Right or Wrong?

Cut MPs' Pay - Public Service Means Personal Sacrifice

2009-05-25T11:35:00.003+01:00

Boris is right, we need a Parliament of rebels, MPs who actually consider legislation, tell their whips to get stuffed, and vote with their conscience.

MPs who are in Parliament out of a sense of duty and public service, perhaps?

But if public service is what being an MP is about, then where is the personal sacrifice?

Where is the career forgone, the business neglected, the leisured life abandoned?

Politics today offers what is for most people a lucrative career in its own right. So much so that MPs have lost credibility as public servants: all too many are now revealed as troughers, in politics first and foremost for their personal benefit. It is a politics corrupted.

Unfortunately it is not just a matter of individual personal corruption, but wholesale corruption; a corruption run rife, yet somehow mostly "within the rules".

What has happened is that MPs collectively have built a corrupt and privileged system, which, exploited by the party leaderships, has led to the weak and servile behaviour Boris bemoans.

The trouble is that MPs’ pay and perks are now so great, and MPs' dependence on their party leaderships for their positions is so complete, that MPs will never find it in themselves to be independent. If an MP is disowned by his party it means forgoing not only his seat in Parliament, but his entire career and income.

If we want men of conscience to be our MPs, then we need to cut, or even eliminate altogether, the financial rewards, the allowances and expenses, the plush offices, and the staffs. Let careerists make their careers elsewhere.

We will not eliminate party, but we can reduce its power of patronage.

Why the Real Economy Needs Gold To Beat the Financial Crisis

2008-10-07T16:49:00.003+01:00

Many people, including, I suspect, many policy-makers, talk about the spill-over from the current financial crisis into the “real economy”, or how to avoid it.

The truth is there is no division. The market in its widest sense is about using scarce resources in the ways they are most valued - to serve individuals’ ends most effectively.

The price mechanism determines what is required to achieve different ends, and the utility of using the different means available, and the relationship between present and future wants largely determines interest rates.

The current financial crisis is a symptom of the need to realign resources, of the impossibility of the current organisation and allocation of resources meeting people’s most valued and urgent wants.

The progress of the financial crisis is the process of a reallocation of capital and of priorities between present and future wants.

The change is so sudden and violent because for many years governments have sought to manipulate the capital markets to achieve “growth” and prosperity. They have done this by artificially lowering interest rates, giving the impression that capital is cheaper (more plentiful) than it really is. Capital is not money as such, even if it is normally represented by money. Because the price (money) and interest rate mechanisms have been distorted, there has been a false accounting: people have lived beyond their means, consuming capital - the future seed-corn.

The sudden change in the financial markets is the result of the dropping of a collective penny, of chickens coming home to roost. The existing allocation of capital is found to be unsustainable. We have to cut our cloth to suit our means, cutting our expenditure and dedicating more resources to future (capital) purposes.

No amount of government money creation can avoid that truth. All it can do is obscure people’s real wants and what really needs to be done to best meet them, continuing to divert capital to sub-optimal ends.

It is true that deflation (like inflation) has untoward effects, itself affecting people’s behaviour, diverting them from the best paths. But the time to take steps to avoid deflation was in the past. The crisis is on us now and the quickest way through it is to let it happen. The best way to avoid a recurrence is to revert to a sound money policy - meaning a non-manipulatory policy by the government, probably best achieved by reversion to the gold standard, simply because there is little scope for the government to create or destroy a gold currency.

What Would You Do If You Ruled The World?

2008-07-27T20:59:00.003+01:00

What three things would you do if you ruled the world?

This is what I would do:

First, I would restrict government spending to a maximum of 10% of GDP.

Second, I would forbid secondary legislation (i.e. The passing of enabling acts which allow the creation of further law and regulation at the discretion of ministers and officials).

Third, I would insist on maintaining parliamentary sovereignty.

Why these things?

Taxation must be limited because in taxing us the state co-opts us in the pursuit of its collective ends, which is necessarily at the expense of our ability to pursue our individual ends in life.

Secondary legislation must be eliminated because it gives law making powers to the executive, enabling them to avoid the rule of law: law becomes whatever they say it is.

It also makes feasible the creation of far more law, and law which is detailed and prescriptive instead of being general principles of conduct. Insisting on primary legislation helps limit the scope of government, and curtail the ambitions of politicians and bureaucrats.

And Parliament must retain its sovereignty, because it is through the mechanism of parliamentary government that those who govern are kept accountable to the people, and that there is a mutually understood relationship between the two.

Maintaining parliamentary sovereignty is of course another reason secondary legislation should be eliminated: it prevents the legislature from passing law making powers to bodies which have no accountability or relationship to the people - the road to eventual tyranny.

Lisbon Treaty Exposes EU Anti-Democracy

2008-06-20T13:24:00.003+01:00

Isn’t it nice to have a government that ignores its people? Isn’t it nice that Gordon Brown, heading quite possibly the most unpopular government Britain has known in modern times, goes off and ratifies the Lisbon Treaty when it is as obvious as can be the treaty would be overwhelmingly rejected by the British people, were they given the opportunity?

Should it take effect, the treaty enables the transfer of yet more powers from Parliament to the EU. In practice the powers would be transferred to the 27 heads of government of the EU’s constituent states who, acting collectively as the European Council, would be able to draw down and exercise those powers without further reference to the member state Parliaments (i.e. with one bound they are free of their peoples, and the checks and balances of their national constitutions). Especially where majority voting applies - and the Lisbon Treaty considerably extends majority voting - there is thereafter no possibility that individual Parliaments can have any meaningful influence over what transpires.

The whole process by which the Lisbon Treaty has come into existence and is being ratified, deliberately avoiding obtaining popular consent - and now following the Irish No vote nevertheless trying to force the treaty through, is itself evidence of the extent to which the EU’s various Presidents and Prime Ministers have assumed a loyalty to EU institutions above and beyond anything shown to their native countries.

When you consider that Brown (and his predecessor Blair) has proceeded without regard to public opinion, indeed by studiously avoiding ever engaging with the British public on the matter, and that at the last election the Labour party were afraid to seek a mandate to carry through a new EU treaty, and instead preferred to defer the issue by promising a referendum on the outcome, Brown is clearly behaving undemocratically.

Brown has contrived to act despite the wants, interests, desires, and aspirations of the British people. He has made no effort to persuade the British people of the rightness of what he is doing, and he has wholly failed to solicit their agreement.

When you further consider that the changes the treaty brings about are not just to do with the country’s internal constitutional arrangements (which would leave open the possibility of their future reversal by Parliament), but are changes that make Britain subservient to a superior judicial, legislative, political, and constitutional regime located elsewhere (thereby making any unilateral reversal impossible), it is quite unforgivable. I guess Brown has too much hubris and sense of personal historical destiny to feel any shame, but he should. He may have the political power, but what makes him think he has any moral entitlement to do such a thing? The guy is a thug.

It is true Brown has run his ratification through Parliament, but no election was ever fought on the issues raised by the treaty, and the promise of a referendum buried the then impending treaty as an issue when the election was fought. Now Brown has avoided a referendum by claiming that the document he has ratified was not the document the government had in mind when it promised a referendum.

In the light of the Irish referendum no vote, there are many treaty proponents claiming that referenda are not the way to decide such important matters. The treaty is obviously far too complicated to be pronounced upon by ordinary, and for the most part ignorant, people in a referendum. In any case, the range of issues rolled up into the treaty is far too wide for a crude yes or no answer. Or so they say.

Too complicated? The treaty’s proponents are being disingenuous. There are very few MPs who have read the treaty, let alone properly understood it - to do so means considerable study and analytical work. This is because the treaty was deliberately cast in the form of a lot of amendments to the pre-existing treaties, both to hide the fact that its content is pretty much the content of the failed Constitutional treaty; and to add credence to the argument that ordinary people would not understand the treaty and so should not be given the power of decision over it.

So if the political establishment - including the Irish Prime Minister, it seems - have not read the treaty, and take their understanding of it second-hand, there can be little force in the argument that the treaty is too complicated for the public to decide upon.

Referendums are too crude? Well Parliament itself cannot amend the treaty, but only say yes or no to it, so the idea that the treaty comprises too many pieces to be susceptible to a simple yes or no by the people is also revealed to be empty: yes or no is all anyone, however grand, can say to the treaty.

Why should we assume ordinary people are not fit to be consulted on the treaty? It is after all the general public in whose name and for whose benefit the treaty is being incorporated into law, and who will have to live with the consequences, good or bad, so they certainly have an interest in the matter.

The questions raised will be about ends, values, and mechanisms (and their efficacy): whether we support ever closer union; or the loss of our country’s independence; or a cross-border power of arrest by foreign police; or the loss of veto powers by our government; or free movement across borders; or whatever? What is so difficult? What makes these questions so much less tractable for the public than for politicians? Is it that the politicians are whipped?

People vote as they do knowing the treaty stands or falls in its entirety. Just as yes voters may swallow hard and sacrifice things they hold dear, so no voters find themselves unable to compromise, possibly losing some elements they favour. But in this there is no difference between them and their elected (and sometimes unelected) politicians. The main difference I can see is that ratification opens up new career games for the politicians.

