Call for UK Bill of Rights Will Get Mired

I love the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, not only for what it provides to citizens here, but how eloquently and cleverly it does so. Say too little, or forget a key area, and people are left to the whims of government. Say too much, and you get unintended consequences.

That's what will happen, I think, with the latest call for a U.K. bill of rights. Certainly trial by jury as one right is important. But "right to administrative justice?" Just what does that mean? And "international human rights as yet not incorporated into UK law?" Who decides what the international human rights are? What happens if more "develop?"

They want specific rights for "vulnerable groups." But the more specific a bill of rights gets for particular groups, the more it loses, as the idea is to provide the important floor of rights for everyone. Why, in such a document, would you want to detail rights offered some but not all? It seems to fly in the face of the concept itself. And a right to "an adequate standard of living?" I do agree with the concept, but how to you legally ensure that? Whose standard and how much? And that's considered separate from a right to health, housing, and education. Does that mean everyone gets to go to a university, and if so, how much money will it take to build enough of them to provide space for all? Ensuring health care, certainly. But ensuring health? How does that happen?

I understand the impetus: No humane person wants to see others suffer. But how will a document that likely cannot be enforced in its full considerations provide any help? Well, other than making people feel good about the "advance" in society. My bet is that the observation of the New Testament that the poor will always be there will sadly continue, no matter what official dictate is in force.

London Bookstores Are Going Up

It seems that some independent books stores have started in London over the last few years and, contrary to "smart" opinions, are having some success, according to a blog in the Guardian by one bookstore person:

Each independent has its own survival strategy. Ours has been to stock not just those titles our core customers would expect to find, but to second-guess those customers and offer books to surprise and excite them (what Gabriel Zaid calls "a fortunate encounter"). That in itself is not enough, which is why we set out from the very beginning to establish an involved community, both through participation in events and by opening the London Review Cake Shop, which has become a favourite haunt of writers, journalists, publishers, academics (it helps being in Bloomsbury) and, of course, customers.

Of particular note are the activities of the London Review Bookstore, including events, a revamped web site (with soon to be available podcasts of talks), catalogs, and signed first editions. Some of this actually sounds like marketing techniques used in New York's old Book Row (interestingly covered in a volume I've been reading, Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade). Sometimes what went around should come back for another tour.

Theatrical Civility in English Blog

I first started to read a Guardian theatre blog entry by director Raz Shaw because the question of whether you need life "experience" to write or direct certain plays has an interest to me. And I would tend to agree with Mr. Shaw that it should not be a necessity if only because we then reduce theater to formulaic naturalism and start down a road of insisting that the the lead of A Man for All Seasons be a highly-religious and brilliant statesman, lawyer, and thinker. To insist on the literal is to turn our backs on unexpected insight from someone outside a given milieu.

And then, on a whim, I scrolled down to the comments. They were civil, informed, and well-reasoned. At least as of when I read them, there is an example of what online discourse could be, rather than the all too frequent taunts, put-downs, and even intimidation. How refreshing.

UK Statistics Watchdog Goes Out Fighting

The UK government is disbanding its Statistics Commission, which is a shame because the group apparently fought against political use of statistics, according to an FT story:

Allegations about the politicisation of data have intensified throughout the years of New Labour rule – most recently with last week’s issue of national figures showing thousands of children had not won entry into their first-choice state school.

Critics of Ed Balls, schools secretary, accused him of trying to deflect attention from the statistics by simultaneously reporting that “a significant minority” of schools were breaking new admissions rules.

The commission has written to Mr Balls’ department and stressed the release of official figures should be “seen to be independent from policy comment”.

The government set up the commission in 2000 "to improve trust in government figures." The question is whether it didn't do its job well enough or entirely too well. A new UK Statistics Authority replaces it next month.

A group devoted to making politicians come clean on their use of statistics. More than a full-time job, I'd bet.

Homage to the Bic Stick

Some people in the UK seem to have a bit of time on their hands - just witness the parade of amusing reviews at Amazon.co.uk of the classic cheap Bic pen. Black. Medium point. What, you were expecting blue and fine point? So was one of the reviewers.

Tony Blair Dances with Words for Stop-and-Question Law

As has been well-reported, outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair is pushing for a new bill that would allow police to stop and question people without needing any grounds for doing so. This would be a first in the U.K., which does allow searches on "reasonable grounds for suspicion," according to this story in the Trinity Mirror. In defending his proposal, Blair wrote the following in a piece in the Sunday London Times:

But at the heart of these new proposals will lie the same debate: the balance between protecting the safety of the public and the rights of the individual suspected of being involved with terrorism. ...

We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first.

I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong. If a foreign national comes here, and may be at risk in his own country, we should treat him well. But if he then abuses our hospitality and threatens us, I feel he should take his chance back in his own home country.

But Mr. Blair isn't being accurate. The problem with a stop-and-question law is not protecting the civil liberties of an actual terrorism suspect, where there is a body of evidence suggesting a tie between the individual and such an activity, but protecting the rights of whomever the police decide to stop.

The reason British and US law has such regard for the rights of the suspect is the underlying concept of someone being innocent until proven guilty. Society regards the rights of the suspect because there is a good chance that the suspect is innocent, and if the innocent person can face such restraint of rights, then it could be only a matter of time before anyone else is in the position of being a suspect and of losing rights.

But there is also a meaning of suspect that isn't tied to that philosophical underpinning - one that is more simply a person who is the target of suspicion. Mr. Blair is essentially pulling a semantic bait-and-switch. He uses the single word used in both contexts and then uses the second meaning, pretending that the first doesn't exist. He then decries the "dangerous misjudgment" of prizing civil liberties above chasing terrorism. Ironically, his own act of linguistic deception - whether intentional or accidental - offers good reason for keeping the emphasis where it is.

When Is A Billion Not A Billion

In a discussion on a writers' board, there was what I thought would be a brief discussion about what to call 5,400,000,000. Five point four billion, right?

As it turns out, not necessarily. and the explanation is not only fascinating, but it explains something about the BBC - more on that in a moment. First we must return to the 15th and 16th centuries, during which French mathematicians developed the terms billion and trillion - which meant 10¹² and 10¹⁸ respectively.

But for some reason, a century later, some scientists in Italy and France started using billion to mean 10⁹, or a 1 followed by nine zeros. That created what eventually come to be called the long and short scales. In the former system, there was a name every time you added an additional six zeros - or multipled by a million - and in the latter, the new names started with every three additional zeros, or multiplication by a thousand.

The world was now split, with many countries, including Britain using the long form, and some using the short. By the 18th century, the short use appears in the British colonies in North American, although back in England the citizens still used the long scale. By the early 19th century, the U.S. officially converted to the short scale and taught it in schools, as did most people in France. Britain remained unmoved.

By the 20th century, things got really screwy. The French now officially proclaimed the long scale to be the one to use, and by 1994, the Italians also embraced the long scale. Note that these were the very two countries that had started all the confusion in the first place. In 1974, the United Kingdom had official statistics switch to the short scale. I'm sure it had something to do with the French moving back to the long scale. And you thought geopolitics was confusing.

As for the BBC, there is still some use of the long scale, which is why news presenters will still often say "thousand million" rather than billion. How quaint - though I'm not sure which side is.