Early Summer Thoughts

It's Summer

Summer doesn't officially arrive here until the 24^th of the month (the fete de la St Jean) but the weather says it has. We have had very hot days of sunshine and, today, a tropical-style storm. The pansies that have done such a good job since last November are exhausted and the bulbs have bloomed and died so I've been buying plants. They should ensure a decent summer display, front and back.

The warm summer evenings have allowed me to indulge in my favourite late-evening past-time of a Calvados on my balcony while I engage in some navel-gazing, encouraged by the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine and to the background of the frogs' chorus from the river. My son, Carl, has started to show an interest in philosophy so I've sent him some books. There's not a lot I know and can tell him other than of the importance of the “dubito” preceding Descartes oft-quoted “cogito ergo sum” and Wittgenstein's suggestion of the ultimate futility of the subject. But that's the end and he is at the beginning.....and there could be insights along the way.

And there is something else that preoccupies me and my Calvados.................................

Testing Times
Rules are rules. It may be the backstop of every Jobsworth and the rules may be against any common sense or human understanding but once they are made they (supposedly) have to be observed. So, do we worry much about how and why they are made? A story in the press caught my attention.

Here is the background. A 37-year old woman who was born in Germany of a German father and unknown mother, who came as a child to England and has lived virtually all her life there, is married to an Englishman and has two English children. She applied for a passport for a holiday abroad with her family and was refused it; not only that, she was told that she might have to be deported as an illegal immigrant. The remedy? She could apply for British citizenship by passing the citizenship test. This was the response of the Home Office which otherwise reportedly said: “Rules are rules”. Being tautological this must be correct; who made the rules, to what end and subject to what tests are just a few of the important questions that are begged.

So what's in the citizenship test? Questions on English history and the flag are prominent. You might think that ability in the language and knowledge of, for instance, the status of women and the role of education might be more pertinent but I could not possibly comment. What would your (legal test) “man on the top of a Clapham omnibus” suggest as criteria for the test? I don't think it would be questions on English history and the flag. So who created the test and thus the inferred rules and to what criteria (subjected to what tests)? No answer to that, I'm afraid, except that “rules are rules”.

There have been few occasions in my professional life when I had to create a test but I was conscious when I did so that I had also to create a test of the test. Anyone can create a test in the abstract and fantasisers clearly often do; what also is needed, and what fantasisers don't create, is some way of demonstrating that the test will produce the practical (as well as the theoretical) results that it is designed to. The test of the test should do that. One criterion is that examples supposed to easily pass the test should do exactly that. So, could all existing bona fide English citizens easily answer questions on English history and the flag? I don't need an answer; I merely wish to show that the citizenship test clearly fails its own test.

A more difficult case concerns human rights. The UN has created a charter stating what they are and the EU has a court to ensure that they are upheld within its territory. It is difficult to argue against this worthy statement of what should be but what is the practical effect? It may help some Syrian refugee, possibly starving and in danger of physical assault, that he/she has a right to education, health, food, clean water and free speech but I doubt it. In practice, and I stress the word “practice”, the UN Charter on human rights becomes primarily a playground for lawyers and those with money or influence. Was the Charter itself subjected to any tests of its effects in practice? Not to my knowledge. And here, rules are rules only if anyone sees fit to observe them.

The root problem, I think, is that it is too easy to sign up to statements of intent that are full of good intentions and, indeed, often impolitic not to do so. Why would you not sign up to good intentions? The answer is because, once rules are inferred, what is easily practicable and an obvious solution to particular situations is ruled (sic) out. So the Home Office can't simply be told to get a life and grant the passport application; and convicted criminals and terrorists can hope to escape their just desserts.

Dare I say it? Perhaps we should reject all invitations to sign up to statements of benign intent, however impolitic that may be, unless they have been subjected to appropriate tests of their practical consequences. In the case of human rights, if you live in a country where democratic human rights are generally agreed and observed, any breach of them is far more likely to be because the rules, implied or explicitly stated, are not observed by the relevant authorities rather than because of anything in the fine print for lawyers to argue over. The remedy is not in further statements of rights (and implied rules) but in forcing (shaming?) authorities to face up to their responsibilities. A free press should do that and that will nowadays generally happen, over the Internet if not by locally paid-off media.

So let's get rid of rules unless they are accompanied by tests created at the same time to demonstrate that they will achieve the effects that they are designed to. Otherwise, use common sense. On the other hand, if we really want cloud-cuckoo land, there's a citizenship test I know of ready to be used.