Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[MrWolf]

10 minutes ago, alastairq said:

One man's ''common sense'' is another man's ''idiocy?''

 

Neatly put.

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, MrWolf said:

how does the law decide which is morally right? 

The law is capable of deciding ‘intent’, so in theory could decide ‘motivation’ or ‘purpose’, the debate in setting the law would then be around which motivations or purposes society wishes to admit, and which it doesn’t, which would be seriously difficult to resolve.

 

Its odd to me though, because in a sense the intent of protestors in a circumstance like this (maybe not the Colston one, but definitely Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain) is precisely to break the law, get convicted, and go to prison, as a non-violent way of bring the issue to the top of the public agenda. If I were them, and what I was doing was made legal, I’d go and find something else non-violent to do that wasn’t!

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

Despite the tendency of modern governments to criminalise everything (Blair and Brown notoriously invented a crime a week while in office, and the trend continues) and the nasty concomitant rise of more strict liability offences (i.e. no need to prove intent), many crimes do require guilty intent to be shown.

 

Thus, recalling the studies of my youth, offences traditionally require the prosecution to prove two aspects:

 

• Actus reus: The committing of the acts that constitute the offence; and, 
• Mens rea: The guilty mind, the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of the offence.

Here the discuss of the Colson case has looked at intent in a general, less legalistic, way. So did the jury, it seems.

 

Let us assume that the offence was criminal damage and that criminal damage requires mens rea to be established. I say 'assume' as I am neither expert nor current in criminal law, which has never been part of my practice. 

 

To establish intent I imagine that it is necessary to show that the damage was intentional, which it clearly was and, I believe, the offence was anyway admitted by the accused.

 

What Nearholmer is talking about is really 'why', the underlying reason why the accused formed the intent to commit criminal damage.

 

That motivation is irrelevant to the question of whether the offence is proven.

 

However, here the jury was not interested in the correct legal outcome. As Nearholmer says, it was applying a different, arguably more sophisticated, test of guilt than the legal test.

 

Undoubtedly the jury should have delivered a guilty verdict, but they were not bound to do so.  They chose to make a political judgment.  

 

Whatever one thinks of that, it shows the independence of the jury system. I think a system in which the consciences of Twelve Good Men* and True can trump what the State** wants is a sound one.

 

*women and non-binary folk

** in the form of what the government put on the statute book and what the prosecuting authorities seek

 

[MrWolf]

I do think that you have a point @NearholmerThereby creating their instant "martyrdom" and the publicity they crave whilst their friends bleat "fascist state" over and over like Orwell's sheep.

Except that in a fascist state they wouldn't be saying anything. Well, only once.

The problem is and has been for years that these types of protestors do little to endear themselves to the public at large, even if they support or at least recognise the issues.

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by MrWolf

[burgundy]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Let's not forget that a certain von Trapp had been an Austrian submarine ace in WW1!

 

According to Wiki, sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 GRT and 2 Allied warships displacing a total of 12,641 tons

 

He actually looked like this. 

This portrait hangs in the Casino building in Pula, Croatia. 

By way of explanation, Croatia was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Pula was then Pola and, as noted above, the home of the Imperial Navy. Casino should actually be translated as Officers' Mess. 

The portrait hangs on a wall filled with other portraits of bewhiskered military officers. It came as a complete revelation to our guide when I pointed out that this one, at least, had a name that would be instantly recognisable in a completely different context.  

Pula was a fascinating place to visit

with derelict merchant ships within touching distance of Roman buildings and a Foo Fighters concert going on in a Roman theatre. 

Best wishes 

Eric 

 

[burgundy]

5 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

The problem is and has been for years that these types of protestors do little to endear themselves to the public at large, even if they support or at least recognise the issues.

 

In this particular case, for some reason, there have been remarkably few people standing up to say, "we really think we should continue to celebrate someone who traded in human lives". 

I suspect that the majority of public opinion in the city had been against the statue for some time. 

Best wishes 

Eric  

[Welchester]

9 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Undoubtedly the jury should have delivered a guilty verdict, but they were not bound to do so.  They chose to make a political judgment. 

 

I'm not sure about that. There is no means of knowing why the jury reached its verdict. This is interesting. Forgive me if you're already aware of it.

[Nearholmer]

32 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

The problem is and has been for years that these types of protestors do little to endear themselves to the public at large, even if they support or at least recognise the issues.

Ah, but if that assertion is true, how is it that twenty four people off the Clapham omnibus came to the conclusions they came to?

 

My reading is there is actually quite a deep well of sympathy towards the points that both groups were making, i.e. lots of people agree that trashing the environment, and lauding those enriched by enslaving people are bad things, and that, if asked, a great many people would be reluctant to “bang up” protestors, especially retired vicars and the like, for expressing those points impolitely, because they understand that the world “cops a deaf ‘un” when those points are expressed politely.

 

Consider for a moment that even many establishment figures have expressed sympathy with the points made by the protestors, while carefully skirting-round endorsing their methods. Prince Charles I thought came really close even to endorsing their methods, and sounded as if he would have joined them if he could have got away with it.

