An attorney for Trump did the rounds on Sunday TV to give his defence to the charges of interfering with election results.  He said that what Trump did was only ‘aspirational.’  According to the Shorter OED, to aspire is ‘to have a fixed desire or ambition for something at present above one.’  That may not fit the case here, because Trump says he believes he was still President.  I am not sure what the American usage is.  But what is meant is that Trump at least hoped or wanted to get a result.  And since he believed he was still the most powerful man in the world, and he has never been taught to accept defeat, he would take steps to achieve that result.  And although I know little about the criminal law, it looks to be to be inevitable that as soon as Trump took steps to achieve that result, then if to do so successfully would be in breach of the law, he was in the process of an attempt to do just that.

I could of course be quite wrong.

Some in the press say he bona fide believed he had won the election.  Presumably he would have to do that in the witness box.  That has its own problems, but it would look to me be like saying: ‘Yes, I shot him in the head, but I did not think that would lead to death’.

Finally, some say it is a matter of freedom of speech.  You are free to say ‘Yes’ – but there are consequences if it is in response to ‘If I pay you one million dollars, will you murder the President.’  If that defence got up, the world would know the U S Constitution protects those who want to bring it down.

Two old men, King Lear and the Earl of Gloucester (or Gloster), drive a theme with two plot-lines.  They are both now past it, and they are out of touch with the next generation – which in their case contains predators to whom they are vulnerable.  They respond by casting out the innocent child.  If Hamlet is about angry young men, King Lear is about angry old men.

Two sisters compete for nastiness.  ‘Tigers, not daughters.’  Bradley looks to give the palm to Regan – notwithstanding that Goneril murders her, and offers to give the same medicine to her own husband in order to make room in her bed for the bastard.  Bradley remarked that Regan had ‘much less force, courage and initiative than her sister, and for that reason is less formidable and more loathsome.’  Tales of evil sisters have a long history, but these too are hard to beat.  When Regan says she is sick, Goneril, the poisoner, says, aside: ‘If not, I’ll ne’er trust medicine.’  The humour is very black and morbid at the end.  But Regan does have ‘Let him smell his way to Dover.’  And that is pure evil.  Perhaps Bradley had in mind that being weaker, and second in line, Regan was the crueller bully when she got her chance.

Two sons, and brothers of sorts, are very different.  The bastard lives up to the argot in his title.  Gloster’s legitimate son, Edgar, is very hardly done by, but he finishes in triumph, while taking out the bastard, and coming into power.

The two husbands of the evil sisters fall out almost immediately, we are told.  Cornwall is the archetypal villain.  Albany comes fully to understand his folly in marrying Goneril.  Cornwall gets his due from a servant – exquisite irony.  Albany is set to retire hurt.  He was not built for this sort of game.

Two members of the aristocracy – two nobles, if you prefer –react in their own way to events above them.  Kent is nothing if not forthright – and he is ferociously loyal.  He is the first out of the family to feel the wrath of the king in his descent into madness.  Gloster is appalled at what is happening, but he plays the role of the dutiful courtier.  But when civil war is started, he has to take sides, and he pays the ultimate price in the cruellest scene of this playwright outside of Titus Andronicus.

The two French wooers of Cordelia are very different.  Burgundy is naturally unsettled that the offer of wealth has been withdrawn by a cranky king of perfidious Albion.  (He takes the Macron view of commerce.)  France is curious and big hearted – but at the end, he picks a bad time to have an alternative engagement, and his wife is murdered.

Two victims stand out because they are effectively disinherited for no good reason – Cordelia and Edgar.  Cordelia is the victim of her father’s hot blood, and the evil of her sisters.  Edgar is the victim of the evil of his sibling, and the pompous rashness of his father.  Gloster commits what might be called the Othello mistake – he convicts a loved one without hearing from him first.  (The mechanics of the two frauds are very similar.)  By contrast, Lear puts some kind of test to his daughter, and then snaps when she refuses to play the game.  There is thus a symmetry of evil and rashness in the story of two of the principal victims.

