Self-Corroboration

I recall from my dim and distant past that there is, within the Law of Evidence, a rule against self-corroboration. Well, that rule does not have sovereignty in the realm of the OG.

I mention this merely because I yesterday came across a quotation from eminent sociologist Erving Goffman, itself quoted within Alan Bennett's Writing Home. Anyway, being as self-involved as anyone who writes a blog I lighted on Goffman's remarks as adding weight to what I said about Keir Starmer on 7 January.

Young psychiatrists in state mental hospitals who are sympathetic to the plight of the patients sometimes express distance from their administrative medical role by affecting shirts open at the collar, much as do socialists in their legislative offices .. What we have in these cases is a special kind of status symbol - a disidentifier ... telling others not what he is but what he isn't quite.

I see this appliance of the disidentifier in the dressing habits of my successors in the legal profession. As I write this I realise, of course, that Starmer is one such successor.

Sloppy logic, I know. This is not really self-corroboration. But you get what I'm driving at - these are my prejudices and I'm sticking to them, it's taken years to acquire them.