‽istis ponders ‘breaking the mould’
(weekending September 10th 2022)
This week, ‽istis started by pondering the law – it’s
making, breaking and changing…
· A family wedding was held, joyously and finally: gathering, many people in a room together dancing, partying, close, unmasked. The wedding date had been postponed twice because to proceed would have been illegal or so restricted that it would not have been the big, celebratory day planned or desired.
· A focus at the beginning of the week in the UK seemed to be on Westminster; a new Prime Minister leading a Government, leading Parliament in one of its main responsibilities ‘to scrutinise proposed bills for new laws or changes to existing laws. It is the role of Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of the House of Lords to examine each bill before it is either approved and becomes an Act, or is rejected.’[i]
·
Members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), who
have been stopping work on alternate weeks since June, voted for an
uninterrupted, indefinite strike.[ii]
And
then…
…the
news…
On
the radio, on television, in the press, spilling out from Balmoral to dominate
so many conversations in homes and on the streets, in work, in pubs, in social
clubs and places of worship, in other gathering places and across social media,
across the globe even beyond the red-shaded boundaries of the British Empire at
its height.[iii]
News of an event with personal, family, social, emotional, religious,
political, military, legal and constitutional, national and international implications.[iv]
The images and words of speculation, commentary, memory, reflection and feeling flowed. Plans drawn up and codenamed were put in to practice in the institutions of the land: across layers of state, in the Church, in the BBC and beyond.
Other past blog-ponderings and wonderings of ‽istis no doubt reveal a bit of a position on matters of social structure, political arrangements, monarchy and ‘history’. But the start of the week’s ponderings on the law (and it’s making, breaking and changing) may not be so far away from the ponderings of the end of the week… linked perhaps by what could be a potentially liberating, yet unnerving, challenging and maybe radical and perhaps threatening notion: that all may not be ordained, immutable or fixed but be constructed, created, moulded (albeit sometimes baked hard over time, tradition, custom and practice), formed, maintained and conserved.
Constructs - personal, collective, social, organisational, political, religious, historical...
Constructs - deconstructable...
Constructs - reconstructable…
New constructs altogether...
There have already been many hours of non-stop, multi-channel broadcast coverage and perhaps millions of words spoken and typed, including plenty of idioms and clichés. While one BBC broadcaster was bold enough to suggest apparently that this might be ‘the moment history stops’…‽[v] (ironically maybe even at the same time as many were claiming that we were seeing ‘history’ being made‽), ‽istis is not sure that a comment has been made about ‘the mould being broken’ with the death of Queen Elizabeth II though there is quite a lot of ‘we are never going to see the like again’...
·
to
favour republicanism
·
to
advocate for abolition of the House of Lords and a revision of the second
chamber
·
to
dismantle the honours’ system
·
to
press for Empire/Commonwealth reparations
·
to
cheer the gradual return of artefacts in the nations’ museums
all
hint that perhaps it’s time take the dog out for a walk and at
least daydream about having the power to make a difference, to support and help shape possible remoulding and maybe even construct things differently‽
NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme
and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t
necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’:
@Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...
[ii] https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/legal-aid/bar-strike-what-you-need-to-know
& https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/aug/22/barristers-england-wales-vote-indefinite-strike
[iii] The
size of the British Empire – the amount of land and number of people under
British rule – changed in size over the years. At its height in 1922, it was
the largest empire the world had ever seen, covering around a quarter of
Earth’s land surface and ruling over 458 million people. https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/general-history/british-empire-facts/
& https://vividmaps.com/british-empire-at-its-territorial-peak/
[iv] The list of the Queen’s titles alone
give an indication of the reach of this one person: from Member with Collar of
the Royal Order of the Seraphim (Sweden) to Grand Cross of the Order of the
Equatorial Star (Gabon); from Member of the Order of the Dogwood (Canada) to The
Most Illustrious Order of Queen Sālote Tupou III[citation needed] (Tonga); from
Order of the Golden Heart of Kenya, to Member of the Order of the Benevolent
Ruler (Nepal); from Member with Chain of the Grand Order of the Hashemites
(Iraq) to Collar and Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (Japan);
etc. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_titles_and_honours_of_Elizabeth_II
[v] https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1567951290965049348?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
(now that does seem worth an interrobang‽)
[vi] To ‘conserve’… hey, perhaps there’s
a political party for that…‽
