Primacy of the liberal professions in Europe

June 27, 2008

A relatively unheralded development was the tabling, on 17 June, in the European Parliament of a written declaration on the significance of the liberal professions in Europe. The text, including the Preamble, is a call by the European Parliament as follows:

A. whereas the liberal professions, such as pharmacists or architects, are a key sector in the European economy,

B. whereas the liberal professions often provide public services in core areas of general interest (e.g. pharmacies) even in rural and economically less attractive areas,

C. whereas individual responsibility and provision should be seen as a fundamental expression of subsidiarity,

1. Calls on the Commission to respect the added value of the liberal professions to European society and to make sure that the liberal professions are not assessed solely on the basis of market-economy criteria;

2. Calls on the Commission to respect the self-governing structure of the liberal professions and their potential to help implement the Lisbon Strategy;

3. Calls on the Commission to acknowledge that a premature liberalisation of the liberal professions could lead to a decline in quality and in the full coverage of supply, as for example with medicine;

4. Calls on the Commission to consider more democratic methods when embarking on further reforms and to proceed jointly with Parliament and the Council, instead of initiating judicial proceedings when considering such reforms;

5. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the Council, the Commission and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
scissors

The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.