I heard a woman on BBC 2 saying "Torino" not "Turin" in an otherwise English-language sentence.

Are the 2006 Winter Olympics when Turin starts to sound like Leghorn or The Groyne?

posted at: 22:50 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry

In Monday's Guardian, Marcel Berlins argued against introducing sharia law to Britain. He cited the status of women as one objection, and another as the wrongness of dividing the country into areas "where different laws may operate, depending on the density of minority groups within [them]."

So far, so fair enough. But in England-and-Wales you may not be subject to the same law (generously defined) as your neighbour. Anyone subject to an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO) has, in effect, their own personal criminal code. I'm allowed to visit petrol station forecourts, stare into my neighbour's garden, approach rivers or railway lines, swear and feed birds, but the next man may not be, and these innovative offences are punishable by up to five years in prison.

The programmer in me sees the antisocial behaviour legislation as a sort of API. All you have to do is to prove that a given behaviour is considered antisocial, and it can become a criminal offence for somebody. Hearsay evidence is admissible. Between 1999-04-01 and 2004-06-30, only 42 ASBO applications out of 3069 were turned down.

This is promising ground for bringing in an alien legal code of your choice. You need Charles Clarke to extend the potential scope of ASBOs from individuals to groups of individuals, say streets or housing estates, and to specify more innovative punishments. Remember that this is a government that views human rights law rather as Rupert Murdoch views tax law, as a set of loopholes embedded in an inconvenient chunk of statute, so don't be shy about corporal punishment.

posted at: 22:46 | path: /simulations | permanent link to this entry

I was sitting in the waiting room between platforms two and three. A member of staff locked the door to platform three. Platform three was finished for the night. The national anthem started going round my head.

I didn't stand.

posted at: 22:13 | path: /N | permanent link to this entry