Liversidge v Anderson Explored

I shall today be exploring the case of Liversidge v Anderson ([1942] AC 206). It isn’t a case I was immediately familiar with, but is significant nonetheless for its impact on constitutional law and theory, especially concerning the authority of the courts in challenging Parliament.

This case is particularly significant not because its outcome affected the nature of the courts’ relationship with Parliament, in fact it is a dissenting judgement with which we are concerned. Naturally, a dissenting judgement doesn’t have the persuasive calibre of a prevailing judgement, which would grant it the authority of law, but this case deftly illustrates the role taken on by judges as a social conscience, prepared to challenge statutes enacted by Parliament where they believe they infringe too far on our civil liberties or basic freedoms. Moreover, when discussing points of law and finding precedent to support a judgement, whether a judgement was dissenting or not is irrelevant when it is authored by an expert whose legal opinion is not to be disregarded simply because the others on the bench disagreed.

The case is primarily concerned with a bill presented to Parliament in the summer of 1939. At this time, Europe was not yet embroiled in conflict with Nazi Germany, but the threat of war was present in the United Kingdom and so, in order to prepare for the domestic threats war brings (foreign agents or Nazi sympathisers, for example) a bill was read in Parliament that would provide certain Emergency Powers, and allow the enactment of Defense Regulations that would, “(a) make the provision for the … detention of persons whose detention appears to the Secretary of State to be expedient in the interests of the public safety or defense of the Realm.”

Although there was some opposition to this clause in the House of Commons, the bill was enacted with this passage included, and the first application of these Defense Regulations was made; the wording of which was as follows:

“The Secretary of State, if satisfied with respect to any particular person that with a view to prevent him from acting in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the defense of the Realm it is necessary to do so, may make an order.”

The danger is obvious. The Act gave the Secretary of State the authority to detain without trial any person he believes to be a threat to either Public Safety or the Defense of the Realm. This therefore granted the minister the authority to detain potentially innocent people for an indeterminate amount of time without their proper right to Habeas Corpus. Chillingly, this echoes all to closely some of the more extreme anti-terror measures introduced after  September 11th, which served just as well to erode our well established right to the proper system of justice.

The Regulations, after war finally broke out, were issued 1,428 times between May and August 1940, so concerned was the Government at the prospect of there being subversive elements in the United Kingdom. One such order was used against Mr. Robert Liversidge, whose real  name was Jack Perlzweig, and who was serving as a Volunteer Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force. The application of these emergency powers against Mr Liversidge (Perlzweig) meant that he was imprisoned without charge or opportunity to prove his guilt or innocence.

Although the majority decision taken by the House of Lords was that Emergency Legislation in times of war should be given more, and not less effect, Lord Atkin, in his dissenting judgement, made an impassioned argument to reign in the power of the Executive by the Judiciary by applying appropriate safeguards against unlimited executive power, and proposed that the wording of the act, which had been amended the year before to read where the secretary of state has a reasonable cause, implied that there was an objective measure of reasonableness to apply this law, and that it was the court’s responsibility to determine this measurement and apply it accordingly. In his speech, Lord Atkin says,

“In England, amidst the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which on recent authority we are now fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law.”

It is vital to recognise the last phrase of this quotation, that it is the responsibility of the court to be “alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law.” Atkin identifies here that it is the responsibility of the courts to define where the government is acting in a way that inexcusably grants excessive power to Government and unlawfully penalises ordinary citizens without the availability of any legal recourse. This is, in fact, the same argument used in Anisminic: that the courts cannot be excused of their authority to rule whether a government body is acting outside, or making incorrect use of, the law through statute. As a result, Atkin’s speech is in fact quite significant, especially given that it predates Anisminic by nearly 20 years.

Atkin went on to say , “I know of only one authority, which might justify the suggested method of construction. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less’. ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be the master, that’s all.’ After all this long discussion, the question is whether the words ‘If a man has’ can mean ‘If a man thinks he has’. I have an opinion that they cannot and the case should be decided accordingly.”

The speech eloquently asserts that it is not the right of ministers to arbitrarily decide where someone should be imprisoned, and be deprived of their liberties. He argues that responsibility to prevent this behavior lies with the courts, who are empowered to decide how statutes should be interpreted when such a question is raised. This echoes A.C. Gray, mentioned above, who wrote that, ‘“Whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written or spoken laws, it is he who is truly the Law-giver to all intents and purposes, and not the person who first wrote or spoke them”; a fortiori, whoever hath absolute authority not only to interpret the Law, but to say what the Law is, is truly the Law-giver.’

