Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The American legal system is different to that in the UK, to the extent that information is not only released during the preparation of the prosecution, but it is freely debated in the media. The Americans hold that justice must at all times and at all levels be public. There is a lot to commend this, other than the conditions for an unbiased and fair trial.

We are now told by the prosecution, that the accuser, who is the star witness, has been lying and even lied to the grand jury. It is difficult to see how there can now be a trial, but if there is, how on earth there could be a conviction. Nothing in this whole drama can be taken for granted, yet there does now seem to be a real prospect that M. Strauss-Kahn will soon return to France.

That will significantly alter the political dynamic, not just in France, but across Europe. The financial and political talents of this man, notwithstanding a reputation over women which is not without blemish and questions, are sorely needed. At the moment the Euro zone is on the wrong path. Lending more money to Greece without a rational acceptance that it cannot pay its debts, is simply going to make matters worse.

It is disturbing to see that rioting has returned as a regular feature in Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own brand of sectarian tension which finds its expression in football rivalry. The divide is between Protestant and Catholic.

Both are branches of Christianity, yet the passions behind the tension and the acts of violence and abuse are wholly un-Christian and fly in the face of everything which the faith holds dear. They also fly in the face of any moral interpretation of a difference between right and wrong. Finally they break not one but several laws.

Yet on they go, generation after generation. Sometimes there is a lull until new activists reach maturity and stir up latent passions. Whilst both the protestant and catholic churches say the right things, they do not do enough. This is trouble on their patch, about their dogma, theology and faith and they have an over-riding responsibility to practice what they preach and take a joint lead in bringing an end to  the disorder, as well as  the warped interpretation of their scriptures which drives it. Over the decades, even centuries, the clerics have done far to little to lead their flocks to pastures of reconciliation. They need to get a move on.