 

My sense is that the position of “the silent majority” is quite different from where it might have been a few years ago.

 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

36 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

That motivation is irrelevant to the question of whether the offence is proven.

I realise that it is currently irrelevant, what I’m doing is to explore the possibility of laws that do include it, make it relevant, in future.

[MrWolf]

16 minutes ago, burgundy said:

In this particular case, for some reason, there have been remarkably few people standing up to say, "we really think we should continue to celebrate someone who traded in human lives". 

I suspect that the majority of public opinion in the city had been against the statue for some time. 

Best wishes 

Eric  

 

I wasn't talking specifically about the Bristol statue situation, but rather more generally. If we allow people to attack or destroy anything that doesn't sit with their world view, are we not setting them up to see what else they can get away with? Do we allow such people, however noble their intentions to police our thoughts and deeds, rewrite history et cetera?

Now you're getting into the fascist state protesters are apparently railing against.

Having worked in a voluntary capacity for a Liverpool based anti slavery charity, my personal thoughts are that the statue could have had a use. It could have been incorporated into a permanent display highlighting the fact that this is most people's view of slavery and educating them that slavery is still thriving. The image of bewigged East India company slave traders or Confederate plantation owners is obsolete. Now, the slavers walk amongst us, unseen. They're everything from businessmen to drug dealers.

Slavers were never all white Europeans, they are all manner of  people and the sooner that is admitted and addressed, the better. 

[Nearholmer]

6 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Do we allow such people, however noble their intentions to police our thoughts and deeds, rewrite history et cetera?

Of course our history needs to be re-written; it needs to be re-written to include the significant chunks regarding colonial exploitation, and enslavement which were left out when it was written by our antecedents.

 

In the same way that including The Holocaust in standard history acts as a warning about one particular strand of beastliness in the human character, and covering the squalor and exploitation of early industrial cities warns about another, it’s worth including enslavement and colonial exploitation to warn about those beastlinesses.

 

The police police our deeds, and it’s a fallacy to believe that anybody, ever, anywhere has been capable of policing our thoughts, it’s an impossibility (so far, although maybe tech is on the brink of making it half-possible).

[MrWolf]

I would say that history needs to be taught, not rewritten.

 

Not only the events, good or evil, but the whys and wherefores behind them.

 

Go to any country on earth and read their individual history, all have blood on their hands.

The origins of slavery as a trade take us down a rabbit hole that many don't like to admit.

My own ancestors were far too busy trying to earn a crust in the quarries of Shropshire and the woods of Southern Germany 200 years ago to be thinking about colonising anywhere.

I was having a conversation a week last Tuesday with someone about the "re-education centres" in China last week as a spur from talking about people rewriting history to suit their agendas. 

All he could do was come up with a lame obfuscation and lecture me about "how the British invented concentration camps during the Boer war".As if I hadn't heard that one and hadn't considered the Napoleonic prison camps or the plight of the Scottish Presbyterians as mentioned earlier on here?

I kind of stumped him by asking if that meant it was okay to still have such places in the world? 

 

I think that you know what I meant by "policing our thoughts and deeds" as in forcing their world view upon us who may be a product of different experiences and opportunities.

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by MrWolf

[Regularity]

The point might be that people don't make war, countries do...

(That is nowhere near as simplistic a statement as it sounds. If you think so, think some more.)

[MrWolf]

Agreed. There's every chance that some of my ancestors faced each other across the trenches and for what?

Not because of their personal differences, but because their own leaders would have had them strung up if they refused.

 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by MrWolf
Stupid autocorrect

[Nearholmer]

4 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

I would say that history needs to be taught, not rewritten.

 

Given that it would be impossible to teach all of it, even all of the known bits, let alone the unknown bits, then deciding what should be selected for inclusion in standard syllabuses (syllabi?), and what should be emphasised at places like museums and stately homes, is IMO important, and needs to be “re-written”. 
 

Modern school curriculums (curriculi? Curricula? curriculee?) are actually pretty good at prompting thoughts about whys, wherefores, sources, selectivity etc, certainly a million times better than when I were a lad.

[rocor]

The original plaque for the Edward Colston statue read as follows:

 

“Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city”.

 

There were plans for a second plaque to be erected which would read as follows:

 

“As a high official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, Edward Colston played an active role in the enslavement of over 84,000 Africans (including 12,000 children) of whom over 19,000 died en route to the Caribbean and America.

Colston also invested in the Spanish slave trade and in slave-produced sugar. As Tory MP for Bristol (1710-1713), he defended the city’s ‘right’ to trade in enslaved Africans.

Bristolians who did not subscribe to his religious and political beliefs were not permitted to benefit from his charities,”.

 

There was opposition to this new plaque being placed, from such entities as the Society of Merchant Venturers, that believed that they should have had the final say on the words that appeared. Also, some Tory councillors had objections to having Colston being credited as having being an MP of their party. 

