Northern Ireland was the news when I was a child.  At least, the reports of the violence, the death and the misery related to the Troubles seemed to be a reliable constant in the news.  I wasn’t generally all that interested in the news, but the reports about Northern Ireland always drew me in, because I wanted to see the bit where Gerry Adams was interviewed and the reporter would say “for reasons of security his words are spoken by an actor”.  That fascinated me.  Firstly, since you could see his mouth moving on the screen and hear the words he was saying (intriguingly not in synch with his lips) it seemed an entirely pointless exercise.  Secondly, I couldn’t understand the purpose of the policy, which presumably was not to fascinate small boys.  What was so wrong with people listening to what someone had to say that anyone would attempt to interfere with the process?  Thirdly, I desperately hoped that one day they would forget to overdub him so that I would get to hear what his real voice sounded like.

Growing up, I thought that there was no hope for peace until the generation of leaders like Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness had retired or died.  The peace process and resulting advent of power sharing is, therefore, one of the most astounding things that I have seen happen in my lifetime.  To see power sharing in action, with Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness working together as First Minister and Deputy First Minister was something that had seemed impossible.  The complexities of remembering Martin McGuinness are well described elsewhere, so I’m not going to dwell on that beyond to say that I suspect people will still be debating how to remember him centuries from now.  In thinking of complex lives like that of Martin McGuinness, what I reflect on is that all of us have the capacity to do evil and the capacity to do good.  We also all have the capacity to be changed:  by the events we live through or by the people we live with; by the force of our own will or by the tender love of God’s will.

In one of the many counselling sessions I had during my depression, I was asked “Being completely honest, do you want to change?”  This wasn’t the first time I’d been asked that question and I’d always just answered “yes”.  It seemed like the obvious answer and it seemed to be the answer that I ought to give.  However, on this occasion, I paused and thought really hard about it.  I realised that the truth was neither “yes” nor “no”.  The answer I gave was “I’m not particularly happy with the way things are, but I can’t want to change because I can’t want something that is impossible”.  When I look at intractable conflicts like that in Northern Ireland and listen to the language used, I am often reminded of my depression and the language my own mind used.  It is the language of absolutes (never, impossible, can’t).  It is the language that crushes hope and stifles our capacity to be changed.  When change seems utterly impossible, the only option left is violent self-harm.  It is only through the language of truth (the language of Social Stories; the language that makes the impossible seem possible) that we can embrace our capacity to be changed.

Amidst all the clamour about NIC rises (or NIC equalisation measures – it’s all in the language) and manifesto commitments, I find myself puzzled about when it was that paying tax became such a bad thing.  Of course, all governments waste money and I’m never going to agree with all government spending.  It would be illiberal of me to expect the whole country to agree with my particular spending priorities.  However, it seems to me that we can have as good a health service, education system, social care system, transport system etc. as we are prepared to pay for through our taxes.  The alternative, it seems to me, is to continue to demand more and better services, complain about taxes so that no politician dare raise them and consequently pass on ever increasing debt for the next generation to deal with.  The legacy of Brexit is, despite what many people say, uncertain and will only be known some considerable time after a deal is finally reached.  There is still everything to play for, if we choose to pull together.  The legacy of the ever increasing national debt that we are generating is, however, knowable:  even greater pain for a future generation to deal with, quite possibly in a manner imposed on them from outside.

The question I ask myself is as follows.  What is more important:  that the Chancellor sticks to a ridiculous manifesto promise made two years ago by a different Prime Minister and different Chancellor in very different pre-referendum circumstances, or that he actually raise some money (in a way described by the director of the IFS as a “small change making a small step towards correcting a big problem with the current tax system”) to pay for services in a sustainable manner?  I’ve already given my thoughts on the promises that politicians make, but there was a sting in the tail:  I think we are all, to an extent, complicit in that game.  Whereas I used to sneer along with him, now when I hear John Humphreys trying to force politicians to say exactly how they will act in the future I think about the damage this causes to all of us.

In other news, I was puzzled to hear that Nicola Sturgeon’s solution for dealing with a divisive referendum result is to hold another divisive referendum.  I was not surprised, but I was puzzled because Brexit, it seems to me, is in many ways the fruit of the nationalist movement.  Without IndyRef, unsuccessful though it ultimately was, would we have had Brexit?  It seems to me that the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and the decades of campaigning that led to it legitimised the following:

• The assertion of national identity.
• The desire for self-determination.
• The use of a binary choice, simple majority referendum.
• Leaving the legal realities of separation to be dealt with after the event.
• Emotionally embracing an undefined future path.
• Pretending that you can define an undefined future path.

