There’s an article on the BBC about this bloke, Mario Celaire, who has been convicted of Murder under new Double Jeopardy laws.  It sounds like he was probably guilty but he had already been acquitted nevertheless sooner or later these new laws are going to cause an innocent man to go to jail.

The new laws state that someone can be re-tried after acquittal if “compelling new evidence” comes to light thus removing a protection which over hundreds of years have saved thousands of people from bullying state interfearence.

What prompted these laws were that some of people were coming out of court having been found not guilty and they were admitting their crimes.

This is a weak argument in favour of removing Double Jeopardy protection after all bad though it may be to have the man who raped you walking free when everyone knows he was guilty it still seems rather better than having the man who raped you walking free with everyone wondering whether or not you were lying.

Also idea of “compelling new evidence” seems to undermine the presumption of innocence a bit because to me compelling new evidence means evidence which basically shows that they were wrongly acquitted which in turn means that a judge has sent the message to the new jury that the evidence suggests the defendant is guilty.  And you can’t solve this by not telling the jury in fact that just spreads the presumption of guilt more widely.

But the most important point is that for every extra criminal this law locks away there are hundreds of innocent people who don’t get proper closure.  Their lives, already blighted by wrongful accusations, now further hurt by the fact that they will never be able know that their ordeal is finally over.  The locking up of the one extra criminal isn’t worth all the destruction it does to countless other people’s lives.

To quote the family of the victim of this Celaire bloke:

“It is a victory for everyone who feels that they have been let down by the justice system.

“This double jeopardy will give people the chance to say, ‘We can go back and fight again, we won’t give up.’”

Or put another way:

“They can go back and fight again, they won’t give up”

I felt like writing a post about virtual strip seraches which I fear will become as commonplace tomorrow as bag scanning is today.

However the American Civil Liberties Union makes the point much better than I would so I lifted the entire article from their website (link included):

“See-Through” Body Scanners

Millimeter Wave Image (see larger >>) Backscatter X-Ray Image (see larger >>)

There are some security measures that are extremely intrusive and should only be used when there is good cause to suspect that an individual is a security risk. See-through body scanning machines are capable of projecting an image of a passenger’s naked body.

Passengers expect privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/35506res20080603.html

The right wing ideal of good governance is that fiscal policy should be for the benifit of all non evil men and women in this country and, to an extent, the world. I realise this is a fairly woolly aim but it is intended to contrast with other people (often good people of the left) who feel, that government should act in the medium to long term interests mainly of the poor. They feel that it is sometimes even worth making the total pie smaller in order to give the hungriest a bigger piece. And that is reasonable, to a point, but where we place that point is one of the big questions. However it is clear to me that there have to be some no-go areas.

There are two, massive, populist traps which catch people on either side of the path. Those of us whose sympathies lie to the right must, at all times be vigilantly wary of any instinct within us which writes off as irrelevant the interests of any one particular group, particularly the poorest. This is the cruelty trap and it is wrong on every level, it is unfair and it is contrary to the only moral aim that a centre-right government can have, namely, as set out above, to act for all. The Tories fell into this trap when they introduced the Poll Tax which was certainly wrong in scale, if not in principle.

The trap on the other side is, however, just as deep and appalling, if not more so. It is the trap of spite and it is this trap that Kelvin Hopkins, Hon. Mem. for Luton (North), has fallen into when talking about the 50p tax rate.

First a bit of rather obvious (perhaps skipable) economic background.

It is well understood that there comes a point when raising tax rates will no longer increase the tax take because as the incentive to aim for higher gross pay lessens other considerations become more important. People, especially the very rich, do care about things other than the size of their gross pay check. They care about the number of hours they have to work, they care about their enjoyment of the time they spend doing that work, they may chose to take some lesser, but untaxable, benefit in liew of a pay rise (or they may agree to take a pay cut on a similar rationale), or they may, perhaps with a heavy heart, chose to leave their nation because they see their tax bill as a rather over priced sort of rent and their patriotism runs only so deep.

30 or so years ago it was not uncommon to have 80 or 90% top rates of taxation and it is widely believed that at this time a substantial reduction in tax rates would have actually lead to an increase in the tax take. We are probably not, yet, at the level where this tax rise will cause a reduction in tax take, at least not in the short term. But at the same time we may not be far off (at least this is my instinct, which may be wrong).

The fact is that shortly before the next general election we are due to move to a tax system where to put a net. 100 pounds into a rich (I>£150,000 p.a.) man’s pocket costs someone over £230 (Ironically if they are a slightly less well paid making them £100 a year better off may cost their employer as much £290 per year [details available on request]).

I can’t say that I am sure that the 50p rate is a wrong decision, even though this it is my instinct and I can’t be certain that it is merely electioneering, although again I feel it probably is.

