Monday, October 24, 2011
A cornucopia
Following my post on October 18th, now got around to thinking a bit more about the matter of Kevin Lane. But without conclusion. The material on the web site, while odd, did not amount to enough for me to be able to overrule the jury and say he didn't do it. Plus it was unfortunate that he elected not to call his partner to corroborate his alibi. Doesn't look good to me and presumably didn't look good to the jury. My next thought was that one wanted to see a better summary of the case than had been put on the web site. Perhaps the judge's summing up would provide a management summary? Perhaps that is what they are for. But then I got stuck. The Ministry of Justice web site did not help me find out whether or not members of the public could get at summings up. Nor, supposing that they could, had it anything much to say about how. The nearest I got, deep inside some long document about criminal procedure, was something that appeared to say that anyone could apply to the clerk of the court for such stuff, provided the case was ongoing or recent, which this one clearly wasn't. It looked as if was going to take a bit of effort to find out what goes here. If I was rich, I suppose I could just ask my own lawyer to prepare me a brief, but I am certainly not that kind of rich. Perhaps Mr. Branson (the bearded one, not the pickle one) would oblige? Perhaps he gets lots of begging letters about matters like this? And then I noticed that one of the bits of paper I had been given at Trafalgar Square described Mr. Lane as an innocent young man. Which description I believe to be a touch economical with the truth; possibly not guilty as charged, but not innocent in general. At which point I decided that I had spent enough time on him.
Then moved onto a recent LRB, where I was treated to a long whine about how awful it was that the legal aid budget was being cut and all kinds of worthy causes would no longer have access to free lawyers. Whoever wrote it did not seem to understand that if one wants to make large cuts in government spending, which our government clearly does (for good or bad), a good proportion of those large cuts have to come from lots of small cuts across the board. Lots of small cuts to lots of programmes, all of which had previously been proved to be essential, value for money and all the rest of it by world class consultants. One hasn't got time to revisit all this stuff. One just has to get on and make half the distance with roughly pro-rata cuts. Not nice but necessary.
And then there was an interesting piece from R. W. Johnson on elections in the US. He claims a seismic shift over the last fifty years or so. A shift which has left us with rich people and ordinary white males tending to vote Republican. And with professional people, women and other minorities tending to vote Democrat. With the first tendency likely to out gun the second in the mid term. An unholy alliance between those who have done very well out of the last 20 years and those who have done rather badly. What I don't agree with is that things are so very different over here.
And another one on Houellebecq, a chap in whom I took an interest in earlier this year. Searching for him turns up the relevant posts. This article was clearly a very good article as it took more or less the same line on the chap as I would, albeit at considerably greater length. Early work bit prone to porno., but the 'La Carte et le territoire' with merit and without porno., although perhaps not quite up to the puffing in French literary circles. However, first read of the article did involve some alcohol, so I think I will give it another read.
A coincidence, as a few days ago there was another reason to remember Houellebecq, in particular the point noticed on July 11th with the consumer durable in question being a surge protector. Having been alerted to the possibility of weathery disasters by the book about the lack of water in the western half of the US, I thought I ought to protect my shiny new hifi with a surge protector. Off to Maplin where I find that they do not do the Belkin I know and love, just some cheap and ugly alternatives. Have Belkin vanished from the face of the earth? Luckily I persisted all the way down to Staples where I find that Belkin is alive and well. Maybe not quite the same as my existing models but near enough. With the additional and unplanned benefit that the cabling spaghetti in my study is now much thinned.
# posted by Jim @ 1:32 AM 