What strikes me in writing this piece is that I find myself having to explain and justify the benefits of popular consent and democratic accountability. There is something profoundly disturbing in the fact I have to do this, and that intelligent people seriously doubt the need for popular consent: something harking back to the communist and fascist regimes of the twentieth century. I can only hope it does not portend another Dark Age.

Council Elections - Labour All Out!

2008-05-02T16:16:00.001+01:00

Labour have suffered large losses of seats in the local elections in England and Wales.

What? A sudden enthusiasm for Conservative policies?

I don't see it. Labour plumb the depths, and for the Conservatives it's a case of Buggins' Turn.

Police & CPS Should Be Prosecuted Over Lotfi Raissi Extradition

2008-02-15T13:30:00.001Z

The Court of Appeal has found that Lotfi Raissi was falsely imprisoned, and his life destroyed, on the basis of false evidence presented by the CPS and Metropolitan police.

The judges said: “We consider that the way in which extradition proceedings were conducted in this country, with opposition to bail based on allegations which appear unfounded in evidence, amounted to an abuse of process.

At the very least those responsible were incompetent or careless, but quite possibly the 'evidence' was fabricated.

The police and lawyers should be investigated to decide whether they should be prosecuted, for example for false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and perjury. At the very least some of their number, including those at the top of those organisations, should be sacked.

Only then will the police and CPS be minded to uphold right and the rule of law and stop being bullying cynical jobsworths.

Attempts to Avoid EU Referendum Are Pure Humbug

2007-08-02T13:51:00.001+01:00

The ‘constitutional concept’ has been ‘abandoned’? Well, so says the UK Government when pressed for a British referendum on the EU’s Reform Treaty, the successor to the ill-fated EU Constitution.

Both the Constitution and Reform Treaty have been designed to introduce the ‘innovations’ resulting from the 2004 IGC into the operation of the EU.

The Constitution did so by replacing the constitutive EU treaties with a new text.

The Reform Treaty does so by amending the constitutive EU treaties.

Both have had the same purpose, and each have been intended to provide the EU with the same powers, institutions, and status.

If the Reform Treaty is intended to produce much the same result for the EU as was the Constitution treaty, what is the justification for refusing the British people a referendum now?

To pretend that the precise means by which each treaty acts is different is pure humbug, because the substantive result, and so the import for the British people, is the same in each case.

End Planning Controls - Or Immigration

2007-07-11T17:46:00.001+01:00

So Brown wails about the shortage of 'affordable' housing.

The reason housing is so expensive and short is because demand is growing and supply is restricted.

Brown wants more 'affordable' housing, and is hoping extra can be built on government 'brownfield' sites.

The main problem is the restriction on land supply caused by the requirement for planning permission. The problem will not be solved by public building programmes. The market will do a much better job, given the chance.

There is plenty of land, it is just people aren't allowed to build on it. So it is that England's gardens are built on and infilled, and unpopular flats, rather than houses, are constructed.

And no one - Labour, Conservative, or Liberal - dare mention immigration. Even the government's own 2006 estimates reckoned on an expected 130,000 net immigrants a year who would require 65,000 new houses between them.

Gordon Brown hopes for an extra 40,000 houses a year, but is worried about upsetting the green belt and NIMBY lobbies. A surer way to make his numbers add up would be to reduce immigration.

Personally, I would abolish the planning system, and let people build the sort of houses they want to live in, where they want, without restriction.

The planning system is a way for the property 'haves' to maintain their privileged position - high property values, and good views. Everyone else squeezes into smaller, more tightly built accommodation, on rubbishy 'brownfield' land. The old back to back slums will compare well with some of the stuff being thrown up now.

Those who are worried about building on greenfield sites should look to cut immigration: it is hypocritical to support both large scale immigration and green belt policies, at the same time complaining about the lack of affordable housing.

Those who are worried about their children or grandchildren ever being able to afford a house should recognise that the biggest cause of high property prices and unaffordable housing is the planning system's restriction of supply - and the solution is to end the planning system.

Love Poems More Popular In UK

2007-04-21T23:58:00.000+01:00

After reading so much gloom about the state of British education, it's good to know that mobile phones are helping to keep alive the country's romantic imagination.

A lot of mobile communication is via text, and some of the most popular texts are romantic and flirty texts, sent especially by younger users. Perhaps this explains why there are so many web sites devoted to love poems?

I recommend Sara Teasdale's short To-night as a good one for text lovers - not too much finger pressing!

Royal Navy Brass Hats Need Sorting - Not Browne

2007-04-15T09:51:00.000+01:00

It is all very well to press for Browne's scalp, but the real need is for one or more inquiries to understand why the Navy did not live up to its Nelsonian tradition, and possibly some courts martial.

In praising and publicising the weaknesses and humiliations of the hostages, the senior admirals appear to have revealed an unedifying Byngism at the heart of the Navy, for which they are personally responsible.

The case against Browne is that he should have prevented the admirals acting the way they did. It is a view that presupposes the Navy did not have the authority to make its own decisions, and requires a strained interpretation of events to justify that view: viz. that the freed fifteen were being given permission to express views on politically controversial issues (which goes beyond simply giving an account of what happened).

It is in the country's and Navy's interest that weak and bureaucratic officers and officials are weeded out and there is a reassertion of Nelson's own principles and values: of independence and boldness of action, of delegation of responsibility, and always doing one's utmost to succeed; but this must be done with due process, and it is only when the Navy is understood to be failing itself that Browne can legitimately act to override it.

The Telegraph should know better than to engage in these cheap party political tricks.

Grand National Tip

2007-04-13T23:22:00.000+01:00

Last year I selected two of the favourites to win the Grand National and bet on them both "each way". They did well enough for me to come out ahead.

Byng and What is Wrong with the Royal Navy

2007-04-12T11:33:00.000+01:00

William Lind writes an interesting article on Admiral Byng and the HMS Cornwall incident:

... Byng was executed not for what he did, but for what he did not do ... Without Byng, I doubt there would have been a Nelson.

Byng's execution points directly to what went wrong in the Royal Navy in the Shatt. It is not so much what people did as what they did not do. Neither the fleet commander nor the commander of HMS Cornwall prepared for such a situation. When it happened, Cornwall did not react. The captured sailors and Marines did not think about anything except their own skins. The Royal Navy, as represented by Admiral Band, seems decided to do nothing about its disgrace except pretend it did not happen.

That pretty well sums it up.

RN's HMS Cornwall Whitewash Shame

2007-04-12T11:01:00.000+01:00

There needs to be an official and formal Board of Inquiry into the seizure of HMS Cornwall's boarding party by the Iranians on March 23rd. Courts Martial should probably follow.

It is a pity the returning captives were encouraged to go public with their stories, and worse that they were encouraged to sell them. Inevitably this is liable to prejudice the possibility or outcome of any Court Martial, and for that reason, if for no other, it is a scandal that it was allowed to happen.

It is likely that the handling of the freed captives was calculated to avoid a full and proper inquiry into all aspects of the incident and what it says about Royal Navy operations, training, and equipment, and defence policy generally. Perhaps too to avoid a probe into any deal done with the Iranians to secure the captives' release.

That the government thought it could get away with such a whitewash, and that there have as yet been no resignations over it, shows how poorly the government is held to account. The Opposition's opposition has - yet again - been lamentably weak: the real outcry and criticism has come from everywhere else.

This shameful incident is an illustration of a crisis in Britain's Parliamentary government.

If Cameron's wet Conservatives want to redeem themselves they should at least ensure there is a formal inquiry and not the feeble "lessons learned" exercise the government wants.

There is an excellent and heartfelt blog by Toby Harnden.

EU Kills Bowland Dairy As UK Parliament Stands By

2006-12-14T16:25:00.000Z

Booker tells how Bowland Dairy Products Limited was forced out of business when the Curd Cheese (Restriction on Placing on the Market) Regulations 2006 made it illegal for the company to trade.

The regulations specifically applied to Bowland Dairies and to no other company, and were intended to force them out of business. Section 3 says, "No person shall place on the market any curd cheese manufactured by Bowland Dairy Products Limited ...".

The regulations were made because there was no legal way of forcing Bowland to stop trading: Bowland had broken no law and were causing no harm, so there was no reason to take them to court, and no prospect of success if they had been.

Parliament did not vote on the regulations, and no one in Parliament was inclined to force a vote on the regulations. There was a short debate in the House of Lords nearly two months later, in which some Lords expressed their concern at what had happened, but that was it.

The UK Government made the regulations because the EU told it to. The EU had decided in its wisdom that Bowland's curd cheese production was unsafe and Bowland should be banned from trading: but this was in the face of findings to the contrary by the UK's Food Standards Agency after its own investigations, and despite Bowland's clear vindication in the matter by the European Court of Justice.

It shows there is nothing the UK Government is not willing to do in its abasement to the EU.

It is a case of rule by administrative fiat and the unaccountability of EU institutions.

Bowland's treatment contravenes the principle of the rule of law - where legislation is framed in terms of general principles applicable to everyone equally.

And above all, it is a clear example of Parliament's failure to uphold the liberties of the British people, and of Parliament's willingness to allow those liberties to be trampled all over. The House of Lords may briefly have mentioned Bowland, but the Curd Cheese regulations banning Bowland were raised in the Lords only on the understanding that they would not be voted on.

As I have said before on child booster seats, Parliament cannot challenge the EU on even the smallest point without challenging the very principle of EU power. But what happened to Bowland Dairies is not a small point. What on earth is it going to take to wake up the mother of Parliaments?

