HCJ - Weber on Bureaucracy (Quotes from reading)

"'Bureau' (French, borrowed into German) is a desk, or by extension an office (as in 'I will be at the office tomorrow'; 'I work at the Bureau of Statistics'). 'Bureaucracy' is rule conducted from a desk or office, i.e. by the preparation and dispatch of written documents - or, these days, their electronic equivalent."

"It is a servant of government, a means by which a monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or other form of government, rules."

"The king was accompanied also by 'clerks', i.e. clergy, who could read and write, who took along a chest containing records and writing materials; the modern bureaucracy developed from this."

"He also points out, not only government services but also political parties, churches, educational institutions, and private businesses, and many other institutions have bureaucracies."

"There have in history been governments whose members made no distinction in resources, income, expenditure, etc. between public and private."
          - Patrimonial (Roman law term, properties bought and sold)

"The ideal lying behind this is that if the official has any source of income apart from a salary he will not reliably follow the rules. Reliable following of the official rules is one of the highest values in a bureaucracy."

"Bureaucrats do not own the 'means of administration' - the computers, the furniture, the files, etc."

"Weber speaks of 'credentialism', the preoccupation evident in modern societies with formal educational qualifications. All these things - credentials, fixed salary, tenure, stability of staffing, Weber incorporates into his ideal type. They are all required, he believes, for the efficient functioning of an administrative machine."

"Another feature is the impersonal application of general rules, both to the outsiders the organization deals with, and to its own staff. The Taxation Commissioner's staff impersonally, objectively, apply the rules to the taxpayer, and their own duties and rights within the organization are defined by rules applied to them impersonally by their superiors. In Weber's mind this is the most important feature of bureaucracy. It underlies the features we have been commenting on up to this point: bureaucrats do not own their equipment or their job, and receive a fixed salary etc., because these things ensure reliable rule-following."

"There are three types: rational, traditional and charismatic. Charismatic authority is regarded as legitimate, and works, because followers are personally devoted to the 'gifted' leader. Traditional authority is regarded as legitimate because everyone has always obeyed whoever was in the leader's position, and no one thinks of disputing his authority. Rational authority is the 'rule of law': it exists in a community in which there is a moral attitude of respect for the law as such, or because the law has been arrived at in a way that is regarded as legitimate. "

"Goal-rational behaviour is whatever course of conduct is well-adapted as a means to one's end."

"Rationality of actions is not always determined by their effectiveness in furthering goals, but sometimes by some other sort of relation to values that are not goals, and that goals and other values also can be rational or irrational. For example, to tell a lie may be an effective means of furthering one's goals, but it may violate a moral value, a value that truth-telling serves in some sense other than as a means to achieve a goal; and truthfulness is not a goal, but a 'value' of some other sort"

"'value-rationality', the rationality of goals (and not merely as means to some ulterior goal) and other values, and of actions in their relation (otherwise than as means) to some value."

"Bureaucracy is rational in the following: 'Experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization... is... capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency, and is in this sense formally the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings."

The Innocence Project - Did the CCRC make the correct decision in the Neil Warner Case?

On 19th March 1991, Neil Warner was convicted of the murders of Mr. and Mrs Pool, an elderly couple residing in Easthampton. He was imprisoned for two life sentences. Since then, Mr. Warner has applied to the Criminal Convictions Review Commission in an attempt to have his case seen by the Court of Appeal, and ultimately, clear his name for good. However, things did not go to plan for Mr. Warner as the CCRC deemed his case 'unsafe', meaning that until new evidence is found he will have to sit out his service. This blog post will look at whether or not this was the correct decision.

The first avenue to go down is prints left at the crime scene; police found Mr. Warner's fingerprints above where the murder weapon was kept and on the window frame he escaped through, and they also found a shoe print matching a pair that Mr. Warner owns on the couple's dining room table. All of this was downstairs but the bodies of the elderly couple were found upstairs. Neil Warner claimed that he entered the house with a drunken intention to steal but did not venture upstairs. He says that he entered through the open front door and would've exited that way too but for someone walking past. The CCRC would have deemed this has unsafe for appeal as it puts him at the crime scene.

Further evidence overturns Mr. Warner's assertions that he didn't go upstairs, with fibres being found in the bedroom that are 'indistinguishable' from those on the blue jumper he was wearing on the night. The pullover was left at the crime scene as Mr. Warner claims to have used it to rub out finger prints. He left with Mr. Pool's shirt which, the defence claimed, was kept upstairs. This shirt was later retrieved at Mr. Warner's caravan.

Finger prints that Mr. Warner seemed to forget to wipe away were found above where the murder weapon was placed. Evidence such as this does not help Mr. Warner as they were the only 'foreign' prints discovered near the weapon. The CCRC would question why he would have been near it if he did not have any intention to use it.

DNA tests confirmed that most of the hair strands found at the scene were Mr. Pool's, however, they also form an incomplete profile for Mr. Warner, leaving a 1/680 chance that it was not him who committed the murder. When reviewing this evidence the CCRC will say that there is next to no chance that 680 individual people entered the house on the night in question.

There was some evidence in favour of Mr. Warner. An unidentified finger print found on the back door handle belonged to Martin Smith, a man accused of being a 'peeping Tom'. There were some inconsistencies in the statements that he gave the police and was an option that the defence for Mr. Warner did not use. The CCRC will acknowledge that this puts Mr. Smith at the scene, however, it does not show he entered the house at all.

In conclusion, the evidence stacks up very unfavourable for Mr. Warner and it is clear to me why the CCRC deemed his case 'unsafe'. Simply put, the amount of evidence against him is enormous and cannot be ignored.