Two characters are sacrificed because they are simply not up to it.  Neither Gloster nor Albany is set in anything like the heroic mould.  They are courtiers who make up the numbers and who become collateral damage.  Albany survives, but his interest in ruling has died, and it will be a while before he thinks of marrying again.  One such ‘interlude’ is enough.

Two characters are cracked in the head – the Fool by nature, and Poor Tom by design.  The first adds to the theatre; Poor Tom does not do that – at least for most audiences today.

Two are there to meet in a fight, like that at the OK corral – Edgar and Oswald.  And each is up for it.  But Kent was the more natural antagonist: ‘His [Oswald’s] countenance likes me not.’   On this form, he could become an honorary member of the Marylebone Cricket Club. 

(The spray that Kent gives Oswald at 2.2.14ff could excite the jealousy of the coach of Melbourne Storm.  He is justly famous for his sprays of his manly entourage.  One of the milder forms of abuse of Kent for Oswald is ‘the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.’  Speaking of Melbourne Storm and rugby league – which is not the upper-class version of rugby – at their first meeting, Kent labelled Oswald ‘you base football player.’  The Everyman annotation reads: ‘a low game played by idle boys to the scandal of sensible men.’  The football reference makes dating the action in the play even more difficult, but the analogy is now complete.  This play is about the heaviest of this playwright on the stage.  Kent on Oswald is the play’s one belly laugh, and it should be played for all it is worth – otherwise the audience, too, might go mad.)

And there is something of the mathematics of the western in the fugue of the finale – two of the black hats get taken out by two of the white hats. 

And, finally, there is also an element of Greek tragedy.  Lear, Gloster, and to some extent Albany, are cleansed and enlightened by their suffering – Bradley says ‘purified.’  Which is what members of the audience might aspire to as the curtain comes down, and they go out to face the world.

The purpose of the play is to answer the question: ‘Is man no more than this?’  For that purpose, we the audience take upon ourselves the mystery of things, ‘as if we were God’s spies.’  And the answer is that all that stands between us and the primal slime is about as strong as a Tallyho cigarette paper.  That is why the study of evil in the theatre of the grotesque of the ages in King Lear is seen as this author’s greatest work.

The practice of the criminal law is beyond me here in Australia, much less the U S, but the following issues in the response to the indictments seem to me to be at best odd.

Some speak as if there is some overall strategy in play.  The AFR says ‘Yet the legal pursuit of Mr Trump in the courts is still not a real strategy for enabling America to genuinely put the Trump era behind it.’  The prosecutions occur in different jurisdictions.  There is no basis for suggesting some government agency is orchestrating some ‘strategy’ behind them – to which some may append the label ‘political.’

Some say that the charges are politically motivated.  What does that mean?  If it is intended to be a criticism, what is the evidence of it?  Does an improper motive taint a prosecution – and if so with what result?  (Socrates tried that one on in Athens, and it did not end happily.)  Does it matter if those responsible for the prosecution loathe the accused?  Did the prosecutors at Nuremberg have an open mind about those they were intent on sending to their death?

One basis is common to each of the prosecutions.  The U S subscribes to the rule of law.  That is essential to our whole conception of good governance (something that Trump knows nothing of and does not cherish).  A central plank is that we are all equal under the law – or, no one is above the law.  It would be very wrong for a prosecutor not to proceed with a case that it is otherwise proper to bring, merely because the circumstances may be called ‘political,’ or might attract consequences that are ‘political.’

These indictments come with due process.  In particular, they come after findings of a grand jury.  That process is a thousand or so years old, but it only now remains in the U S.  They are much better there at preserving trial by jury.  And this mode of proceeding confers rights on the potential accused that we do not see here.  (Local defence lawyers may prefer to have a go at prosecution witnesses at the committal; others, including the alleged victim and the taxpayers, may think differently.)

And the intervention of a jury before the proceedings start makes allegations of impropriety against those bringing the charges even more weightless.  There is no evidence at all of impropriety in the jury.  Those making the allegations are insulting the jurors and demeaning the process.  They should be ashamed of themselves.  (De Santis says a DC jury would indict a ham sandwich – if it was a Republican ham sandwich.)

(And a civil jury found Trump responsible for a serious crime after he declined to appear in court.)

