Judge for yourself

Baroness Deech

There has been a great deal of comment recently about freedom of expression – in the press (shortly to be under a new system of regulation); on the airwaves, where an extremist was allowed to give his views on the Today programme following the conviction of the murderers of Lee Rigby; on campus, as I described in my last blog; even in court, where the by-product of a case which is focused on determining the guilt or innocence of an accused may be damage to the reputation of a witness. What I want to address here is how, nevertheless, certain topics have become no-go areas, regardless of the medium. 

The right of an extremist to express his abhorrent views was upheld by the Any Questions panellists later that day.  I wonder if there would have been the same robust defence of freedom of speech had someone appeared on the Today programme to attack gays or Muslims or ethnic minorities. Pro-Israel speakers are regularly howled down on campuses while the university authorities stand by. Certain views are acceptable nowadays and others are not.  Take traditional marriage for example.  It is extraordinary that a practice going back in one form or another for centuries is now regarded as controversial.  Judges are now much freer than once they were to give interviews and speak out about current issues. They are regularly reported as voicing their opinions in court, or out of it, on crime levels, European Union and human rights legislation, multiculturalism, the separation of powers, the need for laws about cohabiting couples and so on. But activity in support of traditional marriage is apparently beyond the pale.

There were fresh statistics this week demonstrating that a child is very much more likely to grow up with its two parents if they are married than if they are cohabiting.  We all regularly express support for child welfare and tut-tut over child neglect and abuse.  Do we really mean it? This is what I said in a recent lecture: “We live in a world where we are encouraged to take care of our own and our children’s health: we are constantly admonished to take exercise, eat healthily, wear a cycle helmet, belt up, eat 5 fruits or vegetables a day, study the side of the package, stop smoking, recycle, combat global warming, brush our teeth, control our drinking habits and have health checks.  But when it comes to the one issue that does more harm to the next generation than any of these – the absence of the father of the family – there is a conspiracy of silence.  Politicians fear to address it, for they themselves or their constituents may be implicated.  Politically correct academic family lawyers shy away from it.  No one knows this better than the family court judges, who have spent decades as barristers or solicitors and adjudicators resolving marriage breakdown problems that, fortunately, most of us have never had to face, or at least not more than once or twice. It is time to place marriage issues up there along with climate change, poverty and peace as a topic pre-eminently relevant to the present and future happiness and health of all people.” But somehow it is not done to say it.

12 comments for “Judge for yourself

  1. Gareth Howell
    22/12/2013 at 10:33 am

    A very cogent rant by the baroness! The question of father in the family is quite a personal one to the post war generation, and it may not be entirely accurate. A father figure is needed, for a boy, and it may frequently not be the father in the home at all. A mother in the home for a girl, but then that is rarely not the case.

    <The right of an extremist to express his abhorrent views was upheld by the Any Questions panellists later that day. Upholding his right to incite racial hatred. I’ve followed all the information on Abodelawajo in the Guardian, and my conclusion is that one, if not both, of the murderers, is criminally insane. The one thing that Abodelawo fears is being classified thus.
    So be it!

    It can have nothing to do with religion to hack a man to death in the middle of the street of a law abiding country. Satanic and devil practices more like.

    If the one were imprisoned and the other classed as insane, in Rampton top security institution, it would probably be the right destination for them both, the one until he dies.

  2. tizres
    22/12/2013 at 4:55 pm

    It maybe a mistake to believe that today’s fanfare for the common people is: “More Abrogation, Less Abdication”. The following are from the e-petitions site:

    171 people want to Ban Fluffy Bedding but only two to Ban mothers from using Facebook.

    Eight people put their name to Stop Child Abduction By Banning People From Using Cars.

    Two are pleading to Ban the use of the message: “No artificial, flavourings or preservatives e.t.c” because “…not all artificial flavourings are bad. While some natural flavourings (+ additives e.t.c.) have been seen to be ‘bad’ and can cause worse affects than an artificial one.

