HCJ - Lecture 1

Philosophy is something that I’ve never really been able to get my head around, although I now have to – quickly.  The thing that scares me the most is having to read almost 250 pages of the HWP book by next Tuesday, which I’ve worked out as having to read at least 4 chapters per day, this doesn’t sound like a lot, but added to that I will also have to read chapters 2 - 7 of NcNae’s (plus the seemingly insignificant, but important Key Concepts reading).

From what I could gather from the first 10 – 15 minutes of the lecture, the first literary artefacts were The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer (who some believe was actually a series of poets - not one man). Both of these works tell of the migration and the battles that the Saxons endured while being troubled by a monster called Beowulf – yes, that’s a very long and from what I’ve heard - a very complex and boring book.

The Greek Civilisation is an important part of the history of philosophy in the western world, partly because most of the early writers e.g. Plato and Aristotle were from Greece. The languages Greek and Persian/Farsi are very similar; they have a common heritage and the other Indo – European languages link to Greek and Farsi.  In this sense, the major European languages (including English, Italian and Latin) all derive from Greek.  This is contrary to popular belief, as a lot of people think that languages such as English and Italian come from Latin, this is true in some ways, however it can be argued that Latin actually derives from the group of ancient Indo – European languages (inc. Greek).

The Greeks were also ahead of their time, a lot of major scientific discoveries that we attribute to others actually belonged to the Greeks, for example is Earth being round and that everything was made from particles/atoms.  All in all, the Greek civilisation was very advanced.

However as usual, when something is going well and booming, the bust isn’t far around the corner.  That’s exactly what happened to the Greek world; the Romans took over and seized power from the Greeks, leaving almost no trace of the once great Greek civilisation behind – this wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the Greek philosophers hadn’t properly recorded their works.  However, the Romans’ fatal moment was when they believed that their King was a ‘King – God’ - who had all power etc...

Now I’ll move onto the religious aspect of the lecture and the concept that all people are the same derives from Judaeo – Christian ideas, because there is one God, and some people even argue that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the same... 

Christianity was left unchallenged for over 1000 years, this time period was also known as the ‘dark ages’, especially because in those 1000 years, only 3 BOOKS were published, including the Lindisfarne Bible – the first English translation of the Gospels.  This staggeringly low amount of books contrasts to the amount published in the UK every year – at least 200,000.

Later Christianity ‘re Greekified’ itself, including the building of Winchester Cathedral, many of these late Christians called themselves ‘Late –Zion’ or ‘Late – Jews’.

Back to the philosophy…

Aristotle wrote nearly half of all Greek philosophy, including the concept of logic.  Luckily for us, some Greek science was preserved by Catholics during the time of the Greek civilisation’s decline.  I will explain more on Aristotle and Socrates in my next HCJ blog.

Al Ghazali (a very important Muslim philosopher and thinker) believed that anything not in Muslim’s sacred text (The Qur’an) was ‘the devil’.

Finally, Witchcraft and how Protestants used to practice it.  If a woman was accused of being a witch, the acid test was to throw her into a river, if she floated, then the devil was helping her – therefore she was a witch.  However, if she sank, then she was not a witch.  I’ll leave you to mull over that one….

TB 2011

Media Law - Lecture 1

Today's media law lecture began with some of the lighter stories from the world of news, including a 3 year girl who eats bricks – well I say bricks, but the newspaper that reported this story was The Sun, so who knows whether she actually eats bricks or just brick dust, as Chris was eluding to.

Public Interest

Whether this story is really in the ‘public interest’ is an interesting question and talking of public interest... if the information in a legal case is deemed to be in the public interest, then it is valuable to society, for example it is in the public interest to tell people about a criminal or a politician, however judges have alerted journalists to the fact that ‘kiss and tell’ stories do not apply to being in the public interest, even though a lot of people are interested by them. 