And these indictments go into far greater detail than in the process that we use to initiate charges of serious crime.  The accused is told in great detail the case he has to meet.  (It is probable that this accused has not read the indictments and never will.)

And to obtain a conviction, the prosecution will have to persuade another jury that they have proved his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.  In other words, the representatives of the nation in the form of two juries must have found against the accused in accordance with procedures in place before the U S was born.  (In the old days in England, the court read the charges and said to the jury that the accused pleaded not guilty – ‘whereon he has put himself upon his country, which country you are.’)

Now, here’s the kicker.  When I sued big bad targets in civil cases, my central question was : ‘Do I have enough to force the defendant into the witness box?’  That’s when the whole issue is reframed.  And Trump would be one of the worst witnesses ever.  His lawyers know that.  I would be amazed if these detailed indictments do not disclose a prima facie case.  I would be surprised if the prosecution is unable to get its witnesses to live up to their statements of evidence.  That being so, Trump and his lawyers will have a very big bullet to bite.

Finally, I have not heard anything that comes within a bull’s roar of a defence to any charge.

Getting the morning paper delivered in print is quite a luxury these days.  It reminds me of the time milk was delivered to the door by a milk man with a horse and cart.  But since I started getting The Age in Yarraville, it has been pot luck just where in the street it might land – if at all – and in what condition.  In the apartments of my present address, where there are about five subscribers, it could be spewed all over the footpath and nature strip and be a damp public nuisance – frankly, an ugly disgrace.

So I sought an assurance from The Age that if we put out a box for the papers, the papers could be left in it – safe, dry, and readable.  After some prodding, I got this response: Unfortunately, due to privacy and safety reasons, the delivery drivers are unable to get out of the vehicle and deliver the papers to a newspaper box. 

What that means, I suppose, is that they are not prepared to pay for a proper service – ‘privacy and safety reasons’ mean $$$.  The conclusion is also inevitable that The Age cannot operate as efficiently as Australia Post.  That is very sad for them – and the rest of us.

Oh, well – another win for the robots, another loss for mankind.  At least with the old milk man, you got some useful manure.

The Age – Australia Post – robots.

An Australian expert on agricultural research says that we are not doing enough to deal with climate change, a sentiment likely to be shared by anyone who watches the news on television.

Collectively, we are doing too little too slowly, too partially, and too timidly, to tackle the obvious challenges that have been well understood by scientists for decades.

The key word is ‘timid’.  Or, if you prefer, gutless. 

According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,  the word ‘timid’ means ‘subject to fear; easily frightened; wanting boldness or courage; fearful, timorous.’  The Macquarie has ‘subject to fear; easily alarmed; timorous; shy.’ 

Let’s stick with ‘easily frightened or alarmed.’

The suggestion that we as a nation are too easily frightened or alarmed is certainly warranted in the case of climate change.  Tens of thousands of people are dying in front of our eyes, and whole areas of the planet are becoming uninhabitable or uninsurable, and yet we are still too timid to do what we should to save those who will come after us.

And you can say precisely the same thing for our failure to deal sensibly with other issues like same sex marriage, housing, corruption, and taxation. 

It is obvious that if we wish to continue with the same level of government services – and the addiction dates back to 1788 – we will have to pay more in tax to pay for those services.  But as one European MP correctly observed: ‘We all know the answers – but we all want to be re-elected.’ 

So, one weakness of democracy is that voters and the elected may be too timid to make what might look to be hard decisions.

And nowhere has our timidity been more on show than in our treatment of the First Nations people.  The Commonwealth has pussy-footed over this since it was born. 

So, a considered suggestion is made – that we the people give them a voice in the government of this nation.  What could be simpler?  Who in good faith could say ‘No’?

But we are told it is not simple, and there are risks.  And the timid wire is tripped yet again.

And that wire is set by just the people who set it on same sex marriage, housing, corruption, and taxation.  They are people of dark corners.  They do not appeal to the contented among us, but to the discontented; they confuse being reactionary with being conservative; and they are much stronger on demolition than building.  To the extent that any of them appeals to an Australian under forty, that is a sad accident of history.  They do in a few ways resemble those who delivered Boris Johnson or Donald Trump.

