Compare and Contrast

First off a story I have just heard, a man arranged a German car-sharing trip with a stranger, as is common-place over there, to a ferry port. This stranger calls off the trip, car is not ready. So our man takes the train to the ferry, missing the last ferry, to catch the ferry the next day. Arrives in England and is hauled off and subjected to a strip search, a thorough search of his luggage and some five hours of interrogation, where his denials were dismissed with disbelief and hostility. What is even worse, a female passenger, he just happened to exchange a couple of polite pleasantries with, sharing the hazards of travel sort of stuff, was also given the same treatment. His crime? He had by mischance managed to exchange a couple of EMails with a suspected drug dealer! What do we have, the planned car journey manifestly did not take place, the two individuals never met and we are left with secret snooping on private EMails giving rise to a suspicion, just a possibility with no tangible supporting actual physical evidence. Just a person somewhere being suspicious.

That evening I watched a documentary about benefit fraud (Britain on the Fiddle). Of the three cases offered up for our entertainment was the case of a man with two identities, one of which was also receiving disabled benefit, all fraudulently claim benefits. The hard physical evidence was there, double passports in two names, video recording of man working easily and physically with no sign of impairment, photo records of living at different addresses to that claimed, variety of cars all in use by him yet the investigation drags on because there is not yet enough evidence to ensure a conviction and the Police are too busy to bother with such a minor contraventions! So plenty of hard evidence but whether by incompetence, sloppy documentation leading it open to challenge or just too overwhelmed with work to fit in bringing the cast to court, a man manifestly living out a fraud, is allowed to continue. Eventually yes the wheels are in motion, months down the line and he does go to jail. But just compare and contrast. The overt working of the legal systems and the covert unaccountable systems.

If you have emotional hype on your side, think drugs, terrorism or even pedophilia, then  anything can be justified, perpetrators are beyond any compassion, beyond any hope of even the most radical do gooder defending some basic civil right. No, for fear of condoning, we willingly acquiesce  to secrecy, to abandonment of all rules of proof and justice being seen to be done. In our name we will allow unknown, unaccountable individuals to trash the rules that have been crafted over centuries to give everyone a chance to protest their innocence. Not to be subjected to the whim and fancy of a Another's suspicion.

In this oh so PC world we are tripping over our feet of zealous correctness and have lost our confidence to know right from wrong. So the burden of proof has to be able to withstand so many minor technicality challenges. For fear of giving offense we lean over backwards to allow the legal counter-challenges that then grind our system down so that fraudsters can wriggle this way and that way. 

To interpose authority into someones life, to prohibit their freedom to carry on seeing a dying mother, or making that interview, or declaring their love or just travel for the joy of it, there has to be significant cause, not just an idle suspicion.

Bad Government

It is trivial and in the scale of things amounts to nothing. So why get all concerned about whether fluoride should be added (locally) to our national water supply or not? Self-evident, fluoride is scientifically proven to reduce the incident of tooth caries and adding to our water is the cheapest and most effective way to ensure everyone gets it. Right?

Why I am bothering to write is because it is indicative of a wrong totally misplaced attitude. Not the action in itself but the mind set that makes to so acceptable and right. Our social compact is, if we forego certain freedoms, we will be supplied with clean potable water. I would add in by the state and not a service sold off to a foreign commercial enterprise accountable only to its shareholders and not us, the English people. But that is another argument.

To return, to ensure the water is delivered in a healthy potable 'germfree' state we accept that it is dosed with chemicals.. We might even accept that to avoid the cost of replacing worn out pipework we accept that the distribution pipelines are lined with chemicals that will become 'inert' with use. The health of the nations people is important. So the next step to dosing the water with a chemical that is known to be good for the nations health is logical.

Every time a person in a position to know announces that miracle product 'X' is wonderful and has no known side effects, all credibility flies out of the window. Nothing on this earth has only positive good effects. Everything you can think of has good and bad effects. It is a question of balance, a human judgement prey to the fashion thinking of the times. What is a 'right' balance one year, one month, one day is wrong or even misguided the next. Fluoride is just another such substance, the scientists will be arguing, testing and exchanging data that will shift the balance back and forth.

What is at issue is that the government should not put us into a position where we are not allowed to make our own choice, to go with the perceived balance or not. There are no absolutes in judgement, it all depends. With dosing the water for purity, there really are no options other than supplying water that might be contaminated. Pragmatically there is little option. It happens in my local area we have a water collecting topography, so could have access to pure clean water even if untreated. Except for national conformity, and to enable our water to be distributed around I suspect, it is treated. Another aside. Chemically lining the pipes to save costs? Well I was not asked, do not like it, but it is a democracy and making harsh decisions against competing costs issues is part of the game. Adding fluoride is something else.

The Government is not appointed in loco parentis for each of us. It is simply not for them to decide. There are heaps of issues where it would be nice if only they could decide, to save our health, to make looking after us so much cheaper and easier. Except that is not the contract we have with them. We are to be left to make our own choices and decisions about things that affect us as individuals, as far as possible. Even if we are wrong, pigheaded or plain stubborn.

I love it as an idea, if the Government could stop obese people, no let us go the whole hog, all people eating beefburgers. Plainly bad for our nations health and very little food value that could not be better supplied another way. Except of course it is plainly wrong as would be the banning of say, alcohol. Some things are just down to the individual. It gets muckier when it is a collective issue. When we forgo an individual freedom for the greater good of the wider community. All milk should be pasteurised as only then can you be sure it is safe to drink. When it comes to Class A or B or C Drugs I get less and less sure. Much as I have huge reservations about drug taking, it seems DoGoody Government wants to decide for me. I know the social implications are enormous but it is always better if people can come to their own conclusion than having a Government decide for them.