Utopia, you are standing in it!

The politicians seem to have steered clear of the controversy over matauranga Maori and science in which the Royal Society of New Zealand has become embroiled.

This is perturbing. The meaning of “science” in this country – and how it is taught – will be influenced by the way the controversy is resolved.  So, too, will the difference between truth and belief.

Soon the government will be evaluating feedback after launching the Te Ara Paerangi – Future Pathways Green Paper to prompt a consultation on the future of the country’s research, science and innovation science system.

Associate science minister Ayesha Verrall ominously said at the launch:

“Te Tiriti needs to be embedded right across the design and delivery of the system, and more opportunities need to exist for mātauranga Māori.” 

Does she mean opportunities for a belief system? An alternative view of the world? Or what?

She has also declared: 

The years from 1939 to 1945 may well have seen the most profound and concentrated upheaval of humanity since the Black Death. Not since the fourteenth century had so many people been killed or displaced, disturbed, uprooted, or had their lives completely transformed in such a short space of time. The years at the very end of the war, and immediately following it, once more illustrated the old adage that it is quite possible to win the war and lose the peace.

The areas where the war was actually fought lay in ruins. Northern France, the Low Countries, the great sweep of the North German Plain, and a wide swath running all the way to Moscow and Stalingrad lay devastated. In the countryside it was not so bad; targets had been fewer, and there were substantial areas that had been bypassed by the fighting. The farther back in the country…

Could Parliament pass a law that all blue-eyed babies be murdered?  This was the hypothetical question posed by Stephen in the Science of Ethics, quoted by AV Dicey in the Introduction to the Study of The Constitution.  Dicey agreed with the answer that “legislators must go mad before they could pass such a law, and subjects be idiotic before they could submit to it”.

But what if Parliament passed a law that if a blue-eyed baby was murdered, there could be: no civil case against the murderer; no inquest into the circumstances of the death; no prosecution of the murderer; and there could not even be a police investigation? What if Parliament went even further and passed a law that: all current civil cases on this point must cease instantly; all current inquests be stopped; existing prosecutions must be discontinued; and existing investigations must end? Would we likewise agree…

No, this is not a paper on covid rule-breaking by UK ministers.  Instead it analyses the judgment of 20^th December 2021 in Re Napier, on what happens when Northern Ireland ministers refuse to comply with their legal duties.  The particular duty was the duty to participate in meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council (the NSMC).    Given that the Democratic Unionist Party ministers had already been found to be acting unlawfully by failing to participate, what would happen when the case came back before the court, and the court was asked to order them to stop acting unlawfully?

Facts

Part V of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 sets out various duties of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (of Northern Ireland) in relation to meetings of the NSMC. The NSMC essentially provides a venue for discussion of matters where the government of Northern Ireland and the government of…

“Ought we to be drunk every night?” Sebastian asked one morning.
“Yes, I think so.”
“I think so too.”
(Charles and Sebastian as students discuss their drinking habits in Brideshead Revisited)

Brideshead Revisited is probably Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel, simply because of the huge success of the 1981 ITV dramatisation. Which is ironic, because there’s a strong case for arguing that Brideshead is the least representative of Waugh’s works.

It’s also odd that it’s so popular, considering it amounts to a prolonged description of the destructive effects of alcoholism, the bitterness of adultery and infidelity, and a sustained account of one of the most dysfunctional families in literature.

Brideshead Revisited is divided into five sections: a short prologue (13 pages) and even shorter epilogue (6 pages) and 3 long central parts which each cover a distinct period in the characters’ lives. At 331 pages in the Penguin paperback…