Bernard Lazare: Antisemitism: Its History and Causes

Note on Chapters 1, 5, 10, 15

ONE

Not just due to religious war - Christian nations against the Jew, not doctrine of a God

Jews rarely stood up against their conquerers, made them look inferior

Excited jealousy and hatred - Allowed to develop states within states, had a better condition of life, better trade, more wealth

Declined to submit to other customs where they lived, shunned interaction and intercourse with inhabitants

The Eighteen Things - Caused unsociability

Fear of contamination made Jews isolated - clothing, dwelling, nourishment

Only learnt the law

Rabbbinites cut Israel from community of nations - became recluse, rebel against laws, closed minded - fuelled persecution, massacres, etc

Patriotism of Israel

FIVE

Built synagogues all over Europe but still didn't interact with growing nations, watched and stood back

Played a part economically but were hated due to Middle Ages states being moulded by the Church, who gave their unity to numerous tribes in the nations

Narrow faith, wasn't welcoming of others

They love their gold, they do

Christians were poor because of church, Jews rich because they could engage in money exchanging and banking

Wished to become a power, felt superior, chosen race

Exercised tyranny which created craftiness

Social and religious causes of anti-semitism intermingled

Richness

Church persecuted spirt of Judaism in all forms

Sacrificed n times of plague and famine

TEN

Semite - 'strange, noxious, disturbing, inferior'

First asserted that white race and some 'yellows' were capable of founding superior civilisations - Aryan is white and perfect

Ethnologic principles helped cause anti-semitism

Aryans are superior, resisted rule of rival Semitics

ELEVEN

"Customarily a nation is called an agglomeration of individuals having in common their territory, language, religion, law, customs, manners, spirit, historic mission."

"ews they possess also common peculiarities, a common individuality and a common type."

"in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the legislation against the Jews was identical, a fact quite easy of explanation as in all these lands the legislation was inspired by the church."

"The Jew spoke the language of the country he inhabited, but he spoke it only because it was indispensable in his business transactions; once at home he made use of a corrupt Hebrew or of a jargon of which Hebrew formed the basis."

"Thus, consequently, the Jews had the same religion, manners, habits and customs, they were subjected to the same civil, religious, moral and restrictive laws; they lived in similar conditions; in each city they had their own territory, they spoke the same language, they enjoyed a literature, they speculated over the same persisting and very old ideas. This alone was sufficient to constitute a nation."

"Jews placed them under the ban of their society, it was lawful to kill them, just as it was lawful to kill "the best of goyim." Similar exhortations would be found at all periods of patriotic struggles, among all nations; the proclamations of the generals, the calls to arms of the tribunes of all ages contain just as odious formulas. When the French, for instance, invaded the Palatinate, it must have been a rule, nay, even a duty, for all Germans to say: "Death even to the best of Frenchmen !""

"Modern Judaism claims to be but a religious confession; but in reality it is an ethnos besides, for it believes it is that, for it has preserved its prejudices, egoism and vanity as a people a belief, prejudices, egoism and vanity which[137] make it appear a stranger to the peoples in whose midst it exists, and here we touch upon one of the most profound causes of antisemitism. Antisemitism is one of the ways in which the principle of nationalities is manifested."

"What is this question of nationalities? By it is understood "the movement which carries certain populations, of the same origin and language, but constituting a part of different States to unite in such a way as to make a single political body, a single nation.""

"To these nationalist egotists, to these exclusivists, the Jews appeared a danger, because they felt that the Jews were still a people, a people whose mentality did not agree with the national mentality, whose concepts were opposed to that ensemble of social, moral, psychological, and intellectual conceptions, which constitutes nationality. For this reason the exclusivists became antisemites, because they could reproach the Jews with an exclusivism exactly as uncompromising as theirs, and every antisemitic effort tends, as we have seen already, 207 to restore those ancient laws restricting the rights of the Jews who are considered strangers."

FIFTEEN

Helped liberal, social and revolutionary parties - Contributed wealth

Modern anti-semitism is different from anti-Judaism - more self-conscious, more pragmatic, more deliberate - fear & hatred of strangers

Jews not assimilated - Continue to differentiate themselves from those around them

If they are Frenchmen, or if they are Germans, they are also Jews - maintain their peculiar characteristics as a people

Laws, prejudice and persecution - prevented them from mingling

Assimilation has caused differences between Jews from different countries

No laws on Jews now, just normal laws, no longer live apart, share a common life

Every external form of religion is losing its influence

Radio News Assignment

Winchester City Council are planning to cut short evening Park and Ride services due to too many ‘near-empty’ stops.

The new service will aim to serve commuters better, although evening travellers see their timetable adjusted to end at 8:45 instead of 9:30.

Currently, the first bus arrives at Winchester Station 25 minutes after the first train to Waterloo, having adverse effects on those who travel to London for work.

The council say that this move could save them almost £40,000, beating their proposed savings target.

Southern Water have admitted that they are still unsure as to where fluoridated water will be delivered.

The scheme to include fluoride in the South’s water supply has come under criticism, and now campaigners are saying that there could be legal issues if the water passes into areas that were not in the original proposition.

I asked residents of Winchester how they feel about the matter:

[vox pops]

Non-profit organisations around Winchester are to receive funding for improvements from Winchester City Council. Organisations set to benefit from the cash injections include the Stanmore Community Association, Winnal Rock and Sparsholt Memorial Hall.

I asked Eloise Appleby, Assistant Deputy of Commissioning at the council, what the grants aim to achieve:

[Interview]