A UK Roads Market Please, Not Rationing

2006-12-05T17:40:00.000Z

Rod Eddington's scheme for road pricing sounds more like road rationing.

Circumscribed by a desire to reduce not just congestion, but emissions, what is missing is a mechanism for increasing supply in accordance with demand - i.e. a roads market.

What Britain Must Do To Stop Immigration

2006-12-05T10:11:00.000Z

The UK government has said that long term immigrants to Britain will have to pass tests in English language and the British way of life.

So you might think the government has concluded that immigrants need to integrate and not live in their own closed communities? With the implication, perhaps, that large-scale immigration poses risks to Britain?

And yet the most substantial immigration is currently from the EU's Eastern European member states, especially Poland. A recent estimate is that maybe 10,000 East European immigrants arrive each week at London's Victoria coach station alone: half a million each year for the last three years, with no sign of a let up, and with Romania and Bulgaria about to add to numbers when they join the EU on 1st January.

No citizens from EU member states can be compelled to learn English or take a test on the British way of life (for what that is worth).

The government has no intention of stemming the tide of immigrants deluging Britain, whatever harm immigration may cause: to do that Britain would have to withdraw from the EU.

Time to Leave the EU?

2006-11-17T10:45:00.000Z

If you are one of the many people who think it's time to leave the EU, today you have a chance to help bring that about!

The 10 Downing Street website has an online petition you can 'sign' calling for a referendum on the UK's continued EU membership.

If that's what you want, go and do it now!

Parliament Refuses to Discriminate Over EU

2006-10-03T13:43:00.000+01:00

This week new age discrimination legislation came into effect. So, hard on the heels of the child booster seat law, the government introduced another EU law without Parliamentary scrutiny.

True, it has been a long time brewing, but the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 were laid before Parliament on 9th March, and nodded through the Commons on 28th March, and then the Lords on the 30th March.

On the 27th March, the Commons' First Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation discussed the regulations for 46 minutes, and on 30th March the Lords discussed them for 32 minutes. That was it.

Not bad for legislation which the Minister responsible, Gerry Suttcliffe, said had "huge" significance, was "broad in scope", and would have "far reaching consequences." As he said, the UK regulations to implement Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27th November 2000 were developed "through a process of continuous engagement with our stakeholders" - not by Parliament.

Yet again Parliament allows itself to be sidelined, fails to debate complex and far-reaching legislation, declines to challenge any aspect of a new UK law, and fails to hold anyone to account for it.

Britain's interests are represented, insofar as they are represented at all in the EU, by the UK government. The UK government does not have the power to determine EU law or policy, except in those ever-shrinking areas still reserved to national government: it can only lobby and play politics with other EU governments.

The hard truth is that unless and until Britain's Parliament is prepared to challenge the principle of EU power it has no say whatsoever over large areas of law and policy, because it has legally subordinated itself to the EU via the European Communities Act 1972.

Parliament is thus entirely unable - as is the UK government - to hold EU institutions to account, and because it is not prepared to discuss the EU critically, and assert itself at all in relation to the EU, Parliament also fails to hold the British government to account either for its own EU policy, or for the effects on the UK of EU actions.

With respect to the EU, Parliament is unwilling to discriminate between that which is in Britain's interests and that which is not. It would rather hide its head in the sand.

Child Booster Seats And The EU

2006-09-21T14:13:00.000+01:00

Boris Johnson waxes indignant at the new law on child booster seats, imposed as a result of an EU directive four years ago.

After picking holes in it, he says the measure was not discussed by the Commons' European Standing Committees, and even had it been it would have made no difference (which is a way of rationalising the failure to discuss the measure).

He goes on to say:

We need proper standing committees with the power to mandate ministers, and to refuse to accept directives ... Otherwise we will find that the law of this country ... is not made in this country; and that is a perfect and justifiable reason for massive civil disobedience.

Boris Johnson is not facing reality - the law of this country is not being made in this country now. The reason being that our politicians have abdicated responsibility for it.

In the areas in which they pass power to the EU, our politicians - and hence the British people - have no say in what the EU does. And because there is no mechanism for our politicians to change EU law, they cannot then challenge the EU on even the smallest point, the most trivial item, without challenging the very principle of EU power.

None of our political parties, and only a very few of our elected politicians, are prepared to challenge the principle of EU power, and so they will not challenge even the silliest things the EU does.

Our politicians prefer not to consider EU laws at all, lest they are forced to face just how unpopular and at odds with British interests the things the EU is doing may be, and their own cowardice and betrayal as they continue to sit on their hands and refuse to act. It is harder to avoid responsibility if there has been a carefully considered debate in which all the shortcomings of a piece of EU legislation have been revealed, so they don't debate them.

Which is why the EU continues in its unaccountable way, and as the EU grows British politics and politicians both matter less to the British people, and are at the same time held in greater contempt.

It still remains within the power of the British people to reclaim their birthright - independent self-government over themselves through their own Parliament - but only if we and our politicians wake up, and soon.

Media's Qana Photo Shame

2006-08-05T10:05:00.000+01:00

Do you believe what you read in the press?

Does an emotive photograph overwhelm dry facts, or the need to look for them?

If you want an insight into media manipulation, take a look at this stunning analysis of the Qana photographs that were published after many people were killed, apparently by an Israeli airstrike on July 30th.

Not all was as it seemed. The Western media appear to have connived in a stage managed Hezbollah event calculated to squeeze the maximum shock and emotional punch from tragedy. By going along with the charade, a big question mark must be raised over what really happened at Qana in the first place, and Hezbollah's part in it.

EU Referendum blog's initial take on the Qana photos resulted in a denial by the press agencies, but that denial failed to detail an alternative interpretation, or provide any further evidence. Now Richard North has fully exposed the agencies' shameful secret.

What credibility - or integrity - the mainstream media now?

Menezes Investigation Flawed From The Start

2006-02-09T11:19:00.000Z

A shocking revelation about the investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London tube at Stockwell last July comes at the end of this BBC report about how the Menezes family are being kept informed.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission chairman, Nick Hardwick, says that although the IPCC has had full access to those in agencies outside the police, the IPCC does not have power to refer those who do not work for the police to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Since I am not aware of any police criminal investigation into the shooting, it looks as if those outside the police who might have had criminal liability may never be considered for prosecution: not only will the IPCC refrain from putting together the pieces it has with respect to them, but it may not even have bothered to collect the pieces in the first place, and who else will have done so instead?

It suggests the IPCC is inadequate to deal with cases where the police are not the only party to a possible crime.

The Hard Case of PC Mark Milton

2006-02-02T14:51:00.000Z

It is wrong that PC Mark Milton is to have his acquittal by District Judge Bruce Morgan last May set aside and be retried.

I can understand how people could be unhappy that a policeman is acquitted after driving at 159 mph along a motorway, and perhaps even more so given that he drove at 91 mph in a 30 mph zone.

The High Court has set aside the aquittal because it considers the District Judge failed to take into account the possibility of danger to other road users who, had they been there, might have been endangered had they pulled into PC Milton's path. This is said to be a failure of the judge "in law".

If it was a failure of law rather than fact, it is one that is very close to a finding of fact, because implicit in the finding is the suggestion that had the judge taken such a hypothetical into account it would likely have been enough to have changed the judge's finding that PC Milton's driving was not in fact dangerous. From the reports it seems the High Court were very worried about PC Milton's driving - in other words the finding as a matter of fact that his driving was not dangerous.

It would be surprising to me if the judge had not taken the possibility into account and dismissed it, even if it did not form part of the reasons explicitly given by the judge to the High Court. Was it not, for example, even alluded to by the prosecution during the case?

The other aspect of the hypothetical is of course what PC Milton's reaction would have been had another driver appeared, when events would have shown how safe his driving was. We can never know, although perhaps that is just as well.

The High Court is really saying, in contradiction to the finding on the facts of the judge, that speed is itself ipso facto dangerous, irrespective of the absence of any evidence, other than the speed itself, that any danger was ever actually caused to anyone.

Why though should PC Milton be put through this? He was tried and judged and found not guilty. In the absence of any evidence of corruption of the court process that should be that. How many bites at the cherry should the prosecution get? The opportunity to revisit inconvenient or embarrassing acquittals is just the tool any vindictive, over-bearing, authoritarian, or otherwise illiberal state will wish to have.

If people think the police are out of control, then the answer is to regain control and accountability of the senior officers.

If people think the district judge made a perverse decision on the facts, then be thankful for judicial independence.

If people think PC Milton's judge really did make a mistake in law, then let there be a process for declaring what the law really is: there is no need to revisit PC Milton's acquittal in the process.

If people think the law itself is wrong, let Parliament change it.

Iqbal Sacranie Provokes Police State

2006-01-11T17:55:00.000Z

Iqbal Sacranie, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, is not my favourite man. He is not a liberal and in seeking to make laws against religious hatred a crime, he does not represent a liberal cause. He does not want Islam to suffer criticism or be the subject of debate. Our free speech will suffer if he succeeds.

Yet he has my sympathy as he faces a police investigation into remarks he made on the BBC's Radio 4 PM programme on 3rd January, when he said homosexuality is harmful.

