The 28th Article

Forgot to mention the excellent Spectator editorial on Clause 28. Boris makes no bones about how silly he finds the debate:

Some people may think it important to demonstrate what they take to be society’s views on the question; some may think it deeply offensive. The salient point is that this is not a fit subject for law. The wish to be vaguely anti-poofter is not a good enough ground for a restriction on free speech; not when Tories are trying to contest another ban, of far greater importance, on a way of life which the public, alas, also finds unacceptable. If the Tories show illiberalism on Section 28, they can expect no mercy on hunting, and nor will they deserve it.

I ask the supporters of Clause 28, whether there is a law forbidding the promotion of bestiality in the classroom? There isn't, as far as I'm aware, and that should show how silly such laws are.

Advocacy journalism?

The news networks of course have a duty to alert the public to potential health risks, but they can go too far. One example seems to have occurred last week when CBS and CNN rose to the bait of a campaign by the Public Citizen advocacy group about the supposed dangers of acetaminophen (Tylenol). CBS reporter Sheryl Attkisson filed the following story on Sept. 20:

Acetaminophen is considered very safe in the proper dosages. But it's now in so many products, hundreds, that tens of thousands of people a year accidently overdose on it, some by taking multiple products like Robitussin for a cough and Tylenol for a headache. Both contain acetaminophen.

Mr. STEVEN COOPER (Wyeth Pharmaceuticals): Each individual product is safe, but the consumer has become confused, and unintentionally they can take multiple products containing acetaminophen and unknowingly find themselves in serious danger with liver toxicity.

ATTKISSON: Now an FDA advisory panel recommends new labels that warn consumers taking more than the recommended dose may cause liver damage, also not to use other products that contain acetaminophen because the dose can add up.

The new labels aren't a done deal. The FDA doesn't always follow the recommendations of its advisors. In fact, it rejected a similar proposal from an FDA advisory panel 25 years ago which said there should be liver warnings on acetaminophen products.

Practicising physician "Sydney Smith" has some excellent commentary on how the coverage has affected her patients over at Medpundit. In particular, she is worried about her patients growing scared of Tylenol:

The publicity over this, regrettably, is already making patients shy about using the drug. I had a couple of people tell me yesterday that they would rather use other over the counter analgesics for their minor arthritis pain, like Aleve and Motrin, because of the news reports about Tylenol’s dangers. Those drugs, unlike Tylenol, can cause bleeding ulcers and kidney damage, even when taken in the correct dose, making them riskier than Tylenol. If Public Citizen is truly concerned about public safety, they should consider the full consequences of their political action.

By pointing out potential health risks without mentioning why the medication is still better than the alternatives, CBS may have done its viewers more of a disservice than a service.

The Tipping Point

My wife, who worked in restaurants for several years, is rather outraged at the EU court decision that tips for waiters can form part of a minimum wage, because, when the customer pays a tip by credit card or cheque, he is paying the restaurant:

This is the most ass-backwards thinking I've seen from the EU yet (published in today's Electronic Telegraph). It's infuriating. When I tip a waiter whether it's cash or part of my credit card payment, I'm tipping the waiter for good service. I'm not tipping the restaurant. I pay the restaurant for the food I ate, I tip the waiter for the service I am given.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's allowing the restaurant owner to steal wages from his employees! What kind of promotion of "human rights" is this? I may be more pro-chefs than waiters but I waited tables too and this is just, well, just stupid.

ARGH!

I completely agree, although, to be fair, the UK courts had found the same way and legally their argument is pretty tight. It's still an abuse of the customer's trust, however. I always used to tip in cash in the UK. Now I remember why.

400,000 people can be wrong

Natalie Solent has an excellent post on some of the disparaging comments made about the Countryside march in the Grauniad. We should also note that Martin Luther King's civil rights march on DC only attracted about 250,000...

Global consequences

Tony Blair has released his dossier on Iraq (also available at the Number 10 site). The PM told Parliament:

'And if people say: why should Britain care? I answer: because there is no way that this man, in this region above all regions, could begin a conflict using such weapons and the consequences not engulf the whole world.'

I think he's probably right on this. A China-like isolationist Fortress Britain might be able to escape some of the consequences, but not all. And I think our role in creating the artificial entity that is Iraq, and then supporting Saddam under the silly "enemy of my enemy is my friend" principle, makes us responsible in some ways for sorting out the problems those actions caused.

Hic!

