The rule of law?

I am sure that this is a theme that has been considered earlier but the media is always a couple of months behind the times. The speech by Tony Blair and the so-called "Euston Manifesto" has reawaked my interest.

The way the "middle class " liberal left is being atatcked for opposing the Iraq war would be amusing if it wasn't for the recourse to slandering your opponents when you have lost the argument. I do not know about middle class, my background is, I am sue, rather more working class than most of the commentators, BUT I am certainly a member of the liberal left. Also I certainly opposed the Iraq war, but why. There are a number of reasons, to begin, Iraq was not a threat to anyone nor was he developing weapons of mass destruction whilst the inspectors were there. So the jsutification on either of those grounds were invalid at the time.

A more substantial reason but one that comes back to Tony Blair's recent speech in which he argued, as he has before, for the right to interfere with "evil" regimes. This is a valid point of view and one that should be supported. But there has to be a proper process to justify it. It is wrong that one or two countries can decide that another is evil and that it should be invaded. This is why we have set up a complex from of law to protect people from vindictive use of power. In britain it took a long time to establish people's rights, going back to Magna Carta. These reforms had to be fought for, to stop the local lord just throwing people into prison becuase they had the power to.

Do Britain and the USA hve to right to invade a country and install some system of government because they choose to. Of course not, this will jsut lead to others claiming the same right, the Chinese have felt this way about most of South-East Asia for centuries, as has the USA about the rest of the Americas, see the Monroe Doctrine 1823. Balir is right that we need a reformed United Nations which can take action. There are two major eforms that have to take place before anything can be effective. The first is the setting up of a United nations force which is only answerable to the UN and not made up of bits of other peoples armies. Those joining it would be joining it and not their national armies. The second is that the veto rights of some countries have to go. No one country should have such power to stop effective action. Blair could make a major gesture by giving up Britain's veto. As an aside note that the USA has used the veto more than any other country.

There is no way that I am a moral relativist but nor do I see think that democracy will solve all the worlds problems. Killing people is wrong, whether after judicial process or by dropping bombs on people or gassing them. There are no wriggles that excuses killing people except in self-defence. All that the Blair-Bush position does by acting independendtly without proper process is to encourage others to behave badly.

We have rules of law, many times they protect the rich from the poor but they can also protect the innocent form the powerful, that is what the action of invading Iraq has put in jeopardy!

Power Corrupts?

Once again we return to the eternal theme of power. As a retired academic I watch in amazement at the combined stupidity and cupidity of Vice-Chancellors. They were all once intelligent and reasonable people. What happenned, they were given POWER! It is wonderful to watch the transformation of sane individuals into raving lunatics.

This latest dispute in universities is to do, as usual, with pay. The workers want a roughly 25% over three years and the Vc's have offered half that. Of course the 25% is what they have awared themselves over the preceeding three years. So why do they think thay are so much more valuable? Power, because they have it they think they are special. Imagine hoever at some get together and they all died of food poisoning. A sad thought but one which would have almost no impact on universities, they would quite easily recruit another 100 or so people, no better and no worse than the current lot, so why do they think they are worth, not just more, but an increasing amout more.


This particular behavious is not peculiar to Vice-Chancellors, or academics. Take any situation, someone is doing there job well, perhaps running a small team doing something well, they might even be expert in something. Then they get promoted and suddenly they are in charge of twice as many people. But some of them do things the newly promoted manager knows nothing about. Would they admit it, of course not, they now have power and all of a sudden thay are experts in everything! Some time ago someone called Peters invented Peter's Principle. This asserted that everyone got promoted to their level of incompetence. Perhaps the two principles work together to explain why most management works by luck, as long as the management doesn't interfere and nothing much changes all will be well.

Which leads me neatly on to the problems of politicians, they suffer from these problems thrice over. Power, no expertise and vast management problems. As the government gets more and more into the detail of running things they will be presented with more & more management decisions. The problem is that most have no management experience and no training in management.

Consider the recent debacle over foreign nationals who have been imprisoned. There was no policy decision about this, just that management oversight. One presumes that nopbody cared enough to do anything about it but whose responsibility was it. There is no way that the Home Secretary can be expected to know what is going on, but should the prison service be held responsible, the coyrts or the immigration service. The only person to lose their job is Charles Clarke who is probably the person who has done least wrong, but the buck stops with him. But lower down the chain some people have screwed up.

guardian incompetent

The Guardian claims to give a good to good departments in Universities. It is complete RUBBISH. They calim to get their data from somewhere but they must abuse it quite seriously.

How do I know well I looked at their tables. Then I checked on of the universities in their list to see if I could study the subjext at that univeristy. Funny they do not think they teach the subject!

What is wrong with the Guardian, just look at their web page and see, www.guardian.co.uk, and explain how it works.