    Since this gvt opened the site, 10,000 e-petitions have demanded one ban or another and, if you’re quick, over 1,200 are still open. I’m rooting for this one, in all its glory:

    Ban the sending of welcome messages into outer space

    The welcome messages and information packs accompanying the recent voyager-1 mission should be omitted from subsequent vessels until more is known of possible recipients.It is naively assumed that idividuals intercepting such data would be benign advanced intelligent souls facinated by our achievements and amused by our quirky ways.However aliens are equally likely to be colonists escaping exhausted worlds and unwilling to share with what they perceive as parasitic, backwards, superstitious creatures devouring the flesh of dissimilar animals and hell bent on the destruction of a beautiful world. They might find our fast food culture particularly antagonistic if they are avian or porcine evoluents.

    The author believes this best be answered by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

  3. Bedd Gelert
    22/12/2013 at 8:39 pm

    With the greatest of respect, aren’t you danger of making the same mistake printed daily in our newspapers which say [I paraphrase..] “If you want to live 5 years longer, move to Hampshire..” or “A glass of wine a day will add 10 years to your life..” etc. etc.

    If you were to move to Glasgow, I suspect your life expectancy would not shift very much, unless ‘by osmosis’ you started [and again, I exaggerate for effect..] started drinking Buckfast Tonic Wine, eating the mythical deep-fried Mars bars, and the many other staples of journalistic legend.

    The Daily Telegraph neatly encapsulated this the other day with a tongue-in-cheek placing of two stories on the same page about the ill-effects of alcohol and also how drinking a glass of wine a day [it’s never a bottle of beer in these stories..] will make you live longer. Of course, in reality the point is that people who drink a glass of wine a day already may be slightly wealthier, may take more exercise, have a better diet.. So unless one adopts all the other traits of the ‘average’ wine drinker, no effect will really be seen.

    I am all in favour of the idea that children should grow up with two parents if possible – but I’m not really sure that some amazing transformation takes place when a couple become married, but I do think that people who are able to afford to get married, or who are more culturally disposed to it, may have other traits which make them decent parents. Supposing that people without those traits will somehow acquire them at the point where one says “I plight thee my troth..” seems rather fanciful, although I have nothing against marriage ‘in principle’.

    In practice it seems like a good institution, but not everyone wants to live in an institution. [For the avoidance of doubt, I would have no objections at all if someone wants to offer me a peerage, as that IS the kind of institution I might learn to cope with..].

    And for those seeking a more interesting / challenging / cogent / barking debate than my ramblings, have a look at this article by Laurie Penny on the topic of ‘free expression’..

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/22/this-isnt-feminism-its-islamophobia?commentpage=3

    On the other hand, if you want to read an argument even more rambling than my own, here’s Chris Huhnes latest article having a go at the ‘selfish, short sighted old’ !!

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/22/someone-needs-fight-selfish-old

    Bedd Gelert

  4. maude elwes
    23/12/2013 at 6:16 pm

    Baroness,

    The fear instilled in people to speak their minds over the last fifteen to twenty years has created a decade of lies, half truths and an idea that should anyone say or hold a belief that is unacceptable, for political reasons, then those who don’t agree with what is being said feel thy can abuse, misuse and intimidate the person letting their heart show. This is not only ill advised. as it creates what we see today, a government which has no idea of how the public relate to policies they may want to adopt or to know the way our citizens need to see their country run. A big mistake. It divides us from one another and leads to a path nobody can abide.

    Take your first example, you appear to feel the person who gave their views on the ‘Today’ programme should have been stultified so, why is that? Did he have a point that was reasonable and as a result you felt he may win over some listeners. If that is so, then we all need to know about it and hear his views.