 

Maybe if these vested interest had not opposed the new plaques' installation, there would have been a different outcome. 

[MrWolf]

That then begs the question of: Who decides what is selected to be taught?

 

That way is a very dark path as history has often proved

[Nearholmer]

Somebody has to, because it can’t all be taught. Somebody chose what is taught in schools now. Somebody decided what to emphasis and what not at every museum in the land.

 

Best hope to avoid a dark path is to put genuinely wise and enlightened people in charge of making the choices, but you can’t have “not choice”, a choice will always be made somehow.

[MrWolf]

8 minutes ago, rocor said:

The original plaque for the Edward Colston statue read as follows:

 

“Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city”.

 

There were plans for a second plaque to be erected which would read as follows:

 

“As a high official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, Edward Colston played an active role in the enslavement of over 84,000 Africans (including 12,000 children) of whom over 19,000 died en route to the Caribbean and America.

Colston also invested in the Spanish slave trade and in slave-produced sugar. As Tory MP for Bristol (1710-1713), he defended the city’s ‘right’ to trade in enslaved Africans.

Bristolians who did not subscribe to his religious and political beliefs were not permitted to benefit from his charities,”.

 

There was opposition to this new plaque being placed, from such entities as the Society of Merchant Venturers, that believed that they should have had the final say on the words that appeared. Also, some Tory councillors had objections to having Colston being credited as having being an MP of their party. 

 

Maybe if these vested interest had not opposed the new plaques' installation, there would have been a different outcome. 

 

I understand that Bristolians weren't exactly keen on the statue being put up in the first place.

No doubt those who had the statue commissioned had a vested interest in putting a positive spin on Colson, probably to cover their own backs.

[MrWolf]

7 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Somebody has to, because it can’t all be taught. Somebody chose what is taught in schools now. Somebody decided what to emphasis and what not at every museum in the land.

 

Best hope to avoid a dark path is to put genuinely wise and enlightened people in charge of making the choices, but you can’t have “not choice”, a choice will always be made somehow.

 

Who are these "genuinely wise" and "genuinely enlightened" people?

 

Who decides? Government? Local councils? Some idealistic think tank?

 

Even those phrases have Orwellian overtones to those of us who have worked in some of the world's less desirable tourist destinations.

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

You can research quite easily how the history content of the current national curriculum for schools was arrived at, and it wasn’t a non-controversial process.
 

Deciding what history to teach or emphasise is always a controversial, or at least complicated, matter, except where one group/party/world-view/ideology is so immensely dominant that no others even get a look in.

 

Even in the simple domestic setting of a family, choices are made about which bits of family history to pass forward through the oral tradition, and which bits to leave out, either because they are boring (every Saturday afternoon for thirty seven years, your father cut his toenails while the football results were on the wireless) or don’t reflect well on people (your uncle Norman had a mild incontinence problem, and always smelled fairly of stale urine), and which to emphasise (Of course, Cousin Maude shook hands with Queen Alexandra, twice!).

 

Culture Wars are what happens when the making of the choices gets nasty; The Department for Education and Science is paid to make choices in a boring way, that has broad support, and doesn’t involve people smashing one another over the head with lumps of 4”x2”.

 

But, like it or lump it, choices get made. They always have, and they always will, by one means or another. Expressing mild paranoia about every conceivable way of making choices won’t stop them being made, in fact it’s more likely to cede space in which blatant manipulators can then operate.

[MrWolf]

It's not mild paranoia and I resent the suggestion. 

It was a genuine question about exactly how we would arrive at deciding how and what history is taught.

To obfuscate about cutting toenails is borderline reducto ad absurdum.

 

What we need is something that is honest and factual which is neither some bombastic delusion that Brittania still rules the waves nor some knee jerk public sector white middle class guilt of empire trip either.

[Nearholmer]

Apologies. I am probably over-sensitised to the use of faux-rhetorical questions by alt-right bods who use them to delegitimise democratic institutions in order to insert their own ideologically biased rubbish. 

 

For the big, public-policy decisions around this, we have the usual combination of elected representatives operating within constituted arrangements, and public servants to do the donkey work. But then there are also universities that have a fair degree of freedom to set their curriculums, charities like the NT that can influence or respond to the dialogue, etc etc.
 

If you want to influence the national curriculum, I guess the people to pester are your local MP, and The Minister.

 

 

[colin smith]

3 hours ago, Welchester said:

 

I'm not sure about that. There is no means of knowing why the jury reached its verdict. This is interesting. Forgive me if you're already aware of it.

 

That article is brilliant and should be required reading for anyone with an opinion on the jury's verdict. I was particularly taken with this line which came after many hundreds of words of informed and persuasive analysis:

Quote

it is hard to convey in sober terms how utterly batshit this proposition is

And his conclusions at the end are right... and chilling.

[Caley Jim]

4 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I think a system in which the consciences of Twelve Good Men* and True can trump what the State** wants is a sound one.

 

*women and non-binary folk

15 in Scotland (I've served on one).

 

Jim