But what I will say for sure is that we do not need MP’s like Mr. Hopkins saying:

“if a handful of ageing pop stars and money-grubbing bankers leave the country as a result [of the 50p rate], I say good riddance… …In the Budget debates of last year and the year before I suggested much more radical tax changes that would reach further down, with tax rates on the mega-rich higher even than those suggested by the Government. We should go back perhaps a little way towards where we were in 1979.”

This is the politics of spite and it has no place in any nations politics - recession or no recession.

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After yesterday’s Nuclear Power engineering lecture I asked the lecturer what he meant by “high g” centrifuges (which are used to seperate out the different isotopes of Uranium Hexaflouride.  He told me he couldn’t possibly answer that (even though it’s in the notes as “many thousand g”).  I felt this was a bit ridiculous because I felt that it would not be too difficult a thing to simply work out and.  I figured that if it is something that I can work out for myself then he should be prepared to discuss it (as there is no real secret) and if, on the other hand, it is something I think I am able to work out but in reality I am missing something, then he should feel able to discuss that for educational purposes. The course is, after all, called “Nuclear Power Engineering”.

I admit that I find it tiresome when people act as if they are somehow on special Privy Council terms on matters of deep national importance.   Especially if they have just undergone sixth form work experience or something similar. I remember people at school saying, “Oh I couldn’t possibly tell you that, it’s much too dangerous if it gets out.  I’m trusted by her Majesty you know!” Give it a break you self-important phaffle-head!  Yes some things need to be kept secret.  Setting a scale of importance from one to ten: troop movements in Afghanistan being a Ten, the Cabinet minutes from the run up to the Iraq war being a three and the amount Britain knew about the torture practised by the Bush Administration being a one.

On that scale the discussion or otherwise of an aspect of physics with an interested undergraduate is well bellow zero and the same goes for most things people are asked to keep “secret”.

Most likely if you think you have been told some vital matter of national security then you’ve been placed “in the loop” to make you feel important.  This probably accounts for 90% of “secrets” while 90% of the rest are doubtless things that might be embarrassing rather than dangerous, “Chris Galley” Stories, if you will. After that maybe 10% of the residue is actually troop movements in Afghanistan and if you know about them then, in the words of Sir Humphrey, you’ll be “keeping it secret that you hath the secret to keep” and you won’t be telling people how important you are.

Anyway, it turns out that , assuming that the UF₆ gas remains at room temperature (and remains a near-ideal gas - big assumption!) then we would need the edge of the centrifuge to move at 400 m/s which is roughly Mach 1. This means that if the centrifuge had a two metre diameter then this would mean g forces of more than 10,000 g. Furthermore keeping the stuff at room temperature in such an environment might be tricky. Perhaps the non-idealness of the gas might help the enricher out quite a bit.

(Probably error ridden) notes are enclosed below.

notesongascentrifuges

ps
Isn’t the microsoft formatting just beautiful.

Charles Moore, in the telegraph, deals incredibly eloquently and sensitively with an emotionally prickerly matter; articulating the unease that he felt after the anomalous cancellation of Prime Minister’s Questions following the tragic death of Ivan Cameron.

articlebycharlesmoore

I feel Moore is perhaps a little unfair in his assessment of Gordon Brown’s motivation, especially given Brown’s personal circumstances.  A fairer assesement might be that offering to cancel PMQ’s was a fine gesture for Brown to make and equally it was fine for the Tories to accept but ultimately the Speaker made the wrong decision and should have allowed PMQ’s to continue without David Cameron.

Having said that this is by no means the worst decision the Speaker has ever made (see Speaker Michael Martin) and given the current controversies in which he has been embroiled it is understandable that he didn’t want to be seen to be standing simultanously asgainst govenment and opposition.

Moore acknowledges that the general public probably feel that Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable’s tributes to Ivan were a good display of adversaries coming together over something tragic which “transcended” the usual politicking.

If they are each to be rightly commended for this then surely the decision of Nick Clegg to say almost nothing in public but simply to send private condolences should also be commended as the most elegant and selfless of possible gestures that a party leader could make?

The mathematician G.H. Hardy once said that a “first class man” should never expresses a majority opinion as there will be plenty of other people to do that.  Well here I am re-expressing the, now widely held, opinion that Speaker Michael Martin should soon step aside.  Evidently I am not what Hardy would have called a first class man but then very few of us can be that.

For the small number of readers who are not familiar with the story of Speaker Martin I will briefly outline what he has brought to the office of speaker over the last nine years.  (Yes a small number of readers can still be a majority since the blog only has a small number of readers – Us!)

The Speaker, once elected, is supposed to completely sever their links with their former political party and maintain the strictest impartiality.  Prior to Michael Martin’s appointment there was a tradition of alternation between speakers from the two main political parties (remembering that until fairly recently the Lib-Dems would have had far too few members to wish to spare one to take on the role of speaker).  The Speaker before Michael Martin was the highly esteemed Betty (now Baroness) Boothroyd who was a former Labour MP, although you would never have guessed it from the way she conducted herself in the chair.  Consequently there was a perception among the more honourable honourable members that it was time to have a Speaker drawn from the Liberal or Conservative benches.

