Foreign Perspectives

This seems to have been one of the most widely discussed trials around the world to date and it seems certain that the discussion has a ways to go with an appeal seeming quite likely if not yet certain.

The grounds for the appeal seem to be coming from two basic angles namely that the child’s evidence was unreliable because she was so young and that the defendant didn’t get a fair trial because of all the discussion that’s been going on by way of the Internet around the world and particularly because said discussion could hardly be missed in the UK by the jurors. I’m calling him “the defendant” to avoid legal issues but if you want to know his name, it takes a few seconds to find it courtesy of google as he’s named on loads of non-UK sites.

The “fair trial” argument will likely hinge on article 6 of the Human Rights Convention of which entitles everyone to a “fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law”. The problem being that had the jurors seen some of the discussion knocking around the Internet over the last few months then it would be quite possible that they would not meet the requirement that they be impartial. That’s a particular problem in the British court system as it starts from the premise that the jurors know nothing about the case that they are concerned with other than the information which they acquire in the course of the trial itself. Were the appeal for this case to be upheld for this reason it seems certain that the presumption of ignorance would need to be changed; doing so wouldn’t mean jail time for this defendant but would at least sort out what is becoming a serious problem for high profile cases that will come up in the years to come.

The age of the child is an interesting argument from a psychological perspective. Can a 4 year old be relied on to accurately recount events that occurred when they were 2? Early childhood memories are quite a big issue in psychology and it’s very, very difficult to avoid implanting memories in young children of events that just didn’t happen. At the trivial level this can be as simple as asking leading questions rather than open questions but even open questions need to be carefully phrased with young children. It is fortunate that her recollection came from a time when she could speak as few people can recall anything before that and little in any detail. Quite why that should be so is something of a mystery but suggests that memory is either dependent on speech or requires developments in the brain that happen to coincide with occur at the same time as speech development. Actually implanting false memories was one of the assignments set by a Yale psychology course so it’s surprisingly easy to do even for those of university age never mind young children.

Although this is one guy who needs the key thrown away, if his appeal does succeed on the article 6 grounds, let’s hope that the British legal system learns from the experience and abandons the presumption of ignorance on the part of the jury. Should it succeed on the grounds of the competence of a child to testify then that’s potentially a very serious problem for any children in similar circumstances in the future.

Once the original Star Trek series started to do really well in syndication after it had been canceled it was obvious that “something” would be produced to follow it up although it was probably not so obvious that so many “somethings” would be done over the decades which followed it.

Clearly the easy thing to do is to produce a follow-on of some sort but for a successful series that becomes more and more difficult to do both in terms of the writing and indeed of the fees demanded by the actors to reappear. In the case of Star Trek this meant that the follow-on series were spin-offs with very little real connection with the original series. Certainly the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine made little attempt to truly place themselves within the confines of the original series. Funnily enough, although Voyager was effectively in an entirely different universe, it was the one that seemed to me to be closest to the concept of the original series in exploring new worlds, new civilisations and boldly going.

Once the sequels had largely been exhausted it was time to consider prequels. In a science-fiction series these can get away with being set so many years before the original that there’s no problem with actors needing to appear younger and so Enterprise got away with an entirely different cast. The problem with that series seemed to be that it’s quite difficult to develop a plausible set of technologies that whilst more advanced than what we have now, are less advanced than what’s to come. Unfortunately in the case of Enterprise this was particularly difficult as a lot of the technologies from the original series are already available in the shops in some form eg the communicator, electronic notepad, etc. which meant that those remaining seemed to be confined to limiting the capability of what was shown on the original series eg the less perfect transporter, the slower warp drive, and, of course, the much grimmer decor of the ship (I suspect that this last one is what felled the series ultimately: it didn’t look science fiction enough).

Which brings us to the prequel film. Clearly the studio had decided that it was time for another Star Trek film but apparently didn’t want to pay enough to drag the various actors out of retirement. Thus we have an entirely different set of actors with pretty much the only common link to what had gone before being the name of the film. But, then, what else could they do?

It’s all so much easier to do in books….

It wasn’t that we’ve been putting off joining a gym for the last couple of months but rather that we’ve been both working up our exercise programme and checking out the prices/facilities on offer locally.

Our first thought was to head for Esporta which we’d been going to before. It’s an excellent choice for the long term committed gym goer in that it’s quite a large place with lots of free space around the equipment and it provides a very complete health club setting with everything including a pool, a wide range of exercise classes and quite a nice little restaurant. However, it’s 12 month contract at around £50/month (they have various offers so the price on offer varies) and we knew for sure that we’d be taking a two month break this summer.Besides, the £50/month is really only worth paying if you’re making full use of the facilities and we won’t be for a while. In a similar vein is David Lloyd although they currently offer a three month trial membership which we might take up in September.

At the other extreme are the small gyms run by private organisations and the local councils. These are generally run on a pay per visit basis which is a great way to start out an exercise programme as you can begin with a once a week visit and work up from there. The larger council places usually run classes too. However, the pay per visit approach can get very expensive. For example, a typical £3/visit with three visits a week amounts to around £40/month. Add on classes and you can easily be talking over £60/month at which point clearly somewhere like Esporta is a more sensible option.

