Ethical Companies – The Blog

“The public should be invited to reject the politics of fear, that sees life as a perpetual terror of what might happen and a perpetual investigation of what has. It should not be asked to regard every child as a victim and every adult a paedophile, a terrorist or a mass murderer. The government should stop spending stupid amounts of money on a security lobby now running amok through the public sector.

There is no such thing as safe. There is only safer, and safer can require the greater watchfulness that comes with taking risks, witness new theories of road safety. Removing risk lowers the protective instinct of individuals and communities, and paradoxically leaves them in greater danger. But there is no government agency charged with averting that danger. There is no money in it.” – Simon Jenkins (The Guardian)

This has already been blogged by Al Jahom’s Final Word but it’s worthy of repeating.

Steve

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There’s been some talk about rape in the air lately. More specifically about changing the law around rape in regards to anonymity of the defendant (eg the man). In a nutshell our new coalition government (eg the Dave & Nick show) are proposing to sort out the anonymity issue regarding rape, in other words the defendant’s anonymity is to be preserved because “false accusations do happen”. The idea being that defendants will be anonymous unless convicted, is to me at least, something blindingly obvious that should happen.

You know what people are like. If you’re a man and you’re acquitted people will still point the finger, wave it around and tut “there’s no smoke without fire” and the like. So personally I welcome the idea of such a law, because false accusations of rape can, and do, ruin lives. For example:

Jurors in tears as they clear student of rape – then discover another man falsely accused by same ‘victim’ had killed himself.

A woman drove a man to suicide by crying rape and forced a second innocent man to consider taking his life after falsely accusing him of a similar sex attack. Despite being exposed in court as a serial liar, legal restrictions mean the 21-year-old woman can never be identified. A jury took only 45 minutes to clear medical student Olumide Fadayomi, 27, of rape. But several jurors at Sheffield Crown Court broke down in tears when the judge revealed the ‘victim’ had a history of crying rape.

Judge Patrick Robertshaw launched a stinging attack on the Crown Prosecution Service for making Mr Fadayomi stand trial. He said: ‘The evidence did not, and was never going to, prove rape. The prime overriding consideration in the CPS’s decision had been merely that the complainant wished the case to go ahead. ‘It was little short of a craven abdication of responsibility for making an independent and fair-minded assessment of the case. ‘It is quite astonishing these decisions are made by those who simply do not have experience of what happens in Crown Court because they never come into Crown Court. ‘They sit behind desks and make decisions that result in this sort of trial taking place.’ The judge revealed how 18 months earlier the same woman had made an allegation of rape. He said the case never reached court because it was ‘lacking in credibility’, but the accused man committed suicide ‘when facing that allegation’. After failing to have this first ‘rapist’ brought to court, the woman set about framing Mr Fadayomi, a stranger she met in a nightclub.

The law allows defendants accused of rape to be named, but the government intends to introduce anonymity for alleged rapists until conviction.

It really makes me sick to read this ….

On a personal level one of my friends was accused of rape, back when he was an undergraduate at Southampton University. He was innocent, even the jury knew he was innocent and he was acquitted (quite rightly so). However, the trauma of the event plagued him for a number of years and he has had a lot of problems over the whole event. In the end he had to move away from home and essentially start his life anew, with very little money. I stuck by him and to this day he is still one of my best friends, and has fought his “demons” and is about to get married.

In my opinion, any type of sex crime should provide anonymity to the defendant, because even to be accused of paedophilia or rape etc. can ruin your life if innocent ….

There’s more articles here:

Naming rape suspects ruins lives. (from the excellent Minette Marrin).

Anonymity for rapists without balaclavas. (Al Jahom’s Final Word).

Anonymity for those accused of rape: One good reason right here. (Al Jahom’s Final Word again).

Steve

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I’ve not done a lot of blogging lately so I haven’t commented on this yet, and as such it’s somewhat “old news.”  However, I like to stick my oar in and come out with my two penny’s worth ….  As United Kingdom readers of this blog will already know (unless you’ve been living under a rock) the United Kingdom has “officially” come out of recession; as such the UK was the last G7 country to do so.

Let’s not get too excited though.  How much has the UK economy grown ?  Are you ready ? 0.1%  Media and blog reaction is (not unsurprisingly) somewhat unenthusiastic:

Britain limped out of recession yesterday with an anaemic return to growth that raised fears of a second downturn and wrecked Gordon Brown’s election strategy. Output rose by just 0.1 per cent in the final three months of last year, marking the formal end of the worst recession since the 1930s. – Daily Mail

Britain’s economic recovery plans were thrown into turmoil yesterday after official figures showed that the country had limped weakly out of recession. Growth was surprisingly low at 0.1 per cent during the final three months of 2009. Experts had predicted that the economy would grow by 0.4 per cent or more. Although the 18-month recession has now technically ended, the lacklustre performance alarmed financial experts, raised fears of a further slump and prompted a political row. – Telegraph

So, in Q4, with all the feverish Xmas buying, the rush to buy tat before VAT returned to 17.5% AND an unseasonal upswing on property purchases, partly due to the end of the stamp duty holiday for buyers of matchboxes, the economy grew by – are you sitting down? 0.1% – Al Jahom’s Final Word

In the real world of course (eg the world where people earn less than £25000 a year and a £100,000 banker style annual bonus is a mere fantasy) the vast majority of the UK populace won’t see any difference anytime soon. Bankers of course are already seeing profits again, ergo banker’s bonuses …. Sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words and Matt of the Telegraph sums it up nicely:

Steve

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“The number of ways you can have your life fucked up at random is just ever-growing” – Al Jahom

Steve

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