    My feelings on the the brave Mr Rigby is, the government betrayed him. How you may ask? Well, first, millions of deeply religious Islamic people were allowed into the country to settle and make a life here. So many that some areas are now no go for the indigenous people who believe this to be their country. One that does not aspire to or have any connection with the violent culture Islam represents or the ardent nature of its leaders to instill its sentiments, as well as its followers to comply with its rules. Leaders did this knowing full well the cultural traits of the newcomers and their obsessive adherence to such beliefs. And they did it without either the knowledge of the natives of this island or with their consent to do so. They lied by omission, without what I can see as a rational political policy, when doing so. They knew they would be importing uncomfortable views for a Christian based society but did it anyway.

    Then to add insult to this injury they called for war on Islamic countries, starting with Iraq and moving on from there to Afghanistan, Libya with the threat to Syria. All based on lies. None of these countries were or had intended to attack the UK. That is until we decided to insist they democratise their lands and take up our cultural traits. Which is an insult to them as they see it. Their customs are held as sacred to their people as ours are to us. And government did this knowing the Trojan horse was full to the top of its head and placed firmly within our city centre spreading across the entire country.

    Adding disbelief to this apparent insanity they felt our soldiers would be untouched when they returned home from war and that they would be free to walk the streets believing those who had come here had somehow left behind their connection to the kith and kin. Not one person in their right mind could possibly have believed in this scenario when they knew full well the deeply felt Islamic principle stood within its people core. So, when Rigby was decapitated it was done in expectation of almost all of us. It was simply when we wondered about.

    How would we have reacted had millions of us British taken up residence in Germany, for example, and they had turned war on the British Isles, killing and maiming relentlessly and seen on TV every night. Do you believe the Brits there would not have turned into freedom fighters or a resistance of some sort to save the souls of their own? I could not believe that they would not. For God’s sake we have a TV channel that shows nothing but WW11 twenty four hours a day. We are never allowed to forget Hitler and the Nazis for one minute. And that, I believe, is how many young Muslim men feel when they see their women and children mutilated by bombs and drones and whatever else we can muster against them.

    The instinct to defend their people is programmed into the psyche of men, it is what nature designed them to do. And if government knew that in WW11 they knew it just as well today. So why did they feel they could abandon the men and women of this country to such a fate? It is treasonous to do this. And speaks of madness in those who run the country on our behalf.

    Now, to move on to support for traditional marriage. Again a government led policy to reject that institution. And the rejection came through the pounding of role changes. Men no longer wanted to support women because they were hammered daily with, women are your equal and want to kill their own snakes, they no longer need your care and protection. Don’t marry them as you will have to support them whilst they bear your children and raise them, and if you want to leave that women for another, you will have to forfeit half your possessions when you do so. There is plenty out there, so you are better off letting them work for their own bread and butter. Marriage is a noose around the neck boyo so duck out of it before you’re in too deep. Women too were roped into the idea that if they have a ‘career’ they will not have to fear abandonment by the male and father of their offspring. They can have it all, whilst skivvies raise the kids and bring them to their level of mediocrity, letting you be free from the drudgery. (May I shove in here a ‘career’ to majority of the women in the UK is cleaning for the rich, selling burgers for the franchises to fools who eat them, and trying to sell rubbish to the nation as venders from knickers to insurance policies) They have to do for all and sundry what they once did for love of spouse and child. Leaving them empty of any kind of fulfillment or satisfaction of the soul when they do it. Which turns them into displaced human beings unable to fathom where they went wrong. High class intellectual positions that feed the mind are not your average girls experience or indeed their goal in life. So government set this up and they did it to encourage cheap labour for corporate indulgence. The same reason behind the massive influx of immigrants. Low pay and eternal work shifts. Reducing our country to a third world lifestyle of serfdom for its natives. All the gains made for the population from WW11 lost in a flip of the coin. Our culture decimated, our creed diminished, all at a speed that is unacceptable. Done to make the rich have more and the poor to be so needy only starvation could bring about such a rapid change. Hence the endless rise of the food banks, beggars and homelessness. Something this nation has not seen in more than a century.

    The joke being, those who think they are clever and have it all tied up, believe we don’t know what is going on or why. That is not so and the compliance will not last. Not even the duplicitous Farage and his UKIP rational will ease the savage breast for very long.