I doubt the police will find there is a crime to prosecute, even as they try to piece one together under the Public Order Act. That crime is one the government intends to bring on later as it looks at a clutch of 'hate crimes'. Meanwhile the government presses the police to investigate all complaints of crime 'aggravated' by 'hate'.

Were there a law banning comments critical of homosexuality it would be very sad indeed for Britain, and a severe blow against freedom and free speech here. But there is no law, and it is outrageous that police are leaning on people and 'investigating' them. They should be telling the complainants where to go.

Teacher Convicted of Kissing

2005-12-15T12:09:00.000Z

Samantha Grixti, a teacher, has been sentenced to 180 hours of forced labour (aka community service) after being convicted of kissing a 16 year old pupil.

As I have said before, it may be unprofessional to have relationships with pupils, but it is not a matter for the law. At 16 people are over the age of consent, and free to embark on sexual relationships with anyone else over 16. It is perverse to make it a criminal offence for others to have relationships with them.

All the more so when the state is happy to support widespread promiscuity among the under 16s, offering confidential contraceptive and abortion services, often in defiance of parental wishes, and seeks to encourage unconventional relationships, for example through 'gay marriage'.

Why Protect Red Squirrels?

2005-11-09T12:06:00.000Z

The Telegraph reports that grey squirrels are to be 'excluded' from red squirrel areas in England on pain of death.

There is an evolutionary struggle going on and the red squirrels appear to be losing out to the greys, which was introduced (by man, of course) from America.

Why should we intervene in this struggle? There is no malice between squirrels. There are no 'good' or 'bad' squirrels, there are just little creatures struggling (as we all do) to survive.

If the greys are spreading at the expense of the reds, it is because in evolutionary terms, they are the fittest to survive - the fittest for the environment in which they live.

For man to take sides is ridiculous.

In fact it is worse than ridiculous. It is not clear that more red squirrels will have suffered short lives then would have been the case without the grey, because there are always factors at work limiting a species' population size.

But if we have in some sense caused red squirrels to suffer by introducing the grey, it simply compounds our failing to cull greys. Unless we exterminate the greys entirely there will never be an end to the slaughter. So to assuage our collective guilt over the change in squirrel populations we embark on an endless campaign to inflict suffering on grey squirrels.

Who are we to say one little animal is worth more than another little animal, especially when the difference between them is that one is red and the other is grey?

Another Teacher Pupil Love Case

2005-10-21T11:55:00.000+01:00

Shelley White, a 24 year old geography teacher, has been convicted of 'abuse of trust' by having sexual activity with a child, a 15 year old boy. The 'sexual activity' was kissing (or 'snogging' as the Telegraph puts it).

It may not be desirable conduct in a teacher, but it is not something that warrants a conviction. The difference in age was not so great, and the acts were consensual, and in any case fell well short of intercourse.

A matter of school discipline perhaps, but not the criminal law.

The jury probably thought so too, because it was a 10 - 2 majority conviction. In the old days that would have meant an acquittal, and should have done so yesterday.

Instead, another life ruined.

Government Planned Population Explosion

2005-10-21T11:21:00.000+01:00

Official forecasts from the ONS suggest the UK's population will grow from 60 million now to 67 million in 2031. Much of the increase will be in south east England.

The growth results from greatly increased immigration - net migration into the UK last year was 223,000, against 50,000 a year in 1997. The new forecasts are greater than Migrationwatch has put out, when it has been called 'alarmist'.

So will those who have been encouraging this massive wave of immigration free up the planning system so people can live decently and affordably in southern England? Or will the government inspired rabbit hutches continue to proliferate, for those that can afford them, and we come to live in ever closer proximity to each other as more spacious houses are demolished to accommodate increasingly cramped ones, and traditional gardens disappear?

Oh, and by the way, when did the English ever ask for so many new neighbours?

Has it ever been alive, European Democracy?

2005-10-14T09:19:00.000+01:00

The EU cannot undo its lack of democracy by setting up national debates with students, young people, politicians, trades unions, academics and business groups as reported by the Telegraph. The problem is there is no EU demos - people's political activity, awareness, and allegiance is at the level of individual nation states. Democracy exists only within the nation state, not the EU, its antithesis.

Margot Wallstrom, the European Commission's vice-president for communication asks, "Has it ever been alive, European democracy?"

She should know when she says, "This [the EU] has been a project for a small elite, a political elite ..."

If the EU were a democracy there would not be a series of European Commission inspired 'debates' with a few groups, but elections where the electorate were regularly offered the power of decision at EU level. Yet not only are there no such elections, and the EU is ruled by an unaccountable, unelected, self-perpetuating elite, but EU political supremacy is not even wanted: in Britain at least, people want their nation state to continue and do not want to be subject to foreign control.

Parliament, wake up!

The Craven Broadcaster

2005-10-06T07:37:00.000+01:00

John Humphrys, the BBC Today presenter got a dressing down from his bosses last month for remarks which made fun of some Labour politicians.

But the Telegraph today reports that:

BBC chiefs wanted to sack the Today presenter John Humphrys over jibes he made about Labour leaders in an after-dinner speech ...

... According to John Kampfner, the New Statesman's editor and a former BBC journalist, Mr Grade [the BBC chairman] was intent on making an example of Humphrys to placate the Government at a time when it is reviewing the corporation's charter. He said Mr Grade also saw the Humphrys issue as an opportunity to prove to politicians that the corporation's new governance system is effective.

If true, it is a good reason to abolish the 'licence fee' and let the BBC find its own way in the world, truly independent of any government.

If it isn't true, it is a good reason to abolish the 'licence fee' and let the BBC find its own way in the world, because the idea that the BBC is in thrall to the politicians is all too believable.

Being English Now Banned

2005-10-04T22:04:00.000+01:00

On the same day I learn from Mark Steyn about a Tory council banning all pig related items, including an employee's box of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet tissues, due to Muslim sensitivities - and a so-called wish for 'tolerance', I now discover the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Ann Owers has been at it too:

A section on race relations in Owers' report [on Wakefield prison] said: "We were concerned to see a number of staff wearing a flag of St. George tie-pin.

CNN goes on to report:

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades.

"A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history," he told CNN. "They see those campaigns as Christendom launching a brutal holy war against Islam.

"Muslim or Arab prisoners could take umbrage if staff wore a red cross badge. It's also got associations with the far-right. Prison officers should be seen to be neutral."

Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with."

I say wave the flag, sing the national anthem, march on St George's Day, and let's see who our friends are!

To have pride and respect for our past, and support the ancient institutions that have grown out of it in the face of a new intolerance is to stand firm for our country's freedom and future. The tail cannot wag the dog. Down with PC prats and religious bigots.

It's nearly enough to start me eating meat again - pork, that is.

Dogs' Dinners

2005-10-04T10:07:00.000+01:00

Jamie Oliver exposed the dire state of Britain's school dinners on TV.

The government commissioned a report which says:

The state of many school meals is an indictment of more than two decades of public policy which has in effect stripped nutrients off plates, removed skills from kitchen staff and seen the take-up of school meals drop precipitously.

So, caught out, the government intends to enforce nutritional standards and on-site cooking (even though it will mean building kitchens for many schools - another one-size-fits-all approach), while banning many 'junk' foods.

Very good. But would school meals have got so bad if schools were not controlled by the state, and obliged to direct their attention and resources to satisfying the bureaucracy and politicians rather than children and parents?

Having spent "more than two decades" making a dog's dinner of school meals, the government still thinks it knows best, showing no respect for the freedom of parents to determine what their children may eat. According to the Telegraph:

At first, the standards will cover only the provision of food. By 2011, however, they could be applied to its consumption, which would involve restricting the food children were allowed to bring into school.

Government conceit joined by the heavy hand of an obese state.

History as Propaganda

2005-09-30T10:09:00.000+01:00

On his blog, James Bartholomew describes a visit to St Pauls - a leading boys' independent school in London.

The sixth form boys had very little idea of the reality of life before today's welfare state, greatly underrating health and education provision in the past, and with little conception of past generations' independence, a partial view fed by their highly left-wing teachers.

As Bartholomew says, if it is like this even in private schools, what sort of message is being promoted in state secondary schools?

No wonder people find it so hard to consider moving beyond the welfare state.

Abuse of Terror Act

2005-09-29T08:59:00.000+01:00

An 82 year old man, Walter Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Labour Party member since 1948, was yesterday ejected from the Labour party conference for heckling. According to the Telegraph:

When he tried to re-enter the secure zone, he was stopped by a police officer citing the Terrorism Act.

... At first Sussex police denied that Mr Wolfgang had been detained or searched but a spokesman later admitted that he had been issued with a section 44 stop and search form under the Terrorism Act.

Another example of a law passed for one purpose but used for another - moral: never trust the state.

And if the Sussex police denial was made knowing its falsity, an example of self-serving lack of integrity.

Blair U-Turn on Kyoto?

2005-09-28T17:38:00.000+01:00

Those of us who failed to pick up the great scoop from James Pinkerton at Tech Central Station on 15th September 2005 are only now learning from the MSM of Blair's change on Kyoto. The Sunday Times reports Blair saying:

“The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem. To be honest, I don’t think people are going, at least in the short term, to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”

... In his comments, Blair suggested he no longer had faith in global agreements as a way of reversing rising greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he appeared to place his faith in science, technology and the free market ...

