Impunity 1959


After such an extended break from blogging, you will be deeply disappointed that I restart with something as mundane and trivial as Jeremy Clarkson. I have defended the man in the past, because I much enjoy Top Gear and consider that much of what he has been criticised for in the past had been an amusing winding-up of the po-faced of the kind I employ myself. But nasty, indeed vicious bullying of a subordinate should always be a sacking offence.

That did not ought to be the question, though. He hit someone and they had to go to hospital. Where are the police? They are incredibly fond of sweeping up scores of teenagers for thought crime, but here we have an actual violent assault that spills blood, and it seems completely out of the question the perpetrator is brought to account. Why is that? I had a personal experience a couple of years ago when I was very mildly hurt – less than young Oisin – in an assault, and the police insisted on arresting the perpetrator despite my repeated requests to them not to do so. They told me rather firmly that the idea that it is the victim who has a say in pressing charges, is a myth. Why was Clarkson not arrested?

I cannot in my mind dissociate this from the non-arrest of Jimmy Savile for his crimes, despite their being well-known and reported at the time. That seems to link in to the wider paedophilia scandal, and the question of why no action was taken even in the most blatant of cases when there was compelling evidence, such as that of the extremely nasty Greville Janner MP.

But then I think still more widely as to why, for example, Jack Straw has not been charged with the crime of misfeasance in public office after boasting of using his position to obtain “under the radar” changes in regulations to benefit commercial clients, in exchange for cash. I wonder why a large number of people did not go to jail for the HSBC tax avoidance schemes or the LIBOR rigging scandal, which involved long term dishonest manipulation by hundreds of very highly paid bankers.

At the top of the tree is of course the question of why Blair has not been charged for the crime of waging illegal war. The Chilcot Inquiry heard evidence that every single one of the FCO’s elite team of Legal Advisers believed that the invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. Yet now the media disparage as nutters those who say Blair should be charged.

Then I think of all the poor and desperate people who get jailed for stealing comparatively miniscule amounts in benefit fraud, or the boy who was jailed for stealing a bottle of water in the London riots.

The conclusion is that we do not have a system of justice in this country at all. We have a system where the wealthy and governing classes and those associated with them enjoy almost absolute impunity, broken in only the rarest of cases. At the same time those at the bottom of the pile are kicked hard to keep them there. There is no more chance of justice against those in power in the UK than there is of the killers of Nemtsov being brought to book in Russia.

But what has really scared me is this thought. This situation has been like this my entire life: and I have reached the age of 56 before I realised it. A very great many people have still not realised it at all.

What does not scare me is this. I realise that if the system of justice is completely corrupted, then there is no obligation on me to follow the laws of the state. In fact it would be wrong of me to do so. I must seek my ethical compass elsewhere than in the corrupt power structure which weighs so hard upon the people.


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1,959 thoughts on “Impunity

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  • technicolour

    “We can only see the side of the moon which is facing the sun.”

    Ow ow ow – no, can’t understand it, curses. Thanks for trying…

    “Cameron wanted to go to war. He was not happy to be defeated in parliament.”

    a) the antithesis of dictatorship, not excusing anything else he/this administration has done b) people like Gove demonstrably & tellingly far more unhappy.

    “how would you like it?”

    5 bags in a pot, stewed, and with a spoonful of honey please. Visions of which get me out of bed of a morning..

  • Clark

    John, I’m not sure what I think because facts are few and propaganda is rife. Provisionally, I’m opposed to sending in armed forces from either side.

  • technicolour

    John, since you haven’t replied, can you explain why as a pacifist, you are not supporting the anti war voices in Russia, please? Thank you.

  • Peacewisher

    One thing today’s eclipse should remind everyone of is that our solar system (or at least our part of it) has intelligent design.

    Well, do you think the relative sizes and distances of sun and moon to cause that eclipse could have happened by chance?

    Peace, love, and humility to all.