As I mentioned, Atkin’s judgement was dissenting, which means it had no direct impact on the outcome of this particular case, but its significance and impact continued to be felt throughout the twentieth century, and Atkin came to be relied upon more even than the prevailing judgement, as Judges made greater attempts to undermine Parliamentary Sovereignty  in order to secure against injustices committed against the people by an executive attempting to wield absolute power.

Sneak Peak: Analysis of the role of the President as Sovereign (Early Draft)

Chapter Four – “If the President Does it, that means that it is not illegal”

Thomas Fuller’s quote, “Be you ever so high, the law is above you,” is one nearly inescapable in any text on the Rule of Law, or any discussion of sovereignty. The term is well-worn, but remains an important illustrative axiom, which serves to remind the traditional leaders of the past, such as monarchs and presidents, as well as the powerful and influential leaders of today (media moguls and political lobbyists, for example), that nobody can escape the Rule of Law. Though for lawyers it may be a phrase impossible to forget, in politics there are countless examples in modern political history demonstrating that to politicians it is a phrase easily overlooked. Nixon, for example may be glad to know that the Bush Administration would, in the space of ten years, vindicate the title quote so completely, and aim to dismiss Fuller’s phrase so totally, in their pursuit of victory in the War on Terror.

Bush, a president whose term was marred with accusations of illegal spying, wiretapping, rendition, human rights abuses and the ongoing debate over the invasion of Iraq in 2003, pursued a political philosophy that “asserts a conception of executive power which is unlimited; which cannot be constrained by the other branches of government, by Congress or by the Courts, when the president is acting as Commander-in-Chief.” In short, Bush sought a presidency fused with legal sovereignty. Both Americans and observers overseas would be familiar with this perspective, since it was shared by Richard Nixon during his term in office and afterward. Nixon, who was also dogged by accusations of at least questionable, at most illegal practices while in office, believed that as President he had absolute authority to authorise actions which would otherwise have been statutorily criminal. The difference is that Nixon believed that the President was beyond the rule of law in all circumstances. As was demonstrated in the quote above, Bush’s perspective mirrored Nixon’s, but was different in one crucial respect: that the unlimited power of the President was granted only when acting as Commander-in-Chief.

Whatever the differences in their philosophy, both assumed that as President they adopted the role of Sovereign in the legal-political system of the United States of America. The legitimacy of this claim is, of course, not possible to assume. Just as Nixon learned following the Houston plan and the Watergate scandal, Bush found that there are no circumstances in which the President is granted absolute authority to act beyond the law. The fundamental difference, of course, between the United States and the United Kingdom is that the United States has a formal constitution, which outlines the fundamental rights and responsibilities of government, and is defined in Eakin v Raub.

In this case Gibson, dissenting, states “What is a Constitution? It is an act of extraordinary legislation, by which the people establish the structure and mechanism of their government; and in which they prescribe fundamental rules to regulate the motion of the several parts.” The United Kingdom does not have a formal constitution, but instead, as was explained above, has a number of leading cases and ‘ordinary’ legislation, which defines the powers and limits of the Government, as well as the most fundamental rights and responsibilities of subjects. The case for Britain adopting a constitution will be discussed in further chapters.

The Constitution of the United States, in the Fourth Amendment, guarantees the right of Americans against unlawful search and seizure, and this has, alongside the development of more sophisticated communications technology, been expanded to include controls over the use of wiretapping, interception of email and the monitoring of internet use. The Bush administration however decided that the President, while acting as Commander-in-Chief, could exercise his Constitutional role to protect the United States from threats by issuing orders to tap the communications of domestic citizens of the United States without a warrant, where their communications were with a recipient outside the country. According to The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),73 the president has the authority to authorise wiretaps without a warrant where they are directed at persons who are not citizens and are outside the United States. It also provides that the President can issue orders for warrantless wiretaps within fifteen calendar days of a declaration of war by Congress.

