pumpkinstrokemarrow

Franklin's Christmas present was a cat flap, the idea being that he can spend cold spells in his kitchen, with the prospect of other rooms if he behaves himself. But he has not yet quite got the hang of it, requiring some encouragement to propel him through it - in either direction. No doubt he will get there, with the end result that we will see rather less of him. Own kitchen better than other kitchen.

A present to myself was a new spectacle case; at least one drawn from my small store of such things, to replace the one on active duty, the spring of which had stopped working. Nosey as ever, thought I would take the recently retired one to peices. Rather neat peice of design. Pressed steel plate shell, covered with some tasteful blue material with a pleasing soft matt finish. Hinge joining base to lid about two inches by half an inch overall, taking the two halves together, fixed to the shell by lugs punched out of same, pushed through matching slots in the hinge and bent over. Couldn't work out how the spring was supposed to empower the hinge - or even where it was. Presumably inside somewhere.

In the dream world, back on high buildings, perhaps prompted by that posted on 21 December. I was in this tall building and wanted to get out. So get down the stairs, into a sort of basement where I thought the exit was. Go across to the exit, an opening in the wall about 6 feet high by 12 feet wide, where I discover that my building is somehow suspended in mid air, high in the sky. Some way below, and over a bit, there is the top of another building. Maybe 50 feet. There is a ladder running between the two, nicely fixed at both ends so that it does not slip, with the idea being that one gets out of my building by climbing down to the one below. Not clear what happens after that. But this is not on at all. With my poor head for heights, I would need very active encouragement to get onto the ladder - after which I would probably panic and fall off. Presumably I wake up at this point.

I believe poor head for heights to be partly an age thing: the bits of the brain needed to override the natural, selectively advantageous disinclination to be in dangerous places conk out. I was never too hot when it came to things like abseiling - although at that time I could get myself over the edge without making a fuss - but I could do things like climb up the scaffolding around the outside of a small tower block under construction. BH claims not to be bothered by such things at all, and she is certainly a lot less bothered by the vertigo opportunities one comes across on the daily round than I am.

Since 19 December got a bit further into the book about Bryn Estyn. Now pondering about how one ought to handle a situation where young men, probably more or less criminal and certainly disturbed when young, are offered the prospect of making large sums of money if they can make sticking allegations about their former carers. As the author (Webster) points out, one aspect of all this which is unusual is that with most crime there is no doubt about the fact that a crime has been committed and about the nature of the crime. The difficult bit is catching who done it. In these cases, the difficult bit is deciding whether or not a crime was committed.

While the book is disturbing, a weakness for me, at least about a third of the way in, is that we have a long catalogue of allegations which, perhaps after some years, turn out to be more or less completely false. It is also made clear that there was some abuse which did result in convictions. What we do not yet have is any kind of balance sheet. 253 false allegations, 43 unresolved and 67 proved sort of thing. For me, the relative proportions do make a differance. If the allegations are basically sound, but someone has got a bit carried away at the margins, that is one thing. But if the great majority of the allegations turn out to be false, that is another. So I hope before the end we get some presentation of the wood, after all the trees.

Legal disturbances of a differant sort from a book about terrorism by one P Bobbit. He writes rather densely but his matter is interesting. Presently at the bit where he is pondering about whether torture ought to be allowed, and if one does, how might it be managed. Now I think I used to be with the pacifists on this one: a civilised society should never torture any one. Partly because the business of torturing taints the torturer, and by extension society at large. Partly because it does not work; people being tortured are apt to tell you what they think you want to hear, rather than the truth, whatever that might be. But no more. Now I think that there are circumstances when torture is the lesser evil, despite the taint and despite it not always working. Suppose one is holding a person whom one has good reason to believe knows the magic word which will stop the world blowing up in a few days time. Person refuses to reveal the magic word. In these circumstances I think one has to give torture a go; better tainted than dead. Unless, I suppose, you believe in a life to come where taint might be worse than death. I don't, so I would reach for the thumb screws. Or at least hire someone else to do it for me.

Now this is a rather hypothetical example. But, unfortunately, the world has changed in ways which make it a lot closer to reality than it was.

The other point that Bobbit makes which sticks in the mind, is that while you might allow your government to do things in secret, those secret doings must be in the scope of some policy which is public, debated and agreed. Furthermore, those secret doings must be the subject of a management regime, the general shape of which is public, debated and agreed. I am not at all sure that our government always passes these two tests.