Study: Alcohol Ads Often Reach Teens, reports The Washington Post. A research branch of Georgetown University, which does not seem to have a web presence, alleges that alcohol advertisers are deliberately targeting teens by including certain magazines in their advertising strategies. The Post refers to the main problem with such a study -- how to define a magazine with a teen audience -- but only does so in a "he said, she said" manner. A little more research into the demographics of the magazines, however, could have revealed that, for instance, 63% of Sports Illustrated readers are aged 25-54. The problem appears to be not so much one of advertisers delibertaely targeting teens, but the anomalous grey area in America's social fabric caused by treating young adults as adults in most areas, but not when it comes to drinking. A 19 year-old is, to all intents and purposes, the same as a 26 year-old when it comes to the ability to spend money on music, sports and clothing, but not when it comes to alcohol. That is why the 18-24 demographic tends to be treated as a single unit by marketers.

Moreover, even if we ignore this problem, the Federal Trade Commission looked at the self-regulating practices of the industry in 1999 and commended some companies that

have [voluntaily] raised the standard for ad placement. Instead of adhering to the 50 percent requirement, these companies require a 60 to 70 percent legal-age audience for print media...

Sports Illustrated, for one, clearly meets that more stringent requirement. And apparently the study also includes Playboy as a teen magazine... This study appears to be raising the bar significantly.

More on the Lethality Survey

The survey, which the author was kind enough to send me in Word format, relies on the discrepancy between the homicide rate and the aggravated assault rate as recorded by the police in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). If the author had used the National Criminal Victimization Survey figures he would see, as depicted here serious violent crime overall remained roughly steady from 1973 to about 1993, after which it plummeted. The author argues that crimes recorded by the police are a better measure of the most serious crimes, but crimes committed within the criminal community (eg between drug dealers) are unlikely to be recorded. The best measure for the author's purposes would be a nationwide measure of persons admitted to hospital with life-threatening wounds, or an FBI/NCVS category of "attempted murder," but neither figure is available. Instead, we are dealing with dueling proxy measures. One indicates an ongoing increase in lethality. The other indicates not much change since 1973. It can therefore safely be said that we do not really know whether or not the murder rate would be much larger if it were not for modern medical techniques.

PP: Final word on lethality: This CDC publication, Nonfatal and Fatal Firearm-Related Injuries -- United States, 1993-1997, provides evidence that non-fatal firearm injuries fell at the same rate as fatal firearm injuries from 1993-1997. This would seem to indicate that medicine was not masking an increase in attempted murder between those years. Any increase in medical effectiveness must therefore have taken place before the recent crime drop. The drop in violent crime appears, therefore, to be real.

Liberty and Livelihood

407,791 voices cry freedom, which represents slightly more than 1 in every 200 Brits. In relative terms, that's equivalent to about 2,000,000 Americans descending on DC. In other words, this was a bloody big demonstration. Andrew Ian Dodge's brief testimony is here, Peter Briffa's look at the contrast between the double-barrels of Rees-Mogg and Alibhai-Brown is here and David Carr's eye-witness account is here.

When I checked the news.bbc.co.uk page last night, there was no mention of it.

PP: Mr British Spin's less than congratulatory comments about the march are here. Having now seen The Sun's coverage the toff quotient does seem pretty high. Still, the scale remains important.

Hotel California

Good Jim Bennett column, The European Roach Motel. As he says, Britain benefits from trade relations with Europe, but what the Constitutional Convention is proposing is utterly ridiculous:

The Anglosphere vision is of a loose set of cooperative institutions among the English-speaking, Common-Law based nations. This vision is compatible with the idea of complementary cooperative ties between the various Anglosphere nations and their regional neighbors. For America, this would include Latin America; for Australia, it would include Asia and the Pacific. For Britain and Ireland, a set of useful cooperative ties loosely affiliated with Europe makes perfect sense. Imposing the roach-motel clause on the European Union guarantees that, rather than being the basis for such ties, will in the long run be something Britain must stay out of.

The points about Europe's desire to raid Britain's prudent pension (social security) provision is well worth remembering.

If I have one quibble, it's that the legal framework is not examined. The newly supreme European Court would hand down judgment after judgment against Britain, with crippling fines, I am sure, for her refusal to co-operate. The European police would be perfectly entitled to freeze British assets in Europe and so on in order to get her to comply with her constitutional obligations. That's why I think it may come to an armed conflict, but it will be Britain that is forced to fire the first shots in order to restore her independence, not the outlandish case of a European invasion of the UK. And the legal niceties will almost certainly be on the European side, even if the demands of justice are not.

