First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

4 Responses

1. Stephen says:

   December 5, 2008 at 11:17 am

   Grayling is a magnificent public figure, a serious thinker, and a valuable communicator of ideas.
   Yeah? Where’s the evidence? His monthly piece in Prospect is like a secular ‘Platitude of the Day’.
2. UberKev says:

   December 6, 2008 at 1:01 am

   Dear o dear, it is so-called intellectuals like Grayling that is the problem in the English-speaking world today. In that Guardian ‘article’ he pontificates:

   What about the right to protection against attacks on one’s honour and reputation? Here too the brave new electronic world makes this a laughing-stock. Look at the blogosphere – the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration – to see what a whimsy that idea has become. In jurisdictions like ours, there can be a remedy after the fact when such attacks occur in print or on the airwaves; one can sue. For the armies of the nameless invited to “post a comment”, the only defence would be to compound the felony – by invading their privacy through yet further electronic means.

   It does us credit if we prefer putting up with them to seeing the tentacles of rights-annihilating power reach still further into the bowels (though this, in this case, would be the apt location) of our polity

   Only an arrogant member of the British establishment would feel proud of such a statement. I don’t know why Peter Bazalgette is surprised by Grayling’s cretinous opinions, you must know that he is a religous atheist, has friends in the New Labour party, like that imbecile Miliband, and, as far as I’m concerned, this compromises everything he has to say on ‘human rights’ and he is also compromised by his Anglo-Saxon perspective, like this comment he made in his last ridiculous article:

   One of the standard objections to the UDHR is that it is a western Enlightenment invention, and that its claim to universality is spurious. Few things refute this allegation so swiftly as thoughts of torture and slavery. The mammalian nervous system, and what coercion involves, are the conclusive data. For my money these thoughts govern how we should treat all animals generally; so if cows and chickens should not be treated cruelly, still less should any human be so treated. So much for relativism.

   Er, no Grayling, the ‘objections’ are to do with the way the UDHR is applied not it’s contents. People, not of your class or race, Grayling, consider that the UDHR principals are not universally applied by the ICC, its enforcer.
3. A. C. Grayling says:

   December 6, 2008 at 10:51 am

   I think the point Peter misses is that electronic data gathering and storage is so networked - unlike telephone directories and pension books of yore - that it represents a difference in kind of information-based surveillance, not merely of degree as he suggests. The fig-leaf of Chinese walls (two metaphors for the price of one there) in the civil service is in fact an admission of the increased risk to personal privacy represented by the digitalisation of records: as is the losing of computer disks.
   Safely anonymous Uberkev is a shining example of the lavatory wall: well done Kev, you make my point for me.
4. UberKev says:

   December 6, 2008 at 6:34 pm

   As you do mine, prof. What is your beef with ‘anonymity’ om the web? I tell you what, Grayling, when I’m given such public platforms to write like you and get paid for it then everyone can know my full name, until then I will take advantage of the relative freedoms I/we still have to make comments. That’s democratic, you know, Grayling, similar to the ‘anonymity’ that the polling system proclaims, but you don’t like it, do you? You just can’t stand it when some prole has the temerity to criticise you, eh?