Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

I have always been interested in history, more-so of late – but that is the function of passing time. Today, 28th November, in 1990 – some 16 years ago – The Honourable Margaret Thatcher resigns as Prime Minster and John Major is selected as the new Tory Leader in the UK. Why is this important? It isn’t really, but it is an event I remember well. It was an end of an era, a woman who molded my formative years, and to be honest unlike most politician’s Maggie had definite political views and beliefs and kept to them. To be stabbed in the back by her own side was kind of ironic since at the time the Tory party was usually pretty solid on the unity front; in the 80’s it was the Labour party who made an art of stabbing their leader in the back at fairly regular intervals.

It was quite a shock in the late 90’s and 2000’s when the parties in the uk did a loyalty switcheroo with the Labour having a united front and the Tories kings of the back-stabbing and shooting yourselves in the foot.

Anyway back to Maggie, our Iron Lady. She espoused the philosophy of self-reliance, little government interference in business, privatization of government assets and a gung-ho attitude to interfering foreign powers. She won a war; jumped into bed with the USA (figuratively that is), and helped beat the Soviet bear.

What a woman.

Crikey!!! Has it been a whole month since I made a post and so much has happened. North Korea has maybe detonated a very small nuclear weapon and we are faced with a US President again with egg on his face since it proved that the Iraq war was all about OIL and little to do with weapons of mass destruction.

Any way by a round about way it brings me to the subject of this blog – the Law. Laws exist to enable a society to exist in a just and harmoneous manner where the transgressors are punished. Laws range from the minor kind – litter dropping – through to the most serious kind: murder. If you want to be part of the society you must abide by its laws or try to get them changed through democratic means.

So why do so many Irish men and women wantonly day in and day out deliberatly break the law because it does not suit them? according to the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business via the Allianz insurance firm who said a total of 100,000 drivers were using the roads illegally by not having insurance!!! That is more than 2% of the population of Ireland or 6% of people driving. That is totally unbelievable. How can they get away with this. Not only is this a kick in the teeth to those of us who pay insurance, but what other crimes are they guilty of? Drink Driving, Paedophilia, Tax Evasion and maybe Murder? I remember some time back reading a book about the mayor of New York who said cracking down on petty crime reduced major crime – small time criminals evolve into major criminals.

The government needs to crack down on petty crime. Drivers who don’t have insurance or motor tax; or deliberately drive the wrong way down a one-way street. Should not only be fined, they should loose their license for a year or two and have their car put through the crusher with them forced to watch.

Schools should teach what it means to be a citizen, ethics and morals – and it should do this from primary schools. Parents must not as they seem to have of late, abdicate responsibility of installing in their children the difference between good and evil and respect for their fellow citizens. If a childs parents do not care for the society and its laws how will a child know? Mom and DAD you must lead by example; if you don’t then don’t whinge when your kids give you the finger and the state takes your liberty.

what a week or two it has been in Ireland. We have seen a government humbled, the Minister for Justice shown (if what the papers say is true) to be an incompetent arrogant fool; criminals who are a bit slow and the anguish and righteous anger of the Irish people in full flow.

What is this all about? Well let me tell you. There was a law until last week which stated that if any man slept with a girl under 17 they were automatically guilty of statutory rape. It did not matter if the act was consensual, or the girl concerned was 15 and dolled her self up to pass as 17+ (and there a lot of them around – teenage pregnancy and under-age drinking are rife and a recent survey said around 50% of girls lost their virginity before they were 17 – but I digress); if the act occurred then the man was guilty. There was NO DEFENSE. This law has existed since 1935 and has been used to put away the most vilest of paedophiles and perverts in our society. Well the long and short of it is that someone challenged this in our highest court and won. Essentially there should be no crime where the accused is automatically guilty of crime without the redress of saying (in this case) “Sorry, but I did not realize that she was under-age�. The result in our society has been an uproar.

What happened after the supreme court ruled the law as unconstitutional (we have a written constitution in Ireland) has been amazing, horrifying, and fun to watch as a bystander. When the court ruled, the minister for justice stated that “this was totally unexpected; no one told us that someone was challenging this and that the law was dodgyâ€? – which was funny since he is the Minister for justice and if someone is challenging a law on constitutional grounds he should be better damnedest be aware of it or else he should be hounded out of office as a buffoon and incompetent. This is doubly true if:

1. The challenge had been proceeding through the courts for a year or more.
2. The law society had written in the official law rag that the piece of law concerned was likely to be successfully challenged on constitutional grounds; – and this article appeared 17 years ago!!! and as legal beagle of many years standing the Minister for Justice should damned well be reading his own professional bodies articles.
3. The minister for Justice himself (if the papers are to be believed) gave an interview on the dangers and problems with the “no defence available� law some 11 years ago.