And this most recent appeal to the timid is so brazen as to be contemptuous.  ‘If you don’t know, Vote No!’  ‘Just accept that you’re just another bloody idiot, Short-arse, and leave everything to dear old Uncle Rupert.’

It is so sad a flaw in a young nation that should have everything before it.  We are being held back by naysayers who apparently don’t want us to grow up.

And if we have had this problem with the issues I have referred to, just think of the bloody mayhem that awaits those who would like to have an Australian head of state.

It is no small thing to call someone out for being timid.  If you said it to an Australian cricketer or footballer, you would be looking at a bunch of fives.

But we the people just keep toddling along ,and rolling over like bunnies back to our burrows, at the whistle of suits in Canberra, and an outcast in New York – and we mock the myths of the bronzed Anzacs, Ron Barassi, and Shane Warne.

Well, we are no longer the lucky country, but we are still run by second rate managers, who have run us out of luck, and who exist to inflict their own timid mediocrity on the sunlit plains extended.

Exeunt, with a dead march.

Voice – Murdoch – Horne – Liberal Party- conservative.

Two systems of law compete in the world for adoption – Roman law, and the common law, or the Anglo-American model. 

The first looks to elegance and codification, and is big on theory and grand design.  The latter grows from accidents of history, and responds to events rather than theory.  There is a difference in the underlying world views, as big as the difference between Aristotle and Plato, and between Aquinas, Rousseau and Marx, on one side, and Hume, Burke and Keynes, on the other.  I have sought to catalogue both – ad nauseam for the taste of some. 

The difference is deeper than the Atlantic.

And then there is the fact that the notion of the rule of law, which is fundamental to our view of civilisation, let alone governance, comes from the common law.  It was not developed under Roman law.

Both these facts of legal history are apparent in Magna Carta, 1215.  It was like Mafia dons making the peace, but the result is the most remarkable constitutional document the world has seen.  It is the foundation of the English constitution, and the origin of our idea of the rule of law.  It is more than 800 years old, but most of the rest of the world has not caught up with it yet.

The following comments come from reading Magna Carta by Professor David Carpenter, and should be read with two of my papers, The Story of English Law, and The Universal Juristic Schism, both published in the eBook, Some Papers on the Law (Amazon, 2023).

When considering the consequences of a document at law, we common lawyers look not for the intention of the creators of the document, but for the legal effect of what they have said. 

And that in turn develops further depending on what other judges have said those effects.  The legal effect is determined by the courts – and that may change with the composition of the court, as any constitution means what its judges say it means.  (Recent events in the U S are an alarming example.)

So, it may not surprise us if we give Magna Cartaan effect that would have seemed revolutionary to the barons – who did turn up armed at Runnymede.  (There was a war on.) 

And in turn, we would not be surprised if the authors could not have foreseen what effect would be given to their work.  (Similarly, if you told the authors of the Bill of Rights that the reference to a right to bear arms would be used more than three centuries later to fordid a sometime colonial government from banning hand guns in New York, they would have fallen about laughing.  Stuart kings had produced just such a ban for London by royal proclamation.)

And it may be just as well that we don’t need to determine what went through people’s minds in 1215, as I have no confidence that I can follow the effect of God and Rome and the oath on people back then.  As far as I know, they thought invoking God was far more decisive than invoking the law.  And we are looking at a Church that said its people were outside the general law – which would be unthinkable now.  And Hell was, I think, in the game or on the table back then – it is not now.

Much of the document that is Magna Carta now looks extravagantly beneficial to the people and adverse to the king.  The stated intention of involving the ‘commune of the whole realm’, and passing on to people down the line the benefits obtained by the barons is staggeringly ‘progressive’ – if I may use that slippery term.  Most political history turns on efforts to slam the door of the tree house on the next lot claiming to share the spoils.  That is what brought undone the revolutions of 1776, 1789, and 1917.  Yet the barons and their lawyers saw this coming in 1215.