  • technicolour

    It has musical design, and beautiful design, and serendipity, but ‘intelligent’? Hmm.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    “Resident Dissident is very happy to support this, and the killing of 6,000 in the first civil war in Ukraine since 1921. Nearly 100 years of peace and along come the Yanks with their chequebooks and proxy diplomacy.”
    ______________

    Actually, the original record said “poxy diplomacy” but Mr Goss’s copy is almost worn out and inaudible from over-frequent playing. 🙂

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    I have noticed something interesting : the quieter the situation in eastern Ukraine, the louder and more frenzied the Voices of Putin and Fascist Uprisers on this blog.

    Not too much Peace-wishing there, I’d say.

  • John Goss

    Technicolour, I did reply. It is two comments above your request. And you can add to that the fact that because by intervening in accordance with the wishes of the Crimean people it brought peace to that region, and I am in favour of peace. A similar intervention in Novorossiya in accordance with its residents, may have saved the lives of 6,000 people, and the downing of MH17, even if you don’t believe Vladislav Voloshin was responsible.

  • Clark

    Tech, imagine you’re the middle in a big room, like a sports hall. The nly light comes from a single naked bulb on a person-height stand half way between you and the back wall. You’re holding a football out at arm’s length, and you’re slowly turning on the spot, looking at the football you’re holding…

    When your arm is directed away from the bulb on the stand, the side of the football facing you is fully lit. All the far side is in shadow, but you can’t see that. This is like the situation at full moon.

    You turn anticlockwise slowly by 90 degrees. Now the bulb is on your left. The left half of the football is lit; the right half is in shadow…

    Keep turning. The lit part of the ball becomes a crescent, getting thinner and thinner.

    As the ball comes into line with the bulb, the far side of it is fully lit, but the whole side facing you is in shadow. The ball obscures the bulb – This is like total eclipse.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Peacewisher
    20/03/2015 11:38 pm

    Obviously, aliens moved the moon into place to create a cool aesthetic effect, and then the tides inadvertently started off abiogenesis and evolution, culminating in intelligent life on earth, which was a bit annoying for them ethically.

    I’ll have some tea in the morning, Clark, thanks all the same. I am off to bed. Happy debating.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Evgueni

    John Goss and his lies – 100 years of peace in Ukraine. I draw your attention to the facts – millions of Ukrainians dead in Ukraine during 1932-1933 Holodomor, hundreds of thousands executed in the back of the heads in 1937. Strictly, he is right – it wasn’t civil war, more like extermination. Then there was the little matter of UPA resistance to the Soviets during which mortality on the Soviet side was higher than in their adventure in Afganistan. A mere insergency then.

    I am not the first one to call John Goss a liar on this blog. For me the only question that remains is whether he sincerely believes his own lies, or if he is paid to spread them. The former would not surprise me – the old commies still gather around their bulletin boards in my home town, to defend the non-existent honour of their Party.

  • technicolour

    “a coup in Ukraine, like the one in Chile, which brought Mrs Thatcher’s friend Pinochet to power”

    Do you really think it would have helped matters if Russia had started pouring arms and/or forces into Chile?

  • Peacewisher

    @John S-D: please think for yourself. Science is just the best model we have at the moment. The results from the Hadron Collider are already causing physicists to think their model is wrong.

  • RobG

    Clark, like many of us here I was around in the 1980s.

    All the doomsday stuff, wearing noddy suits, etc, was all part of this continuing madness. The Soviet Union had a huge land army, and if it ever headed west across the German plain, NATO would, at best, have had 72 hours before the nukes started flying.

    All this now gets air-brushed out of history, by redneck Senators who barely know what time of the day it is, let alone what planet they live on.

    I find it gobsmacking that people believe anything that comes out of Washington.

  • technicolour

    hah, the results from the Hadron Collider were messed up royally by a seagull with a baguette!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/large-hadron-collider/6514155/Large-Hadron-Collider-broken-by-bread-dropped-by-passing-bird.html

    This makes me feel a lot better about the fact that Clark’s kind and careful explanation still makes my head hurt.

