Science Festival 2 - science-free...
Apr. 6th, 2008 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningThe second lecture I went to the Science Festival was entitled “Are You Wrong About Your Rights?” There were three speakers talking about citizens’ rights and remedies; it was very interesting; but I still don’t know what it was doing in the Science Festival, since there was not really any science in it at all.
The three speakers were Kaliani Lyle from Citizens Advice Scotland, Lord Hamilton, the Lord President of the Court of Session (the head of the judiciary in Scotland), and the journalist and former editor of the Scotsman, Magnus Linklater. It was chaired once again by Heinz Wolff.
Ms Lyle argued that having legal rights was pointless if one doesn’t have access to them or isn’t aware of them – and most people, they were neither aware nor had access. She described the kind of problems CAB sort out, and the low level of knowledge and expectations people have. She was particularly scathing of financial services companies and the large utilities for mis-selling their products and failing to keep their promises. She described the bureaucratic systems maintained by large organisations – public and private – as dysfunctional. She believed social welfare was too low on government’s priorities.
Lord Hamilton spoke about the other side of rights: that rights were of no use if remedies were not available, nor if those rights could not be enforced. Being a lawyer, he saw these as legal remedies, though he also spoke about arbitration and “alternate dispute resolution”. He had a curious speech impediment – both Rs and Ls sounded like Ws, so he sounded like an exaggerated Woy Jenkins. This session seemed a bit like an introduction to the legal system – how the courts worked, the impact of the human rights act and so on.
Magnus Linklater was actually most interesting. Starting with his own Kafka-esque brush with the law – he was threatened with arrest for not paying a council bill he hadn’t been sent (and which the council couldn’t tell him about), he went on to explore the Freedom of Information Act and its effectiveness at challenging the absurdities of modern life. He compared his efforts to gather information on Klaus Barbie, a war criminal who worked for both the British and US governments. When he asked to see the information held by the British government, he was told they had five documents which were secret and couldn’t be released; the US government told him to bring a van along the next day and gave him six boxes full of files; and when he was investigating an arms deal, the MoD told him he was unpatriotic to even ask to see the files, whilst when he got lost in the Pentagon, a general invited him into his office and asked how he could help him.
But as I say, this was particularly short of science. Linklater mentioned the internet, and the risks and benefits it provides. I asked whether the new media needed new rights, but the answers focused on existing rights: I was thinking about intellectual property rights and the rights to identity and privacy, but the format for questions didn’t allow for clarification!
The lecture had been sponsored by the International Foundation for Intelligent Living, an organisation set up to promote thinking, comprehension, analysis and understanding of the modern world – to make up for the lack of independent thinking since most experts are part of large organisations. I thought this sounded like a very good idea – but their website is dreadful. It could be that senior professors and lawyers and intellectuals don’t quite get the internet!
The three speakers were Kaliani Lyle from Citizens Advice Scotland, Lord Hamilton, the Lord President of the Court of Session (the head of the judiciary in Scotland), and the journalist and former editor of the Scotsman, Magnus Linklater. It was chaired once again by Heinz Wolff.
Ms Lyle argued that having legal rights was pointless if one doesn’t have access to them or isn’t aware of them – and most people, they were neither aware nor had access. She described the kind of problems CAB sort out, and the low level of knowledge and expectations people have. She was particularly scathing of financial services companies and the large utilities for mis-selling their products and failing to keep their promises. She described the bureaucratic systems maintained by large organisations – public and private – as dysfunctional. She believed social welfare was too low on government’s priorities.
Lord Hamilton spoke about the other side of rights: that rights were of no use if remedies were not available, nor if those rights could not be enforced. Being a lawyer, he saw these as legal remedies, though he also spoke about arbitration and “alternate dispute resolution”. He had a curious speech impediment – both Rs and Ls sounded like Ws, so he sounded like an exaggerated Woy Jenkins. This session seemed a bit like an introduction to the legal system – how the courts worked, the impact of the human rights act and so on.
Magnus Linklater was actually most interesting. Starting with his own Kafka-esque brush with the law – he was threatened with arrest for not paying a council bill he hadn’t been sent (and which the council couldn’t tell him about), he went on to explore the Freedom of Information Act and its effectiveness at challenging the absurdities of modern life. He compared his efforts to gather information on Klaus Barbie, a war criminal who worked for both the British and US governments. When he asked to see the information held by the British government, he was told they had five documents which were secret and couldn’t be released; the US government told him to bring a van along the next day and gave him six boxes full of files; and when he was investigating an arms deal, the MoD told him he was unpatriotic to even ask to see the files, whilst when he got lost in the Pentagon, a general invited him into his office and asked how he could help him.
But as I say, this was particularly short of science. Linklater mentioned the internet, and the risks and benefits it provides. I asked whether the new media needed new rights, but the answers focused on existing rights: I was thinking about intellectual property rights and the rights to identity and privacy, but the format for questions didn’t allow for clarification!
The lecture had been sponsored by the International Foundation for Intelligent Living, an organisation set up to promote thinking, comprehension, analysis and understanding of the modern world – to make up for the lack of independent thinking since most experts are part of large organisations. I thought this sounded like a very good idea – but their website is dreadful. It could be that senior professors and lawyers and intellectuals don’t quite get the internet!