The tragedy of the Commons

I'm kinda torn - OK, I support abolishing the House of Lords, but then I support trial by Jury - which the Lords have just defended. By the same token, though, they might well overthrow the sexual orientation regulations (SORs) that the churches loathe so.

Should I savour the Lords, rejoice in their sagacity, regret their follies?

Should I, that is, play practical politics and welcome whatever stick drums out my cause? I think not. I'm glad the erosion of trial by jury and the crasss stupidity that entails has been defeated (it was clearly a matter of change management and death by a thousand cuts) - but I won't welcome that the Lords did it, nor thank them. I still consider their intervention illegitimate and unwanted.

A great deal of harm is done by procedural power politics and doing things because you can without, per se, winning the argument or making the case - especially as if someone were to contrive a way around the procedural power point or to eliminate it altogether then nothing is there to prevent stupidity. Winning the argument is the only reasonable means to any political ends.

To reiterate the importance of Juries - they are there so we can consider that crimes are something that can be understood by the layperson. If fraud trials are too complex that is the fault of legislators and prosecutors for failing to make the tests clear enough. Nothing to do with ancient rights or whatever, but common sense that the minimum we want from our courts is that they maintain confidence in themselves and their proceedings.

Sling out the Lords, they're no bloody good.

The Jury's out

Well, as young Master Osler observes, they've gone and done it - they've abolished trial by jury. I do not exagerate.

Here's how it will go - having established a precedent by abolishing it for fraud trials, they'll wait awhile, and then when, say, a tricksey rape or murder case comes to court, or where a jury passes what ministers perceive to be a perverse verdict, they'll turn around and say:

Well, we can conduct trials like we do fraud cases. We've accepted the principle of juryless trials; and we can see they work, we're just extending a working model.

And there we have it, creeping abolition. All from the change management manual. Convince people the current system doesn't work (by breaking it if need be) and then implement the one you want.

This is already underway with ASBO's with their extension to organised crime - after all, ASBO's work don't they, we've already accepted the principle? Exactly.

Couple this with on-the-spot fines (a one way ticket to corruption is you ask me - "Would you like to pay an £80 fine, risk going to court and paying a £180 fine, or pay me £20 to forget all about it?" Sayeth the Rozzer).

The fact is, juries should be the jewel in the crown of the left - we don't like judges, can't trust the police, but can trust the honest decency of common folk to come to the right verdict. Any left worth its name should defend juries, and indeed make their greater use a central plank is winning the law'n'order vote - if it's confidence in the criminal justcie system people lack, real experience of jury service would do more to modify that than a million technocratic reforms.

The travaills of the Home Office tell the truth about technocracy and bureaucratic responses to social questions - incompetence and inefficiency will always out as people who know the truth of totalitarian states would tell you - they were crap, they could efficiently eprsecute someone but their dream of total control was beyond their reach.

Still, clear red water is available - a sensible left would build it's law'n'order strategy around juries, around getting more common folk ionto a justice system built on sound values.