Making the law

The piece at reference 1 asserts that government is moving towards government by diktat - which sounds to me like a watered down version of Hitler's infamous Enabling Act, duly passed by the newly elected, Nazi dominated German Parliament, which said, roughly speaking, that Hitler could do whatever he wanted.

And it is certainly true that journalists and others have long been protesting amount the huge amount of stuff which is passed into our law over a Minister's signature, with little if any desire or need for further Parliamentary scrutiny.

By way of example it refers us to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, presently before the House of Lords, which it describes as 'a monstrous jumble of laws that wouldn’t look out of place in Soviet Russia'. I associate to a story that the wheeze in Putin's Russia is to have such a monstrous pile of laws that no-one can understand them all, that they are full of internal contradictions (something that old-style Marxists were always finding in capitalism)  - but which can always be used to make more or less anyone or anything illegal, as the need arises.

Curious, I turn up the law (reference 3), which is pretty impenetrable. I search for offending terms like 'without suspicion' (does away for the need to be suspicious before some preventative actions can be taken) or 'named individuals' (who are not allowed to protest) and either get too many hits or too few.

I then turn to the consolidated list of amendments (reference 4) (only being slightly confused and delayed by the relevant page being updated while I was looking at it). And this sort of thing does turn up there, in useful quantities. Cavendish is on the right track.

One of the people involved in all this is one Baroness Williams of Trafford, who was born in Cork, educated up north at a private Catholic school, trained in applied nutrition, did time on Trafford Council and then more time in the House of Commons, before being elevated to the Lords.

But what caught my eye about her was that she succeeded one Earl Atlee as Conservative whip in the Lords. A Tory earl who is the grandson of that pillar of Labour History, the first earl. A renegade! A chap who was educated in the fancy public school called Stowe, to be found at reference 5. That is to say a stonking great house whose owners ran out of dosh in the aftermath of the first world war and which then became a school.

Gardens passed onto the National Trust for them to look after. Some of the state rooms in the big house now open to the great British Public. And I imagine lots of tasteful new buildings have been erected nearby, but out of sight from the gardens.

Maybe some day we will get to some better way of making the law of the land. Does it really have to be so complicated? But in the meantime, how many people actually understand all this stuff? Do we have to just take it - and the judgement of the minister on the day, who is empowered to more or less make most of it up as he goes along - on trust?

All to be followed up at some point, quality time permitting.

References

Reference 1: The new ‘government by diktat’ bypasses parliament altogether: Ministers should ask themselves what opponents might do with the new powers they are busily creating - Camilla Cavendish, FT - 2021.

Reference 2: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2839/publications. The official starting point for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

Reference 3: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/43970/documents/1042. Possibly the current state of the bill - all 304 pages of it.

Reference 4: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/44037/documents/1091. The running list of amendments. - just 74 pages of this one.

Reference 5: https://www.stowe.co.uk/. But the snap was turned up by Bing.