Stephen VasciannieEARLIER THIS month Britain was blanketed by news that the blunt David Blunkett had blundered. Blunket, the home secretary, has resigned essentially because he apparently sought immigration privileges for his lover's nanny.
The story has twists and turns. Blunkett is a rock solid member of Tony Blair's New Labour, but he has alienated several Cabinet colleagues with disparaging remarks about them in a book published earlier this month. He has also alienated human rights supporters by spearheading anti-terrorist measures that go beyond established constitutional norms.
Ultimately, though, Blunkett was brought down by an email. Blunkett had consistently denied that he had sought to accelerate processing of the nanny's application for indefinite leave to remain in Britain. And then, after about two weeks of turbulence, the smoking gun was found. The email, from an immigration official to Blunkett's office indicated: 'No favours but slightly quicker', and it was all over. Evidence of unjustifiable ministerial interference, goodbye Blunkett (at least for now).
Blunkett is not the first Blairite minister to fall on the email sword. Stephen Byers, a former transport minister, also fell victim of the new technology about two years ago. In Byers' case, he had failed, it seems, to take appropropriate action against an assistant in his office.
INSENSITIVITY
On or about the day of the al Qaida attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, Byers's assistant had e-mailed various colleagues to suggest that the attacks had created a good opportunity for the transport ministry to publish their bad news, on the assumption that no one would notice. When Byers did not dismiss the assistant for callous insensitivity, he started to dig his own political grave.
With respect to both Blun-kett and Byers, I rather doubt that the offending email writers would have put their thoughts in the form of an official letter. On the contrary, they would have been aware that official letters are readily used as evidence and easily placed in the archives.
So, it seems, the apparently transitory nature of email communication tricked them into political oblivion.
The prevalence of email has also influenced newspaper policy. The Gleaner insists that letter writers must give a verifiable home or office address, partly on the correct assumption that email addresses cannot be relied upon.
The London Times has, however, apparently given up on trying to verify the status of advertisers. Amidst its personal columns, the Times states in bold that it cannot check that its advertisers are bona fide: readers are therefore strongly recommended to take their own precautions before "entering into any agreement or any transaction on the Internet."
UNFORTUNATE
People are reading fewer newspapers because of the Internet; it is also likely that we are reading fewer books and magazines for the same reason. In some senses, this must be an unfortunate development. And here I am not simply trying to be an old fogey: to use a modern word, old time books are inherently more 'interactive' than computer based models.
The book is permanent, and can often be read at a more leisurely pace than Internet sources. You can understand the writer's thoughts more easily when they are in book form: if you lose the thread of an argument at page 234 you may easily go back to pages 26 and 59 to double check points and review the structure of the argument.
MAKE MARGINAL NOTES
All right, you can do this on the computer as well, so what's the big deal? It may be that in the case of the book, when you are moved to respond, you can indulge in marginalia. This sounds almost obscene, but I simply mean that you can make marginal notes as you work through an idea.
This may not be a major advantage, so perhaps I am simply, and unsuccessfully it seems, trying to find a way to justify my preference for paper over screens.
In the meantime, I rejoice at the news that Google is to put more than a million books from Oxford's Bodleian Library online. Books from libraries at Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and the New York Public Library will now be available in electronic form for all the world. Wonderful, wonderful computers.
Stephen Vasciannie is a professor at UWI, Mona and a consultant at the Attorney-General's chambers.