Anyway there are loads of perverts lining up in the courts claiming that they can no longer be held in prison since the law under which they were convicted no longer exists. This opens the possibility that the genuine fiends and paedophiles could possibly sue the government for false and illegal imprisonment and get massive damages. A “Mr A� has already been released from prison based on the supreme courts ruling. Mr A being a 41 year old man who raped a few years ago a 12 year old girl. The Minister of Justice said last week that he would not be rushed into “fixing� the law and there was no crisis – how bloody wrong that idiot is.

Rape centres, youth groups and many victims are incandensent– and justly so; although some of them don’t seem to “get the pointâ€? that any law should permit some form of legal defence on valid grounds – especially if its age. If you don’t you get the worst kind of repression and excesses like you see/saw with Sadaam Hussiens regime, The American treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and any number of other dicatatorial regimes around the world.

The long and the short of it is that It seems that the law is going to be passed to allow the “honest mistakeâ€? defence; although that may mean that youngsters will probably have to submit to cross-examination in court which won’t please a lot of people. I just hope they get the law constitutionaly right, don’t make it retrospective, and get rid of the ass-hole who is the current justice minister since he has shown a distinct lack of ability, understanding, management and moral fibre in this and other matters of late. If the minister did not see this crisis coming then you should not be doing the important post of Justice Minister – arguably the most important post in the government since society works and moderates itself through the rule of law. Without rules then there can only be chaos and our society will fall.

Today is May the 2nd. Nothing too special, a nice day in Dublin; work went well and I relearned a couple of new things about Java and the nature of Watchdogs. But this is an aside. From the BBC On This Day site there were two items that brought back to me the passing of time and I am getting old. The first was on 2nd May 1997 The Labour Party Crushed the corrupt Tory government which had been in since 1979 with the promises of equality for all, justice for all and good clean, honourable Government. I was 32 at the time. I thought the world was becoming a better place – how wrong I was. Look in today’s British papers and you get pretty much what the Tories had become famous for – Ministers abusing power, ministers cheating on their wives or husbands, and incompetence in Government – in all cases the Ministers concerned trying desperately to cling on to their jobs and power; HOW can they hold up their heads in public – not only that but have the cheek to refer to each other as “the honourable memberâ€?; There is little honour between any of them. I won’t go on about imprisonment without trial (although terrorists should be hunted down with as much gusto as we can muster) or going to war on false pretences and telling bare faced lies to the public about it.

The other thing was on May 2nd 1982 the General Belgrano was sunk by a British Submarine and initiating the “hotâ€? period of the Falklands war. I remember it because I was a member of the British Armed Forces at the time (ah the time when I was fit, had hair and had a decent figure – fond memories). My Battalion was on a rifle-range and we were undertaking a Battalion shoot at the time – it was a warm sunny day I remember; It was the day I discovered that I could shoot better with my left hand than my right (I am right-handed by preference). The day was going fairly well for my company (D Company) but there was a buzz in the air about the war – will we be deployed, who do we know who’s out there, how will I react under real combat conditions? will my bottle go or will I be OK and not let my mates down? will there be any fighting or will the various governments back down. All these thoughts and feelings are natural in the circumstances.

The range tannoy system crackled into life sometime early in the afternoon and made a brief announcement giving the basics of what had happened – an Argentinian Cruiser sunk; no British casualties; probable Argentinian. The men – myself included – cheered and roared with delight with national and professional pride (that said, I am Southern Irish and was serving in the British Army, but the family has a history of this and the pay is much better than the Irish Army); At the time I clearly remember an inner disquiet. I remember thinking, “that’s it; no chance of peace now; why am I cheering; don’t these men realise that men have died – they may be Argentinian but they are men like you and me doing a job; it could be you, and somewhere and sometime soon a family is going to be devastated to learn they have lost a son, lover or husband. A child will be fatherless. It is an odd to feel elation and sadness at the same time, you would have thought that they are opposite emotions to a degree and you would feel either on or another.

It really made me think about war, humanity. I often think of the Falklands. Fortunately I was never deployed there. But I knew people who did and some who went and never came back alive. A military funeral is a solemn and majestic thing in many ways – and it really brings home the sacrifice of those millions who fell in the slaughter of the first world war; but to loose some one who is only 18,19, 20 is not the way it should be. We were, and many of those sent out as cannon fodder are little more than children with guns. What a waste of so much potential. What has humanity come to?