Category: Housekeeping

25th June 2023

Here is a painting of an empty city.

It is a perfect, bright, ideal(ised) empty Renaissance cityscape.

And here is another (almost) empty though less cheerful cityscape:

It is from the great twentieth-century artist De Chirico.

Scroll up and down and compare and contrast the two urban depictions.

Similar architecture, but the latter has flawed inconsistent perspectives and a more ominous (near-)emptiness.

(You may have noticed that both the pictures above have often been banners or avatars for my social media accounts.)

*

Much of practical law and policy commentary offers a contrast between ideal systems, on one hand, and the incoherence and contradictions of reality, on another.

That is: between how things should work and how they do (and don’t) work – between the ideal Renaissance City and a latter day De Chirico city.

I have also spent most of my life in and around large cities, and so much of my writing carries urban perspectives – which, again like perspectives in a De Chirico painting, don’t always neatly join in the middle.

Anyway, this is just a way of saying I have changed the name of my Substack to Empty City.

I like the new name, and I hope you don’t mind it too.

And if you can subscribe at the Substack, that would be wonderful.

23rd June 2023

I hope all of you had a happy midsummer* – and now it will be another year before we get this much sunlight again.

My website had some unexpected problems, and it has been offline for a couple of days for repair and so on – and for this I apologise.

I have thereby taken some time to work on some long-delayed longer pieces for you.  These essays should be ready soon. I am sorry for the delay.  Researching and writing original detailed long-form content is not as easy as I sometimes fool myself into thinking it is.

I am also considering moving to a new publication schedule, of posting stuff here when there is something worth posting, rather than aiming to post once every weekday.

Sometimes this may mean a number of posts on a day, or a few weekdays between posts.

It also should mean fewer typos.

(Well. We can always hope.)

I am also thinking through the relationship between this site and the Substack.  At the moment I am usually publishing the same content on both.  But I am wondering if there should be divergence.

Let me know your response to any or all of the above by replying what you think in the comments below – I will read the comments though not necessarily publish them, and mark any comments which are “not for publication” accordingly.

I am especially anxious that those of you who are kind enough to support this site via Patreon and PayPal should feel that you are getting something in return.

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*For those of you in other hemispheres, please amend my text according to your taste.

5th June 2023

There will be no substantive post today, as I am preparing detailed posts on the Covid Inquiry judicial review, based on court documents, and on the Ben Roberts-Smith libel case (judgment here).

I am also writing an essay for paying subscribers on the 1973 Border Poll in Northern Ireland, an issue which is becoming increasingly topical.

I am sorry none of these are ready to be published today, and I hope they are worth the wait.

 

24th December 2022

Thank you all for following this blog, and I wish you all a happy Christmas.

May your gods (or significant others) rest you merry.

See you next week.

~ dag.

5th December 2022

I have decided to also start a substack, which I have called “the law and lore blog”.

You can find it here.

For now, I will just crosspost my daily blogpost from here over there, thereby running them in parallel.

I will always post here first, so you will keep getting the usual notification email.

I intend to keep posting here every weekday, as usual.

And once I have got used to the new medium, I will offer free subscriptions to the substack to all those who support and sponsor this blog.

But, in the new year, there may be some longer pieces, that take a lot of time and research, which I may offer on a subscription basis at new site.

Nobody who supports this law and policy blog though Patreon or Paypal will have to pay any subscription to the new blog.

If you have paid to support this blog, you will get a free pass at the new site if you want one.

The intended revenue stream will be brand new subscribers.

 

 

29th October 2022

Yesterday’s post went up late and it was on a contentious issue, where the views I expressed were probably not shared by many of those who follow this blog.

But still, at the time of writing, there were 141 comments – some of a high quality, and many were balanced on the PR issue.

Only one comment was not published by reason of irksomeness.

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Of course, comments moderation makes a difference.

Comments moderation is time-consuming, but I think it is worthwhile as it ensures a good standard of published comments.

I see my role as a letters’ editor of an old-style newspaper, where there was pride in what letters were published.

And so it is not like the anything-goes antics of “below the line” on other media sites.

I think it is a false economy for such sites not to pre-moderate their comments, as it means fewer (if any) sensible people will spend much time looking at the comments.

As for “free speech” (or “freeze peach”), nothing in my moderation policy is stopping a person from publishing a view elsewhere.

But curating the comments on this site is itself an exercise of free speech.

I especially welcome – and treasure – comments that show how my posts are wrong in detail or in principle or in reasoning, but without abuse and name-calling.

This is because the subject matter of this blog – law and policy and how the two connect – is the thing, and there really is no merit in saying things which are incorrect.

And so as Twitter becomes more of a Hellsite – and I spend far less time on there than I used to, and my main account there is now permanently locked – I would like readers and commenters to know that they are welcome here.

For it is possible to have polite discussions on the internet on contentious issues between strangers.

Thank you.

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Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

The comments policy is here.