I would be desperately sad if the place where I was born and lived for the first twelve years of my life decided to break away from the place where I have lived for the thirty years since, thereby splitting up the country to which I feel I belong.  (In the absence of a convenient adjective for ‘citizen of the United Kingdom’, I call myself British.)  It would appear that Nicola Sturgeon is reluctant to accept the fairness of a binary choice, simple majority referendum.  I think she has a point.  Whilst it may be a democratic tool, in that the power of decision is in the hands of the people, it is not a liberal tool.  It is a tool that allows no compromise and listens only to the loudest voice.  Unfortunately, once you have used it, you can’t legitimately un-use it.  Fortunately, there are alternative approaches that she could use if she wishes to be more liberal.  She could go with a threshold other than 50% (e.g. 60% of votes cast or 40% of electorate).  Alternatively she could use the Australian model (a majority vote in a majority of regions).  I will watch with interest.

However, if a second referendum was to be successful, then I think Nicola Sturgeon might just find that leading a deeply divided country through major constitutional change that drags close to half of the population “out of a union against their will” is not quite as easy as it looks.  She would have an advantage over Teresa May in that she would be a leader with a united party behind her who has not suddenly been parachuted into the top job to pick up the pieces.  However, after 310 years in a union, the emotional pain and the practical difficulties would be a whole lot worse than after 44 years of tentative steps towards a union.

Dear House of Commons,

Please would you uphold the amendment to the Article 50 bill, which was passed by the House of Lords, regarding the rights of EU citizens living in the UK?  I am asking you to do this because it is the right thing to do.  These are people.  They are people who came to live in the UK in good faith and they should be allowed to continue to do so and they should be granted the dignity of being told this immediately.  It does not matter whether or not the EU is prepared to discuss the rights of UK citizens living in the EU:  it is still the right thing to do.

Furthermore, the negotiations that will follow the triggering of Article 50 will be long and arduous.  However, I believe that there is a greater chance of them being constructive if they set off on a positive note.  The UK having the generosity of spirit to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK without waiting for a reciprocal agreement would, I believe, set such a positive note.

Let’s make Britain great again.  Let’s start by being great-hearted.

Lots of love,

David

I opened a previous post (Post-Truth Certainty) with this question, asked by Pontius Pilate of Jesus during his trial.

John (Chapter 18, Verses 37-38)

‘So!’ said Pilate.  ‘You are a king, are you?’
‘You’re the one who’s calling me a king,’ replied Jesus.  ‘I was born for this; I’ve come into the world for this: to give evidence about the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’
‘Truth!’ said Pilate.  ‘What’s that?’
With those words, he went back out to the Judeans.

Much like Pilate himself, I didn’t hang around for an answer at the time, dwelling instead on untruth and why we seem compelled to chase that.  I’ve decided that it is time to look for an answer.

In my previous post I described how Pilate’s question had reverberated around my head since childhood, inspiring feelings of puzzlement (“Isn’t it obvious?”) and wonderment (“If it is so obvious, why ask the question?”).  As a mathematician, I suppose that the puzzlement arose from associating truth too closely with facts.  Facts are quite common in the realm of mathematics and science and so I thought of truth as being like a fact:  something that is provable beyond doubt.  In other areas of life, however, absolute facts are actually few and far between and truth is a much more nebulous quality.  Facts may help us find the truth of a given situation, but rarely contain the whole truth of that situation.  Although currently obsessed with facts, alternative facts and fake news, I would say this is very much true of politics.  It is also true of ethics and aesthetics (see the knots that Doctor Who fans can tie themselves in trying to ‘prove’ that one Doctor is better than another, or that football fans can tie themselves in trying to ‘prove’ that one team is better than another).  Once I grasped this difference between truth and facts, the wonderment about Pilate’s question subsided, although the puzzlement increased.  If truth doesn’t simply boil down to provable facts, what indeed is it?  However, I believe I can now see a way through the puzzlement.  It turns out that mathematics, which I’ve just described as being a stumbling block, is now a help.

