Understand The Welfare State

I have just read a wonderful book pandering to my prejudices, and I would recommend you to read it too.

James Bartholomew's The Welfare State We're In is a refreshingly critical book about the Welfare State. Easy to read, well argued, informative, historical, provocative, and well referenced.

In some ways it is depressing to contemplate the immense waste and destruction wrought by the often well meaning people who have brought about the welfare state, but it makes me optimistic that someone can pull together such a cogent and devastating critique, showing not just how ineffective and counter-productive the welfare state is, but how it helps explain and give a perspective to the enormous increase in crime and change in morality since the 1950s.

It is sometimes hard to imagine how anyone can any longer begin to challenge the vested interests behind the welfare state, and then reform it, but we have to start with rational critiques like this one, showing how things really are, how they once were, how they might have been, which then point to how things might yet be.

Read it now.

See the website too.

Subverting British Justice

The ejection of the Law Lords from the House of Lords has moved still closer with the recent announcement that the new Supreme Court will be sited in Middlesex Guildhall.

And so is brought closer another step in the erosion of the UK's constitutional wellbeing.

The change is not being made because there is or has been any problem with the quality of judging or judicial decision making or any lack of judicial independence (far from it), but to correct the supposed failure of the British constitution to separate the judiciary from the executive and legislature, thought to be implicitly required by the Human Rights Act.

The trouble is that removing the Law Lords from the House of Lords removes them from the most independently minded part of our constitutional structure.

As members of the House of Lords, the Law Lords have an independent standing which will be denied them under a government minister. At the moment they can look to the House of Lords itself for protection in the event of a dispute or crisis. And while the principal Law Lord is the Lord Chancellor, himself an eminent professional lawyer, and the Speaker of the House of Lords, he has a status, role, and standing giving him an independence and influence quite unlike other members of the Cabinet, and as a matter of professional integrity, a personal interest in defending the judiciary. It is significant that in Lord Falconer, the current Lord Chancellor doing the hatchet job we have a placeman who does not match the personal and professional profile required for the Lord Chancellorship (but then he was never intended for such a role - it had supposedly been abolished in a press release).

Isolated from the Lords, and without a standing independent of their government department, and run by an ordinary Minister the judiciary's dynamics will change. Their selection will reflect political priorities far more than today - the selection panels can have no true independence from the politicians: our safeguard today is that the Lord Chancellor is not an ordinary politician. The change will affect the career calculations of our leading lawyers, and as the status of our senior judges is diminished, this will in future affect the quality of our leading judges. Above all, it changes the environment in which the senior judges will work, and makes them more vulnerable to political and bureaucratic pressure. It will not just be most senior judges who will be affected - any change in their status and independence will have a knock on effect on the judges below them: we are moving the whole judiciary to an inferior status, making it much more subject to the government, and isolating it from Parliament.

If the separation of powers is so important - how then can the system of drawing the government from Parliament, i.e. the legislature, be countenanced? The whole idea of applying a separation of powers to the UK is based on a misconception of our system of government. Perhaps the intention is in time also to remove the monarchy and elect an executive president?

State Bullies Fail Children

Why is there not more support for education vouchers and other schemes to give power and choice back to parents, and away from government and its bureaucracies?

See Samizdata.net for another example of the failure of the state system to provide for the needs of children as individuals, and worse, to undermine and bully the attempts of parents who want something a little different for their child.

My own experience with Hampshire's LEA leaves me with every sympathy for the Williams. Hampshire still believes it can act however it pleases, and then stonewall any attempt to bring it to account.

New Drugs Tests For Motorists

The Telegraph reports drivers face new roadside tests, such as standing on one leg:

If police judge that the suspect's reactions indicate that driving ability has been impaired by illegal or certain prescription drugs, charges could follow.

Surely what should determine fitness to drive is whether you can drive properly, whatever you may or may not have been consuming?

Useless Tory Proposal To Cut MPs

The Tories will cut the numbers of MPs to save £30m:

The Conservatives have said they will cut the number of MPs, ministers and special advisers by a fifth within five years if they win the election.

Another proposal showing the Tories have lost the plot.

Will it enhance MPs' independence? No, because British political parties are increasingly centralised and state funded. The central party machines dominate MP selection, and are insulated from local party associations by state funding.

