My dear law students, I know that the events in Brisbane are at the top of your minds, so I will jump on the bandwagon and talk about one aspect of this wonderful test series that appealed to me. Right through the series, we have seen the role of fortune in a player’s success.

Rishabh Pant escaped a stumping before he went on to win the game for India in Brisbane. In Melbourne, Ajinkya Rahane was dropped before he went on to make a hundred. But is it not the case that we give these players credit for their achievements despite their fortune?
We also hold these players responsible even if what happened was their misfortune. India’s 36 in Adelaide was a collective failure no doubt but it was also a perfect cocktail of bad luck-pitch, conditions, and all the Australian bowlers managing to get their line & length right.
That’s test cricket, but we might say that’s life in general. Luck, good and bad, plays an important role in how the world judges us. We might go further and say that the law reflects life in this respect.
When I look at the way the law apportions responsibility, I am amazed that there is widespread acceptance of the system. Take the law of negligence that all of you study in the first year. The law of negligence establishes an objective standard of care.
The standard of care is that which is required of a hypothetical reasonable person in the circumstances of the alleged offender. So, if a person is actually ignorant, clumsy, lazy etc, he will still be subject to the objective standard of care expected of a reasonable person.
In a remarkable set of articles, Oxford’s Tony Honoré has analysed the moral issues that arise from the application of the standard of care in negligence law. I will try to summarise his ideas in this thread and also raise some questions.
Honoré begins by noticing the following point: People generally believe that a person who is negligent is someone who is at fault.
Traditionally, fault is ascribed to a person only when a person could have controlled the situation in which he found himself, and had the opportunity to act otherwise, but didn’t.
Applying this test to the law of negligence, a person would be guilty of negligence only if he could have met the applicable standard of care. This means an incompetent, clumsy, impatient or lazy person ought not to be held guilty of negligence.
However, this is clearly not true because of the application of the hypothetical model person test in the law of negligence. How do we then justify the law of negligence? Honoré has argued that we live in a system in which we allocate responsibility...
according to the outcomes of our actions, not moral qualities or circumstances. Is outcome responsibility fair? Honore provides two different justifications for outcome responsibility, neither of which is uncontroversial.
Honore argues that since we take credit for favourable outcomes (like the examples I gave in the beginning), we must accept responsibility for unfavourable outcomes as well. He believes that generally people benefit from a system that is essentially based on luck.
Ask yourselves if you are convinced by this argument. Some people appear to have more luck than others. If luck allocation among the population is not uniform, then why must we accept a system where the unluckier ones are punished more often?
Honore has another, more abstract justification for outcome responsibility. He believes that outcome responsibility is crucial to our identity as persons.
To quote Honoré, if actions and outcomes were not ascribed to us on the basis of our ‘bodily movements and their mental accompaniments’, we would have no ‘continuing history or character’.
Outcome responsibility makes us have an identity-we are what we are because we are responsible for our outcomes, good and bad.
How do you respond to Honoré? Is the idea of responsibility or accountability vital to our identities? Is the connection between identity and responsibility intuitively obvious?
I agree with Honore that it is a myth that, in law, fault is essential to responsibility. Fault can enhance the punishment for one’s actions, but legal responsibility depends on the outcomes of one’s actions, not one’s mental make up.
When you review Donoghue v Stevenson, go past the negligence issue and neighbourhood principle and ask yourself this question: what if the snail got into the bottle because the manufacturer’s employee was a clumsy sort?
Would it have made any difference to the finding on negligence? If not, negligence liability is as beset by bad luck as some of our unfortunate cricketers.
Ask yourself whether you are ready to accept a legal system that apportions responsibilities on the basis of outcomes, even if these outcomes are just plain bad luck.
Search for the philosophical foundations of the cases you study, even the ones that you think have bee n done to death. You might be surprised at what you find.

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Brief thread to debunk the repeated claims we hear about transmission not happening 'within school walls', infection in school children being 'a reflection of infection from the community', and 'primary school children less likely to get infected and contribute to transmission'.

I've heard a lot of scientists claim these three - including most recently the chief advisor to the CDC, where the claim that most transmission doesn't happen within the walls of schools. There is strong evidence to rebut this claim. Let's look at


Let's look at the trends of infection in different age groups in England first- as reported by the ONS. Being a random survey of infection in the community, this doesn't suffer from the biases of symptom-based testing, particularly important in children who are often asymptomatic

A few things to note:
1. The infection rates among primary & secondary school children closely follow school openings, closures & levels of attendance. E.g. We see a dip in infections following Oct half-term, followed by a rise after school reopening.


We see steep drops in both primary & secondary school groups after end of term (18th December), but these drops plateau out in primary school children, where attendance has been >20% after re-opening in January (by contrast with 2ndary schools where this is ~5%).

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I think a plausible explanation is that whatever Corbyn says or does, his critics will denounce - no matter how much hypocrisy it necessitates.


Corbyn opposes the exploitation of foreign sweatshop-workers - Labour MPs complain he's like Nigel

He speaks up in defence of migrants - Labour MPs whinge that he's not listening to the public's very real concerns about immigration:

He's wrong to prioritise Labour Party members over the public:

He's wrong to prioritise the public over Labour Party
Хајде да направимо мали осврт на случај Мика Алексић .

Алексић је жртва енглеске освете преко Оливере Иванчић .
Мика је одбио да снима филм о блаћењу Срба и мењању историје Срба , иза целокупног пројекта стоји дипломатски кор Британаца у Београду и Оливера Иванчић


Оливера Илинчић је иначе мајка једне од његових ученица .
Која је претила да ће се осветити .

Мика се налази у притвору због наводних оптужби глумице Милене Радуловић да ју је наводно силовао човек од 70 година , са три бајпаса и извађеном простатом пре пет година

Иста персона је и обезбедила финансије за филм преко Беча а филм је требао да се бави животом Десанке Максимовић .
А сетите се и ко је иницирао да се Десанка Максимовић избаци из уџбеника и школства у Србији .

И тако уместо романсиране верзије Десанке Максимовић утицај Британаца

У Србији стави на пиједестал и да се Британци у Србији позитивно афирмишу како би се на тај начин усмерила будућност али и мењао ток историје .
Зато Мика са гнушањем и поносно одбија да снима такав филм тада и почиње хајка и претње која потиче из британских дипломатских кругова

Најгоре од свега што је то Мика Алексић изговорио у присуству високих дипломатских представника , а одговор је био да се све неће на томе завршити и да ће га то скупо коштати .
Нашта им је Мика рекао да је он свој живот проживео и да могу да му раде шта хоће и силно их извређао