In philosophical terms, I would subscribe to the pragmatic theory of truth.  This asks us to think of truth as being “that upon which our beliefs converge through the process of enquiry”.  As a mathematician, I found the idea found in convergent sequences or functions of always getting closer to a limit but never quite reaching it fascinating.  I am therefore quite comfortable with the consequence of this pragmatic definition that the truth may be something that we can never quite reach.  However, that shouldn’t ever stop us from trying to get closer to the truth.  Looking again to mathematics, not all functions or sequences converge to a limit.  Some may remain constant, others may diverge.  There are plenty of examples of this happening in enquiries in the realms of politics (e.g. the EU referendum campaign failing to converge on a truth about the EU) or ethics (e.g. the Church of England struggling to converge on a truth about homosexuality).  What conditions are required for our enquiries to converge on a truth?  I think that we firstly need to have a current position, secondly need to accept that our current position may not yet be the truth of the situation and thirdly need to understand alternative positions.  (Without understanding an alternative position, you can neither agree nor disagree with it.)  In other words, we need to have an opinion but also be prepared to change our minds and discuss with people who have different opinions.  You might not end up changing your opinion, but if you enter any enquiry with the statement “Nothing that I hear will change my opinion!” then you are denying yourself and your community the opportunity of getting closer to the truth.

As a Christian, I can go a bit further with this.  However, what emerges at the end makes no reference to God.  If you’ve made it this far I would therefore encourage you to stick with it all the way, whatever your beliefs.  When we enter our enquiries with such an open mind and (assuming we are heading in the right direction) consequently move closer to the limit of truth we move closer to the one who said of himself:

John (Chapter 14, Verse 6)

‘I am the way,’ replied Jesus, ‘and the truth and the life!’

Furthermore, the truth we seek is liberation itself:

John (Chapter 8, Verses 31-32)

So Jesus spoke to the Judaeans who had believed in him.
‘If you remain in my word,’ he said, ‘you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

Despite all my talk of limits that we never quite reach, the implication is clear that the truth is something that we will eventually reach.  We will know at the time when the earthly and heavenly realms join and God’s kingdom finally comes on Earth.  Paul sheds more light on this time when we will reach the limits of our enquiries and find the truth.  This is a long quote, but it doesn’t mention God and should be familiar from weddings or, for any self-respecting Doctor Who fan, The Curse of Fenric (Episode 2):

1 Corinthians (Chapter 13, Verses 4-13)

Love’s great-hearted; love is kind,
knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,
is not puffed up, knows no shameless ways,
doesn’t force its rightful claim;
doesn’t rage or bear a grudge,
doesn’t cheer at others’ harm,
rejoices, rather, in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
Love hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.  But prophesies will be
abolished; tongues will stop; and knowledge, too,
be done away.  We know, you see, in part;
we prophesy in part; but, with perfection,
the partial is abolished.  As a child
I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child;
when I grew up, I threw off childish ways.
For at the moment all that we can see
are puzzling reflections in a mirror;
then, face to face.  I know in part, for now;
but then I’ll know completely, through and through,
even as I’m completely known.  So, now,
faith, hope, and love remain, these three; and, of them,
love is the greatest.

I made an assumption above that in order to approach the truth we must be heading in the right direction.  Returning to mathematics for a moment, the function f(x) = 1/x has two limits: one as x tends to 0 and one as x tends to infinity.  How do we know in our enquiries into the truth of an issue that we are heading towards the limit of truth rather than towards some alternative limit?  We need some kind of compass to ensure we are pointing in the right direction.  The compass we need is right there above, in 1 Corinthians 13.  It is the one virtue that will continue from this world into the next.  Love.  Love will carry us through to the time when we know completely.  Like any compass, however, it isn’t just something you look at just once before setting out.  If you want to avoid losing your way you need to keep checking in with it at regular intervals.  To seek the truth always guided by love is, I believe, the vocation of every Christian thinker.  Since it doesn’t mention God, it’s a vocation that I think any thinker could subscribe to, whatever their beliefs.

On reflection, the title that I would like to give this blog is “Seeking the truth; guided by love.”  Not because I make any claim as to my ability to find truth, but as a reminder to myself that it is what I should always be doing in my thinking and writing.  As for Pilate (a homophone of pilot, not a singular form of a popular physical fitness system), the answer to his question was right in front of him, if only he’d been able to see it.  A bit like me at the start of my quest for the raspberry jam.