Will it reduce the payroll vote? No, the number of ministers is not determined by the number of MPs. If a governing party wished to reduce the number of ministries they could do it now.

Will it make for a better Parliament? No, it reduces the pool of available talent. It is what MPs do that matters, not how many of them there are. Far better if MPs actually scrutinised legislation, instead of passing endless enabling Acts which let the UK/EU government legislate by regulation.

Will it save money? Marginally, perhaps, but £30 million is so little in the overall scheme of government expenditure. Leaving the EU would save far more on MEP salaries and expenses - apart from the benefit of having the freedom to reduce the £100 billion annual cost of regulation.

Will it make for a smaller state? The number of MPs has nothing to do with the size of the government machine, or the range of activities it undertakes, or the volume or complexity of regulations. In that sense reducing the number of MPs is irrelevant. It might make some sense if the government's role in society was substantially reduced, and politicians had little to do, but reducing the role of government has to come first. At the moment the problem is that MPs are not doing what they should be doing, viz. representing the electorate and scrutinising legislation and the executive.

Come on Conservative Party! Surely you can do better than this?

Britain - Land Of The Ever Less Free

The Telegraph reports:

Up to 600,000 people each year who apply for their first passports will have to attend an interview under a scheme announced yesterday by the Home Office.

It is ever clearer that the government regards itself as master, and we all live on sufferance. Travel is a privilege, and the passport is not supplied to clear the way and help us travel, but as a means of control.

The purpose behind ID cards is the creation of a unified national database - principally for the surveillance and control of British nationals (the 26 million transient foreigners annually are not to be subject to it, thereby negating many of the supposed reasons for having it).

Now the government announces all adult passports issued for the first time will require an interview from 2006, at one of 70 centres around the country. This means travel, and travel expense, and time off work, and time waiting for interview, and time being interviewed, and time being processed and approved. And being subject and beholden to some self-important official, and whatever personal questions he chooses to ask. An intrusion into one's life and privacy.

All for our own good, of course. I don't think so.

What the government announcement is really saying is that it is setting up the system by which, when the ID cards come along, we will all have to go along for "interviews" to get our passports, whether for the first time or not.

Britain becomes less attractive by the day, and, so long as they subscribe to this evil, it is another reason the Tories will not get my vote. Time for the 1952 Committee.

Right Not To Be Offended?

We have just seen a play close in Birmingham because Sikh protesters used violence, and the forces of law and government lacked the will to defend free speech, which if it is to mean anything means allowing people to offend others.

I think Mark Steyn has it right when (discussing mainly USA examples) he says:

The elevation of the right not to be offended into the bedrock principle of democratic society will, in the end, tear it apart.

If this is a consequence of the creation of a multicultural society, it is a heavy price to pay.

Government To Risk Coaching Witnesses

The Government is hell bent on dismantling the traditional safeguards of the criminal justice system. It now wants to let prosecution lawyers interview prosecution witnesses - a practice currently prohibited because of the risk of the prosecution coaching its witnesses, and tainting their evidence.

A particular motivation seems to be the Damilola Tayor case, where a young witness proved unreliable. In other words, the Government is keen that child and other vulnerable witnesses be interviewed before trial.

Yet it is child and other vulnerable witnesses in a trial that are at especial risk of being used by others; are most at risk of being coached; and pose special problems in being interviewed. See relevant article on child interviews.

Defence lawyers would be excluded from these interviews, further reducing confidence in the proposed system.

To compound the problem the Government is saying there is no need for these interviews to be recorded by video or audio, and that only written notes need be made.

In other words, there will be no record of the interview independent of the prosecution; no possibility of evaluating the effect of the interview on the witness; and no possibility of assessing the prosecutor's use of the interview. And of course, the prosecution have a career interest in successful prosecutions.

Liberty has already submitted cogent criticism of the proposals, which were floated at least a year ago.

Hard cases make bad law.

Straw Repudiates Law Lords' Decision

It is ironic that Jack Straw invokes the special immigration appeals tribunal to support his case:

Mr Straw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The people concerned have a right of appeal to a special immigration appeals tribunal, which is chaired by a high court judge, and on each of the cases of the people currently detained the decision to certify them as requiring detention was approved by that court.

