Lavengro in Spain

Happy Christmas to all my readers

Opting out

The BBC says:

UK work time opt-out under threat

Britain has moved a step closer to being forced to limit the working week to 48 hours for all employees.

Euro MPs have voted in favour of ending Britain's opt-out from the EU working time directive.

This famous opt-out is, of course, what has made it possible for the UK economy to out-perform all others so spectacularly, and face the present crisis with such equanimity. If only the Foreigners were able to manage their affairs so well, they too could be as happy as the UK.

Ponzi madness

From the BBC:

Some of the world's wealthiest private and corporate investors are reported to be victims of an alleged $50bn fraud by Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff.

Mr Madoff is alleged to have confessed to a huge Ponzi scheme fraud.

What is a Ponzi scheme? From Wikipedia (my emphasis):

The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi .... His original scheme was in theory based on arbitraging international reply coupons for postage stamps, but soon diverted later investors’ money to support payments to earlier investors and Ponzi's personal wealth. … the principle behind every Ponzi scheme is to exploit investor naïveté.

So who are these ‘naive investors’? Well, according to the BBC (my emphasis):

Reports say the main owner of the New York Mets baseball team, Fred Wilpon, and former American football team owner Norman Braman are among the victims. Others facing losses reportedly include French bank BNP Paribas, Japan's Nomura Holdings and Zurich's Neue Privat Bank. …Hundreds of people are thought to have invested with Mr Madoff, among them international banks, hedge funds and wealthy private investors - who are all trying to find out the cost of the alleged fraud. Spanish newspapers said the leading bank Santander had invested with Mr Madoff. Bramdean Alternatives, a UK-based asset management company run by Nicola Horlick, saw its share value drop by over 35% after it revealed that nearly 10% of its holding was exposed to the New York broker. One hedge fund, Fairfield Greenwich Group, said its clients had invested $7.5bn with the firm.

Parliamentary privilege

Two points about the Green affair that are in the forefront of my mind are firstly that British MPs have no immunity from the actions of the Crown – despite all the fuss that was made about that very issue in the seventeenth century. And secondly that no-one seems to have the slightest idea of what the constitutional position is nowadays – which, given the mess that passes as a constitution in the UK is hardly surprising. The British Constitution, like the Holy Trinity (which it closely resembles with its Monarch, Lords and Commons), has no physical existence and is entirely a matter of faith. One day the speaker lets the police search an MP’s office without a warrant, and the next he has the door closed in Black Rod’s face to symbolise the independence of the Commons from the Crown.

But this has been said very well indeed by Mary Dejevsky in the Independent. I recommend her article to those who have not read it.

Money from easyJet

I have described how easyJet gave me the run-around after my baggage was damaged on a flight on 15 May, and how they sent me a vaguely threatening indemnity form that turned the liability back on me – and how I deleted the bit I didn’t like before returning it to them. Well, yesterday I received a cheque for the sixty euros that I had claimed originally.

All my correspondence with them was by registered post; when I sent them a registered letter from England, I found that the Royal Mail has a data base of addresses from which it prints its own address labels for registered items, and that a company other than easyJet came up for the address that they hade given me. It may be the case that the addressee is an agent for several airlines; but it is true that this is another dissuading factor for people pursuing a claim.

My claim was backed up by a reference to the consumer defence agency of Barcelona city council. They wrote to me on 19 September accepting my claim and asking me to return to them if the matter was not settled within two months. I informed easyJet of this letter. I did in fact write to the municipal consumer agency after the two months had elapsed. However, easyJet’s cheque is dated 24 November so it is improbable that the council had been on to them. I think that it is more probable that they simply waited for the two months to elapse before dealing with the matter.

I know that my messages about my easyJet baggage claim have generated considerable interest and visits to my blog. One man in Germany has started his own blog about luggage problems with easyJet. After success in my own case I can only say: Don’t give up, send all correspondence by registered post, and get the support of an official consumer protection body.

The British Constitution

In a recent post I contrasted the genuine words of Speaker Lenthall in 1642:

May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.

with an obvious burlesque of Speaker Martin’s views in 2008:

Good morning Mr Plod, good to see you again. How are the wife and kiddies? Oh good, I’m so glad. A cup of tea? No, you’re in a hurry, well I understand. Mr Green’s office? Of course, out of here turn right, right again and it’s the third on the left. Shall I call him? Ah, a surprise visit, well I see. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. We’ll meet again soon, I’m sure.

But despite the fictional nature of the latter quotation, and irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the present issue concerning Damian Green, it is true that what was the de facto constitutional position in 1642 regarding the privilege of the House of Commons is not the de facto constitutional position on the same matter in 2008. This leads me to ask the following questions:

1. When was this important constitutional change made?
2. By whom was this important constitutional change made?
3. By what legal mechanism was this important constitutional change made?

In a country that calls itself a democracy the answers to these three questions must, by definition, be known and available to the citizens – not least because in a democracy ‘the citizens’ must be the answer to question 2.

So, in the UK, which likes to call itself a democracy, what are the answers to these questions?

Moving

I have moved to the old part of Barcelona. This is a temporary arrangement while my own flat undergoes a complete refurbishment, and I will spend three months in a rented flat in the maze of narrow streets close to the Picasso Museum and the cathedral, being a tourist in what is in fact my own city but could really be somewhere completely different, and being close to a municipal market (Santa Caterina) where there is a stall that sells more than two dozen (we both lost count) different kinds of tomatoes. The move was stressful, as these things always are, but I was fortunate in that the man who is doing my flat up was finishing work on a flat that is intended for holiday lets, so I had no trouble finding alternative accommodation and he also organised the move for me. Of course he was very happy to have two jobs back to back, and as he did up the flat below mine earlier this year he knows the building and I have a good reference for his work, and have seen it. He says that it will take about three months and my neighbour says that his work was completed within the time estimate. Work has started and they work from 08.00 to 18.00 and Saturday mornings.