Perhaps he'll tell his 'scientific' advisers now, and we'll have to endure less of the sanctimonious claptrap we've been getting from the likes of Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, reported by the Telegraph saying:

... the intensity of the hurricanes was caused by water in the Gulf of Mexico being warmer than usual and was consistent with the latest scientific predictions of how the climate will behave as a result of man-made warming.

"If this makes the climate loonies in the States realize we've got a problem, something good will come out of this situation," said Sir John.

And yet Sir John had only to look at the US National Hurricane Center's statistics on hurricane strikes on the US mainland over the past 150 years to see that while there is a lot of variation, there is no pattern of increasing frequency or intensity in recent years.

As I've said before, and maybe Blair is coming round to this too, if there is global warming we are better off adapting to climate change than trying to control the weather, which is still subject to greater natural forces than we can deal with.

Most People Want To Leave EU

2005-07-31T23:54:00.000+01:00

A YouGov opinion poll commissioned by UKIP shows 50% of UK voters want to leave the EU in favour of a free trade area, while only 34% want to remain within the EU.

How can it be that on something as fundamental as national independence the main political parties remain committed to the EU against the majority of the electorate?

No wonder votes ebb away from them, and there is disillusion with UK politics.

Must we suffer a terrible crisis before the incumbent parties recognise reality and are stirred to action?

For how much longer must we voters watch this EU show which has no clothes?

How To Help Someone Near Death

2005-07-26T11:25:00.000+01:00

The greatest thing one can do for another (letter from the Telegraph):

Sir - The death of

Dame Cicely Saunders

(Obituaries, July 15) is a great loss to the hospice movement.

I spent the whole of my career in nursing and in the early 1970s I heard a lecture given by Dame Cicely, who described the three important things that the terminally ill need. They are given as if the patient were speaking - Stay with me - Speak to me - Hold my hand.

These few words perfectly describe the needs of a dying person and were so powerful that I remember them every time I think of that situation. May I commend them to every person who is a carer, be they a relative, a friend, or anyone in the medical field. To carry out these three things is the greatest thing one can do for another person.

Jeanne Yates, Devizes, Wilts

Something to remember in these troubled times. Thank you, Jeanne.

Justice Is Fallible

2005-07-22T10:13:00.000+01:00

It always surprises me how much confidence people place on the verdicts of the courts.

The justice system is a human construct and so subject to error, both of fact and reason.

Professor David Taylor is spot on in his letter to the Telegraph regarding so-called expert witnesses:

Sir - Judge Thorpe (letter, July 20) recognises the failure of the way that expert witnesses are treated in this country, but not the cause of the failure.

The fault lies not with insufficient expertise on the part of the witness, but in the fact that even the best experts can be wrong. I very much doubt if Prof Roy Meadow would have failed Judge Thorpe's tests.

The answer is that expert witnesses must be treated like any others, and be subject to challenge. It is true that this can lead to undesirable contests, but even so, this is preferable to the present system.

Prof David Taylor, Scarborough, N. Yorks

Council Pygmies Oppress Giants

2005-07-20T21:49:00.000+01:00

Brian Culbert and his wife Fiona wish to extend their house in Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire. Mr Culbert is 6 ft 10 in and Mrs Culbert is 6 ft. As they keep banging their heads on the ceiling and doors, they want their extension to have a higher ceiling.

But, after 18 months, the council has refused them planning permission, Councillor Peter Argyle saying if they allowed it because the Culberts are above average height,

Then in theory that would open the door to anyone else who is tall getting applications approved on the basis of their height. That is just not logical.

It seems perfectly logical to me: if you're tall you need higher ceilings and doorways than if you're not.

Councillor Jenny Watson, height 5 ft, said they should just "buy a bigger house". Well thanks, Councillor Jenny Watson, perhaps you'd like to pay for it, and suffer the inconvenience and disruption too?

But perhaps councils should just stop telling people what they can and can't do with their own houses, and to their own land? The planning process is slow, expensive, and wasteful; the bureaucracy pettifogging, harsh and oppressive (and, of course, with a vested interest in itself).

Does anyone imagine the world would fall apart if the Culberts built an extension fitted for someone of 6 ft 10 in? Like hell!

If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out!

Government Uses EU to Bypass UK Constitution

2005-07-12T09:42:00.000+01:00

The UK government is using the London bombings to advance its Big Brother agenda. It wants internet and mobile phone companies to retain data about user activity for extended periods, ostensibly for intelligence purposes. This agenda has previously run into considerable opposition, both in Parliament and among civil liberties and other groups.

Now the government intends using the device of an EU inter-governmental agreement - which is not enforceable by the EU - to enable implementation within the UK without an Act of Parliament, and hence without normal Parliamentary scrutiny, and without the possibility of Parliamentary amendment.

As the EU Referendum blog points out in an illuminating post, the UK government is using the EU to legislate in the UK outside the normal Parliamentary process, effectively bypassing the UK constitution.

It is an extremely important point to grasp in understanding how Britain is losing its constitutional safeguards, and Parliament has lost a large part of its power, not simply to the EU, but to the executive.

Commons Sidelined, Again

2005-03-01T22:18:00.000Z

The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is reported to have caused outrage in the Commons when it became apparent that amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, will be introduced in the House of Lords. The Commons will be unable to debate them, and the limited debate they were allowed yesterday had to be conducted in ignorance of what they would be.

Kenneth Clarke, a former Tory home secretary, said the proceedings were "a complete outrage" and the Government was treating the Commons with "intolerable contempt".

Other MPs expressed anger at being cheated of consideration of the new legal moves before being asked to approve the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. But attempts to force the suspension of the Commons to allow time to consider the changes were unsuccessful.

Amazing that MPs (especially arch-Europhile Kenneth Clarke) should get so worked up about being sidelined in this debate, when Parliament has been completely cut out of the picture on so many matters by the EU, is often ignorant of where power now lies, and while its decline continues apace.

Fairtrade Critique

2005-02-28T22:46:00.001Z

Nice post on Fairtrade by Alex Singleton on the Adam Smith Institute blog, explaining how counter-productive Fairtrade is (even if it does relieve middle class guilt).

Neigh To Horse Passports

2005-02-28T13:32:00.000Z

Horse owners face fine or jail from today if they do not have passports for their animals. The passports are required by the EU to control the quality of meat entering the human food chain - they eat horses on the continent.

According to the Telegraph, while half a million passports have been issued, anything up to half a million animals do not yet have a passport, which must be shown when moving premises, entering competitions, breeding, etc.

The government has twice delayed implementation of the law, because so few people had acquired the passports: once in January 2004, and again in June 2004.

The government says that if Britain does not comply with the law to the EU Commission's satisfaction, the Commission may withdraw approval for around 60% of veterinary medicines.

So what does it mean?

It means Britain can no longer make the law for itself, because our government is no longer competent to decide this matter, and there is now no one Parliament can bring to account and force a change if the policy and law on horse passports is thought to be unsatisfactory.

And it suggests that the most effective form of resistance to unwelcome bureaucratic laws which do not have general support is to ignore them. The horse passport requires a certain amount of cooperation among horse owners if it is to work.

Notice too, that it is the UK government that gets the flak for failing to derogate from the EU regulation: the principle of subservience to EU law is not questioned, and nor is the EU criticised for creating the regulation in the first place.

Act Needed For Prince Charles' Marriage

2005-02-24T13:06:00.000Z

I think the government is deliberately undermining the monarchy. It seems quite happy to let the uncertainty continue over the legality of Prince Charles' marriage to Camilla, and for our future king to suffer the inconvenience and indignity of being married in a public registry office.

It would not be difficult for Parliament to pass an Act putting the legitimacy of Charles' wedding beyond doubt, and enabling him to have the civil ceremony at Windsor Castle as originally intended, but without making the Queens' home a wedding venue for everyone else.

It is not enough for our second rate Lord Chancellor to make a statement of his advice: the trouble is that if there is any question over the legality of Charles' marriage, it may give rise to serious constitutional and legal questions in the future, affecting not only Charles' family and heirs, but the country.

We owe it to the family who bear the burden of being Britain's constitutional keystone, and to ourselves, to sort this out properly.

Labour Plays Politics With Election Court

2005-02-22T17:19:00.000Z

The Times reports on Labour's attempt to delay the trial of three Labour councillors accused of using postal ballots to rig elections to seats in the Bordesley Green and Aston wards in Birmingham in June 2004.

When Richard Mawrey, QC, the judge, refused an application to delay the trial until after May 5th, the Labour party withdrew legal funding from its accused councillors, presumably attempting to distance itself from them, but at the same time revealing its real interest in the case.

Doubtless without the case Labour would also find it easier to press ahead with introducing their contentious system of postal voting for the general election.

Another example of Labour's total cynicism, and contempt for the legal process.

Power To Parents

2005-02-22T11:51:00.000Z

Anyone who doubts the decline in British education standards should look at the figures at the end of a report in the Telegraph.

Geoff Parks, director of admissions at Cambridge said the university admitted 140 fewer undergraduates this year than last because of an increase in the number of four year degrees, now common in engineering and the sciences, a result of pupils knowing less than they used to.

This despite, of course, repeated government assertions that things have never been better, as evidenced by the ever higher grades achieved by ever more pupils in ever more subjects. Nothing to do with grade inflation, naturally. Blatant lies, and part of Britain's Sovietisation.