This is amazingly precocious – and so much more uplifting than the grand lie about all men being created equal; or the danger of giving a right of rebellion to people disaffected by the new regime.  (It would become a fact of English historical life that a king who acted badly could be dethroned.  Richard II is just the most fabled example.  But it is not a good idea expressly to confer such a bathplug clause in the constitution – which the English realised when they went from 1215 to the Declaration of Rightsin 1689.)

The significance of the commune, as a sworn group, would be far more obvious to French historians having regard to the communein Paris in 1792 and 1870.  Marc Bloch, in his wonderful work, Feudal Society said this:

In feudal society, the oath of aid and ‘friendship’ had figured from the beginning as some of the main elements of the system.  But it was an engagement between inferior and superior, which made the one the subject of the other.  The distinctive feature of the communal oath, on the other hand, was that it united equals….  It was there in the commune that the really revolutionary ferment was to be seen, with its violent hostility to a stratified society.   The originality of the latter [feudal] system consisted in the emphasis it placed on the idea of an agreement capable of binding the rulers; and in this way, oppressive as it may have been to the poor, it has in truth bequeathed to our Western civilization something with which we still desire to live.

The security clause of Magna Carta was always going to be exhibit A in a petition to Rome on the ground of duress.  When Macaulay said Strafford was ‘the first of the rats’, he forgot King John.  The English knew that, and inserted a clause that the king would not go the pope to get any deal revoked.  The drafting was altered to exclude reference to the pope personally.  That had been bad cosmetics.

There is no basis for suspecting that the king negotiated in good faith.  You could say much the same for the other side.  King John had what is now called a ‘transactional’ approach, similar to that of unreliable people today like Trump or Boris Johnson.  They routinely enter agreements with no intention of honouring them. 

That seems to me to be very likely to have been the case here.  And of course, he had the fall back of being able to get Rome to quash the deal – even if he had to pawn the kingdom to do so.

So, he made extravagant promises that would diminish the status of his successors.  We also see that process at work today.

And this was massive interference by a foreign potentate in the affairs – nay, in the constitution – of the English. 

The English were told moonshine about the E U and ‘sovereignty’.  The E U had nothing on the Vatican, and no decent independent nation could tolerate that kind of interference.  The bible has something to say about serving two masters, and English kings who owed allegiance to a foreign power were placed in a horrible position of conflict of interest. 

It is ironic that that issue came to a head after the pope got into a position of conflict of interest involving that quaint body called the Holy Roman Empire – and as a result he could not accommodate a routine request from Henry VIII – who promptly decamped from Rome, in high style, and higher hypocrisy.

There is a juristic issue about an English king being guilty of treason, but there is no doubt that King John and Kings Charles II and James II betrayed their nation in their dealings with the Vatican – for which the English banned Catholics from sitting on their throne.

So, the English came to bring their kings and priests into line.  That just left them to deal with the nobility and to enfranchise the whole people.

There were three main planks that sat on and in the developing common law – Magna Carta, in 1215; the Act of Supremacy in 1534; and the Declaration of Rights, 1689.  Each was said to be just a recognition of custom or precedent, but each may be seen as part of the movement seen by Sir Henry Maine as the transition from status to contract.

It is against that background that you can see the failure of Europe to develop on its own the concept of the rule of law.

And now in 2023, we just pedal on surrendering our status to robots with whom any contract is worthless.

The attachment to Taylor Swift looks to be a form of unbalance brought on by iPhones, the new and nasty form of addiction.  She looks to be a well-managed construction in a world of make-believe. 

The press today reported that Ms Swift has re-recorded a song.  One lyric was ‘She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress’.  It is now ‘He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.’  The first version drew ‘accusations of misogyny,’ and the reversal was said to be ‘in line with Swift’s modern reputation as a feminist.’

As bullshit goes, that is hard to beat. 

But the same report says Lizzo and Beyonce have removed the word ‘spaz’ from songs.  That was apparently thought to be an ‘ableist slur.’  I don’t have the faintest idea what that might be – which is a shame, because I think I may be a victim.

As if on cue, the first message to And Another Thing in this morning’s paper refers to the lady appointed to the Reserve Bank, and to ‘the misogynistic vitriol likely to be hurled at her when the cash rate rises again’. 

Philip Lowe was, predictably, subjected to vitriol when the cash rate rose, but I do not recall any of that vitriol being predicated on the fact that he is a bloke.