I have noticed that in recent years, some people are more interested in these types of stories than ones that actually tell us something important; take Amy Winehouse’s death and the deaths of 80 something young people who were shot dead on the island of Utoeya as an example.  As reports of the terrible events in Norway were appearing, TV and radio stations in the UK, (not naming any names), were keeping us up to date regularly.  However, towards the middle of the same afternoon, reports of another story were flooding in – the death of Amy Winehouse.  Almost as soon as it was confirmed that she was dead, the very same TV and radio stations focused on this and not the tragic events in Norway, these events seemed to be brushed under the carpet until we all got bored of hearing 10 second clips of ‘Rehab’ and then they were rightfully back on the airwaves.

The point I am trying to make here is that people have become so engrossed in what their favourite ‘celebrities’ are doing, they seem to forget about the important events unfolding here in the UK and across the world.  However as usual, the public gets what the public wants, (as quoted by Paul Weller of course) this will continue until people stop this silly obsession with famous people and stories of young people being shot dead by a madman will be dominated by stories about the death of a drunkard.  A clear example of this was on Facebook, a lot of people I knew had put their status as something to do with Amy Winehouse and not the Norwegian shootings; sadly this just shows the way that some people’s brains seem to work nowadays.

Back to media law: there are two types of law: criminal and civil.  Criminal law deals with offences against the sovereign e.g. murder or assault.  Civil law deals with disputes between two individuals or two parties e.g. divorce or land ownership and it is ONLY county or civil courts that deal with these disputes, because these disputes are not offences against society (unless there is violence involved).  Higher courts e.g. The Old Bailey and other high courts (including the one in Winchester) deal with criminal law. 

But what IS a crime?  A crime is basically any act that is in breach of a statute or a code. - So does this mean that Tony Blair and Hitler were murderers? Hmmmm....

Another interesting point that I thought of whilst reading the book and during the lecture was freedom of expression.  The question that I was asking myself was “Do we really have freedom of expression?” and I believe that the answer is yes AND no – not like me at all then!

On the one hand, you and I can physically say whatever the heck we like, about anyone or anything and at any time.  Article 10 of the Human Rights Act supports this: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority”. (McNae’s 20^th Edition).

However, Article 8 of the Human Rights Act protects people’s privacy; it is also the basis for mounting a legal case against a journo for them saying something about you that you feel is incorrect – or if you just feel like making some extra cash!!!  These two rights must be balanced, for example in the ‘Re S’ (a child) case, where it was judged that any anonymity (using Article 8) granted would too greatly harm the public interest.

Standards of truth and proof...

Journalists (like me - apparentley) must be sceptical about what they read in newspapers e.g. the brick girl.

The police must believe 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the person that they are about to charge did the crime, the Police must have one or more of these 3 things to be able to charge someone: a confession, forensic evidence and an eye witness.  Believing that someone commmited a crime 'beyond reasonable doubt' also applies to the jury in court e.g. the film 12 Angry Men.

To be honest, I think I’ve said enough about the first lecture, so I’ll leave you to do something else now…

TB 2011

My first (proper) blog entry

The realisation of how much work the first semester of my Uni degree will actually involve has set in, even after only reading chapter 1 of McNae's and making notes on the majority of it.  Obviously I knew that the course wouldn't be all fun and games, but just thinking about the next few weeks’ workload makes my head spin!

Anyway, on to the reading. I sat down with McNae's early-ish on Friday morning full of optimism (the only way you should be ahead of something completely new) and parts of it were very interesting and easy to remember e.g. criminal and civil law and solicitors and barristers. On the other hand, some parts are not so easy to get your head around, (mostly stuff involving the EU!) Mainly because it seems so wishy washy, in terms of there being 'directives' imposed on the UK by the EU - does this mean that they are only advisory or are they there secretly to thwart a journalist's attempt at writing a story?  Who knows.

What I do know is that in the UK journalists are the eyes and ears of the public, there is no real freedom of expression and that barristers are definitely not solicitors!

TB 2011

About me

My name is Thomas Baxter.

I'm 18.

I'm a huge fan of West Ham United FC.

I'm technically from a place called Seven Kings, which is very near to a town called Ilford, in north east London.  However, I like to think of myself as being from London.  If you've been to London, you can understand why, it's a beautiful city - especially by night. 

Anyway, that's a brief summary of me, goodbye (for now)