The Telegraph also mentions that the numbers obtaining at least three As at A level or the "vocational equivalent" (as the university admissions service regards hairdressing) increased by 68% last year to 128,000 (or around one in six of the entire year group). And yet pupils know less than they used to and degree course get longer in consequence. It doesn't add up.

I don't see how Britain's education system can ever improve so long as it remains a political football, and a vehicle for social engineering. Stop pretending the academic and the non-academic are the same. Get the politicians, the civil servants, and the inspectors out, and let parents make the decisions.

Stop Giving Aid

2005-02-16T21:42:00.000Z

Today, an example of the waste that foreign aid becomes. The Telegraph reports that King Mswati III of Swaziland has just spent £450,000 - half Britain's aid to the state - on new cars for his many wives.

Last year the King spent almost £9 million on palaces, parties, and cars, nearly two-thirds the country's aid receipts.

Most of the population live in poverty and many are infected with Aids.

Why do we carry on giving the money? It props up bad government and aid fails to reach the people anyway.

What we should be doing is offering unrestricted trade, not aid. We would be better off too, but trade barriers support the EU's controlling and interventionist tendencies: policies of subsidy and high taxation, and keeping third world produce out.

Pupil Marries Teacher

2005-02-15T21:51:00.000Z

The Times reports that an American former elementary school teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau, is to marry her lover, Vili Fualaau, after serving two sentences for child rape: they met and had a relationship when he was her pupil aged 12.

Their daughters, aged 6 and 7, are to be flower girls at the wedding.

Their relationship may not have been conventional, but I can't help wondering whether the law today treats such consensual relationships too harshly.

I hope they and their family have a happy life.

Why Prosecute? POCA Them Instead!

2005-02-10T11:11:00.000Z

This is another post triggered by Bystander, the interesting Magistrate, this time with a blog about the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

Bystander seems a little uneasy, but is content to call POCA a civil matter and go along with it. I don't know why.

I agree with the comment of Special Forces Alpha Geek: the POCA is not really a civil matter. It is a tool of the law enforcement agencies, and its justification for confiscating property is that it was acquired as the proceeds of crime. The seizure or confiscation of property by the state is a sanction of the criminal justice system. The proceeds of these proceeds of crime actions go to the very agencies undertaking the actions.

Especially worrying is that the POCA imposes criminal sanctions without the procedural safeguards of the criminal law: there are none of the procedural safeguards surrounding criminal prosecutions; the burden of proof is reduced from beyond reasonable doubt to balance of probabilities (with the onus on the defendant); and there is no possibility of a jury.

The government sold the Act on the basis it would be used mainly against wealthy "Mr Bigs" (as if that justifies circumventing normal due process) - but it is being used against all sorts of Mr Smalls (and who knows how many Mr Smiths?). If you look on the Home Office website there is a lot of talk about recovering "criminal cash", "criminals' ill-gotten gains", etc, but the POCA does not require there even to have been a charge brought against anyone, let alone a prosecution or conviction. Indeed, someone can be acquitted after a trial, and still be subject to related asset seizures.

As in other areas - like the detention of terrorist suspects - the government seems to think criminal trials make it too difficult to deal with those they just know to be criminals.

With the terrorist suspects, the government says 'trust us, what we do is based on good intelligence, it's just it cannot be divulged lest we compromise our sources'.

The POCA is based on intelligence too - it requires all accountants, bankers, estate agents, traders and retailers, and in many circumstances lawyers too, to be secret informers of the state. Any suspicions they may have about anyone, e.g. their clients, they must reveal to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. Failure to do so is a criminal offence punishable with imprisonment, as is letting the suspect know they are suspected. The intelligence is then used to identify possible asset seizures outside the normal criminal justice system.

It can only encourage lazy police work and rough justice.

Why then do good men like Bystander go along with it?

When The Innocent Plead Guilty

2005-02-09T13:09:00.000Z

The Magistrate's blog has got me thinking.

Is it right that people who plead guilty should get a lighter sentence - perhaps for a lesser offence - than someone who pleads not guilty and fights the prosecution?

I can see there are benefits to the Crown, and the victims and witnesses, in not having a contested trial: less stress and inconvenience, and fewer costs.

What worries me is that innocent people, or people for whom guilt is a moot point (as, for example, in a case of self defence) may plead guilty because they don't think they have a very good chance of acquittal and want to cut their losses.

If justice is to be seen to be done, it needs to be open. Guilty pleas to secure lighter sentences suggest a calculation by the accused, even if there is not necessarily overt negotiation between defence and prosecution.

We get some idea of how many people may be wrongly convicted as a result of their trial, because some later have their convictions quashed and are released on appeal.

But we will never know how many people serve time having pleaded guilty, while believing themselves to be innocent.

For that reason we should give only a very slight discount (if any) to a sentence following a guilty plea, and not accept a guilty plea on a lesser offence in lieu of a trial on a more serious offence.

Jail - Driving's Booby Prize

2005-02-04T18:19:00.000Z

The government is proposing another populist measure - imposing prison sentences of up to 5 years for causing death by careless driving, which currently carries a maximum fine of £2,500. The alternative offence of causing death by dangerous driving already carries a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment.

The change is expected to create a need for 800 extra prison spaces.

There are currently around 3,500 deaths each year on the roads, half caused to car occupants, with around 40,000 serious injuries and 280,000 minor injuries in 240,000 accidents. Including accidents without injuries, there are a total of around 4 million incidents annually in the UK.

If the average sentence imposed for causing death by careless driving were 3 years, and people actually served half that, then we are looking at about 550 prison sentences a year. In other words imprisoning about a fifth of the drivers involved in accidents involving a fatality. Given that many drivers involved in a fatal accident will themselves have been killed, the imprisonment rate for survivors will probably be higher: around 25% - 30%, maybe more.

The reason more people are not prosecuted for causing death by dangerous driving is because juries are reluctant to convict for it. Mainly, I suspect, because they realise that 'accidents happen' and it could be them next time.

Lowering the bar will bring the courts into disrepute. Why should people be punished heavily for slight negligence? Road accidents do happen, lots of them, and it is a risk all road users take (and create). Mostly we get away with these accidents without injury. Only a tiny fraction of road accidents result in death - less than one in 1,000. And even taking into account only those accidents that result in injury, death is still relatively uncommon - little more than 1 in 100 injury accidents.

Banging people up for slight negligence means banging them up when they had no intention to cause harm. Not only that, but they will have had no conception that they were liable to cause any harm until the split second in which the accident happened.

What does it mean to say they were 'careless' - only that the accident was their fault, because they made a misjudgment. Given that someone has an accident that is their fault, it is purely a matter of chance whether they kill someone or not. And in general, it is unlikely that they do.

We can all expect to be involved in an accident every 7 or 8 years. A good half of those accidents will be our fault.

In the course of 50 years of driving we can expect to have 3 and a half accidents which are our fault - most people will have at least one in their driving career.

I don't think it is rational or just to penalise so heavily accidents which happen to have a very bad outcome. Only if someone were exceptionally reckless could it begin to be justified. But those are the people already being convicted of the more serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and locking up those unfortunate enough accidentally to have caused someone's death, through some inadvertance - to which we are all from time to time prone, is wrong because it is arbitrary and capricious. It is like creating a booby prize for the lottery.

Cynics Proved Right

2005-02-02T14:46:00.000Z

The head of Sri Lanka's presidential task force, Tilak Ranavirajah, has criticised the country's relief effort. Five weeks after the tusnami disaster, corruption and incompetence has left 70% of affected Sri Lankan's without aid. This is without considering the areas under the control of the Tamil Tigers. Aid has been disappearing and relief camps have served rotten food.

I don't know how many people are surprised by this. It is a problem of over governed and bureaucratic societies. We can only give our money and hope some of it trickles down to the right people.

The cynics are proved right.

Government Abandons British

2005-01-31T15:06:00.000Z

First, under the EU arrest warrant, the UK government has allowed other EU countries to arrest, remove from the UK, and then try, people alleged to have committed acts which are perfectly legal under UK law.

Now the UK government favours the introduction of an EU evidence warrant, which will allow other EU states forcibly to enter and search British homes and property seeking evidence with a view to the criminal prosecution of acts which could not be crimes in the UK.

In other words, to make legal the execution by a foreign power of search warrants which could not be legally obtained by the British government or justice system.

The British are being abandoned by their own government in their own country.

To be tried in a foreign state, where the law, procedures, and language differ from one's own, and foreigners may viewed with prejudice, is a serious matter. That is why extradition to a foreign state has traditionally been subject to many restrictions and safeguards. These safeguards have already been watered down by the Extradition Act 2003 which introduced the EU arrest warrant, extended extradition to a wide range of relatively trivial offences, and removed the principle of dual criminality, while reducing further the countries required to show a prima facie case.

By failing to uphold established principles of legal jurisdiction and extradition, the Crown is failing to protect its subjects from arbitrary and unjust interference in their lives. Traditional considerations of justice and good government are being sacrificed for administrative convenience and political ingratiation.

Who are the masters now?

Swastika Fetishists Force Women Into Prostitution

2005-01-30T21:45:00.000Z

The EU wishes to ban the wearing and display of swastikas for "inappropriate purposes" reports the Telegraph. I guess Harry wasn't reverential enough?

