Banditry

I’ve long approved of a semi-referendum for the reintroduction of the death penalty, under which only people who vote in favour actually face it as a punishment option (this would work well, as “being a crazy violent idiot” is correlated both with “supporting the death penalty” and “committing murder”).

On the basis of this, do-as-you-would-be-done-by, principle, I’ve come up with an excellent new rule, inspired initially by my annoyance with visa requirements from assorted countries that have visa requirements solely to annoy people who make those countries’ nationals jump through annoying and stupid hoops to get visas [**].

Simply, it involves a plebiscite voting on “do you think all immigration from everywhere to everywhere else should be allowed, or are you a stupid bigot?”. Then, if you tick “stupid bigot”, you’re never allowed to go further than 10km from your hometown ever again, and if you don’t, then you’re allowed to roam the whole glorious world in which we live.

This would be applied on a local area basis, such that areas which have a majority of idiots are cut off (although they’d be allowed to have a separate referendum desperately begging for business travellers and tourists to be allowed to visit, if they liked). Meanwhile, anywhere that wasn’t in the “majority bigot” camp would be thoroughly visitable and liveable for all concerned, subject to “if you try and claim benefits or do crime before you get a passport then you can piss off and never come back” requirements.

Yes, there’s some satire in some of these provisions, but ultimately if they were adopted the general migration scheme would actually be noticeably less rubbish than the current one…

[*] in the Northern British sense of “card” meaning “person who thinks they’re a great wit”.

[**] let’s be realistic, India is lovely, but the reason a UK passport holder requires an advance-acquired visa to go to India isn’t that the Indians are terrified of being swamped by British immigrants…

It’s clear from this week’s events, and indeed to everyone with access to either eyes or a braille reader, that English libel law is a disgrace that needs reformed.

As far as I can make out, the only objection to libel law reform is that in countries like the US with a sensible (i.e. unenforceable unless you’re a previously unheard-of member of the public or the libel is obviously malicious) libel system, mad buggers can get away with describing anyone vaguely heard-of as a demented antisemite/Islamophobe/etc.

I’ve yet, however, to hear any reason why this matters.

If you’re a serious commentator, some mad bugger describing you as an antisemite doesn’t make any odds at all. Similarly, if you’re a serious commentator, describing random selections of people as Islamophobes is likely to get you relegated to the “not serious commentator” pile in short order.

(and as someone who’s been maliciously libelled, whilst almost certainly counting as a public figure for US purposes, I can honestly say that the concept of using English libel law against the nutter in question was about the least appealing option in either my or my solicitor’s arsenal, despite the fact that we were both very clear I had a case and would have won).

But let’s assume, against all actual evidence, that libel laws provide some protection to the truth or to Brave Individuals Being Victimised By A Cruel System: in that case, let’s 1) provide legal aid to libel victims and aggressors [*], 2) cap all costs awards to a legal aid payscale. I can’t think of any way, even in the bizarre parallel world where serious people believe that Private Eye is a threat and James Goldsmith is a victim, that this would cause Terrible Injustice, and it means that the occasional poor (in both senses) sod smeared by the tabloids actually has a chance of redress. What’s not to like?

[*] the beauty of this system is that it’s entirely down to the reader to determine who’s whom, and hence doesn’t matter. Obviously I’m Arkell vs Pressdram on this.

A lot of moaning about corporation tax in leftie-blogland today, for no particularly discernible reason. How about this as a ‘no big corporation tax dodging’ principle to adopt at G8:

* All countries adopt the current UK system of charging the parent company tax at the national rate for its home country, with all tax paid abroad offset up to the national rate for its home country

* Only companies that agree to adopt the practice above, and to nominate a registered country as their home country, are allowed to list on regulated stock exchanges

* G8 ministers decide which countries count as ‘registered’, based on principles such as ‘don’t take the piss’, ‘aren’t Ireland’, etc.