Because as the BBC reports:

When the men were first held, they took their cases to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

The commission ruled on 30 July, 2002 that the anti-terror act unjustifiably discriminated against foreign nationals as British people could not be held in the same way.

The Court of Appeal felt bound to overrule the Commission: hence the House of Lords judgment.

EU's Preponderance Is "Dangerous Timebomb"

The EU says the "Big Four" auditors are too powerful and dominant, and should be broken up.

I say, the EU's preponderance is itself a dangerous timebomb, and it should be broken up into separate nation states, each with their own autonomous government, and accountable through national parliaments to their own people.

"Can independence be preserved"? At the moment, and as envisaged by its proposed constitution, the EU is not democratically accountable, and keeps usurping the role of national governments. The EU does not have a democratic government - it is run by a cabal of heads of state and officials. The people of Europe are unable to throw out the EU government, and their national politicians are powerless to decide any of the ever growing range of matters over which the EU has competency.

The latest evidence is that the EU is costing its members 12% of GNP - over £100 billion a year in Britain alone - in adhering to the EU's regulations. EU competitiveness report (pdf).

The EU is currently putting in place structures to support foreign and military policies, including a foreign minister, military expeditionary forces, and Galileo a satellite system.

Internally, the EU is constructing centralised police, justice and surveillance systems and institutions.

Can Man Really Control The Weather?

The Scotsman reports research suggesting the world is 0.44C warmer in 2004 than the average for 1961 - 1990, and that the last decade has seen 9 of the 10 warmest years since 1861 when global records began.

If the world really is getting warmer, is it down to Man or natural causes (such as sunspots)?

The University of Bern thinks it really is getting warmer.

The Max Plank Institute thinks its down to natural causes.
Stanford isn't sure.

If the world really is getting warmer, is that a bad thing?

The US NCPA reckons cutting emissions is very expensive, and unlikely to make much difference.

The Canadians agree.

So if the world really is getting warmer, is it easier to adapt to that or to attempt to control the weather? Personally, I would go with adapting to it.

Britain's Muslim Question

Britain is increasingly dominated by the Muslim question.

The seemingly perpetual 'War on Terror', a war against Muslim 'extremists', throws up questions of freedom, discrimination, and the rule of law: for example, the anti terror measures, including detention without trial, the Civil Contingencies Act, draconian asset confiscation powers in the Proceeds of Crime Act, and now ID cards.

The Muslim question raises fears about how to keep the large immigrant Muslim populations in the UK and other Western countries onside, to prevent them becoming disaffected, and an enemy within, while at the same time avoiding them becoming the subject of resentment: because either possibility could lead to civil unrest. The government wants to introduce an offence of incitement to religious hatred mainly as a sop to the Muslims, but also partly to suppress discontent with them.

Other EU countries have discovered their own problems with immigrant populations, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Spain. With Turkey's possible entry to the EU, they are wary of adding fuel to what may prove a fire.

Government Contempt For Rule Of Law

The Law Lords have ruled that the law used to detain foreign terrorist suspects without trial conflicts with the Human Rights Act, is discriminatory, and incompatible with the rule of law.


The BBC reports:

Detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial breaks human rights laws, the UK's highest court has ruled.


In a blow to the government's anti-terror measures, the House of Lords ruled by an eight to one majority in favour of appeals by nine detainees.


The Law Lords said the measures were incompatible with European human rights laws, but Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the men would remain in prison.


He said the measures would "remain in force" until the law was reviewed.


Most of the men are being held indefinitely in Belmarsh prison, south London.

Law Lords ruling in full (382kb pdf file)


The Government has known all along the anti-terrorist measures are a violation of established principles of English law, including habeas corpus, which has applied to Englishman and foreigner alike.


The problem is that the Government has contempt for legal restraints on its actions, and for the idea of due process.