However the 1997 elected Labour back benchers, drunk on their hundred and eighty odd working majority decided to break with tradition, which is after all basically an evil, Tory, idea, and impose Old Labour loyalist Michael Martin upon the Speaker’s chair.  He has remained the blunt class warrior that he was as an MP with a peculiar hatred of Tories, plumy accents and, no doubt, polo players!  I should also mention that he is no Ramanujan, an aleph class man if you like, or a perhaps a first class Pig if the abuse of his parlimentary expences is anything to go by.

In his time as Speaker he has consistently shown considerable bias towards similarly aged, similarly scottish, similarly Labour back benchers and indeed anyone watching a rumbustious debate in the chamber will probably be able to infer, within half an hour or so, roughly where Speaker Martin’s sympathises lie on the matter.

Ultimately though it was the now well known events surrounding the arrest of Damian Green, along with the search of his parliamentary offices, that has brought him lasting shame and unequivocally made him the worst Speaker in living memory.  Almost any other Speaker from modern history would have remembered Speaker Lenthall’s bravely spoken words of 1642 “I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak except as directed by this house”.  These words to a King, no less, who had entered the House of Commons in force accomponied by soldiers attempting to arrest five MP’s who has flown away.

Speaker Martin should have unreservedly apologised for letting the Metropolitan Police ransack Damian Green’s offices. He should then have done the honourable thing and immediately resigned and gone to the Lords (as do all outgoing speakers).

I recognise that there is generally too much clamour for people if public life to tender their resignations at the first hiccup in their term of office but this was such a grave error of judgement that he cannot possibly hope to regain even a sliver of the widespread cross party support which a speaker must retain in order to remain effective.

Instead Speaker Martin simply gave a mealy mouthed “apology” in which he tried to shift the blame to the  sergeant at arms and the police  saying that he “was not told that the police did not have warrant”.  Many MP’s no doubt were left thinking, “Well frankly Mick you should have known; in the policeman’s professional handbook on page 1 is detailed, “How to use trickery to obtain permission to enter premises when getting a warrant would be judicially awkward.” If you didn’t realise that then you are even more of a Blubber-Brain than we had previously thought.”

Finally rumours are now flying around that Speaker Martin may not agree to step down, even at the next election, unless his son (currently a Labour MSP) is allowed to take over the Labour nomination in his seat of Glasgow North East.

What an ironic image that would be of the battle weary class warrior processing off in his ermine while his son assumes the hereditary constituency.

Former education minister Estelle Morris is interviewed on the BBC today.  Morris, now a peer, is able to talk candidly about her efforts to reduce British Truancy.  Specifically she talks about the decision to allow imprisonment of the parents of children who persist in truanting (a practice that continues to this day).

When asked about whether this decision was right she says:
“If it worked it was worth it and if it didn’t then it wasn’t”

“I could never have got to the point where I said: I’ve done as much as I can. We’ll just have to leave it now”

These few lines really capture the essence of the role that New Labour politicians felt and still feel that government and the criminal justice system should play in society.  There was obviously a Cabinet perception that the concerns of the greater good deserved more weight than they had been given prior to 1997 specifically when being weighed against the previously much stronger desire to ensure that people who had done little or nothing wrong didn’t go to jail.

The BBC also interviewed Emma Garza, one of the daughters of Patricia Amos, the first mother to be sent to prison in 2004 under the new rules.  Garza obviously feels very strongly that her mother’s imprisonment massively changed her life for the better.

From what Morris has said I assume that she feels that the great good of improving Garza’s life in this way justifies any short term harm done to Amos.  Perhaps Amos would even agree.

Nevertheless when asked about the merits of the policy Garza replies, “It worked but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair on my mum because she was trying her hardest to get me to go to school.”

Even this woman, who firmly believes that she gained life changing benefit from the imprisonment of her mother, realises that visiting the iniquity of the children upon the fathers and mothers is, and has always been, just as wrong as the converse.  Mr. Balls and Straw surely it is about time this policy is dropped, whether or not it is effective.

The BBC links below will probably break in the next few weeks but for now the videos to which I am referreing can be found here:

Morris -     http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7851367.stm
Garza-         http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7883904.stm

The BBC ran a story today: “Education Minister’s Online Typos”.

Apparently Jim Knight (who incidentally once held the smallest ever parliamentary majority) has misspelled: receieved, maintainence, convicned, curently, similiar, foce, pernsioners, reccess and archeaological.

This reminded me of something my stepmother said; that we all suffer from personal prejudice and we delude ourselves if we think otherwise.  I had thought this wasn’t true but hearing about these spelling mistakes did make me think slightly better of Mr. Knight, a clear case of personal prejudice!

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