HOME The Law And Judge Halfwit

There are an awful lot of laws in Ireland (and that spawn of fools and tyrants is growing larger every day), but very little justice. Part of the trouble is that people are inclined to confuse the law with justice, and justice with the law, confusing themselves into the bargin. Laws can be tools of Justice, but Justice can never be a law. It exists on its own as an acceptance of basic equality, that all things are from the same source and should be looked upon from this equalising origin. It has always existed without being a law.  Unfortunately, the more complicated things get, the more likely it is that they will break down. And so it is with poor old Justice. Laws, for the most part, can pervert real justice, and the more loopholes there are in these laws, the more perverted justice will be.  Anyone can see for themselves what justice is not.  Justice is not some well-fed judge sitting on a soft seat, abusing the principle of equality, by making jokes at the expense of defendants, who are given no protection from them by the law. Justice is not Judge Halfwit, using his position of power to act, not merely as if he were a king, but as if he were a god, deciding the fate of other human beings on the whim of the moment, or a twinge of indigestion. Even the best of them fill themselves up with laws and rules, to the exclusion of common sense. Intelligent people do not seem to exist in their ranks. Again, the misconception here is that accomulating vast amounts of knowledge means a person is learned or intelligent. A computer can store more knowledge than any person on earth. Does that make the computer intelligent? The possession of intelligence is based on the use made of knowledge, the amount of knowledge available having no bearing on the decision. Who judges the judges?  Consider our boys in Dark Blue, the Gardi. Gone, apparently, are the days when they were helpful, polite and considerate. The new band of thugs in uniform more nearly resemble the police force in the latter part of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Some of them are bullying, a lot of them are overbearing, and all of them, like the judges, filled with a sense of their own power, which they feel gives them the right to treat other people as less important than themselves. This situation is only made worse by no apparent control being applied by the Department Of Justice. No, all the controlling is relegated to the inspectors, who, from a letter some years ago to a newspaper, make it plain to the ordinary Gardi that they expect to see a certain amount of summonses on their books, or else it will be assumed they are not doing their jobs. Here we have the ludicrous situation of a law enforcement system doing its best to actually create new criminals, of gardi stopping cars in a desperate effort to find the necessary number of summonses from out of date tax discs or slightly bald tyres, while in the streets people are being mugged and in the country, elderly people in remote houses are being robbed, beaten up and even killed with impunity. Is it any wonder that such a lot of people see the Gardi as persecutors rather than protectors? Surely this is a country where all logic has broken down? It is certainly a country where justice is hanging on by the mere skin of its teeth.