Ever since the Government came to power it has been trying to throw off the yoke of the traditional principles of criminal law and due process in favour of flexible administrative powers and penalties:

• So we have anti terrorist measures which allow potentially indefinite detention, without trial or cause, on the basis of suspicion;
• We have the Proceeds of Crime Act, which allows the confiscation of money and other assets from people, on the basis of suspicion and without at any point having to secure a conviction (even following an acquittal), and where the onus is then on the victim of the confiscation to prove their right to the assets;
• The Proceeds of Crime Act also turns professional advisers and others into secret state informers, as they are obliged to report in secret any suspicion they may have that their client may hold assets wrongfully (including, for example, trivial amounts of unpaid tax);
• We have ASBOs - which enable the courts (on the basis of hearsay and a civil burden of proof) to restrain people from doing virtually anything or visiting anywhere, for potentially indefinite durations, in cases where they may not even have committed an offence. Breach of an ASBO is a criminal offence carrying a penalty of up to 5 years in prison, and effectively allows the authorities to invent new crimes tailored to individual people.

Should Juries Be Challenged?

The UK Government is looking at whether jury verdicts should be open to challenge on the basis of prejudice, after the House of Lords considered the conviction of a Pakistani where a juror afterwards alleged the other jurors had been racially prejudiced.

But that is a risk for anyone in a trial: that the jury will pick on some irrelevant detail or use poor reasoning in arriving at their verdict.

The main safeguard is surely that the courts heed the jury members who do not fall into the trap and refuse to convict. Traditionally, all jury members had to reach agreement for a guilty verdict, but the risk of a wrongful conviction is much increased now that majority verdicts are allowed.

If people are concerned about prejudice in the juryroom, the answer is to revert to the requirement of a unanimity for a guilty verdict.

That is far preferable to opening up juries to "investigations", which would challenge their independence and finality, essential if juries are to be able to stand up to pressure and (in time) possible intimidation from the state, and act as the safeguard of last resort against bad law.

If someone is found guilty in the face of the evidence, there is always the possibility of an appeal, doubtless helped along by the misgivings of the trial judge.

The other reason not to countenance opening up the jury's proceedings after the event is that the state will use it as a device, not so much to ensure wrongful convictions are quashed, but as a way to secure convictions after acquittals. And the fear of losing more cases is the principal reason there will be no return to the requirement for unanimity in guilty verdicts.

Judge Ends Mushroom Abuse Case

One judge seems to have some sense of justice. Yesterday, Claire Miskin, a Crown Court Recorder, stopped the case against two men accused of selling magic mushrooms.

According to the Guardian, she ruled

the law was so ambiguous that to put them on trial amounted to an "abuse of process". She recommended that parliament consider new legislation to clarify the legal position.

Two years ago the Home Office issued guidance that selling magic mushrooms was legal. Now it seems to want to change its mind, and the police in some parts of the country are rounding people up with a view to bringing charges.

What does it say about the police that they can be so susceptible to Government pressure?

What does it say about Government and officialdom that they think they can in effect make and unmake the law at whim? And then make fun for themselves prosecuting those then ensnared?

Health Risk From Tax?

The Government is warning people against the 15% of cigarettes sold in the UK which are smuggled into the country. Many are 'fake' - made in Eastern Europe and China to look like well-known brands - and can contain high levels of toxic substances, like lead and arsenic, and so are even more dangerous to health than normal cigarettes.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that it is only worth supplying fake cigarettes because high taxes make legitimate ones so expensive - tax makes up £3.77 or nearly 80% of the price of a pack of 20.

Should the Government cut the tax on cigarettes to improve smokers' health?

Politically Correct Justice

The Court of Appeal has thrown out an attempt by the Government to increase the sentence of a man convicted of child cruelty last April.

I still find it very wrong that anyone should be taken back to court for the prosecution to have a go at setting the sentence.

It seems to me to infringe the double jeopardy rule, in the sense that the convicted person is unable simply to accept the punishment and get on with their life (but then this is the government which is open to retrying acquittals).

It also puts the prosecution in a position which they are not ordinarily in - demanding a particular sentence - which is really a matter for the judge's discretion, after hearing all the evidence and legal submissions. We will see the development of case law, with less latitude for judicial discretion, and more pressure, I suspect, for politically correct sentences.

Another question arises in my mind. This case predates the change in the law which previously allowed "reasonable chastisement" of children by their parents. The man was convicted of child cruelty and was said to have a "distorted view" of how to discipline children.

The methods described in the Telegraph report do not seem to me in themselves outlandish, just to hark back to different times, and the Court accepted they had not caused injury, presumably including psychological injury.