Compare and Contrast

The Brady Campaign against handguns has been happy to trumpet the idea that Americans turned away from gun ownership in 2001. Their press release from 8/28 this year says:

According to an April 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor, the FBI conducted fewer background checks for gun purchases in 2001 than in 2000, and checks for the first two months of 2002 were already 10.5 percent below last year's pace.

Well, now the official figures are out. according to NBC News last night:

"The Justice Department reported today on applications for guns in America, and they're up. The number of Americans who applied for handguns and rifles last year rose 3% to almost 8 million. Of those applications, slightly less than 2% were rejected."

I wonder if the Brady Campaign will retract its claim?

PP: Here's the link to the official Justice Department figures.

Murdering statistics

Canada's NATIONAL POST is the first North American source to pick up on a story from the British Medical Journal that alleges that modern medical techniques are masking a huge increase in the murder rate, by saving people who would otherwise have died and that therefore America is a much more violent place than we think. That may be the case by comparison with the 1930s, but when looking at recent years we can see that the figures confirm that there has been a significant drop in aggravated assault as well as murder. The latest criminal victimization survey shows that the aggravated assault "with injury" rate -- in which all those saved from homicide by medical science would be placed -- has halved from 3.4 per 1,000 persons in 1993 to 1.7 per 1,000 in 2001. Unfortunately, we do not have directly comparable victimization figures for how many people were victims of aggravated assault in the 1930s, so a meaningful comparison with then is impossible. As aggravated assault figures collected by the FBI include those merely threatened with a weapon, any comparison based on those figures -- which I suspect the comparison referred to in the Post article to be -- will be using a measure that is too imprecise. I've asked the researcher for the full study, and will post more if necessary when I've seen it.

Spartan discipline

The insane Greek crackdown on computer games continues. One of the main targets is people playing Age of Empires, which actually has some (not much, I admit) educational value in teaching Greek history...

Received pronunciation

Terrific post from Eugene of The Volokh Conspiracy on the subject of President Bush's pronunciation of "nuclear." It's all snobbery. The folks in the UK who particularly object to the President's "mangling" of the language would get all bent out of shape if anyone dared criticize, say, a genuinely working class Prime Minister from the North of England for using Geordie/Mackem expressions or pronunication. Jest axe them. That'd mayuk 'em "crawfish" awa'. Yerbuggermar.

Over-reaction to child abduction. In the UK...

This MORI poll, The Repercussions Of Soham Murders, shows that 49% of UK parents surveyed (although the sample is small) have actually changed their behavior as a result of the Soham murders, despite the tiny number of children murdered annually (I presume -- believe it or not, I cannot find up-to-date murder statistics for the UK anywhere on line and certainly not broken down by age). My recent STATS essay on child abduction in the US seems even more applicable to the UK.

Alms for Allah?

I used to give money to beggars regularly, on the grounds of Matthew 25,35. I stopped when someone I knew who worked with the homeless and the mentally ill in the UK told me they spent it all on drugs or booze (and the younger they were, the more likely it would be the former than the latter). Now The Homeless Guy confirms this here:

Why do they beg or panhandle? Drugs. It sounds too easy to be true. Sorry, it's all about the Drugs. Even when they are honestly asking for help with food, or their electric bill, or diapers, it's because they've spent all their money on Drugs, (which includes alcohol and cigarettes). At first, giving food may seem like a good alternative to giving money, but that only allows them to save their money for Drugs. Drugs, Drugs, Drugs - I can't say it enough. When you give money to these guys, and girls, you are supporting their life destroying addictions.

Kevin then addresses Christ's injunction. A friend of mine gets round the problem by giving people who ask for money McDonalds vouchers, which seems reasonable.

By the way, you've probably already seen the link on Instapundit, but any question as to The Homeless Guy's bona fides should be dealt with by this post.

Ouch!

There's a line from Thucydides that always makes my eyes water. Listing the evil portents that occurred prior to the Syracusan Expedition, he talks about a man who jumped astride an altar and proceded to castrate himself with a rock. I wonder what he'd have said about this news from Australia: Man Slices Off Four Body Parts. Urgh.

Poor measure

My latest UPI Recent research suggests ... column is up. It looks at some recent criticisms of the federal poverty measure and suggests that income is a poor measure of poverty.

What a mother does

My wife has something she feels she needs to get off her chest:

Over the past few months, several people have asked me what exactly I do all day as a stay-at-home mom. The question has always put me on the defensive and I didn't like that. I realized that people ask that question of stay-at-home moms but would never ask that of a in-home nurse.

Let's compare.

