Understanding Kier Starmer

Kier Starmer is not as other politicians. He is a trial lawyer - he was Director of Public Prosecutions for a while, and that's one of the more thankless jobs in the country. Now many other politicians have law degrees, but they are not trial lawyers: they are politicians with law degrees. Kier Starmer is a trial lawyer who somehow found himself in one of the top ten jobs in world politics.

Most professions, and even many vocational degrees, teach a way of thinking, and of approaching and treating the problems of the profession, as well as the specific technical knowledge and skills of the trade. Trial lawyers are trained to focus on the facts of the case: anything else is irrelevant, and will have their learned friend jumping up to object, if not the judge telling them off. Trial lawyers cannot look at "wider contexts" and "wider consequences": these things are for other people to think about. A human rights lawyer makes specious pleas to the Human Rights Act to keep their client in the UK, and if the client goes on to bomb a bus, that is nothing to the defence lawyer. Trial lawyers are not in the truth-and-consequences business, they are in the get-the-result business, or more often the go-through-the-motions-and-get-the-fees business. And their professional ethics condones this - lawyering would not work otherwise.

Politicians don't work like that. They are in the wider-contexts and wider-consequences business: it's their job (or it used to be) to think about how a decision or a policy will be received, how it will interact with other policies, whether the money can be raised or the cost foisted off on local councils or other people. The better ones are in the goals-and-visions business: what do we want the country to look like? how do we want the world to perceive us?

The ability to think about contexts, consequences, policy reception, interactions, let alone to produce a vision of what kind of country Britain could be, and a path towards that... that ability has been trained out of Kier Starmer.

But here's the real downside about trial lawyers: they live and die within the institutions of the law, and with the whims of judges. Judges, legal institutions and processes cannot be questioned, or the very fabric of the Universe will rend. Starmer is emotionally incapable of contradicting a judge's verdict, which leaves this Government wide open to lawfare, and he is incapable of ignoring the judgements of a trans-national legal institution, which means he will follow the ECHR, the ICC, and any other court the UK has signed up to.

Take a look at his career, and it's clear that he was a young man in a hurry who made the right impressions on the right people at the right time. I have no doubt that within his subject he's smart and capable.

But his subject is human rights law. Whereas it needs to be politics and direction.

And he's going to be Prime Minister until 2034.

God help us.

Highgate Road with Lens Flare

When the light is bright and the air is clear, almost anything is photogenic. 

Well, maybe not the entrance to Archway station. Some things can't be made to look pretty.

I took this in the approved style, by holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, framing in the viewer. Came out nice.

Hampstead Heath North Side

Until the other day I had never walked on the part of Hampstead Heath that is across Spaniards Lane from the main part of the Heath. Neither are really '"heaths", more like "untended forests" with paths that can turn I've-just-got-a-load-of-mud-on-my-shoes within a couple of steps. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun was brilliant yellow, and it was b****y cold.

I have joined the band of proper grown-up camera-owners, by trading in the 35mm lens I originally bought for the hard-to-obtain 27mm pancake lens that makes the X-E4 almost a pocket camera. It's 40mm-equivalent, which gives just a slightly wider field of view than the 35mm (53mm equivalent) but does not go all fish-eye.

Cuba Street, Isle of Dogs

Cuba Street is a narrow road that runs from the old West India Pier into the Isle of Dogs. This is that view.

It did not look like that when I was using the RiverBus to get there more than thirty years ago. It was all pretty derelict. The cream building on the corner was there then, but it was an old-school pub and I think scruffier. Go to the river end of Cuba Street, and look up what is known in the trade as the Limehouse Reach, and that view has not changed for almost forty years. Which is probably why I find it so restful(!). 

Autumn in Regent's Park

No further comment needed.

Canary Wharf - Security

I think the area within the North and South Colonnades, which has the the Underground station in the middle, is patrolled by security officers and may well be owned by the Canary Wharf people, and therefore private land. I was approached by a friendly security officer, who explained that their concern was people taking photographs of entrances to buildings, security camera locations and the like. We parted with a handshake and I carried on.

He meant an entrance like this...

Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.

Canary Wharf Towers

I went to Canary Wharf the other week. The first developer in there was a Canadian firm called Olympia and York. In Canada, it's so darn cold and the snow is so darn deep that the shopping centres of many larger towns are actually built underground. Not all of them, but certainly Toronto, where O&Y came from. The O&Y buildings have their shops below ground, and may other developers have followed this lead of doing nothing at street level. 

Another way of saying this is that there is no "street" at street level in Canary Wharf. "Street" should mean shops, cafes, restaurants, cars, taxis, buses, signs, lights, fly-posted adverts, and so on. At ground level. Flats, offices and light industrial ateliers from the first floor up. There are a few coffee and food trucks and some buses, but that's about it. 

The City of London is an industrial estate, but it has a variety of architectural styles and various eateries and drinkeries at street level - while Cheapside and Princes Street / Moorgate have actual recognisable retail outlets. But Canary Wharf is just a collection of high towers with some "architectural" gimmicks that only ever looked decorative in the architect's sketches. Metal-and-glass is metal-and-glass no matter how you angle it - it does not have the texture of stone or brick.