The Congressional Research Service, however, reported in 2006 that, “…media revelations that the President authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect signals intelligence from communications involving U.S. persons within the United States, without obtaining a warrant or court order, raise numerous questions regarding the President’s authority to order warrantless electronic surveillance. Little information is currently known about the full extent of the NSA domestic surveillance, which was revealed by the New York Times in December, 2005, but allegedly began after the President issued a secret order in 2002.” These revelations came when an article published in the New York Times claimed that Bush ordered the NSA (National Security Agency) to carry out wiretaps against domestic American citizens without a court order. Given that this is illegal under FISA, except within fifteen calendar days of a declaration of war, this should ordinarily have attracted the attention of the courts (thus leading to a constitutional stand-off between the Judiciary and the Executive). However in these circumstances the Bush administration argued that the President, acting in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, was granted unlimited power to carry out any intelligence gathering he saw fit to engage the enemy (in this case, potential terrorists and other threats). The article asserts that “Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of … perhaps thousands of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda.”

In 2002, a supplemental brief for the US Department of Justice for the US Foreign Intelligence Court (herein referred to as ‘the brief’) was authored by the US Department of Justice outlining the authority of the Executive to engage in illegal wiretapping activity against domestic US citizens, which asserted that, “the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority.” The most obvious criticism of this assertion is that the President cannot be above the law. Neither can he, even when exercising his authority as Commander-in-Chief, or even when securing the safety and security of the nation, excuse the breach of Constitutionally guaranteed rights such as the Fourth Amendment right to privacy of communications. The Constitution itself states that the role of the President is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, but the question to be asked is whether the President has the right to defend his own constitutionally authorised role as Commander-in-Chief against the Fourth Amendment, which would seek to limit the President’s authority to carry out warrantless wiretaps against US citizens.

Naturally, at first glance the answer to this riddle is simple: the Constitution, and not the President is sovereign in the United States, and so the President must uphold and respect the Fourth Amendment. But by doing so, he must concede that his role as commander-in-chief is not unlimited and so he must abide by the provisions of FISA. This argument was, however, dismissed in the brief, which claimed that “in considering the constitutionality of the amended FISA, it is important to understand that FISA is not required by the Constitution.” This bold statement asserts that the President, in exercising his role as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to sweep aside inferior statutes (i.e. Any laws which are not constitutional) that preclude his ability to carry out actions which he considers to be necessary to secure the safety of the United States. 
It has been made clear, however, that the courts do not agree with this position. In Butenko, for example, the court found that, “The President in his constitutionally designated role as Chief Executive is charged with the duty to see that the laws of the United States are enforced and obeyed. Yet it is incontrovertible that the President, through his subordinates, cannot ignore the admonitions of the Fourth Amendment when investigating criminal activity unrelated to foreign affairs. Thus, evidence seized in the investigation of domestic crimes as a result of actions outside the bounds of the Amendment would not be admissible in a criminal prosecution.”

This case, along with two others, was relied upon in the brief to legitimise the President’s claim to unlimited authority. However, it is clear that the Brief mistakes the President’s authority to carry out wiretaps in the interest of Foreign relations and international affairs with his authority to carry out those same acts against domestic US citizens. FISA grants the President the authority to allow warrantless wiretaps on non-US citizens where it is in the interests of foreign relations, but there are few exceptions pertaining to citizens, and even where these are stipulated there are nonetheless strict safeguards to ensure that this authority is not abused. The judgement in Butenko goes on to explain that, “The President’s authority to conduct foreign affairs … is implied, at least in part, from the language contained in Article II of the Constitution. The Constitution contains no express provision authorizing the President to conduct surveillance, but it would appear that such power is similarly implied from his duty to conduct the nation’s foreign affairs. Although direct threats to the existence of governmental institutions or to territorial integrity are of immeasurable gravity, there would seem to be nothing in the language of the Constitution to justify completely removing the Fourth Amendment’s requirements in the foreign affairs field and, concurrently, imposing those requirements in all other situations.”81 The second case the brief sought to rely on to justify the President’s authority to carry out wiretapping without warrant was Truong,82 which states that “the President may authorize surveillance without seeking a judicial warrant because of his constitutional prerogatives in the area of foreign affairs … only so long as the investigation was “primarily” a foreign intelligence investigation.” This case also, therefore, refutes the notion that the President is above the law, and reaffirms the fact that where the President permits an illegal wiretap, or any act not permitted according to statute or which is not in accordance with the constitution, he acts ultra vires, and therefore his actions cannot be permissible under the law.