An in-home nurse would arrive at an invalid's home, help them wake up, go to the bathroom, wash their face, brush their teeth and hair, and get dressed. They'd then take them downstairs, make them breakfast, and help them eat it. After putting the breakfast dishes away, they may take the invalid out for light errands, low-key social events, read books to them, or they may simply sit with them while watching tv. Before lunch, an in-home nurse would help the invalid with going to the bathroom and then make and feed them lunch. Afternoons, may give the in-home nurse a break if the invalid takes a rest. Otherwise, it would be a repeat of the morning; errands, social time, or entertaining the invalid. Dinner preparation and feeding of the invalid would be next. Then the in-home nurse would take them upstairs to bath the invalid, get them into pajamas, brush teeth and hair, and help them go to bed. The presuming there is a night nurse or night care is unnecessary, the in-home nurse can go home.

Now, the in-home nurse may also have to give medicine or handle medical equipment which I would not have to do. However, an in-home nurse does NOT have to run heavy errands (groceries, car care, etc.) or clean the house (scrub bathrooms and kitchen floors). An in-home nurse is NOT responsible for organizing all holiday, birthday, family and vacation events/activities (cards, gifts, holiday meal cooking, travel). An in-home nurse does NOT pay the bills, run the family budget, or remember the myriad of tiny details that come with being responsible for a family.

And most importantly, if the in-house nurse belongs to a service, she may get nights and weekends off. She has sick leave and vacation time. I do NOT . I've only had one weekend off in two years and I have NO idea when I will have another time period off. I can NOT get sick because my husband can't take time off from work just because I'm ill. I work AT LEAST 10 to 12 hours days every day of the week except when my husband lets me sleep in to 10am on Saturday mornings.

What's worse is that while people who hire in-home nurses or send their children to daycare can take tax breaks, the family with a stay-at-home mom gets none. Despite the obvious similarities to a job many consider quite important, we stay-at-home moms get little to no recognition from the government (or others). I love and adore my daughter and I'm proud that my husband does not require me to work. I miss the satisfaction of my old career as an advertising copywriter but I believe my job as a mother and homemaker to be more important. It's just a shame that only me and my family feel the same way.

Kris Murray
Iain's Wife

I very much agree with Kris on this. I have on my desk, taped to the side of my computer, a list of 55 separate tasks she completed in one typical day between me leaving for work and arriving home. All are substantial in some way. Society does not give stay-at-home mothers the respect they are due, and in some ways chooses to denigrate them by subsidizing mothers who work (the tax breaks issue). That never used to be the case. Once again, women are shown to be the real victims of the 60s revolution.

Out of Body, Out of Mind?

This is over-wrought. Leading skeptic Michael Shermer claims that this new study is

another blow against those who believe that the mind and spirit are somehow separate from the brain," said psychologist Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptic Society, which seeks to debunk alien abductions and other paranormal claims. "In reality, all experience is derived from the brain."

This is evidence from an experiment on one -- 1, singular, unique -- woman. As such, it proves nothing except that she herself experiences strange things when her brain gets stimulated in certain ways. As a much more extensive survey of survivors of cardiac arrest last year concluded:

We do not know why so few cardiac patients report Near Death Experiences after CPR, although age plays a part. With a purely physiological explanation such as cerebral anoxia for the experience, most patients who have been clinically dead should report one.

(Emphasis added).

NDEs are very difficult to explain. Sydney Smith raises the question of why it's only Heaven that ever gets reported, never Hell. Good point (similar to my mind to the question of why, if God can be represented as a woman in modern Churches, how come the Devil can't?) although a few speculative answers cross my mind. First, self-selection: how likely are you to tell people you've seen that you're going to Hell? Second, the nature of Hell: perhaps Hell is total emptiness, the lack of contact with God. Third, perhaps you don't go straight to Hell. There is all that talk about Judgment Day and separating sheep from goats, after all, in theology (although this has never been a strong point of mine).

In any event, I think Shermer staking a lot on this study is just a little over-the-top.

What the frell?

What Farscape Character are you?

Debt and Taxes

This is worrying. According to economists from the Urband Institute and Brookings Institution (hardly the most conservative organizations in the world), the Alternative Minimum Tax will affect 85% of two children families by 2010. Here's how the NCPA summarize the research:

The alternative minimum tax (AMT) was originally designed to
assure that wealthier Americans with many deductions did not
escape paying taxes of some sort, and as recently as three years
ago fewer than one million Americans were subject to it. But if
nothing is changed, by 2010 about 36 million taxpayers will face
its complex provisions.

o When the Bush cuts become fully effective, 85 percent of
taxpayers with two or more children will be forced off the
regular income tax and onto the AMT system.

o It will largely affect families with incomes of $75,000 to
$500,000.

o Under AMT, many deductions are denied -- including those
for children, the taxpayers themselves, and for state and
local taxes.

o Married couples are 25 to 30 times more likely to be
subjected to it than single people -- which tax experts
call "a nasty marriage penalty."