    John, I still don’t see your response, either. Could you just explain again why, as a pacifist, you’re not supporting the anti-war voices in Russia? Thanks.

  • Clark

    Tech, if you can’t visualise it, actually do it. A living room will be big enough. Take the shade off a standard lamp.

  • Clark

    RobG, I don’t take anything from Washington at face value, but why should I be more trusting of the Kremlin?

  • technicolour

    “When your arm is directed away from the bulb on the stand, the side of the football facing you is fully lit. ”

    But surely it will be in shadow, if it’s facing me – otherwise, what will it be lit by?

    My personal radiance? 🙂

    OK, will try tomorrow.

    Meanwhile, Mr Goss?

  • Peacewisher

    Just stop to think about the improbability for a minute, Clark.

    If you haven’t studied history too much, the Catholic Church defended the “earth as centre of universe” model for many years after Copernicus and then Galileo showed it was a load of bull.

    Science doesn’t move forward linearly, but through revolutions, sometimes bloody ones. See Thomas Kuhn’s wonderful work. I could tell you more, but very tired so another day.

  • technicolour

    John, I still don’t see your response, either. Could you just explain again why, as a pacifist, you’re not supporting the anti-war voices in Russia? Thanks.

  • Herbie

    Clark

    You’ve mentioned what you call “the Russian state position”, a number of times now.

    So far as I can see, as regards Ukraine, the Russian position is that NATO is coming too close for its comfort.

    Ukraine is their red line.

    The Chinese have very similar concerns and are supporting Russia’s position. Much of South America and Africa are supporting the Russian position.

    Do you think they’re all wrong?

  • John Goss

    Sorry Evgueni you’re wrong, in all respects, particularly calling me the biggest liar on this blog, something you certainly cannot substantiate. So tell me are you supporting the genocide of 6,000 people in this civil war? Do you believe that governments should be elected? Or just seize power? Do you believe in coups-d’etat?

    Also, you and Resident Dissident are wrong about the Holodomor. As I have tried to explain there was a world recession at the time everybody was starving, in England, in the US, everywhere. It was called the Great Depression. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned in a Gulag under Stalin and only released in 1953 after Stalin died, did not support the notion that the Holodmor was genocide, but starvation, due to Bolshevik grain procurements. Putin is not a Bolshevik.

    As to the shootings of Ukrainians and Poles and Jews it is true. But those responsible were Ukrainian Nazis and Germans.

    http://www.ukrainewar.info/kiev-forcing-death-starvation-relocation-donbass/

    So as the Quakers say to speak truth to power, yes, I have been called a liar. I have been called a liar by you and by Uzbek in the UK. But I think most people will defend my integrity that I do not intentionally tell lies.

  • technicolour

    What do *you* think, Herbie? Why don’t you tell us, before quizzing Clark?

  • technicolour

    John, guess what, I still don’t see your response. Could you just explain again why, as a pacifist, you’re not supporting the anti-war voices in Russia? Thanks.

  • Clark

    Tech, yes, if the ball is in your shadow, that’s like a lunar eclipse. We could make the stand a bit higher so your shadow is a bit lower than the football. Then you’d have to elevate your arm a bit when it was pointing at the bulb to get the solar eclipse effect, but that’s fine because it simulates the inclination of the moon’s orbit relative to Earth’s orbit around the sun.

    Peacewisher, the moon and the sun looking about the same size doesn’t seem that improbable to me. Your reference to Kuhn suggests to me that you probably think Einstein’s relativity proved that Newton was wrong, and then the next advance will prove that Einstein was wrong, and so forth, proving that all science is wrong, and therefore everything must have been made by something we’re not allowed to think about. OK, sure; you think that way if you want.

  • ben

    “Commie” is a word which when used is a dead giveaway as to the sclerotic venal clog of the most recent regurgitator. Thanks for the mammaries.

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