Sunday 1 March 2009

The Rule of Law - who needs that?

Let's imagine that you're a Cabinet Minister of a country that depends on international trade and finance to pay the taxes that keep it going. Or rather, to pay the taxes that keep your own party going. The one thing that you'd be most careful about was your country's reputation as a bastion of the rule of law.

Step forward Harriet Harman:

"Sir Fred should not be counting on being £650,000 a year better off as a result of this because it is not going to happen," she told BBC1's Andrew Marr show.

"The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the Government steps in."

I repeat:
It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the Government steps in
This is anarchy, some will say.

Not so. Under proper anarchy we would see the rule of law being rigorously enforced.

Of course Sir Fred has been a prat. Of course the directors of RBS should have reined him in. Of course RBS should have been allowed to go bust. But the law says that he's entitled to his pension, and that's that. God help us all if Harperson becomes Prime Minister.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Colin Finlay
The country which respects the 'court of public opinion' to the fullest extent is highly successful Singapore, whose safe streets may be walked at any time of night without fear of muggers. 
Of course, Singapore's governmental elite actually wish to defend their people against criminals, so have sensibly retained the British colonial imports of hanging (for murder and drug dealing) and flogging (for mugging, vandalism and illegal immigration). 
UK's decadent, advanced liberalism is such a joke among sensible Singaporeans, tautologically speaking, that I once heard Mr PH Yong, a former Chief Justice (and Cambridge Double First holder)saying, at an Oxford & Cambridge Society meeting, that whenever he hears of a custodial sentence awarded to a criminal in an English court, he multiplies the prison term by two and a half and adds a flogging in order to arrive at the correct and condign punishment.

9 March 2009, 03:30:42 GMT
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Anon A Moss
Yes I seen that on tonight’s news, not the whole interview just that segment. 
 
Surely the "court of public opinion" doesn't approve of many things that the Court of Law permits?  
 
I mean there are plenty of times when the Court of Law's verdict would be in opposition to the 'hang draw & quarter verdict of "court of public opinion". 
 
This authoritarianism is actually mildly disturbing, and this woman is certainly unfit for public office.

1 March 2009, 18:05:23 GMT