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item0078A  1080, 1081

1080   7 April 2005  

Dear Roger

Sorry no!  I do not understand why such
"corporate" prosecutions should be impossible! 
But then - I am not an educated person.  My
experiences have taught me that Local Authority
officers know full well that they cannot be
personally held liable for anything, even when
they have fifteen letters after their names. 

In my view the law is abusive, and needs changing - so that these "powerful ones" know from Day One that they may go to prison it they fail.  The person at fault here is the Chief Executive of Bolton Council - he is totally responsible for the failures to implement the Health and Safety Laws.  He had a duty to ensure that he had a safe place of work for all his employees.  These Chief Officers get paid a shed-load of money for their fifteen letters, so there is no excuse for it.  They just don't care - because they are never held responsible. 

Seven people dead - and no one is jailed for it!  What a wonderful land we live in!  Those people had a right to life, did they not?   I have read your piece on 'human rights' – well, the country is full of people like me who know we can do nothing because no one wants to listen and no one wants the law changed - because it will mean they will have to do the work what they are meant to do.  One of their jobs is to protect the work force so that they don't die.

And it’s a great website...

Jan 

PS My thanks to Jan for taking the trouble to reply - why not drop me a line?

  • Footnote  As of 9 April 2005, this prosecution still continues, against the Bolton Council Chief Officer (i.e. the Borough Architect) alleged to be responsible for the maintenance failures which led to the Legionnaires Disease deaths. So the "jury is still out"... Roger WE

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1081  8 April  2005  

Anti-clericalism is not enough

That is, not a sufficient response to the phenomenon of the Pope John Paul’s death and funeral.  Polly Toynbee was in great iconoclastic form this week, writing in The Guardian.   Her acerbic atheist prose was French in style, in the extremities of its anti-clericalism.  And as a dyed-in-the-wool anti-cleric myself, I confess that I enjoyed her attack.  And it was successful, as far as it went. 

But it did not go far enough.  One cannot dismiss the events in Rome as mere mumbo-jumbo, inviting only intellectual disdain, neglect, disbelief.  Because it is quite clear that mankind as a species is searching for some overarching explanation of the universe we all inhabit.  And vicious and extremist forms of religion are gaining ground, globally. 

It matters not whether that search be categorised as religious, or scientific, or mystic or whatever: there is a search going on.  National and cultural boundaries, which have contained belief systems for so many centuries (think of Japan, and China) are crumbling.   

The Chinese Communist regime takes the challenge of Falun Gong so seriously that its followers are executed for Falun Gong observances.  In pursuit of their world-view, the Chinese authorities execute 3,500 people every year.  In the former Soviet Union, there is a proliferation of sects to supplement the revival of Greek Orthodoxy.  Muslim denominations of all kinds vie for dominance all over the world, with a depth of passion and commitment which many find unsettling.  Al-Quaida clearly has religious foundations, however distorted and corrupted they may seem to us. The USA demonstrates the power of religious allegiances, when filtered through democratic political processes.  In the politics of secular India, deep religious differences weigh heavily in public life and dialogue.  

Although I am by temperament entirely quietist in matters of religion, I cannot ignore all this evidence that activist “religion”, albeit in dispersed and diluted forms, plays a major part in contemporary life.  And my own search is for a philosophy (or religion, or Weltanschauung, or scientific theory or what you will) that will embrace all these religious variations, and enable mankind to move beyond them to identify the essence of common humanity which unites us all.  For me, it is the reasoning of universal human rights, with its uncompromising assertion of the equality of individual rights, which is most likely to spawn a new overarching “global” philosophy of this kind.   

So - Polly Toynbee is not enough.  When younger, I would have simply enjoyed her skilled iconoclasm, and moved on.  Now, I find that I am enormously troubled by the growth of poisonous and aggressive religions, and their infiltration of democratic politics.  I have huge misgivings, about the religiosity and fervour surrounding the Pope’s funeral.  And I am committed to redouble my efforts, in my personal search for an antidote philosophy.  Or religion.  Or scientific theory.

What do you think?  Drop me a line

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