Anyway, the impetus for this doubtless comes from the same freedom loving people that expect the unemployed to take jobs as prostitutes?

Who are we getting into bed with?

Mass Teenage Criminality

2005-01-26T11:11:00.000Z

Well, I 'm shocked, I really am: a quarter of boys aged 14 to 17 are serious or prolific criminals, according to a Home Office study.

A quarter?!!!

It is not simply a matter of parental discipline or inadequate policing (although it is about those things too). But what does that widespread criminality say about modern mores? We live in a country where common decency, respect for others, and individual independence and self reliance are giving way to a dishonesty and viciousness entirely destructive of society.

People live 'by right' on welfare, or with access to the welfare state. There is no compelling need to maintain the integrity and trust required in normal (for how much longer?) society. Nor is there any shame or humility. Governments have done all they can to elevate welfare benefits onto the same social and moral plane as hard earned income from a job or business.

There has been a price to pay for this beyond taxation: social and family breakdown on the one hand, and the growth of single parent families on the other, which by their nature 1) are less likely to value - and demonstrate the value - of personal commitment, trust, and integrity: all inherent in successful marriages; and which 2) have fewer financial and social resources with which to bring up children. In Britain the problem families end up being concentrated together in 'social housing' (anti-social sink estates), exacerbating the problems.

For all that, there is no simple answer to this epidemic of incivility and criminality. Part of the problem, I am sure, lies with education, which needs to be far more closely tailored to the needs of individual children, i.e. to be selective. The school leaving age should be reduced, as should the age at which children are allowed to work. Another part of the problem is policing: it is time for the police to leave their desks and go back on the beat, reverting to their role of preventing crime.

But most importantly, the welfare state should be allowed to wither away. The nanny state is an inadequate substitute for the self-reliant family.

UK Powerless To Change Immigration Law

2005-01-25T18:03:00.000Z

The Telegraph reports the EU Commission saying a new Tory government would be unable to implement its proposals to control immigration, because asylum is now governed by EU law. The Tories could not introduce quotas nor withdraw from the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to Refugees. The Telegraph reports:

MPs and officials were unaware how much national sovereignty on immigration and asylum had been transferred to Brussels.

Which just goes to show how far Parliament has allowed itself to be sidelined. Law is being made which goes to the heart of Britain's nationhood and MPs do not know what is happening, let alone have any control over it. Within the EU they are truly irrelevant. Why do we pay them?

If the British people wants to make its own immigration law what is it to do?

There is no EU government we can throw out. The EU Commission is an oligarchy over which we have no democratic control. The only way to assert any democratic control is to withdraw from the EU.

School Stops Teaching

2005-01-21T16:22:00.000Z

The Telegraph reports that St John's school in Marlborough has scrapped homework for 12 year olds, having already scrapped subject teaching, as part of a scheme devised by the Royal Society for the Arts.

But its main idea: that a school education should be about acquiring "competences for learning" and not subject knowledge, is misconceived.

The main purpose of school, as presumably is the main purpose of acquiring learning skills, is to help pupils learn and use a body of knowledge. It may be arguable how best people acquire learning skills, whether by doing or more abstractly, but either way they serve little purpose in themselves.

Being able actually to learn is a matter of practice and experience in learning, and building on what you already know. It is impossible to make connections, and to see patterns and inconsistencies in a subject, if you have no knowledge to work on.

Higher levels of learning are not something acquired overnight once one learns abstract skills. Rather they are based on detailed knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, perhaps painfully and laboriously acquired, which then forms the basis for evaluating further additions to, and extrapolations from, that body of knowledge.

There is also the matter of effective teaching. It is not at all clear that structured subject based learning is inferior to project based learning. I suspect in general it is easier to ensure pupils obtain knowledge and understanding when a subject is taught in a structured way, and classes are taught as a whole.

I wonder if this shying away from imparting hard knowledge to concentrating on soft "skills" is a sign that English education has little meaning for the huge numbers of children who have difficulty reading and writing? It is easier instead fill the time with intangibles: "competences for learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing situations and managing information" and gloss over the failure of schools to teach.

Political Education For All

2005-01-19T20:51:00.000Z

Schools have become a means of social engineering and control, and the ideas and values they inculcate are determined by the government, and controlled through the National Curriculum and Ofsted's school inspections.

In particular, the government is using the citizenship part of the national curriculum to propagate its own views and values, and expects schools to 'teach' these even in the face of their own belief and ethos, or judgment of the subject's value.

So it is that David Bell, chief inspector of schools, worried that some (particularly Muslim) schools may undermine the coherence of British society, explains that to be registered as a school, all schools, including private ones, have to ensure their pupils learn about and respect other faiths and cultures, "and the wider tenets of British society." It seems the pre-requisite of being a school is not teaching the three Rs, but 'teaching' the government's idea of 'citizenship'.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, endorses this view, calls education "probably the most important site of social and cultural integration we have," and goes on to say that education's "public value ... is about providing a benefit to Britain that is social, cultural and economic."

If you doubt that the government has an agenda, consider that the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, announced today that he intends introducing citizenship ceremonies for 18 year olds to help promote "inclusive citizenship" as part of a wider plan to increase race equality and community cohesion.

Citizenship is not a curriculum subject like maths or English: it is tendentious, and serves a political purpose. Its reach extends to all schools, state and private, and all schools, staff, and pupils have to conform to its doctrine. There is no escape - on pain of school closure - whatever the school and parents may think a good education is about.

Britain's Political Crimes

2005-01-18T21:46:00.000Z

Prosecutions for racially and religiously aggravated crime are growing. In the year to April 2004 the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuted 3,616 defendants.

But why add racial or religious aggravation as an element of a crime? Does it make it any worse for someone mugged on the street that their assailant was at all motivated by race or religion? Does it make it any better for the mugged old lady that she was a victim only because she was old (and feeble, and hence an easy target)?

I cannot see it makes any difference. We all need protection under the law. Why we are attacked, robbed, or intimidated is of no relevance to the wrong that is done. If you are injured or made to fear for your safety it is that fact that defines the harm done to you as victim. Given a criminal intention, I do not see why the harm should be regarded more seriously because the perpetrator had one motivation rather than another, or was partial to one type of victim rather than another.

It is in deference to different ethnic and religious communities - to cultivate their vote - that the concept of racial and religious aggravation of crime has come about: first racial aggravation was introduced by the Labour government in 1998 (soon after gaining power), with religious aggravation following in 2001.

There is no moral reason to punish the mugger of Asian women more severely than the thug who mugs old women indiscriminately. The reason one is treated more severely is political, and the racially motivated crime is a political thought crime as much as it is anything else.

Big Spending Tories

2005-01-18T14:32:00.000Z

A year ago, the Tory leader, Michael Howard set out his ideas for less government in his speech, The British Dream. He said:

And I will tell you today, in all honesty and as starkly as I am able to, that the size and scope of government in this country – and the means of its financing by the people through taxation – is quite simply too big.

So the Tories are the party of small government? Are they hell! The individual knows better how to spend his money than government? Er, not really ...

Claiming to identify £35 billion of waste expenditure, the Tories want the government to spend most of it on their pet programmes like health and education. Only £4 billion - £6 billion would be repatriated to taxpayers as tax cuts. Pathetic.

Sounds to me more like a way of promising extra spending without admitting the need for additional taxation. If they didn't make the 'savings', what then? Would they hold back on the spending? Fat chance!

Do the Tories think the huge extra monies spent on health and education by Labour has been money well spent, or even that it can be well spent? Not according to that speech of Howard's last year:

Opponents of change [to the NHS] assiduously propagated two myths. First, that no country had better health care. And secondly that there was nothing wrong with the system that just a little bit more money would not solve.

But now we have seen those myths blown out of the water. The current Government has spent a huge amount more of people's taxes on the NHS: they have set hundreds of targets and bench marks. But we still lag behind many of our neighbours.

[... T]his approach has been tried, it has been given time to work and it has failed. Public sector productivity has not increased. The public's expectations, raised by the rhetoric of politicians, have not been realised. There is now a fundamental imbalance between what voters want and what government is able to deliver.

So why spend even more?

The Tories should be proposing to cut out whole functions of government. That is the only way to small government.

Prince Harry: Man Or Eunuch?

2005-01-15T15:34:00.000Z

Why get so worked up about Prince Harry's Nazi costume? No one suggests he was making a political point, and no one suggests he intended to offend anyone.

He was going to fancy dress party. His costume was intended for light hearted fun and a limited audience of friends. It is not as if he was attending an Auschwitz memorial service.

He is third in line to the throne, and if he ever makes it to the throne, he will have no power. Is he condemned to a life of orthodox correctness by virtue of being in the public eye on account of his birth?

Can he not display a little - or even a lot of - bad taste every now and again? Has he no artistic licence? Can he not be a teensy provocative every now and again? Never to let his hair down, offend, and grow up in his own way?

Or must he have come into the world a ready formed, middle aged eunuch - reserve symbol for a nation ambivalent about its nationhood?

Let a man's private parties be private. If you want to act the voyeur, don't complain about what you see.

Sentence By Life Expectancy

2005-01-14T17:20:00.000Z

The government now plans to reintroduce the previously discredited idea of fining people according to their income.