Last year, I read “Hanns and Rudolf” by Thomas Harding.  It is a parallel lives story of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and Hanns Alexander, the German Jew who fled to Britain and ultimately tracked down Höss.  It is, as the reviews said, a remarkable book, although one of the most chilling that I have ever read.  The descriptions of what happened at Aushwitz (and the accompanying statistics) are always shocking, but were not new to me when I read this.  The really chilling aspect was that, in reading the story of Rudolf Höss from his birth to his death, I found myself faced with a real person.  He was no longer a monster beyond all understanding.  As I read, his life unfolded step by step and I realised that I was beginning to understand something of how he came to do the things that he did.  Once you understand something it is much easier to see how it could happen again.  When what you have understood is an integral part of the Holocaust, that is about as chilling as it can get.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said after his recent visit to Auschwitz, “People did this to people.”  My own visit to Auschwitz is something that I’ll never forget.  Exactly where the Holocaust started is something that will always be debated.  However, it seems clear to me that one of the early and significant steps was laying the blame for a country’s problems on particular groups of people, groups that were heavily represented within that country’s population.  The hate then spread worryingly quickly within a civilised country and then to its civilised neighbours.  So, when a holocaust survivor tells us that we all need to be very careful about any hate-propaganda, we need everyone to listen.

“What’s your favourite Christmas carol?” is a question I find difficult to answer.  It’s a bit like asking me “What’s your favourite Doctor Who episode?”  I love them all, even the naff ones.  On my mind at the moment, however, is “It came upon the midnight clear.”  This is one that I used to overlook, because I don’t find the tune particularly interesting.  As I’ve got older, however, the words of Edmund Sears’ poem have really grown on me.  They seem to me to reveal the truth of Christmas and of our world today.  A world that often seems to turn a deaf ear to the simple loving Christmas message of peace and goodwill.  A world where, as a result, we do not always love ourselves and our neighbours, where we do not always listen to each other, where we can get enslaved by suspicion, hatred and revenge.  A world where we see the ultimate fruits of this path: man at war with man.  A world where we see today the devastation of such war in Yemen and Syria, just as Wilfred Kibble saw it with his own eyes 100 years ago in France.  But back to Edmund Sears: sometimes other people’s words say what you want to say better than your own words ever can.

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

This Christmas I wish that I could bottle the incredible peace and joy that I have discovered through my faith this year, tastefully wrap it and leave it under all of your Christmas trees.  However, faith doesn’t work like that.  It is not my gift to give.  It is a gift that has already been freely given, but it is one that each person has to discover and accept for themselves.  Fortunately, this isn’t a journey that anyone has to take alone.  I have been helped along the way by many people over the course of my life.  I will continue to need the  help of others when I lose sight of the Christmas message amidst the bustle and confusion of life.  As I, therefore, keep searching and learning I hope that I can offer a helping hand to other people.

With lots of love this Christmas.

“What is truth?” a powerful man once asked the detainee before him¹.  It is a question that has reverberated around my head since childhood; inspiring feelings of puzzlement (“Isn’t it obvious?”) and wonderment (“If it is so obvious, why ask the question?”)  Now that we apparently find ourselves in a post-truth society, the question is more relevant than ever.  These days, it seems, politicians can lie, be proved to have lied, carry on with the proven lie and still win public votes.  Whilst this is undoubtedly shocking, I do not find it surprising.  The truth, as I see it, is that this isn’t some alien world to which we have suddenly been teleported against our will.  We departed in search of this destination a long time ago.

From time to time, football matches are marred by violence or racism.  Whilst this is undoubtedly shocking, I do not find it surprising.  When it is an accepted part of the culture that spectators insult opposing fans, players and the referee loudly and obscenely throughout the game (to “show passion” and “create atmosphere”) it does not surprise me that on occasions they overstep the boundary into violence or hatred.  That’s what happens when you push boundaries.  To take another sporting analogy, I remember watching tennis as a child and being puzzled as to why the top tennis players often seemed to hit balls out of play.  “Why do they keep missing the court?” I would ask.  It had to be explained to me that in order to seek an advantage over their opponent they were trying to get the ball to land as close to the boundaries of the court as possible, making it inevitable that they would overstep the boundaries from time to time.

