This piece at the Spectator is an interesting look at the challenges, based on Dalrymple’s experience, of being an expert witness in a trial. The best expert witnesses, he says, are not necessarily the most esteemed in their fields, because those kinds of experts are often too busy to pore over the details of the case and are unaccustomed to having their opinions questioned:

What is needed, then, is not a star, but a jobbing but competent plodder who does not consider himself too important to read 2,000 largely irrelevant pages, if only because he fears being decimated in the box. Caution, fear and a certain degree of fight (but not too much) are what make a good witness in the game of law.

The law is not only a game, however: much that is real depends on it. But strategy and tactics are as necessary for the witness to carry his point as possession of the truth uttered with the certainty of an Old Testament prophet.

Mental disorders, safety warnings, deadly snakes and bad architecture. Dalrymple’s second diary entry from his trip to Australia covers a lot of ground.

Although I have known for a long time that Australia is the most highly urbanised society in the world, I have always thought of Australians as tough individualists, both physically and mentally. Therefore, I have been somewhat surprised by the number of safety warnings in Australia. This morning there was a new one at North Sydney station: ‘Don’t be distracted by your mobile phone, help us to keep you safe’. From what, exactly? About half the people in my carriage — on my rough estimate — were glued to their telephones the whole way, disregarding the advice. What did they risk, apart from banality?

I’ve just realized that we’ve missed several articles by Dalrymple in the Spectator. His most recent piece there is a short diary of musings about his just-completed speaking tour of Australia, in which, I was surprised to read, he says that he regularly turns down offers of appearances on British television:

I am plunged into a round of appearances in the media. In England I refuse invitations to go on television by claiming subsequent engagements, or by telling them that in my opinion television is one of the great curses of the last century — which in part, I believe. This generally puts producers off, though not before they tell me that they agree with me. But in my role as a visiting scholar for the Centre for Independent Studies, I am pressganged into my press duties. Still jet-lagged, and with my head feeling as if it were full of lead shot, I find myself in the absurd position of having to give an opinion on the Government’s proposal that the states of Australia should have charge of their own income tax.

Anyway, it’s comforting to know that Dalrymple still writes occasionally for the journal that gave him his start as a writer. Rather than post all of these missed pieces individually, I will just list them here.

24 Oct 2015: Notes on Notes

18 Feb 2016: How references became meaningless in our culture of mistrust

5 Mar 2016: British expats in the EU fear a stronger euro far more than they fear Brexit

26 Mar 2016: Why Britain (and Europe) depends on migrants

Dalrymple writes at the Library of Law and Liberty on a criminological study that attempts to develop a method for predicting the rate of recidivism. Unfortunately, the study begins with some faulty philosophical premises…

The authors also tell us that the prediction of reoffending may help authorities to decide on dates of release of prisoners. This can mean only that prisoners deemed at low risk of reoffending are to be released sooner than those deemed at high risk, even if their crimes that were proved beyond reasonable doubt were similar or the same. In other words, prisoners are to be punished (or relatively rewarded) not for what they did do, but for what they might do in the future.

This would not be so arbitrary and contrary to the rule of law if the predictions were 100 per cent accurate, or very nearly so: but of course they are not.

…and then proceeds to make statistical mistakes as well:

Whether the prisoners reoffended or failed to reoffend was counted in binary fashion: yes or no. One, two or a hundred offences counted as one. Swedish criminals may be less productive of crimes than British; but even so, it is likely that the true recidivism rate was more than 100 per cent, as measured by crimes committed and not by convictions. Of this the authors of the paper showed no awareness whatever.

Read the rest here

What surprises have been revealed by the so-called Panama Papers scandal? That people go to great lengths to reduce their taxes? Surely we already knew that. One interesting lesson, though, is that people think recovering that extra “lost” tax revenue would make a difference.

…even if the money hidden offshore were paid in taxation, it does not follow that public services such as schools would improve proportionately. After all, it cannot be for lack of expenditure that a significant proportion of British children are semiliterate after eleven years of compulsory attendance at school.

Dalrymple at Taki’s Magazine

Who is to blame for prostitution, the suppliers or the consumers (to put it in crass economic terms)? The question itself betrays a false assumption. Does it really have to be one or the other? Apparently, France seems to think so.

It has passed a law, similar to those passed in a few other countries such as Sweden, criminalizing the patronage of prostitutes. Patrons will be fined and sent to an education course on the harms of prostitution. The supply side will not be criminalized, however, because the suppliers—those who in right-thinking publications such as the world’s leading medical journals are now called sex workers—are considered victims.

One thing is often overlooked in the debate over whether Britain should leave the EU: doing so might improve the country, but it won’t solve the underlying problems.

In the end Brexit is almost a distraction from the real problems of British society. Its partisans argue that the European Union is destroying our traditions, but the British people have long shown a less than robust attachment to them, anyway. There was not so much as a sigh, let alone a protest, when the previous Prime Minister, Tony Blair, changed the constitution on a personal whim.

The notion of the free-born Englishman has long since been of no application. The average Briton wants to be a ward of the state and regrets only that the state is not generous enough. The threats to Britain come mostly from Britain, not from the European Union.