The actual move took two men making eight van trips, five on Wednesday and three on Thursday, with help in getting the stuff up from the street from the men working on the next-door flat to my new address; the Folio books were packed into boxes but that still left over 2,000 other books in plastic bin bags as well as all the rest of the stuff. The street where they had to unload it is pedestrianised after 11.00. I do not know – and do not want to know – how they managed it.Most of it is still packed and will stay that way until we move back to our old flat; it’s like sailing to Australia – there’s a lot that is ‘Not Wanted On Voyage’ and we have to hope that we’ve got it right. Having men from the same firm working next door was handy when we found that the WC leaked; they replaced it instantly with one that they were going to install in the other flat.

I had specifically said that I had to have a broadband connection installed in my flat, and the rental contract said that it was there. Well, up to a point Lord Copper. There was a little telephone plug on the wall but when the man from Telefónica came on Saturday, he needed to get on the roof to put a cable right over the building – and he couldn’t do so because it was raining and he needed to use electrical tools. He phoned later to say that he could come on Saturday afternoon, but Telefónica rang shortly afterwards to say that he wasn’t coming; perhaps they wouldn’t authorise the overtime. Anyway, two men came yesterday Monday and after several hours’ work from them I had a functioning telephone and wifi internet connection. Now, a week after the move, we have all our things arranged as we want them.

The stress levels were raised before we moved. At about 18.30 last Sunday my downstairs neighbour came to tell me that water was leaking down into his flat. I could see nothing in my flat but I turned my water off at the mains, which stopped the leak, and called my insurance, a company called La Estrella with a policy taken out through El Corte Inglés (a department store). To cut a long story short, after many phone calls and the involvement of El Corte Inglés’ customer service department, a plumber finally came to see the situation at 22.00 on Tuesday! That was over fifty hours after we turned the water off and just ten hours before we were due to move house! The verdict was that we couldn’t use the bathroom but the kitchen was OK. No showers then, but at least we got several loads through the dishwasher and finally cleared our backlog of dirty pots after the move had started. It meant, however, that the general clean-up that we had planned before moving out couldn’t take place, and that the hassles of dealing with stupid and incompetent insurance agents delayed the preparations. In fact the assessor came to see the claim at 17.00 on Wednesday, with the move in full swing. I will be cancelling my policy with El Corte Inglés insurance service as soon as possible and looking elsewhere.

The jury system

From the BBC:

Menezes verdict choice limited

The jury at the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes will not be able to consider a verdict of unlawful killing, the coroner has said.

Well, there’s a surprise.

Update 3 December.

This has been picked up by today’s El País. After saying that de Menezes was ‘executed’ in Stockwell underground station, Walter Oppenheimer’s article concludes:

The British establishment has done everything possible to prevent the Metropolitan Police being declared responsible for the death of an innocent man, but has allowed it to be made liable for having breached safety regulations.

Update 5 December

Ignore protest, Menezes jury told

The coroner said a verdict of unlawful killing would be not be justified

The coroner at the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes has told the jury to "ignore" a courtroom protest by family members.

On Thursday, several relatives walked out of the hearing wearing T-shirts criticising the coroner's decision to exclude a verdict of unlawful killing.

Sir Michael Wright said it was “wrong for anyone to try to put pressure on a jury and it should not have happened”.

There is no reason to suppose that the coroner was being ironic. Is he stupid, or is he just doing the job he’s paid for?

Tales from the Middle Ages

I have been moving house in the last week and have only just caught up with the Damian Green arrest story. Brian Barder and Tony Hatfield have dealt with the matter on their own blogs and I have no comment to make on whether what happened was done correctly under British law, whether Mr Green behaved properly, or whether or under what circumstances civil servants should leak.

I do, however, wish to point out that in modern democratic countries members of parliament enjoy a privilege that prevents them from being arrested or being subjected to other state-induced inconveniences that may afflict other people. This privilege, be it said clearly to start with, is not absolute: it can be, and sometimes is, waived by parliament when it is thought that there is a case to answer. But the decision to do so lies with the parliament that is the body that represents the people. When it comes to managing its own affairs, and in particular in protecting its members from harassment by agents of the executive, parliament is sovereign; it is not subject to interference by other organs of the State.

Once upon a time that was the case in the English Parliament, though only in the brief and ineffective interlude between the Divine Right of Kings and the Divine Right of Prime Ministers (who, be it remembered, act in the name of the Crown, not of the People). Charles I entered Parliament and tore a page out of the Statute Book; Parliament retaliated by banning him and his agents from its premises. When Parliament is formally opened, the door of the House of Commons is closed in the face of Black Rod – but not, despite everything that we are told, as a demonstration of the will of the Commons to exercise its sovereignty in excluding the agents of the other organs of the State, but – very obviously – as a quaint example of how people can dress up in funny clothes and play pantomime and think they are far more important than they really are. It is 219 years since modern politics began in Europe. When will the UK join in?

In 1642 Mr Speaker Lenthall risked his life to say:

May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.

In 2008 Mr Speaker Martin relaxes and says:

Good morning Mr Plod, good to see you again. How are the wife and kiddies? Oh good, I’m so glad. A cup of tea? No, you’re in a hurry, well I understand. Mr Green’s office? Of course, out of here turn right, right again and it’s the third on the left. Shall I call him? Ah, a surprise visit, well I see. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. We’ll meet again soon, I’m sure.