It seems to me that as human beings we crave certainty, especially about the future, in order to hide from the distressing truth that we live in an inherently uncertain world.  Politicians are wily folk and they have picked up on this.  They have learned two truths from us.  Firstly, if they don’t persuade people to vote for them then they can’t do the job that they want to do.  Secondly, the way to persuade people to vote for them is to pretend that they can make the future appear more certain by making promises about what they will (or will not) do if elected.  Although at one level they are, of course, personally responsible for whether or not they choose to lie, at another level we are partly to blame ourselves, because they are just trying to give us what we want.  This is where we have been complicit in selecting our destination of post-truth society.

What happens next is that when our politicians are confronted with the reality of events as they happen, we are outraged when they break the promises that we pushed them into making in order to get elected.  To change their mind about something is, it seems, to commit political suicide.  “Making a u-turn!” is, indeed, a dirty phrase.  As a result, we get the bizarre spectacle of politicians trying to persuade us that their change of direction isn’t actually a change (even though it may be the best course given the current circumstances) but that it is entirely consistent with what they have always told us they would do.  We are, by now, passed the point of no return on our journey towards our post-truth destination.  As someone once said, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.”

Whilst the Leave campaign’s claim that the UK would have £350 million a week more to spend on the NHS was a proven falsehood, the Remain campaign’s claim that families would be £4,300 worse off by 2030 is just as much a symptom of the post-truth world we live in.  Forecasting is, after all, the art of saying what will happen, and then explaining why it didn’t.  To present expert forecasts as certainties is to push the boundaries of truth to breaking point.  In trying to give us certainty, politicians persistently do this and so I am not surprised when they occasionally overstep the boundary into lying.  As with certain tennis players, though, they may be utterly convinced that their ball was on the line, even though everyone else can see that it wasn’t.

Returning to the football analogy, the role of the referee is, I think, interesting and misunderstood.  Why do we have a referee?  Firstly, we invent some rules so that we can play a game that we call football.  The idea is that it will be an enjoyable activity.  However, when we try to play it, we don’t agree about whether or not the rules have been followed.  We argue about it.  The game breaks down into chaos.  There is nothing left to enjoy.  In order to avoid this, a referee is appointed.  Their job is not to unerringly find the truth in every situation.  Their job is not to give us certainty about everything that happens in the game.  They will not get everything right.  Their job is to provide a swift judgement as to whether or not the rules have been followed in order to prevent the game descending into chaos and therefore allow it to carry on to its conclusion.  That way the game can be enjoyed.  However, this can only work though if everyone respects the decisions they make.

In our public life, aspects of the role of the football referee are taken by parliament, government and judiciary.  Parliament and government cannot always provide us with certainty.  Judiciary will not always be able to determine the truth.  They can only determine, to the best of their ability, whether or not the rules we have laid down have been followed.  They will not always get it right, any more than any of us get everything that we do right.  If we lose respect for our referees, if we surround them and abuse them when we disagree with them, then the whole system is in grave danger of breaking down into chaos:  the maximum degree of uncertainty.  Chaos is what we strive to avoid, yet seem also compelled to bring about.  Remember though, the referee that we need to respect isn’t just the judiciary, but our parliament and government as well.  I think I now see why Paul wrote in his letter to the Christians in Rome “Everyone must submit to the governing authorities.”  Written at the time when Nero was Emperor, I have found this puzzling, appearing as it does to condone unjust, corrupt rule.  However, agree with them or disagree with them, like them or dislike them, the governing authorities are what keep us this side of chaos.  As recent history has shown, achieving regime change without descent into chaos is a very tricky thing to manage, whether we intervene directly or not.

There is currently an argument in the UK that in the EU referendum we have selected departure but that we must have another vote to choose our destination.  However, when the UK joined the EEC back in the 1970s that was a departure the destination of which is unclear even now.  Who knows where remaining in the EU would take us?  Ever closer union is also an option of great uncertainty.  The truth, as I see it, is that our destination is not something that we ever get to choose.  The best we can hope for, as we are swept along in the raging torrent of history, is that we can steer ourselves a little bit this way and a little bit that way and so avoid the worst of the obstacles before us.  My judgment is that in a smaller boat outside of the EU the UK will be a little bit more manoeuvrable and a little bit more flexible and so will be able to steer a little bit better.  To call that “taking back control” would, in truth, be a post-truth statement.