It is easy to forget, in vague discourse on the general constitutional rights and liberties of citizens, that the argument of the Government rests on the notion that the Executive branch may be granted absolute discretion to intercept private conversations and communications without any judicial review. As was stated neatly in United States v. United States District Court (Keith), “The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.” This principle has its roots in English common law, long before it was enshrined in the United States Constitution under the Fourth Amendment. Lord Mansfield, in Leach v Three of the Kings Messengers, says that “It is not fit that the receiving or judging of the information should be left to the discretion of the officer. The magistrate ought to judge; and should give certain directions to the officer.” This statement has held in the Common law in the United Kingdom just as well as the Constitution has protected this right in the United States.

The Constitution, although useful in securing and defining the basic rights of citizens and the operation of government, adds nothing useful to the protection of those rights except a more difficult means of expunging them. Although valuable in itself, the mere ability to keep the right secure is one just as well defended by the courts in the common law. Indeed, given the length of time and number of cases giving ample chances to remove or infringe this right, the common law has stood fast, and has prevailed. Now, with the introduction of the Human Rights Act, this right has been written into our body of Constitutional documents, and will now no doubt prove just as hard to expunge as a right in the US constitution.

The controversy surrounding illegal wiretaps came to a head in 2006, after the revelations in the press, and the practice was widely condemned both by the public and the courts. Speaking in judgement in a Federal Court in Michigan, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the arbitrary violations of Fourth amendment rights were unlawful, and that “there are no hereditary kings in America.”Bowing to public and legal pressure, President Bush finally conceded to end the NSA’s secret wiretapping programme in January 2008, proving at last that everyone, the President being no exception, is subject to the rule of law as defined by the courts.

Nixon, of course, is a President who did not learn this valuable lesson. His presidency is remembered for the Watergate and Houston scandals, both of which helped to redefine the accepted view of the powers and authority of the President of the United States in a legal capacity. As has already been explained, the President has the authority to issue orders for wiretaps against domestic citizens only in specific circumstances and only if a warrant is authorised either before or immediately following the wiretap. If the wiretap is rejected, the evidence gathered cannot be used (the fruit of the illegal act). This is the basic circumstance of the Houston Scandal, which shares many similarities with the NSA Terrorist wiretapping programme carried out under the Bush Administration. The Houston Plan was a programme of warrantless wiretapping against domestic US citizens whom were suspected of aiding the Vietnamese during the American incursion in the middle of the twentieth century. Although Nixon personally authorised the operation, it was shelved before wiretaps could begin due to pressure from J Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, who felt that such an incursion was unconscionable.

The Parallels with the Bush administration are obvious, the only difference being that Nixon defended his position not by claiming that he was constitutionally authorised to do anything when acting in a certain constitutional capacity, as Bush argued.Instead, Nixon claimed that when the President commits any offense he cannot be prosecuted, because as President he is above the law. Naturally this was not true, as his impeachment testifies. The Houston plan is historic now, and has been replaced by the NSA Wiretapping affair, but it is Watergate that is arguably Nixon’s most damning criminal scandal.

Watergate began in 1972, when the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Building, Washington D.C. was the target of a break-in. Eventually, it was revealed that the order for the break-in had come from the Oval Office, and that the President may have been directly involved. This was an immensely important allegation, as it would be a direct accusation of the President in a statutory crime. Two years after the break-in, the Special Prosecutor in charge of investigating the scandal, Leon Jaworski, obtained a subpoena requiring the President to release certain tapes and transcripts of meetings and conversations he had held with suspects indicted by the grand jury.

Nixon, bowing to pressure to appease the public mood, released edited transcripts of forty conversations, including twenty conversations ordered in the subpoena. Nixon’s attorney, James D Sinclair, told the court that, “The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.” Naturally, the court rejected this statement, and demanded the release of all the tapes and transcripts, unedited, to be delivered to the court by the 31st May 1974. Upon referral to the Supreme Court, it was decided that the transcripts may indeed contain evidence of wrongdoing and, despite the President’s claim that he had the right to protect all privileged government communications, the court decided that Nixon had no right to “an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances.” This case redefined the role of the president politically and legally in the United States. The Supreme Court exercised its authority and made clear that even the President is subject to the rule of law as enacted through decisions of the courts.