    Freedom of speech or expression is imperative for man. Without it he becomes a festering time bomb. And those who create the fear to be oneself will be the first to fall.

    All who brought this disaster to our shores should face charges of treason and be tried in the Hague. But, I hasten to add, there was no opposition. The fear to speak ones truth was torn from their mouths regardless of the infamy brought on them.

  5. maude elwes
    23/12/2013 at 6:48 pm
  6. Gareth Howell
    25/12/2013 at 4:36 pm

    Bedd Gelert! Make my day! Hilarious!

    re family values the Mormons may have something re multiple marriages, and nuclear families, on the strength of greater longevity alone. It does mean that conventional psychology of the family members, may be turned upside down as a consequence, especially if both partners bring children to a new relationship.

    re Anti-Israel protest, the mood of the radical socialists, who may have the upper hand in the student unions, seems to have changed a lot since the “Euler sets” of Islam, socialism, and capitalism, got drastically rearranged in 1990. The kibbutz have been completely forgotten

    It does not mean that the President of USA gets elected without the NY Jewish lobby. With it, he does.

  7. maude elwes
    06/01/2014 at 2:19 pm

    Here a direct statement from a selected editor hits it on the nail politically.

    What a relief it was to know that there are people out there who don’t feel they have to toe the PC line. And if only it could be a regular weekly feature. Then we could say we do entertain an alternative point of view and have that wonderful freedom of speech they frequently tell us we have.

    This programme was well done by the Beeb. It was a wonderful new year treat. I loved it. It gave me a lift all day.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03mhyzh

  8. Daedalus
    07/01/2014 at 4:42 pm

    On 12 September 2012, at the BBC RE:Think festival Jonathan Sacks and Richard Dawkins gave their views on a wide range of topics including science and religion. Jonathan or Baron Lord Sacks was a Chief Rabbi at the time and Professor Richard Dawkins a well published academic and atheist.

    As I recall there was little agreement between the two that is until the issue of state morality arose. Both men to the appreciation of the audience agreed that state morality should be based upon a reasonable, emphasise reasonable interpretation of religion.

    The government took the view that the existing marriage law was unreasonable. If we were to rely on the Sacks/Dawkins view of state morality then her Majesty the Queen as Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Head of State would or should have the authority to deny her government after council any unreasonable view of morality.

    She got rid of the Judicial Office of Lord Chancellor which would have exercised this authority on her behalf to deny government; ergo the state and religion have separated and her Majesty the Queen has abdicated her moral authority. The state now operates without any moral basis.

    In the US the federal government has made marriage promotion among single mothers a key part of its continuing effort to fight poverty. In effect the state has taken a moral stance on marriage but it’s not been a success.

    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-01/osu-mph010514.php

    Fathers are a liability and marriage isn’t much use to single mums.

    • maude elwes
      09/01/2014 at 2:37 pm

      This link you put up to a study addressing the lack of need for ‘poor women and their children’ for a father figure and husband is a blindfold to gag and labotomised the ruling elite into an acceptance of modern day slavery.

      Firstly, attention has to be drawn to the fact the link you put up is an American paper which refers, in the main, to African American women. What on earth does that have to do with the British? Is the suggestion that we British are identical to the US factions in their disconnected society? If it is, why do they believe that is us? As far as I have seen and read and witnessed over the years, the communities we have in the UK are not remotely akin to the US experience. The heritage of ethnic women in our country, just as the poor white women of our country, clearly demonstrates that their children and women are more stable, grounded, well educated and emotionally fulfilled when they have a man in the house who committed to them in marriage.

      Anything else is simply untested and unproven. As the opposite has repeatedly shown in studies carried out over the decades. Common sense is always the best source for judgement. Studies can be bought by anyone to reflect what they want to see which suits their agenda.

      However, does Obama really believe his wife and children would be better off without him at the helm had he not shown his commitment to them by marriage? Please, give me a break.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/9245973/The-village-can-help-but-children-raised-by-a-mum-and-dad-do-best.html

      And here is an anecdotal experience very close to me.

