Justice.

There is a lot of talk about justice at the moment.  Horrific acts have been perpetrated and people have cried out for justice.  The families of the victims at Hillsborough sought justice. Attempts have been made to influence the Labour leadership election and people have claimed it flies in the face of natural justice.

One thing I have learned in my fairly long life is that the law is a difficult beast at the best of times and will turn round and bite you in the bum if you take your eyes off it.  Lawyers absolutely love the law.  It's how they make their money. The more complex the law, the more money they make.

But surely justice is straightforward.  If somebody did something wrong then he or she should be punished thus bringing about justice.

Natural Justice actually has a fairly tight definition within the law, which is why those who dislike a judgement often cry foul and claim that there has been a miscarriage of justice are not always right. Sometimes there has but what people are usually asking for when they cry out for justice is a decision which favours their point of view and also probably contains a leavening of revenge.

What people are actually doing is resorting to the old playground whinge of 'It's not fair,' only dressing it up on quasi-legal words to give it more weight and also to make themselves sound less whingy. 
If we look at the machinations still surrounding the Labour leadership election much of what has happened and also much of what may happen over the next few days angers me greatly because I see it as making the outcome I want less likely.  Much of what had been done is, in my eyes, manifestly unfair, and I am not afraid to use those words.  

The problems stem from:

1. The poor wording in the rules when they were drafted.  Such things should be drawn up so as to avoid any ambiguity and one of the skills in drafting contracts and legislation is being able to foresee eventualities which might occur where the wording needs to be completely clear.  In this case it was not clear whether or not the incumbent needed to be re-nominated, and nothing in the wording helped.
2. The constitution of the Labour Party, which rules that the NEC is the final arbiter. This is only a problem when members feel that somehow the NEC has been biased, i.e. it had made a decision which I disagree with.
3. The naivety of newer members who believed it really was one member one vote, when, as with all democracy, it was much more complex than that.
4. The feeling that the NEC slipped some extras in when nobody was watching.  Which they did, but they did so legally.  It may have been a bit underhand but that is all.

The same can be said for the referendum.

1. We should never have had a referendum
2. It was very badly worded and the means by which the winners were calculated were too simplistic, as is much of the voting in this country.  First past the post is an affront to fairness.

In both these cases our reaction tends to be coloured by what we wanted to happen, not by any real feeling of lack of justice.  If we have democracy then we must be willing to abide by decisions arrived at democratically, and if we think that the particular form of democracy which we have is unfair then we must work democratically to change it.

One of the strangest things I heard from the attempted coup in Turkey was that it was coup to bring back democracy. Oxymoronic or what?

Only short today, and a bit short on laughs, but then life can be like that.

Take care

Love Tim xx