Politics of the Tectonic: The problem of alienation in modern architecture, and thoughts on how to solve it.

 

 

 

I was recently given the opportunity to read an enlightening essay on the interrelationship of Politics, Architecture and Social Theory by a good friend of mine. After reading it, I felt compelled to share it,  so enjoy.Politics of the Tectonic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rioting Looting Burning Smashing

Since the start of this widespread rioting across England, many people have asked what could be driving these young people to take to the streets and destroy their communities so violently? What motivates someone to tear their home apart for the sake of stealing a TV, breaking some windows and torching buildings?
Politicians, members of the Police service, all manner of experts have appeared in the media to try to explain this behaviour, but I don’t think it’s been done too well.
These acts of violence, far removed from the so-called “political art” of March 26 Charlie Vietch described, are without aim and without purpose, but there is something behind the madness.

Riots have engulfed the Capital in recent days

These communities, some of the most deprived in the UK, are all but forgotten by the rest of society. Cuts to councils are having wider implications than the government could have imagined. According to some of John Prescott’s latest Tweets, Haringey has lost half of its 8 youth centres to the cuts. On top of this, the young people in these communities feel marginalised, forgotten and overlooked. Minority groups, which make up a large proportion of the population of the affected areas, were dealt a further blow to their self-image when the police in Tottenham, rightly or wrongly, shot Mark Duggan in the chest as part of Operation Trident, the police initiative to tackle gun crime in London’s black community. It is clearly imaginable what impact this would have on these communities. The police deprived a black man of his right to justice and to life, and the community saw this as the police attitude to minorities and to the area, that the police were willing to simply kill a man in the back of a taxi.
Any occurrence of fatal shooting by a police officer must only be absolutely necessary, a last resort in order to prevent serious harm or loss of life. Lessons, clearly, were not learned at the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, but in this case those people who feel so marginalised took the death of Mark Duggan personally.
Obviously, however, there are many people who are using Mark Duggan’s death as an excuse to incite and carry out acts of purely selfish and self-motivated acts of aggression and destruction with no regard for others. But there are valuable lessons to learn even in this. It shows that the young people in these communities simply don’t care about where they live, or with whom. It shows a total lack of respect for everything that surrounds them. But then, why should they respect anything, when seemingly these communities get no respect, no help? While the Olympics pump millions into areas of London blessed by the games, councils are forced to close youth centres, make cuts to vital activities and organisations which otherwise might help to raise these kids’ hopes and teach them to respect themselves and their communities.
It is a shocking picture, what we have witnessed in just a few nights in London and across England, but it is telling in that we have learned that these people, as destructive as they are being, are being so simply because they have no other outlet, no other voice for their concerns. England may be calming down now, but the damage done to these communities will be more than just broken windows and burned-out cars. The scars will take much longer to heal, as societies learn to trust each other again, and move past the damage of the last few days.