Is administering a slipper beyond the pale? It is not so long ago it was common. Or lightly caning backsides with bamboo? This was a school punishment. Dipping boys in cold baths for 20 seconds? A recent television programme putting volunteers through a school regime of 40 years ago used cold showers and cold swims as punishment (feeling unable to use a cane).

What then is the undistorted, acceptable view of how to discipline children, given the legitimacy of "reasonable chastisement"?

Politically Correct University Admissions

The Government increases its control over universities by placing responsibility for admissions with a bureaucracy, rather than academics.

This will make it easier to make universities conform with the Government's idea of what universities should look for when admitting candidates, and reduces the importance of specialist academic factors in selection, particularly at interview - because the specialist academics will not be making the decisions.

To maintain their learning and educational functions, and their ability to achieve their intellectual best, without compromising to the latest political fad, universities must regain and maintain their independence.

Who knows what factors the Government may in future deem relevant and decisive?

Ban To Cut Out Knife Crime?

So Blunkett proposes yet another ban - to stop under 18s buying knives, because so many crimes involve knives, and youths arm themselves with them. Apart from creating more types of crime, and inconveniencing people, it will have no effect.

The trouble is the problem is not with buying knives, or using knives, but with using them as weapons.

I had a sheath knife as a Scout (I may even have had one as a Cub, but I can't remember), and many - perhaps most boys - had penknives, perhaps they still do. Boys generally have knives for innocent purposes, and I believe it is a good thing for them to learn how to use them and look after them.

The underlying problem signalled by knife crime is that the police are not policing properly. They generally react to, but don't prevent crimes. (Perhaps I am being kind, because many people complain the police don't even react to crimes).

My local police station is large, and its car park looks pretty busy. But how many police do we see on the street? On the beat? Very few. What on earth are the rest doing?

Clean up crime on the street, and keep it cleaned up.

Why should people pay to have their police huddled inside stations and cars? We want them on the streets! There are heaps of police, you just can't see them. Is it any wonder that people are increasingly employing their own security firms? They shouldn't have to - or if they should, they shouldn't have to pay for the police too.

If you're going to ban knives, what about all hand tools? All sharp objects and implements? Where does it stop? Razor blades?

There will be 16 year olds who have set up home and will be unable legally to buy common kitchen utensils and household tools. How absurd!

For more questions, see Spy Blog, which kindly brought this my attention.

EU Military Pretensions

The EU aspires to superpower status: it is giving itself a Foreign Minister, and forming an Army.

It seeks to rival the USA - a neo-imperialist aspiration which I cannot see is in anyone's interest, and risks conflict with our closest ally.

The penny is just beginning to drop.

Of course Richard North got there long ago on the EU Referendum website.

How to Cut Tax

The way to cut taxes is for governments to do less.

If they really want to cut tax, the Tories will have to do more than cut waste.

They need to make clear why they want to cut tax - then act on it.

They need to change the moral climate and sell the benefits of people doing things themselves rather than having so much of their income already spoken for by the state.

Why does anyone still think the state is an effective provider of service?

Animals Use Tools Too

What is the difference between humans and other animals?

Is it that man uses tools while other animals do not?

A team from Cambridge University has seen wild capuchin monkeys in Brazil's Caatinga forests digging with stones, using tools to help collect food.

So man is not alone in using tools.

How much longer can Man consider himself something apart from the rest of Nature?

Government Does Too Much

I look at the paper this morning and see more proposals to cut the debt of the poorest countries, and increase aid.


But what is the point? Foreign aid is counterproductive, sustaining corrupt regimes, lining pockets, and avoids real reform, both in the recipient countries, and in the trade terms offered by donor countries.


The politicians are buying votes again with gesture politics.


Just as they buy votes by their health and education programmes. No matter that pets are treated better, faster, and cheaper by private vets than their owners are by the NHS. No, the politicians pretend they can run a health care system for the entire country better than it could be done privately.


Just as they pretend they can run a schools system for the entire country better than it could be done privately. Even when the private sector is patently better than the state sector, a gap that widened with the closure of the grammar schools, and widens still.


Politicians are such good organisers, aren't they? We elect them as managers, don't we? They know one size always fits all: they have no compunction about making it fit.


Why do people keep voting them in?


I think because too many people have become dependent on the state, not only for direct provision of the services, but for money, and often for their jobs. They find it hard to imagine how things could be any different. They fear the disruption of change.