Finally, there’s Fitness First which falls in the middle ground between the two extremes. Pricing for a membership cancellable at one months notice runs to around £30/month which includes gym access and classes ie it’s all-in; for a 12 month membership it’s around £20/month. This is essentially an Esporta cum David Lloyd place minus the pool, tennis court and restaurant and with the exercise machines packed quite close together. We’ve signed up for the one month notice version and will be cancelling next month seeing as we’re off in July.

And we’ve even started going, unlike the surprisingly large number of people who sign up for the gym but never actually go. Even more surprising is how well we’re doing already after just a few days. We reckon that we’re not quite fit enough for the classes but should be in a couple of weeks or so.

Freedom of expression is one of those things that we kind of just assume we have in western societies but in reality there are generally limits to it.

For example, the issue of Madeline McCann is freely spoken about in Portugal yet in the UK a range of comments are censored. Joana on her own blogspot blog clearly is none too impressed about the British media on this one. After all, in Portugal the law states that

1. Everyone shall possess the right to freely express and publicise his thoughts in words, images or by any other means, as well as the right to inform others, inform himself and be informed without hindrance or discrimination.
2. Exercise of the said rights shall not be hindered or limited by any type or form of censorship.

Seems clear, doesn’t it? Well, the problem is that what that particular law doesn’t allow for is how individual publishers operate. After all, it is up to the publisher to decide whether or not to publish stuff on their site. What that law is saying that anyone can publish anything; it doesn’t say that an individual publisher is required to publish everything. After all, Joana moderates comments on her site: is that not the very same censorship that she accuses the British media of?

In America, the first amendment is similarly clear on freedom of expression in that it states

• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

However, that’s been modified somewhat over the centuries and notably does NOT apply to commercial speech so, for example, it doesn’t allow all and sundry to send out junk mail to everyone. Having said that, the freedom of expression is taken very seriously and other laws and administrative procedures have had to change to allow for us, for example, full details of ongoing trials are published as they happen.

In theory Europe as a whole has a similar freedom of expression courtesy of the Human Rights Convention which states in Article 10:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

In many respects this is an updating of the American first amendment, or at least the freedom of expression bits are. As always, lawmakers tack on seemingly unrelated clauses thus whilst we would see freedom of religion as being separate from freedom of expression, clearly in the 1700s the Americans didn’t. Likewise, the business about not restricting the licensing of broadcasting enterprises isn’t altogether appropriate these days with the likes of Youtube.

Interestingly though the second paragraph in clarifying this freedom does not list the prohibition of publication of current court proceedings as being one of those things that isn’t allowed as this does not appear to affect the “authority and impartiality” of the judiciary as shown by the American example. However, yet again that doesn’t mean that publishers are required to publish everything that comes their way, merely that they are allowed to do so if they wish to.

So where does that place our freedom of expression in the UK? Well, the Human Rights Convention is enacted in UK law. So, the publisher would be permitted to publish those comments of Joana but would not be required to do so. However, it does suggest that the action in taking down our own sites last week was NOT legal as our right of freedom of expression as per Article 10 of the Human Rights Convention would override the reporting restriction ie the contempt of court action was itself illegal.

Somehow or other I managed to pick up 78% on the latest assignment which is pretty good going as initially I hadn’t a clue as to how to properly approach the semi-essay part of it.

It was quite a strange kind of assignment as it was largely based on the methodology book rather than the main course text. That dictated quite a different structure than the typical essay response ending up in the question being split between five short definitions and a longer piece on experimental ethics.

As always at degree level, the “definitions” required are quite complete ones with a full definition of each term in the question and examples to show that you actually understand it which, of course, wouldn’t be shown were you just to write out a straight dictionary style definition.

The ethics part was based around an experiment first carried out in the 1960s and replicated for the BBC/Open University series Child of Our Time a few years ago. Basically it involved kids looking at a video of an adult attacking a doll with three different endings to the video: the adult getting told off for his actions, getting rewarded for them and finally nothing happening to him. There are loads of ethical problems in reproducing an experiment like this, most obviously being that you already know that the kids will become more violent after watching the video (yes, folks, watching violent programming does affect them) you know ahead of time that you will be harming in this way.

Psychological experiments on children seem to be quite a minefield in terms of ethics. For instance, it would be really handy to be able to experiment on the effect of removing, say, the father from the family unit but clearly that’s not a runner ethically or morally and many other potential experiments are just as problematical. In these cases you can use what are called “natural experiments” where the conditions you’d liked to have had in your experiment have happened naturally. For example, if the father leaves naturally. However, even there you’ve problems as one assumes that how the family functioned prior to the divorce would be different than if the divorce hadn’t happened ie the “experiment” isn’t running entirely as one would ideally need it to run.

Still, a pleasing mark. Let’s hope that I can keep it up for the next assignment which I gotta get going on soon…