There Should Be A Law.......

There Should Be A Law..........

Steve, Jo and Mana came round to eat tonight and I asked Mana about the origins of the serious divide I perceived between the religious and non-religious in France. Mana didn't see it as I did and thought there were as many people who didn't care much one way or the other in France as in England. Anyway, she and Steve both thought that the church/state divide didn't go back as far as Napoleon but probably had its origins in the Republican governments of the late 19th century. Certainly the divide wasn't enshrined in law until 1905.

I wondered what was the case with the UK military now, the discussion having reminded me of something a friend of my youth had told me. He had joined the Royal Navy and, on signing up, had been asked a lot of questions including his religion, to which he had replied : « none ». So the interviewer duly wrote down C of E ; at that time (the late 1950s) it seemed that you had to have a religion to be in the Armed Forces. God as well as my country, presumably. Steve reckoned that you probably weren't allowed to even ask the question now.

Which led us on to political correctness. We all, other than Mana, had numerous examples of idiocies to recount. Steve and I both being Chelsea supporters discussed the case of John Terry, the Chelsea captain, who allegedly swore at a West Ham player using a racist remark (the West Ham player, incidentally, didn't realise this until after the match.) We both agreed, that for once, Sepp Blatter the EUFA President had got it right. If that had in fact happened then the players should sort it out themselves after the match; many things are said and done in the heat of a moment that are best sorted out between the parties themselves when both are calmer. That's just common sense. Steve reckoned that there wouldn't be any rugby players still playing if the same criteria were applied to rugby. The fact that this is now a case being passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions defies all common sense, if only because the police must have more important calls on their time.

We were discussing the same thing at one of our pizza evenings, partly in the context of the DSK affair, and apparently analogous cases exist in France. Jean Ioannides asked if cases of sexual harassment were common in the UK now and commented that the his wife probably could have had him dismissed if she had not responded to his advances, since he'd met her at work. He added that he would never have dared make the same overtures in the current climate.

Of course all this is a matter of degree and the law is notably bad at dealing with matters of degree except in sentencing, where the punishment can (but won't necessarily) be made to fit the crime. The point of all this preamble is that there should be a law, which it can't be beyond the wit of man to devise, that asserts the pre-eminence of common sense. What, as one judge once put it, the man on the top of the Clapham omnibus would think. Currently, on the contrary, it is principles that have pre-eminence. People of principle are supposed to be admired; I regard them more often as charlatans. Principles, in my experience, are frequently used as a way to avoid discussion; if someone says an opinion is a matter of principle, the you aren't supposed to argue with it. They are inflexible bludgeons with which to hit people over the head, of particular value to bigots and dogmatists. Therein lie many of the idiocies in our society because it is principles that are enshrined and enacted in law, even if in defiance of all common sense.

So who's for a Law of Common Sense that would state that if, in a given situation, a legal principle dictates some course of action that defies all common sense, the Law of Common Sense should prevail?