Category Archives: Culture

Britain, Culture, Government, Politics, Society

The threats to Press freedom in the UK should be ditched

PRESS FREEDOMS

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Intro: IPSO commands confidence among all but the most blinkered of anti-Press campaigners

Following the phone-hacking scandal and Lord Justice Leveson’s Inquiry into the Press, Parliament passed legislation by trying to force the newspaper industry to sign-up to a state-backed regulator. The primary device for achieving this is Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, a pernicious and damaging measure that would see libel costs awarded against any newspaper which is not a member of a Government approved regulator. This would even apply where a newspaper has successfully defended a claim and thus proved its reporting was justified.

Most newspapers in the UK subscribe to an independent regulator, IPSO. Since the costs in legal actions are invariably higher than the damages, this device will act as a deterrent to newspapers, especially local ones, from carrying stories or conducting investigations that bear even a remote risk of being sued. The measures are a direct challenge to the freedom of the Press, but, they are still yet to be enacted, as former Culture Secretary John Whittingdale declined (or perhaps even refused) to trigger the provisions within the Act.

However, there are growing indications that the Government may be about to bow to pressure to proceed with Section 40. Crucially, ministers now need to ask what damage this would inflict. The chairman of IPSO, Sir Alan Moses, has described the possible commencement of Section 40 as a blatant attempt by “the powers that be” to confine and restrict a free Press. A former judge, Sir Alan said a Press that acts under compulsion from the state “is doomed” and MPs should be aware that the very independence that makes the British press “viable and precious” would be lost.

Sir Alan heads a regulator that has shown itself to be tough, robust and independent. IPSO commands confidence among all but the most blinkered of anti-Press campaigners. The Government should now let it get on with the job it is doing – and scrap Section 40 for good.

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Arts, Christianity, Culture, Religion

Understanding the meaning of Christmas from Ecclesiastes…

TRINKETS ARE TRIVIAL

EXPERTS are predicting that so many people have ‘everything’ that Christmas presents will become ‘experiences’ – tickets for such things as hang gliding or bungee jumping. Most of us in the West have many possessions and few can detach themselves completely from them. House, car, furnishings, sentimental objects and clothes define who we are, and we hate to lose them.

But when life is laid bare on the autopsy table, these things look trivial. Who we were, the influence we exerted, the people we helped (or hurt) are what will be remembered and missed. They will be a more powerful memorial than instructions in our will or any words on our tombstone.

Ecclesiastes invites us to step back and look at our own silliness. We never think we have enough (1:8) and we keep on re-inventing the wheel (1:9). Knowledge is no good stored in our head and never used (1:16, 17). Pleasure is an emotion that goes out like a light the moment its energy source is cut off (2:10, 11). And we work our socks off for others to get the benefit (2:17-19).

The author does, though, pose a hard question: why on earth do we live like this? Why do we waste so much time and energy on trivial things and spend so little on lasting things like relationships with others and with God? Perhaps we all suffer from practical agnosticism, despite our protestations of faith. Wisdom starts when we look deep into ourselves and reflect on our own mortality.

Ecclesiastes has a particularly poignant message for Christmas, despite it being a book from within the Old Testament. It looks at life by clearly instructing us to be content with what we have; it also suggests that life is meaningless without the spiritual dimension, and teaches the need to keep everything in proper perspective. The message couldn’t be clearer for today.

Part of our calling on earth is to appreciate and enjoy what the Creator has given us. All good things are to be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3).

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Arts, Culture, History, Society

Nobel Peace, at what price?

PERPLEXED

Despite being shortlisted five times, Dame Beryl Bainbridge never won the Booker Prize, a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Mahatma Gandhi, neither, despite his pre-eminence, won the Nobel Peace Prize, though he had been nominated on five separate occasions between 1937 and 1948. In 1948 Gandhi was assassinated and no prize was awarded, a decree given that there was ‘no suitable living candidate’. It is, of course, up to the Norwegian Nobel Committee to ultimately choose whoever it sees fit to hold the prestigious award. The Norwegian parliament appoints the committee because, when Alfred Nobel died, Norway had been ruled by the same king as its Scandinavian neighbour, Sweden, since the war between the two nations in 1814. It is becoming increasingly difficult, though, to ignore the committee’s aberrant selections.

Two weeks into his first term as President, Barack Obama was nominated for the prize, simply on the basis that the committee had heard his speech in Cairo in which he delivered, at times, perplexing and enigmatic statements. Conjecture such as… ‘Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance’ [as seen] in ‘Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition’ was a presumptuous viewpoint based on little evidence.

The first U.S. presidential laureate had been Theodore Roosevelt, an award that surprised many because Roosevelt had led his own irregular cavalry in an invasion of Cuba. Other implausible laureates followed: Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and Al Gore among them.

And what of this year’s award? Those in favour of chemical weapons are likely to be displeased with the choice of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Yet, of more concern, is the smoke-screen that has thickened in search of those chemical weapons that has created unabated slaughter in Syria’s ruthless and bloody civil war.

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