As far as I know.

What follows is a speech by the historian Lord Macaulay in Parliament in 1848.  Customs have changed since, but not the humanity underneath.  The language might appear to be both aged and candid.  But the speech for me explains the sewer into which the U S has sunk, and not just on the attack on the Capitol

I believe, Sir, that it is the right and the duty of the State to provide means of education for the common people. This proposition seems to me to be implied in every definition that has ever yet been given of the functions of a government. About the extent of those functions there has been much difference of opinion among ingenious men.

There are some who hold that it is the business of a government to meddle with every part of the system of human life, to regulate trade by bounties and prohibitions, to regulate expenditure by sumptuary laws, to regulate literature by a censorship, to regulate religion by an inquisition.

Others go to the opposite extreme, and assign to government a very narrow sphere of action. But the very narrowest sphere that ever was assigned to governments by any school of political philosophy is quite wide enough for my purpose. On one point all the disputants are agreed. They unanimously acknowledge that it is the duty of every government to take order for giving security to the persons and property of the members of the community.

This being admitted, can it be denied that the education of the common people is a most effectual means of securing our persons and our property? Let Adam Smith answer that question for me. His authority, always high, is, on this subject, entitled to peculiar respect, because he extremely disliked busy, prying, interfering governments. He was for leaving literature, arts, sciences, to take care of themselves. He was not friendly to ecclesiastical establishments. He was of opinion, that the State ought not to meddle with the education of the rich.

But he has expressly told us that a distinction is to be made, particularly in a commercial and highly civilised society, between the education of the rich and the education of the poor. The education of the poor, he says, is a matter which deeply concerns the commonwealth. Just as the magistrate ought to interfere for the purpose of preventing the leprosy from spreading among the people, he ought to interfere for the purpose of stopping the progress of the moral distempers which are inseparable from ignorance.

Nor can this duty be neglected without danger to the public peace. If you leave the multitude uninstructed, there is serious risk that religious animosities may produce the most dreadful disorders. The most dreadful disorders!

Those are Adam Smith’s own words; and prophetic words they were. Scarcely had he given this warning to our rulers when his prediction was fulfilled in a manner never to be forgotten. I speak of the No Popery riots of 1780. I do not know that I could find in all history a stronger proof of the proposition, that the ignorance of the common people makes the property, the limbs, the lives of all classes insecure. Without the shadow of a grievance, at the summons of a madman, a hundred thousand people rise in insurrection. During a whole week, there is anarchy in the greatest and wealthiest of European cities. The parliament is besieged. Your predecessor sits trembling in his chair, and expects every moment to see the door beaten in by the ruffians whose roar he hears all round the house. The peers are pulled out of their coaches. The bishops in their lawn are forced to fly over the tiles. The chapels of foreign ambassadors, buildings made sacred by the law of nations, are destroyed. The house of the Chief Justice is demolished. The little children of the Prime Minister are taken out of their beds and laid in their night clothes on the table of the Horse Guards, the only safe asylum from the fury of the rabble. The prisons are opened. Highwaymen, housebreakers, murderers, come forth to swell the mob by which they have been set free. Thirty-six fires are blazing at once in London.

Then comes the retribution. Count up all the wretches who were shot, who were hanged, who were crushed, who drank themselves to death at the rivers of gin which ran down Holborn Hill; and you will find that battles have been lost and won with a smaller sacrifice of life. And what was the cause of this calamity, a calamity which, in the history of London, ranks with the great plague and the great fire? The cause was the ignorance of a population which had been suffered, in the neighbourhood of palaces, theatres, temples, to grow up as rude and stupid as any tribe of tattooed cannibals in New Zealand, I might say as any drove of beasts in Smithfield Market.

The instance is striking: but it is not solitary. To the same cause are to be ascribed the riots of Nottingham, the sack of Bristol, all the outrages of Ludd, and Swing, and Rebecca, beautiful and costly machinery broken to pieces in Yorkshire, barns and haystacks blazing in Kent, fences and buildings pulled down in Wales. Could such things have been done in a country in which the mind of the labourer had been opened by education, in which he had been taught to find pleasure in the exercise of his intellect, taught to revere his Maker, taught to respect legitimate authority, and taught at the same time to seek the redress of real wrongs by peaceful and constitutional means?