But if it were really serious, the government would ensure criminals were sentenced according to their remaining life expectancy. In this way the prospect of prison would weigh with equal force on the young as it does on the old. The fact that a given prison sentence will deprive an older person of a greater proportion of their remaining years must surely be a factor in the lower incidence of criminal activity among the elderly?

So perhaps we will see 60 year olds sentenced to 2 years for burglary, while 20 year olds get 10 years for the same offence - just as under the 1993 scheme there were cases such as the one mentioned in the Telegraph where someone just over the drink drive limit was fined £1500, while someone else twice over the limit was fined only £104 at the same court on the same day.

While I jest, and assume my proposal would be laughed out of court - to be followed, of course, by the government's own whimpier proposal - in the back of my mind I fear there is nothing our lords and masters will not do in their increasingly unrestrained pursuit of the popular, the novel, the sensational, and the politically correct: whatever the cost to our traditional notions of due process and justice. And no thought, other than self interest, they will give to anything before they do it.

Why The EU Is Undemocratic

2005-01-14T10:39:00.001Z

A nice analysis on the EU Referendum blog of the EU Commission and the enormous power this unelected de facto government has by virtue of its complete control over the EU's legislative agenda.

Trade Not Aid

2005-01-14T10:39:00.000Z

Is it right for governments to give foreign aid? In general, the answer must be no.

Government aid is counter-productive and wasteful. Much money goes to line the pockets of foreign politicians and officials, supporting and prolonging the life of corrupt and oppressive regimes, and their pernicious policies. The rest is liable to create dependency.

There is an exception in the case of natural disaster, where immediate humanitarian relief is needed - although even then it is better if the aid comes from private donors, partly because their motivation is purer and they are more likely to scrutinise what happens, and partly because it is better if people are not taxed any more than necessary.

Even in the case of natural disaster, the problem is to turn off the aid to avoid undue dependency without being callous.

Far better if governments promoted free trade. It is time for the EU to open up to foreign producers, including all those from the third world - it will do them (and us) far more good than any amount of aid, and is what they prefer. The present system serves vested interest groups. If the EU won't change and soon, it is another reason to leave the EU.

It is a great shame the Tories have pledged to match Labour spending on overseas aid - yet another area of spending they feel unable to cut, and yet another area of spending everyone would be better off without.

Britain's Sham Courts

2005-01-10T22:00:00.000Z

I previously mentioned that Jack Straw's attempt to justify the continued detention of terrorist suspects without trial by reference to the appeal process available to the suspects - extraordinary enough in the face of the Law Lords' judgment against the government - was flawed, because the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) had already ruled they were being unjustifiably discriminated against.

Now the Independent reports that from judgments released under the Freedom of Information Act it is clear the judges on SIAC also have deep misgivings about the process because of the suspects' disadvantage in not being able to see the secret evidence and allegations used against them.

This on top of the resignation of Ian MacDonald, one of the QCs acting as the government's special advocate for the suspects, who called the law which allows arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention without trial an "odious blot on our legal landscape".

Politically Correct Charity

2005-01-09T19:06:00.000Z

The Charities Bill now going through Parliament introduces a public benefit requirement for charities. It has encouraged a Mr Tony Mitchell in a letter to the Telegraph (No Tax Concessions For Sham Benefits) to call on the Charities Commission to withdraw charitable status from independent schools, because he believes: "they reinforce division and inequality."

Education has always been considered of good in itself, irrespective of who benefits: that is why it has been a charitable purpose, the main legal effect of which has been to allow the endowment of schools.

What Mr Mitchell wishes is to abandon education as a charitable purpose in favour of his idea of egalitarianism. His test that education offers a public benefit only if it is available to all irrespective of income or ability places a narrow and personal meaning on "public benefit" which blindly ignores any value education may have in itself.

I have no doubt that Cambridge students are privileged, even poor ones, benefitting as they do from institutions founded on the generosity of past benefactors, and selected from among many who want to go and could benefit. The fact that those who do benefit are in some ways privileged does not mean Cambridge is not worthwhile, nor that we would be better off without it and similar universities. What we value about Cambridge is the education and learning it provides founded on meritocratic elitism and intellectual excellence. I do not imagine anyone believes the educational value of a degree depends on whether a student is subsidised by the state or not.

Similarly, schools educate individual children, and they benefit as individuals. The school a child attends may affect the quality of the education they receive, but in terms of educational benefit, it makes no difference who pays for it.

It is only because Mr Mitchell wishes schools to serve a purpose other than education that he claims there is no public benefit to schools which charge or select. If you share his brand of egalitarianism you may perhaps agree with him, but to the extent they would penalise private and selective schools, his ideas are destructive of education.

The worst of it is that Mr Mitchell's view may be shared by the new Charity Commission, which is left the discretion by the Charities Bill to decide what is meant by the "public benefit" test it says charities must pass. Another example of government trying to make a matter of administrative and political diktat what should be a matter of law.

Planning Vicious Circles

2005-01-09T18:31:00.000Z

Further to my earlier blog on town planning, an ex-town planner and (I assume ex) Labour councillor writes an interesting piece on the Civitas blog about the do-gooding motivation and self interest of 1960s town planners and their supporters, and their destructive effect on working class communities.

Government Plan To Increase House Prices

2005-01-05T10:24:00.000Z

Prescott says he doesn't understand why house prices rise faster than inflation, and then wants to add fuel to the fire by subsidising house purchase.

Government Approves Discrimination

2005-01-04T08:36:00.000Z

The sex discrimination lobby get the EU to pull back from their scheme to enforce equal insurance premiums for motor insurance despite different risks for each sex, thereby avoiding women having to pay the same as men. Would the EU have relented had it been women who posed the higher risk, and men who faced higher premiums?

A contrasting story is the intention of the Lake District National Park to scrap volunteer guided walks because they attract only middle class middle aged whites. There is no suggestion that the walks are not worthwhile in themselves, or that walks are not available to others. Sounds to me like discrimination against middle class people, middle aged people, and whites.

Examples of the politicians and officials institutionalising discrimination, and how easily rationality goes out the window.

EU Regulation Costs Rise £17 Billion

2005-01-02T17:49:00.000Z

The EU is about to cost us another £17 billion each year as its emissions quota scheme starts, and an artificial market begins in emission trading - see the EU Referendum site.

Planning Ruins English Towns

2005-01-02T15:35:00.000Z

It is ironic, but not surprising, that planning laws, supposedly needed to stop England turning into a concrete jungle, have precisely that effect.

A story in the Telegraph tells of a large Victorian suburban house in Nottingham, which is to be pulled down so 16 flats can be built in its place, typical of what is happening all over the country as developers struggle to meet demand for housing within the tight restrictions on land use imposed by the government.

It's a story I've seen repeated many times in our local newspaper too.

For many years new houses have been crammed into the gardens of older houses in all England's towns and villages. Now the pressure has increased and with government demands for ever higher housing densities, the older - more spacious - housing is being demolished to make way for flats.

I know people don't like to see the countryside encroached on, but the price is inferior new housing, the disappearance of traditional housing and gardens, and everyone having to live in less space.

It seems mad to me when farmland is often not even farmed, and in receipt of massive subsidies.

If land were not subject to planning restrictions people would likely have bigger, cheaper homes, with decent sized gardens around them. The quality of life would be generally improved. As it is, we seem to be spiralling into a world of ever smaller, more cramped, and expensive housing.

In ostensibly trying to preserve the countryside, planning laws are in the process of destroying the quality of life in our towns and villages. Not only are more and more houses being packed into the same space, but prices go up, and locals have to move away. And if the countryside is being preserved, it is true in only a limited sense: farms are being amalgamated, the old farming communities are withering away, and government interference in food trade and supply has rendered much farming uneconomic.

Unfortunately planning laws do not let the market - the net result of the choices we all make every day - decide how land might best be used, and substitutes the decisions of a handful of politicians and officials: the result is less flexibility, less innovation, more uniformity, massive development on greenfield sites when it does happen, and more greyness.

Unfortunately the Tories don't get it either, and are playing the same game.

Understand The Welfare State

2004-12-30T13:14:00.000Z

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

2004-12-29T21:54:00.000Z

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

2004-12-28T11:54:00.000Z

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

2004-12-27T18:27:00.000Z

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

2004-12-27T18:07:00.000Z

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

2004-12-23T22:00:00.000Z

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?

2004-12-22T22:22:00.000Z

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

2004-12-22T22:03:00.000Z

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

2004-12-17T22:07:00.000Z

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"

2004-12-17T21:32:00.000Z

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?

2004-12-17T15:33:00.000Z

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

2004-12-16T22:49:00.000Z

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

2004-12-16T20:23:00.000Z

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?

2004-12-15T18:03:00.000Z

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

2004-12-15T15:01:00.000Z

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?

2004-12-15T14:40:00.000Z

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

2004-12-14T11:17:00.000Z

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

2004-12-14T11:12:00.000Z

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?

2004-12-12T23:30:00.000Z

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

2004-12-11T15:24:00.000Z

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

2004-12-11T15:12:00.000Z

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

2004-12-10T12:48:00.000Z

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

2004-12-09T13:02:00.000Z

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

2004-12-08T16:45:00.000Z

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

2004-12-08T11:08:00.000Z

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

2004-12-05T14:16:00.000Z

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

2004-12-04T19:30:00.000Z

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

2004-12-03T14:31:00.000Z

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'?