      A male relative, unmarried, in his thirties meets a single woman in his office. She had a relationship some years earlier and from that has a son. He as was 10 when relative met woman. Woman had worked to support herself and son as the previous man had not been prepared or able to offer much support. He did however visit the child and son knew full well who his father was/is.

      The woman, although lonely, had good self esteem and although not flush with money managed to work with the help of her mother caring for child. The boy was a good kid but not concentrating on his life or doing well at school. Lives in inner city London and was struggling to make it all round. Women, likewise managed but was unfulfilled without a committed partner.

      Relative fell in love for the first time in his life. He had been a man about town who advocated no desire to marry or have children. He had a good job and there was plenty out there for him. Family was stunned when he took up residence with woman whom he met at an inter office do. Both in there thirties, they decided to have a child. Family dumfounded but happy and supportive. Next thing you know they both married, and low and behold, first son begins to do well at school. His nominal new father teaching him the basics of maths and other favourite subjects. Reading being the top issue with stories of ‘masculine pursuits and quests.’ For the first time the older boy had a male input. Before long he had a beloved brother. It changed his life. He was loved and understood his manhood, his mother had time to be at home when he arrived from school and the infant was there to enjoy, surrounded by deeply committed people.

      I witnessed this personally. And for the woman, personal fulfillment in all aspects of life, a wife, a mother, and the knowledge to understand her good fortune. And the male relative, likewise, understanding his need for respect and appreciation in his role in life.

      This is not an isolated experience.

  9. Gareth Howell
    08/01/2014 at 2:24 pm

    In the other place those concerned with the state tend to leave religion well alone saying that the two don’t mix, although notable exceptions such as the former David Steel succeeded in preaching god on Sunday, and Law for the rest of the week, in his days in that place.

    Daedalus’ reply is interesting if thoroughly arcane, sending Icarus to fly too close to the sun as always. The Archbishop of Canterbury preaches to moral law when the occasion requires it, as for example after the end of the Iraq war, and possibly at the beginning of it too. The Lords Reform has not changed that. He preaches to the monarch when he does so.

    Yet again Daedalus is endeavoring to give more powers to the monarch rather than less, less being the case during the Labour government terms of office.
    Prerogative is the name of Daedalus’ game. Do we want more prerogative to parliament or more to the crown? I think the former. Daedalus thinks the latter.

    No moral authority has been lost, and any way who is talking about Monarchy’s morals. Fayed?

    • maude elwes
      09/01/2014 at 2:52 pm

      Gareth, there is alternative interpretation of Icarus and his father. And that is, although the sacrifice made with the death of Icarus, as a result of waxed wings too close to the sun, they were both free of Minos and the satanic existence they had in the labyrinth. Daedalus survived and although forever grieving his lost son, the sacrifice they both made had been worth the risk for freedom. Even in death.

  10. Daedalus
    10/01/2014 at 10:51 am

    Gareth, I take your point on the arcane but have you considered that the changes to marriage law are also arcane.

    I’m not gay myself but in my twenties as a single man I had intimate knowledge of a married gay woman although I didn’t know she was gay at the time. Under both civil and ecclesiastical law we were adulterers as was her husband who was named as such in the subsequent divorce. If we could have been freed from the notion of adultery I would have been her concubine.

    Now if instead she had married under the changed marriage law and had taken a female lover then the couple would be free from adultery. Her lover would be her concubine.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concubinage

    Why would a modern Parliamentary Democracy such as ours replace adultery with concubinage and why would such a Parliament not offer legal protection to the concubine.

    If morally we take a reasonable view of religion and history, societies that tolerated concubinage restricted it to the high born. So by allowing concubinage in marriage Parliamentary Democracy has elevated same sex married couples to the same high station as royals? It is now quite appropriate to refer to a married gay as “your highness” so you’d better get used to it.

    If Parliamentary Democracy has delivered the arcane then surely the arcane should protect us from Parliamentary Democracy as it has done for such a very long time.

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