Poor judgement should not excuse poorer new law

You can always tell when the local professional prodnose industry thinks next year’s government subsidy might be trimmed because fact-lite scare stories like this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=40829 and http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=40838) appear.
Two immediate and awkward questions arise: just who are these government ‘drug advisers’ who apparently believe “stricter laws, more research and greater awareness are all needed to curb the spread of such drugs”, and do any of them have any professional expertise?
Knowing that the Chief Minister’s task force on drugs and alcohol was set up by individuals and organisations whose main reference point is the Bible, and who do not have so much as one basic qualification in medicine, psychology (or indeed the ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ sciences in general) between them, I do hope it is not them. Actually, what I really hope is that this idiotic ‘Advisory Council’ is disbanded pretty sharpish, because, on this evidence alone, none of them are capable of interpreting something as basic as a medical report to a coronary hearing.
No, I have not read the medical report either, but I do know that it does not say this teenager was killed by a legal high, and I do know, just from reading local newspaper reports, that that teenager had also consumed quite a lot of alcohol, and I do know, from reading many more reports over the years of inquests into ’drug deaths’, that with the possible exception of purer than usual heroin it is never a single chemical substance (legal or illegal) that kills the victim, but a particular chemical reaction caused by the combination of various substances, plus the victim’s particular medical history and the particular social circumstances of the death event.
I would also have thought that in this particular case other questions which might need answering include why a 17 year old had such easy access to alcohol (which unlike the MDAI really IS illegal -and supposedly the subject of very high profile tough legislation and social control which this case alone proves simply does not work either) and why she was apparently openly having a close relationship with a man twice her age yet nobody personally or professionally related to her thought that was odd.
Again, one of the conditions demanded by and granted to Manx evangelical homophobes for the lowering of homosexual consent to 16 was a clause preventing the ‘grooming’ of anyone under the age of 18 by an older adult. In practice, as UK gay organisations have pointed out, this type of legislation is only ever used to block same sex relationships, and never against the organisations whose employees are most likely to groom teenagers for sex, i.e. religious ones.
You can also tell how close the links are between the court services and the evangelicals who live off such moral panics because, coincidentally, there will always be a high profile case for a helpful coroner or judge to use to call for tougher legislation.
Just think about it. Why would a legal professional call for weaker or better legislation, or for people to take personal responsibility for their lives, or neighbours to look out for each other …..or indeed anything which people in the real world would recognise as common sense? That would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Of course, the other thing we can rely on is that either the Manx press were not at the coroner’s hearing, or did not find time to read such evidence as was on public record or the judgement in full, or just chose to concentrate on juicy morsels which ‘prove’ what their bigoted readers always want to think rather than doing their duty as journalists to report the fullest facts and best informed (though probably conflicting) opinion to us so that we can make informed judgements.
Considering the seriousness of some of the issues here, this ragbag conspiracy of self-serving idiots really does need to be treated with utter contempt. And we really should, as their employers, dispatch most of them to the Job Centre as soon as possible.

Judgement Day

I was tipped off that there would be a judgement today in an extraordinary Manx court case. Extraordinary for one thing in that a Manx judge finally broke ranks and admitted the Manx legal system was itself capable of nasty, illegal acts against someone who went to it hoping for justice.
I don’t know the full history of this case – due to it progressing in such a way that it couldn’t be publicised for one thing. What I do gather is that an order from a Lancashire court preventing a Manx resident seeing his kids was upheld by a Manx court – even though there is no equivalent law over here and so the Manx court had no power to make such an order. I also gather much of that was because some in the legal profession passed judgement before anyone entered the court, and seem to have thought like redneck preachers rather than trained lawyers.
It’s been suggested to me there’s some similarity between the way this case went and the sorry way Andy Kershaw was told by a Manx judge not to speak to his kids even if they met by accident in the street. In both cases you have an assumption that a guy who takes a broken relationship hard and maybe initially overreacts is an animal, gets driven into a corner by the legal system, inevitably hits back in sheer frustration and is clobbered with the full weight of the law – in the process losing all hope of a future relationship with kids he loves.
It’s also been suggested to me that much of this fundamentalist Manx attitude is because godbotherers are gaining power in the social services. The problem dates back to the 1980’s, when many local authorities privatised training of social workers to cut costs. The most ‘cost effective’ mickey mouse courses were offered by US evangelicals – the kind who tell students in all seriousness that wearing black T shirts is evidence of Satanism. As the Manx government hates to bear the costs of training anyone locally, it was only a matter of time before these semi-literate kneejerkers started moving over here for a quieter life… and so it goes.
I always thought the job of family courts was to find a middle road for troubled couples, something that gives kids a chance to know two parents and leaves the door open for all in case, with time, the old wounds heal. So even if the family doesn’t get back together at least everyone’s talking.
OK, that’s never going to be easy, but if you have a situation where not only social workers but, over here, even legal officers see everything in Old Testament terms where one protagonist is good and the other evil it’s not going to happen. Period.
The guy at the centre seems to have lost so much faith in Manx barristers that he fought the case himself – which put up the backs of their mates and stacked things even more against him. Good to see that not only did he not give up, but that eventually at least one Manx judge was willing to give him a proper hearing.
The judgement is at http://www.judgments.im/content/J906.htm .
Bear in mind this is our so-called legal profession talking about themselves, so they’re not likely to speak plainly in a place where even us oiks can discover it. Still, if you can plough your way through the legalese you may well worry that our courts are a mess and Manx justice mighty thin on the ground.