This then is my argument. It is the duty of Government to protect our persons and property from danger. The gross ignorance of the common people is a principal cause of danger to our persons and property. Therefore, it is the duty of Government to take care that the common people shall not be grossly ignorant.

Although I have not read the report of Catherine Holmes, SC, I gather it revolves around two issues in our system of governance

One is the collapse of responsible government in the Westminster System – no one in parliament or the civil service is responsible for anything. 

Another is a fundamental misconception about the role of welfare.  Looking after those who cannot look after themselves is an essential function of government here (but not the U S).  Government does not perform that function by making insulting remarks about the need for a strong policeman on the beat.

And now those who were fairly and heavily criticised in the report, and what are called their boosters in the press, have responded on script.

None of the ministers was responsible for this unlawful tragedy, and the leading civil servant in the gun is sitting pat on $900K.

Not one word of sympathy or apology from any of them.

The Leader of the Opposition says the government is ‘politicising’ the report.  He warns against trial by media.

The Australian could not have been more predictable.  Its editorial begins ‘Apart from the odd slice of emotionalism…’ and goes on to say that the Commission was on ‘less solid ground’ calling for politicians ‘to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments.’

The lady running the Commission looks to me to have done a fine and very needed job. 

But for some people in politics and the press, she may as well shout at the deaf.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Robodebt – Liberal Party – Murdoch.

The vehemence of the English response to the Bairstow stumping, and the cold blood of the hypocrisy of Bairstow, Broad and McCullum, and the sheer vulgarity of the MCC, suggest that most of this nonsense has little to do with cricket. 

In his column, Nick Bryant, who is English, said that booing in sport is a confession of self-defeat, and that after the disaster of Brexit, the English nation badly needs a win. 

I agree on both counts.

Well, the lynch mob in the Long Room are just the people who gave England Boris Johnson, Michael Grove, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and who got into bed with Nigel Farage.  (It would be best to pass over some other disasters in silence.) 

The better people are now courting the mob in the outer in the way they did with Farage and the Red Wall. But it is one thing for the Hottentots to spit bile on the terraces of Manchester United.  It is altogether a different thing for the Tory tribal elders to do so at Lord’s.

Underlying both failings is the born-to-rule sense of entitlement of a caste that now has as much use as Childe Harry and Megan.  Sorry, Boys, but after Mafeking was relieved, there was that sad fiasco at Gallipoli, and we legislated to force the MCC here to accept women as members two generations back, now.  Putting women in the Long Room should be a step toward civility, if not civilisation. 

Curiously, it was the fallen idol of Eton and Oxford who put his finger on the issue in his petulant remarks on leaving number 10.  He said that ‘the herd instinct is powerful, and when the herd moves, it moves.’  Unusually for Boris, he got that right.

Stuart Broad – MBE, if you please – resembles Boris so much.  They somehow think that the world owes them a living because they are so pretty, and they can do so much.  You would think they run the joint. 

But if you wanted to know what public service means, the last person you would ask would be Boris Johnson.  And if you wanted to know what the ‘spirit of cricket’ might mean, the last person you would ask is Stuart Broad.  Since he nicked the ball to first slip, and refused to walk, he has been public enemy number one.  Stuart thinks that’s bonzer.  He is noticed.  He is England’s answer to Scaramouche.  Who needs mere cricket?

The worrying thing is that at least the Stark catch that was denied shows that the laws need attention.  We are not talking about the ‘spiritual’ here.  We are talking about the logic of ball games.  The present rule was designed for letter-of-the-law nit-pickers who live for TV replays – that are killing so much sport.

The worry is that this is a matter for the egg and bacon brigade.  It is curious that we are yet to hear the response that a judge gave to counsel that is I think in the Year Books – at about, say, the end of the fourteenth century.  It was , as I recall, to this effect: ‘Don’t tell us what the laws mean – we made them.’

And they’re on your heads, chaps.

Cricket – MCC – snobbery – bad laws – bad manners.