The sister of a colleague is having trouble with the truth, liars, lies, lying & falsehoods. She doesn’t know what they are. She has over a million Twitter followers & a huge media profile.
I worry for my colleague. Her sister. And the UK. I thought I might try to help.
A🧵/1.
The @OED will, I hope, forgive me for the inevitable process of simplification I’m about to apply to their learned entries. But I’ll try to avoid recreating the farrago of nonsense we’ve been seeing on the subject of truth & lying.
Let’s start with the meaning of “true”. /2.
This is quite easy really. For those not easily distracted by inverted pyramids of piffle.
To be true is to conform with reality & fact.
Which brings us to “truth”.
Truth is that which is true. Real. Factual.
Phew. We’re getting somewhere.
Bear with me. /3.
Let’s try our hand at “false” & “falsehood”.
If you were a person who criticises lawyers who get the better of you, but hires them to help you bend the rules, you’d be in heaven, looking for definitional loopholes.
If you had a moral compass you’d see “false” means “untrue”./4.
Getting warmer. “Falsehood”. Milton: “Let truth and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free & open encounter?”
A serious leader or commentator would stand for truth.
Lesser beings would first need to realise a falsehood is an untruthful statement. /5.
How about a “lie”?
Shall we just cut through it all? Perhaps with a smile. Whether or not that’s characterised by a great wordsmith as watermelon-like.
A lie is a statement which is untrue, or intentionally false.
Look carefully. Especially colleagues’ sister. Thanks. /6.
The verb to lie means to tell a lie. Or to make an intentionally false statement.
Pretty easy now. Or perhaps not. If you’re in the habit of describing entirely innocent people as looking like bank robbers. Or part of the postal infrastructure.
Let’s move on. /7.
This is quite exciting. We’re about to find out what a liar is.
We know a liar can’t be present in the House of Commons. The Speaker wouldn’t allow it. And no one’s permitted even to say it.
What a relief.
Because a liar is someone who lies. Tells falsehoods. Is untruthful./8.
Thank you @OED. What would we have done without you?
To recap.
A liar is someone who lies. Or tells falsehoods. Is untruthful.
The question of a liar’s intention isn’t an escape route from the requirement, on decent people, to tell the truth.
I’ll leave it at that. /9.
But not quite.
I said “the sister of a colleague”. That’s no longer true. If a “colleague” is someone working in the same corporation, institution or organisation, the strictly correct statement now is “former colleague”.
I wouldn’t wish to tell a lie. However small. /10. End
(Correction to tweet 6: “colleague’s sister”. Obvs).
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Donald Trump saying “Ukraine is finished” once again, starkly, highlights the question of what the world’s first & only (with the possible exception of Britain), & still remaining, hyper power would do geopolitically under his leadership.
But it isn’t just about Trump.
A 🧵/1.
I’ll be unashamedly Eurocentric.
There’s a broader & deeper story, of course. But Europe is a vital part of it.
The decision the USA has to make, as it did in the 1940s, & repeatedly at intervals after that, is whether it cares about Europe, & if so how much of it, & why. /2.
Does that include all of western Europe? Does it extend to central Europe? And eastern Europe? If so, should Ukraine be part of what the USA cares about (in the 40s that didn’t really play a role, given Ukraine’s status within the USSR)? And if so, how much of Ukraine? /3.
Brexit ripped us out of our $19 trillion GDP domestic market & reduced us to one a 6th of it, thumped our economy, fractured the UK, threw our governance into chaos, & generated perilous geopolitical effects.
And (if you mean it seriously) wildly naive about what actually takes place, legally (although you’d say “in my opinion this is unconstitutional”: good luck!) in the USA.
Still, if we just look at England/UK: yes, there are many concerns. /1.
I never said or, I hope, implied (to a fair, reasonable reader) that there weren’t.
For example (not the subject of my already long 🧵which focused on the way criminal incitement & freedom of expression relate) I personally deeply dislike revocation of citizenship. /2.
But you know that’s a thing in the USA as well, including for natural born citizens.
Involuntary self-revocation (in the guise of “voluntary relinquishment”) of citizenship sounds about as Kafkaesque as it gets.
But there it is, lurking malignantly in the Land of the Free. /3.
Twitter’s full of people trumpeting near zero understanding of English law or of the convictions in respect of the violence of the last 10 days or so.
Nor does the US 1st Amendment mean what many (often Americans) seem to think.
Frustrated? Maybe this will be some use.
A🧵/1.
“Incitement” was an offence under English common law pretty much forever.
In 2008 the Serious Crime Act 2007 replaced common law “incitement” with statutory offences of encouraging or assisting crime.
Incitement in respect of specific statutory offences remains. /2.
“Assisting” means roughly what you probably think it does. But, for clarity, it doesn’t require direct presence at the scene of the crime being “assisted”, or actions which are themselves part of that crime: if they assist the commission of it, that’s a criminal act itself. /3.
I’m not sure we yet know the whole truth about these men’s possible involvement, potentially as inciters to or participants in violence or even terrorism.
There are legitimate questions.
A 🧵/1.
To be guilty of terrorism in England, you don’t have to be physically present (see CPS guidance ⬇️). Similar considerations apply to some other crimes relevant to the current violent disorder.
“I was only tweeting” or “I was just asking questions” are far from safe defences. /2.
For the likes of Mr Musk or Mr Farage one might think their respective, prominent positions could protect them from criminal charges and severe consequences.
One might.
If one thought the AG, DPP, courts, police etc in England to be corrupt, weak or both.