Diary – Page 2 – Robert Sharp

May 23, 2022

Reversing the Ratchet

Busy times for me at the moment, but this is an aide memoir / place-holder for some later posts.

Its now undeniable that the current British Government is damaging our democracy. Several measures either proposed or enacted that strengthen the power of the executive, reduce accountability and/or threaten free speech.

The intent to scrap the Human Rights Act
The measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 which allow the suppression of protests which cause a ‘nuisance’
Eroding the independence of the Electoral Commission
Insisting on the regressive ‘First Past The Post’ method for elections that previously used something more proportional.
The Online Safety Bill, which would impose impossible moderation standards onto social media companies and hand too much power to the Government to suppress speech it doesn’t like
Measures to constrain Judicial Review
New plans to curb the rights of workers to strike
The undermining of ministerial standards and accountability, as demonstrated by the way the Prime Minister ignored the findings of a report that the Home Secretary bullied civil servants
The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 allows the security services to authorise criminal conduct in new, unaccountable ways.

These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There are probably more.

February 27, 2022July 27, 2022

When newspapers conspire to suppress free speech

Earlier this week, eminent legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg wrote about a legal battle between the BBC and the government over the naming of a ‘spy.’ The Attorney-General, Rt Hon Suella Braverman MP, had sought to prevent the BBC naming an intelligence operative in one of their reports.

Such skirmishes over the limits of freedom of expression, balanced against national security, are nothing new. We recall the Spycatcher affair; and the highly questionable detention of David Miranda.

What piqued my interest about this case was the fact that the Daily Telegraph twice published briefings against the BBC, quoting anonymous and therefore entirely unaccountable government “sources.”

In January, that source told the Telegraph that the person whom the BBC wanted to identify was a “spy … working abroad.” Earlier this week the same newspaper reported that “there would be huge disquiet” if the report went ahead, and that national security would be compromised.

But now it turns out that was nonsense. The spy was a domestic informer (those who work for the police, or who watch Line of Duty, will be familiar with the term ‘CHIS’) who told women that he worked for MI5 in order to terrorise and control them.

So here we see something quite depressing: a news outlet has been manipulated by the government into publishing misinformation about, and veiled threats against, other journalists.

Now I’m sure that Helen Cahill, Charles Hymas and Christopher Hope, authors of the Daily Telegraph stories, would be mortified to think that they were complicit in the chilling of press freedom. But that is the effect of their quoting of an anonymous source that has, as Joshua Rozenberg points out, misled them.

This is not an argument for ending the practice of off-the-record chats and anonymous sources. Indeed, anonymity is a crucial aspect of free speech.

But there are, I suggest, two kinds of anonymous briefings.

Those where the anonymous source provides negative or ‘inculpatory’ information about the government or powerful organisation; and
Those where the anonymous source provides positive or ‘exculpatory’ information about the government.

Sources providing ‘exculpatory’ information carry far less of a burden than whistle-blowers. They are unlikely to be hounded by anyone investigating a leak. Whatever it is they say is unlikely to be met with a campaign of denial.

The difference between the two kinds of leaker is stark. When a leaker is ‘exculpatory’ the journalist and their editor need a different — and probably less credulous — approach to the source. Otherwise they risk becoming government stenographers and freelance propagandists for people who have a large enough platform already.

Note: This was written in February but for some reason wasn’t actually published at that time time. This post went ‘live’ on 27th July 2022, when this issue was no longer a ‘live’ story.

August 22, 2021December 8, 2021

Perfidious Home Office

“Are you going to blog about it?” I was asked, last week, about the fall of Kabul.

“I don’t think so,” I replied.

It’s not that I don’t think the return of the Taliban to power Afghanistan is not noteworthy. On the contrary, I’m sure it will be one of the 21st Century’s historical milestones. It is just that it is clearly the product of a hundred different factors, ranging from the geopolitical to the local, that I probably don’t understand. It seems to me that any piece of writing that seeks to say “we should have done things differently” must start a couple of centuries ago. And even with the understanding of how we got here, I’ve not seen or read anything that presents a plausible plan to make things better.

Best to turn past the images of geurillla fighting, and read instead about the pandemic, the wildfires, the ‘point of no returns’ climate warnings, and the incel massacre in Plymouth.

But one very particular aspect does, I think, warrant a very particular comment, and that is our failure to support those Afghans who have supported British military and diplomatic efforts in the country.

July 23, 2021

Marc Fennell on Colonialism and the Contradictions of Patriotism

In an interview with Roman Mars, the journalist Marc Fennell talks about his podcast Stuff The British Stole and the complexities of our interwoven historical legacies.

A big part of why I like this medium, it allows you to take the audience down the pathway that respects their intelligence, that you can hold more than one idea at once. When we look at the past, there is a tendency to either focus on the good things or only on the bad things, and my attitude particularly to colonialism is you will encounter these arguments and people will say “well, you know, if it weren’t for colonialism you wouldn’t have laws and you wouldn’t have railroads” but then at the other end of the spectrum … because of colonialism there was genocide, and there were children taken away from families, horrendous stuff.” And my attuitude to history and the thing this series taught me is that those two things don’t ever balance each other out. And they definitely don’t cancel each other out. All they do is they co-exist. And I think we as a species are smart enough to hold both those ideas at the same time. And not try to force them to balance each other out in some sort of historical weighing match. Its doesn’t work that way. And I think what’s good about stories like this is you can actually guide the audience through those things. And we emerge out the other end with a more complex understanding. Like I say to people, “I want you to stand in the mess.”
Marc Fennell, ‘Stuff thhe British Stole’ episode of the 99% Invisible podcast, 13 July 2021.

This idea of complexity and the holding of contradictory, competing ideas, is one that we encounter a lot in discussions of politics, history and culture. Fennell’s insight is not new, but it is a timely repetition of something that does, unfortunately, need repeating.

May 14, 2021

Cory Doctorow and the Memex Method

Cory Doctorow, China Mieville and Robert Sharp

Cory Doctorow has been blogging for 20 years. In this marvellous post he reflects on how the process has helped his writing and thinking. A blog can be a commonplace book, an ‘annotated web history,’ nucleation, and a memex or brain-extension.

I’m sixteen years a blogger. Back when I started, meta-blogging (i.e. blogging about blogging) was a big chunk of the discourse, with everyone trying to justify their hobby to themselves, to other bloggers and, perhaps most importantly, to the naysayers who mocked us as freaks in pyjamas bashing away at our keyboards.