Sovereignty: A Brief Introduction

The rule of law is a topic that can trip up many budding law students. It is complex, with no direct or simple description. It is multi-faceted, and it is useless to try and offer up any one definition, yet many people try- and fail.
The rule of law is not the governance of ‘laws’ per se. It is the uniting force behind all laws. It is what gives the courts system their authority, and it ensures that politicians obey the laws that define our parliamentary democracy.
There is a problem with the system, however. The problem is, can Parliamentary sovereignty and the Rule of Law co-exist?
Austin, in his Book, ‘The Providence of Jurisprudence Determined’, defined the Sovereign as being that one person, or body of persons, who is habitually obeyed by the majority of the population; who is not in habitual obedience to any other person or body, and is the source of all law.
If any person was presented with this definition and was subsequently asked, “do we have a sovereign who fits this definition?” the answer would no doubt be no. That is at least part of the problem. The definition of sovereignty has become antiquated. Austin’s definition was ill-fitted, even when it was penned in the nineteenth century, to any body or individual in the United Kingdom, or anywhere not governed by a direct dictator.
The problem for British legal sovereignty, contrasting with many other countries around the world, is that we do not have a written constitution. A document such as the United States Constitution serves as a great example, because it is the sovereign document in the legal system, i.e. all laws passed by congress must comply with the constitution, but as well as this the US itself still retains a common law system, which means that their legal system is a remarkable parallel to ours: theirs is how ours would look if we had written a constitution as well.
In the United States Congress, like Parliament, has the authority to pass statutes, but any statute must comply with the terms of the constitution. It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States to decide on constitutional compliance in statutes, and they are imbued with the power to strike down statutes that they decide are unconstitutional, but only when they are challenged in the courts. It is here that the real difference between the UK and the US is visible. Whereas the US supreme court has this authority, to strike down laws in the name of the constitution, the supreme court here shies away from that power. Lord Justice Coke, in 1615, said that any law that is anathema to the public good, should and could be made void by the courts. Since then, Britain has seen Dicey and Blackstone’s Parliamentary Sovereignty take hold, and now the power of the courts to strike down statute is a forgotten wish. Not only that, but to even suggest such a thing is reckless. Even the courts themselves claim that their role, even when they make and unmake law (though perhaps in more subtle words) their claim is still that all they do is interpret the will of Parliament expressed in Statute.
Perhaps it is time for a (very British) revolution against the Sovereignty of Parliament? The courts have the Rule of Law to support them, and the legal knowledge to mirror Marbury v Madison in any constitutional challenge to a statute. But it would take much more than just one or two judgements.
The power of judicial review goes some way to giving such a power to the courts, but in cases concerning the Human Rights Act (perhaps the closest thing we have to a modern binding constitution) Government is perfectly entitled, as Lady Hale told me, to ignore an order of incompatibility if it should so wish.
However, as was evident in several recent cases regarding the Human Rights Act, Parliament will very rarely decide to ignore an order of incompatibility when concerning human rights, and as demonstrated in the recent case of R (on the application of F) and another (FC) (Respondents) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 17. In this case, Two men who are currently required to remain indefinitely on the Sexual Offences Register argued that it was contrary to their right to a private and family life not to be allowed the possibility of reviewing their punishment at a later date. It was decided that this argument was fair and corresponded with the terms of the Human Rights Act. Despite this, the cabinet and government thought differently, and voiced very loudly their concerns. However, despite this noise, the government nonetheless made arrangements for a change in the law in line with the Supreme Court’s decision. This demonstrates an adherence to the rule of law by Parliament, even though their decision to do so was unpopular politically. This demonstration of the power of the rule of law also demonstrates the authority of the courts, and the respect governments will have for decisions in law. It goes some way to demonstrating the authority wielded by the courts, and may perhaps be considered as the first step toward a more powerful Supreme Court, willing to take responsibility for constitutional compliance in government, and to uphold values which in this society we deem to be inalienable and self-evident.

Big Cats Shouldn’t Mate

Apple have released OSX Lion – hurrah! At last, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and sleep soundly in our beds – but is it really all that?

The answer, to be brief, is unfortunately no. True, it is both shiny and new, two things which I cannot personally resist. It also boasts some nice new features, like Launchpad, which displays all my apps, iPad style, in a display of their own, for me to choose like a kid picking sweets at the Woolworths Pick-n-Mix (I apologise to anyone who became upset at that moment of nostalgia). But that’s just it. It’s a fusion of an iPad and a Mac that I find goes just one step to far.
This, here – this is my mac. It is piece of kit distinct from the iPad in a subtle, but noticeable way: It’s a laptop. Unlike the iPad, my mac has a real keyboard, an impressive trackpad system that allows me to glide the cursor around the screen at my lesure and, of course the last difference, it is not an iPad.
I don’t want my laptop to be an iPad. In fact, I distinctly remember not buying an iPad, because I was quite happy with my laptop not being an ipad. It feels, now, like Steve Jobs put my laptop in a room with an iPad and a bunch of surgeons, locked the door, and forced them create an unspeakable Frankenstein-style combination.
Not that I’m complaining obviously. It is, still, very shiny and new. It does have this launchpad thingy, and the Mission Control whatever-it-is.
It’s nice, I suppose is what I’m getting at. It’s very nice, and I can certainly see that this is the direction Apple’s taking it’s operating system, but maybe it was all just too soon for me. I liked Snow Leopard, I knew where I was. We felt like old friends. We knew all each other’s secrets, we knew which buttons to press and how to press them just right. Now Lion’s arrived, not only does it feel like I’ve got a mistress to keep when Snow Leopard isn’t looking, but this mistress is someone totally unfamiliar, who keeps making all sorts of demands and won’t take her shoes off when she comes in.
I’ll get used to it eventually, and as I say it is very shiny. That was enough for me not long ago. Maybe I’ve become old, and set in my ways. Whatever happened, it looks like just being shiny and new just doesn’t cut it any more.