And there is a moral degeneration: people have become less self reliant, and less charitable. In the past it was widely accepted that people were responsible for those less fortunate than themselves, and charitable giving, work, and benefaction were far more common than today. And now people are far less concerned to maintain themselves (or others), and have a far greater willingness to be dependent on the state (and let the state look after others). Between the two the state is picking up an ever larger clientele of dependents, the burden of which becomes an excuse for ever greater regulation of us all.

It changes the ethics and culture of health and education provision too. The principle motivation is no longer charitable, with patient or pupil interests at the centre, but bureaucratic, with political interests dominant.


In the long run everyone would be much better off if the state did far less than it does now. It seems obvious to me. Is it not obvious to everyone?

Man Killing Sea Life

A UK report from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution says man has caused commercial fish stocks to decline by 80% or more.

Fishing is subsidised globally to the tune of £8bn - £16bn a year; the destruction continues with industrial fishing on a massive scale; and meanwhile consumers are recommended to eat still more fish.

The report recommends banning fishing from 30% of the sea to let stocks recover.

However, the UK must look to the EU to introduce any ban, because control over fishing has been surrendered to Brussels.

The same EU which has created much of the problem of over-fishing around Britain, with a system of quotas which cause huge quantities of fish, including immature stock, to be caught, killed, and dumped.

The same EU which has refused to take measures to stop the killing of hundreds of dolphins in British waters.

And the same EU which - along with the Royal Commission - also seems unaware that simple bans are likely to exacerbate the damage to some species as some stocks overwhelm others.

While the UK needs desperately to take back control over its own fisheries, and manage them properly, mankind generally should take far less (and more carefully) from the sea. We are rapidly altering the sea's ecology, and risk destroying the species which rely on the stocks we are decimating.

But how, when most people regard the rest of creation purely as means?

Incitement To Religious Hatred

Freedom requires tolerance, and a certain resilience.

If no-one is prepared to tolerate things they don't like to hear, then no-one will be able to say anything contentious. If no-one can say anything contentious, then no-one can challenge the status quo - whether that is in terms of ideas or institutions.

Those who hope to benefit from a law against inciting religious hatred ought to develop a thicker skin, because if they don't our society will be less free, less flexible, less adaptive, less rational, and less worth living in.

Dogs That Talk

Did you know dogs can talk?

Professor Slobodchickoff from North Arizona has been researching prairie dogs for many years now, and believes the dogs have a language they use to communicate. He believes he's identified at least 20 different words.

To me it is evidence that more goes on in animals' heads than they are generally given credit for, and there is less of a divide between mankind and the rest of the animal kingdom than most people would like to think.

Time to revisit meat eating?

EU Government Snooping

I find it amazing that governments do not get more opposition to their snooping schemes.

The EU Observer reports on EU justice ministers progressing their plans to force telecoms companies and ISPs to retain information about our phone calls and emails.

Naturally they dress it up (as so much else) as part of 'the fight against terrorism'.

It is not enough to snoop selectively: no, they 'need' to gather information on all of us. And then, as with the UK Proceeds of Crime Act, they will happily use the data for monitoring whoever they want, whenever they want, for whatever reason.

There would be no difference in principle were they to copy and store our paper correspondence, put CCTV cameras in our homes, and record all our conversations.

How do they get away with it? Does 1984 not send shivers down people's spines anymore?

For Drunk Read Sober

A Finnish pilot, Heikki Tallila, arrested at Manchester Airport in August for being over the UK's blood alcohol concentration limit for pilots, has been sentenced to 6 months in prison.

The pilot was found to have 49mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, against a legal limit of 20mg.

Most of the news reports describe him as having been 'drunk'.

But the UK limit for car drivers is 80mg. As a car driver the pilot would not have been considered drunk, not by a long way.

Heikki Tallila may have exceeded the 20mg limit, but was that violation really so serious that it warranted a prison sentence, let alone one of 6 months?

Do readers of this blog consider themselves drunk after a glass of wine?

Would Judge John Burke, QC, who sentenced Heikki Tallila, consider himself drunk on 49mg? Or the police who arrested him? Or the prison staff who keep him?

Does our legal system promote justice or injustice?

Is it staffed by decent men, or hypocrites just 'doing their jobs'?