¹ John, Chapter 18, Verse 38

Monday, 11^th December 1916

Dear Wilfred,

I don’t usually start my letters with a lie, especially the first one to a new correspondent, yet I have lied right at the top of this letter.  Today is a Sunday, not a Monday; the year is 2016, not 1916.  The thing is, I am trying to remember you and as part of that I am trying to imagine what things were like for you one hundred years ago, so I hope that you will forgive my little deceit.

You’ve been in France for less than a week.  Looking at your army paperwork, I don’t think that you have joined up with your new battalion (the 19^th) just yet.  My guess is that you are doing training or acclimatisation work somewhere behind the lines.  However, what I’m really thinking about at the moment are the sorts of questions that army paperwork can never answer.  How are you feeling?  Having been in the army for just over a year now, three and a half months after returning to Britain, are you impatient to get stuck in?  What is it that you think you’ll find when you reach the front line?  Two years into the war I wonder how much of the truth of what you will face you have been told?  What have you seen since you have been in France?  Has there been anything to shock you, to give you pause for thought?  Perhaps the injured returning from the front line, or maybe the insistent sounds of distant battle?  Do you talk about these sorts of things with your pals from the 120^th that you came over to France with?  In your quiet moments alone, are your thoughts different?  Are you are missing home?  Where is it that you think of as home?  Did you leave a sweetheart behind in Canada, or is it the family back in Brackley that you miss?

Talking of family, I wonder whether you are any better at remembering birthdays than I am!  It’s your niece’s first birthday today – little Katharine, Kate’s daughter.  I don’t think you can have met her, what with her being born in South Africa, or as you would have known it, Transvaal.  As far as I know, the family didn’t come home this soon after she was born, so they wouldn’t have been in England while you were based at Bramshott.  However, perhaps your sister Kate had sent a photograph of Katharine to your mother and perhaps your mother showed it to you whilst you were in England.  I hope so.  In case not, I have enclosed a photograph of little Katharine in her high chair.  By the way, I’m her grandson.  That makes me your great-great-nephew, so perhaps I should be calling you Uncle Wilfred.  Maybe I will, next time I write.

The other photograph is also of Katharine, my Granny, but she’s the old lady in that one.  She lived until she was 94 (spoilers!).  It was Granny that first told me about you and about how you fought in the Great War, passing on what her mother – your sister – had told her.  We have remembered.  Some members of your family are helping me in my quest to find out some more about you.  Others are reading what I write.  We are remembering.  The baby that Granny is holding in the second picture is my daughter.  She’s eight now.  As I find things out about you, I am telling her and her older brother.  I showed them your picture the other day:  the one of you in uniform (with your stripes) that was taken when you visited home a month or two ago.  We will remember.

With love,

David

As this hearing begins, I really hope our press, media and politicians respect the independence of our judiciary.  Whilst I am sometimes concerned that the adversarial nature of our legal system does not always lead to truth and justice, an independent judiciary is a vital component of our system of government.  Since we have an electoral system that generally gives us a single party majority government, we desperately need an independent legal system to ensure that the government cannot just act in an arbitrary manner.  With such important issues at stake it is important for all of us that the steps taken follow the rule of law.

I not only believe in an independent judiciary but also in a free press.  A quick look at Russia makes me very grateful for the press freedom that we have.  (Although I see our press as being reasonably free from political interference, I am less certain that a press dominated by wealthy owners can truly be considered to be free.)  However, with freedom – just as with power – comes responsibility.  The press have a responsibility to uphold the fundamental building blocks of our system of government – a system, lest we forget, that millions have sacrificed their lives to maintain on our behalf.  Where there is corruption within our institutions then the press should investigate and report.  Would they should not do is to vilify independent judges, whose independence denies them the right of reply, for doing their jobs and interpreting the law.

Reading the BBC News background article to the case, I was intrigued by the suggestion that if the Supreme Court feels that it needs clarification on the meaning of Article 50 in order to decide the case, then it is bound to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice.  The more I think about it, the more I think that this would be in everyone’s interest.  Firstly, it would introduce a significant delay before Article 50 could be triggered.  This would give the government more time to try and come up with a coherent plan and give us all the opportunity to think about how we would like our future to be shaped.  Secondly, it seems to me that there is considerable uncertainty about what Article 50 actually means and how it would work.  It would surely be a good thing (for both the UK and the EU) if this was clarified by the European Court of Justice before we try to use it.