Crawley is not an interesting place

Crawley, in West Sussex, is not very interesting. That is to say, there doesn’t appear to be much to do here – but then my experience is skewed given that I’m writing this from a carpark outside Astral Towers, the home of the company responsible for AirMiles.
I suppose it’s greatest resident is Gatwick Airport, just down the road, which is almost an interesting landmark not least because of it’s history with BAA, the Spanish airport management company so cruelly smacked down by regulators and forced to sell this much maligned transport centre.
Is there much to speak of, even here, at Gatwick? The answer, regrettably, remains no. True; it does boast an array of shops available in the departure lounge, and a traditionally bland, branded coffee shop in front of the arrivals door. When I came here as a child, many years ago, it even had a kind of antiquated aeroplane on the roof, that we were allowed to play in. I am not sure if the aircraft remains.
Needless to say, there’s very little to be said for either the airport or the surrounding locale, and it makes you wonder why I drove 50km out of my way to come here, especially when you consider that I could equally have been making preparations to go camping at Hayling Island, near Portsmouth (courtesy of Joe Young, my unflappable and totally dependable architect), or perhaps I could have spent the morning working on my film (still unfinished, the deadline I set myself changing almost daily). Yet no, I am here. Surrounded by roundabouts. Too far to call it London, yet close enough for the traffic to choke the life from you, this place reminds me of how I once imagined purgatory – a never-ending parade of roundabouts, the traffic entirely motionless as if kneeling to pray in reverence to the lord Traffic Light.
So far, on my way through this town, I’ve seen nothing but garden centres, strip malls and industrial estates. I can only imagine that in fact, people don’t live here, it’s only a town to which people commute to work. When the offices close at around 8, I imagine a steady stream of cars, like the lifeblood of Crawley seeping away, leaving town via the various arterial roads (having first paid tribute at the altar of the roundabout), and the whole place falls completely silent, like Pripyat, except the desperation to leave was brought about by a sheer need to flee the torment of boredom and blandness, and not toxic levels of radiation.
The café inside Astral Towers, Caffé Kix, optimistically offers loyalty stamp cards, offering a free coffee after one side is filled in. Given the number of cards still in the display stand, this hasn’t exactly caught on, but I suppose that’s to be expected in a brand of coffee shop that I’ve only ever seen once, today, in that building. I suppose that, when you dominate the Market in something, just as Microsoft dominated the computer software Market for so long in the 90’s and early 2000’s, any offer of a freebie will be accepted after a while. So too does Caffé Kix dominate to coffee Market here, in Astral Towers and, presumably, it’s free coffee loyalty card is destined to catch on.
Too far to walk anywhere for an alternative, this cafe has managed to corner a market: tired, moody commuters, working for one of the companies ensconced in Astral Towers like Louis XVI in the Tuilleries. They don’t care where their lattes come from, just as long as there’s a double espresso in it and it doesnt cost more than they’re earning an hour (a feat, I suppose, that difficult to achieve in central London without some research).
This building, indeed the entire town of Crawley, is an exercise in hopelessness. A sad revelation in inevitability revealing that one day, for many of us, the commute to work shall be just this: a long line of cars, a carnival of roundabouts, flashing zebra crossing lights, full car parks and cafés that, all things considered, should be investigated by the competition commission. Suits, ties, black Renault Meganes and enormous, faceless industrial estates. Then again, it could always be worse: imagine commuting to somewhere fun, from Crawley.

The Ghost of the Arab Spring, or the New European Summer?

I heard yesterday Baroness Royall speaking in the House of Lords. She was making a statement on the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed British journalism, politics and policing, and made a direct comparison between the Arab Spring revolutions and the scandal aforementioned. She said,

“In comparison with the spring revolutions across the Middle East this year, let alone the Russian Revolution of 1917, this may not be that much of a change, but in comparison with what has run for so long in British journalism and British politics it is a revolution indeed. A number of factors led to this revolution. The most forceful and important has been the public. Public opinion can be hard to hear… Without opinion polls, focus groups, elections or any of the machinery of catching what the public are thinking and want, the public transmitted their views in every home, shop, pub, town and village in every part of the country and beyond these shores. What the public thought and wanted was transparent, forceful and undeniable.”

