Paul Dacre: Confused, contradictory and hypocritical

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Dacre delivered a long speech to the Society of Editors conference the transcript of which can be found here: RePress

It's a long and rambling speech with, it must be said, some good points but this section on the Max Mosley case is just too funny to miss. Remember, this is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Mail talking here:
Recently, of course, the very same Justice Eady effectively ruled that it’s perfectly acceptable for the multi-millionaire head of a mult-billion sport that is followed by countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable sexual depravity with him.

The judge found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a “sick Nazi orgy” as the News of the World contested, though for the life of me that seems an almost surreally pedantic logic as some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform Mosley was issuing commands in German while one prostitute pretended to pick lice from his hair, a second fellated him and a third caned his backside until blood was drawn.

Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely “unconventional”. Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way.

Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter? But what is most worrying about Justice Eady’s decisions is that he is ruling that - when it comes to morality - the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being “amoral”.

In the sporting celebrity case, he rejected the idea that adultery was a proper cause for public condemnation. Instead, he declared that because family breakdown was now commonplace, there was a strong argument for “not holding forth about adultery” or, in other words, attaching no greater inherent worth to marriage than to any other lifestyle choice. Thus no moral delineation was to be made between marriage and those who would destroy it, between victim and victimiser, between right and wrong.

In the Mosley case, the judge is ruling that there is no public interest in revealing a public figure’s involvement in acts of depravity. What the judge loftily calls the “new rights-based jurisprudence” of the Human Rights Act seems to be ruling out any such thing as public standards of morality and decency, and the right of newspapers to report on digressions from those standards.
Update 11/11/08: Toynbee tackles Dacre as does Neil Lyndon


How did we get into this state of affairs?

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Scandal of care at top children's hospital
Treatment at one of Britain's leading children's hospitals is worse than that in the developing world, according to a damning doctors' report uncovered by The Observer which also reveals how parents are "told lies" to cover up sub-standard care.

In the document, which the head of the Royal College of Surgeons describes as alarming, consultants are scathing about the Birmingham Children's Hospital. Last night MPs called for a full inquiry into the quality of care at the hospital, where children are treated for life-threatening conditions such as liver or kidney failure, neurological problems and chronic heart complaints.

• Support for surgeons undertaking kidney transplants is so poor that consultants felt they had received better back-up when performing such procedures on a visit to Lagos, the capital of Nigeria.

• Transplant services for children with serious liver failure are so poor that they constitute "a third-class service [which is] putting patients at risk".

Remember Abu Ghraib?

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Some would rather you didn't

Bush administration delays release of prisoner abuse photos
The Bush administration is doing everything it can to delay compliance with a court's order that the Pentagon turn over pictures of prisoners abused in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new court filing.

A three-judge appeals court panel in September ordered the administration to turn over 87 photographs depicting abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other sites. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the photos in 2005.

On Thursday, the administration requested a review of that decision by all 12 appeals court judges. The ACLU expected the move, a lawyer for the group said previously, but it was nonetheless a frustration for those attempting to uncover the full extent of abuse that accompanied the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pundits, eh? TWAT!

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Neil Clark reminds us of Curranty-Eyed Neocon, Mystic Janet's predictions from earlier this year.

Janet Daley
Obama will not win the presidency: America will have been made to feel sufficiently good about itself simply by his nomination and the way it responds to him as a candidate not to feel the need to put him in the White House.

The popular, if not the electoral college, vote will be close but America will decide that in such dangerous times, it must choose the wise older leader, the war hero, the statesman who talks about foreign policy and national security with real authority.

On Obama

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Is Barack Obama America's Tony Blair?

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Let's hope that Obama doesn't turn into America's Tony Blair...
The fresh-faced, forty-something leader, with his attractive young family, drank in the applause of his adoring audience, which carried on dancing into the early hours.

This had been a spectacular victory; he'd won big even in areas of the country which had never voted for his party before.

A washed-up, discredited government had been consigned to oblivion. His simple, compelling message of 'change' had helped him assemble an historic, all-conquering coalition - white, black, young, old, liberal, conservative.

It was a new dawn. His was a young country, whose time had come. Politics would never be the same again. Things can only get better.

But enough of Tony Blair. What about Barack Obama?
Yeah, sorry, it's Richard Littlejohn and this is an interesting piece so I'm linking to it.

So there!


To dream, to hope

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Tomgram
For almost eight years, somebody else's bad-seed children had the run of the political sandbox. You could look on in horror as they bullied others, tore up the playground, and even managed to throw sand in their own eyes. You could yell at them (though they were heedless), or wonder where in the world their parents had gone, or who in the world had ever raised them to be this way. It was harder to dream, to hope.

Perhaps the best thing about the election of Barack Obama is simply the thought that, two and a half months from now, those mad children will be gone (though the damage they did will be with us eternally).

I've always believed that...

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PsyBlog: Our Secret Attitude Changes
When you change your attitude about something, do you know why? Psychologists have argued that the inner workings of our minds are largely hidden away from us. One aspect of this is the surprising finding that people are often unaware when they have changed their attitudes.

...It gets weirder. In certain circumstances we may even be convinced that our attitude has never changed. So that we are convinced our 'new' attitude is the one we always had...

Smokin' election results

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Americans Reject Bush Drug War Doctrine

Landslide At The Ballot Box: Voters Approve Nine Out Of Ten Marijuana Law Reform Measures

Millions of Americans nationwide cast votes Tuesday in favor of marijuana law reform, approving nine out of ten ballot measures seeking to liberalize penalties on cannabis use and possession.

In Massachusetts, 65 percent of voters approved Question 2, which replaces criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana (punishable by up to six-months in jail and a $500 fine) with a civil fine of no more than $100.  More than 1.9 million Massachusetts voters (and all but three cities) backed the measure - a greater total than the number of voters who endorsed President Elect Barack Obama (1.88 million)...

In Michigan, 63 percent of voters approved Proposal 1, which legalizes the physician-supervised use and cultivation of medicinal cannabis by state-authorized patients.  More than 3 million voters endorsed the measure, which received approximately 150,000 more votes in Michigan than did Obama. Proposal 1 goes into effect on December 4th, at which time nearly one-quarter of the US population will live in a state that authorizes the legal use of medical cannabis.