(the whole speech can be found on Hansards website here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/110715-0001.htm#11071554000602)

I am, of course, all for hearing about a post-Arab Spring Revolutionary Zeitgeist, and Rupert Murdoch is learning now what it is to ignore that particular public zeal, and is now reaping the proverbial whirlwind, but it isn’t a new phenomenon that we are witnessing here.
The 26th of March demonstrations, which I covered in depth for a documentary project of my own, were quite clearly influenced by the Arab Spring, and nearly everyone I spoke to told me so. From the Socialist Workers Party, who were keen to highlight the influence their Egyptian comrades had on the movement, to grassroots demonstrators, frustrated public sector workers all keen to shout that if the Egyptians could do it, why not us? The Guardian reported the same, citing the influence of Tunisia and Egypt on the March demos (Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/22/anti-cuts-campaigners-trafalgar-square-tahrir)

El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, has already claimed their own Arab Spring revolution, comparing the demonstrations there with the Egyptian uprising that led to the collapse of the regime (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/New/democracy/movement/senses/its/moment/elpepueng/20110517elpeng_1/Ten)

Italy, too, is abuzz with talk of their own revolution, with #italianrevolution becoming a trend on twitter. Europe, it seems, loves a good revolution (and lets not forget of course the famous one of 1789), but regrettably, it seems that for Britain the News Corp scandal isn’t going to lead to anything quite so dramatic. The political class couldn’t support a revolution that might ultimately lead to the public cry of “off with their heads,” nor would storming the Tower of London in a Bastille-esque show of people-power versus political-power achieve anything in Britain except make a mess, even if the Great British Public had the get-up-and-go to instigate such a move.
But be proud, Britain, at least we get a revolution at all, and the fact that Public outcry can be so powerful as to bring down to size a company as powerful as News International is something worth shouting about, without doubt.

No News in the World

So the News of the World is no more. Could this be a cynical ploy, an attempt at containment by the Murdoch Empire to nip in the bud a problem inherent in News International? Possibly, but could it just be cutting off the head of a Hydra, only to find that another one, two, three grow back?

The internet is abuzz with rumour and speculation about who knew what, and how far up the chain this really went. There are questions to be asked about how News of the World was able to get away with this behaviour for so long, questions of News International’s fitness to take over BskyB, and of course questions to be asked of our own government. Attention should be given to how David Cameron justified employing Andy Coulson, and why he gave him a second chance after he resigned the first time. Also, why it is that David Cameron alone, in his capacity as Prime Minister, is able to “take full responsibility for everyone I employ, for everyone I appoint”, and for deciding to rehire Coulson? He, the man charged as the spokesman for the British People and yet he decides, unchecked, who shall be the voice for Number 10. Despite warnings from countless people, issued countless times (including much noise from John Prescott) about Coulson’s fitness for the role, he nonetheless personally undertook the decision to appoint Coulson. I am positive that if the same information about Coulson’s past had been presented to the British public and we had been asked if he were fit for the job, we would’ve told Mr Cameron exactly how much faith we had in him to do the job. Bad enough is it that we have enough to complain about (to say the least, I no longer agree with Nick) we now must also suffer the embarrassment that our Prime Minister, despite numerous warnings, knowingly employed someone who at the very least was aware of these hacking allegations, and at worst was wilfully involved in them. Now, to add insult to injury, following Coulson’s arrest, the Prime Minister still asserts that he stands by him, and remains his personal friend. As a British citizen, regardless who I voted for, this man is my representative. He is the spokesman for me and for every other person on the British Isles and as such, I expect him to act with some respect for us in mind. Instead, he has brought the integrity of our Government into question, and that is something that should absolutely be answered for.

Whoever is to blame for the hacking scandal that has engulfed the News of the World, and which led to its ultimate downfall, what concerns me is the lasting effect it will have on British politics, and how we are reflected by our leaders in the rest of the world. More than anything else, David Cameron needs to learn some very serious lessons, and none more important than to put the good of Britain before his personal friendships, and to listen to advice, especially when it comes from people whose opinions even he isn’t arrogant enough to ignore.