The study concludes that almost any remedy to the problem will
cost the Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars or require
raising taxes elsewhere to compensate for the losses.

This tax was introduced to deal with a loophole exploited by 155 people. Congressional leaders need to address this issue very soon, or a real anti-tax rebellion will brew very quickly, I suspect. That's likely to be bad news for certain parties.

La Fort Sumtere

I've always said that around 2010 there will be a secession crisis of some sort in the EU. And that I would join the Secession Party and, if necessary, fight to restore my country's independence. It seems now that the Constitutional Conventioneers are anticipating this problem, but not in a good way. They propose that, in order to secede, a "rebel" state would have to

secure the backing of three-quarters of the votes in the EU Council of Ministers, as well as two-thirds of the European Parliament, and ratification by the parliaments of every single country.

So if you're an economic powerhouse like Britain or Germany whose wealth will fuel much of a United Europe's prosperity, you're doomed. Luxembourg can block your secession. Interesting to see the thinking behind this:

["Liberal" "Democrat"] Mr Duff said his proposal was intended to avoid the sort of confusion that led to the American Civil War. "We don't want to end up like the US when the South wanted to leave and the North had to fight to keep them in," he said.

The thinking is that secession is always bad. Take that, West Virginia. And so much for English dreams of an independent Scotland...

EC dreams dashed

The hope of the European Commission that it will somehow become a rival to the US seems increasingly likely to be dashed on the rocaks of realism. As this Wall Street Journal Europe article (may be for WSJ subscribers only) argues despite itself, the Iraq question has shown the poverty of the idea that European foreign policy is both coherent and distinct from America's:

Institutional reform pushed by Brussels also too often looks like a poor substitute for real policy backed by political will. Even Le Monde, a traditional home for proponents of a united Europe, wrote in its editorial after the Bush speech that "the most disturbing aspect [of a show-down with Iraq] is the total absence of strategic thinking in Europe about the menace presented by radical Islam and the dissemination of arms of mass destruction."

Globalization means the U.S. and Europe are more interdependent, to use the phrase thrown about by Britain's Tony Blair. The banal truth may simply be that on important strategic questions, a unified Europe will usually be one with America. The coming enlargement of the EU from 15 to 25 members -- among them close friends of America -- will only reinforce this tendency.

Europe's ABs are repeatedly being shown to live in their castles in the air.

Here we go again

Kieran Healy replies to my comments below on the effect of crime on the incarceration rate. On the first part, there is, as Kieran says, very little difference between us. The initial analogy is flawed, but the revised analogy I suggest is as near as you going to get to anything meaningful when someone asks "Is an African American more likely to go to jail or college?" Like it or not, it's a question that gets asked. The answer I suggest is more helpful in pointing out the problems with the comparison than the pat answers that have been given so far. And it provides a jumping-off point for discussing why it's not a meaningful question.

On my other points about the incarceration rate being driven by the crime rate, Kieran says the following:

Well, yes --- in a just society incarceration would reflect criminality. But there are at least three difficulties. First, we need to decide what's illegal: the things you can be locked up for have a tendency to vary over time and across societies. Second, while you may "happen to think" that U.S. society is "one of the closest to 'justness' that there has ever been", I think there's some room for disagreement on that point --- at least enough to make one think twice about using it as a premise in an argument like this. Third, I question whether it is a "plain fact" that the prison boom was "driven by an increase in violent crime." It's not obvious to me from crime data that this is so.

For example, here's a time series of the homicide rate from 1950 to 1999 [Kieran has a Javascript pop-up. You can see the data via Kieran's site or here]. As you can see, it really takes off in the 1970s. It declines precipitously in the mid-1990s. In between, there is a rise in the late '80s and early '90s, but that peaks below the all-time high in 1981. The trend suggests that the relationship between crime and incarceration is more complex than Iain Murray wants to allow. (If incarceration rates reflect violent crime rates, why did the prison boom not begin in, say, 1974?) Rather than assume that the incarceration rate is a simple reflection of levels of crime, or that it reflects the basic "justness" of U.S. society, I'd suggest it's more profitable to examine the role that other forces, most notably state policy, play in this process.

Taking Kieran's difficulties one at a time, the first is easily answered. We lock people up for such offenses as our elected representatives from time to time think deserving of the sanction of incarceration. The fact that blasphemy is a crime in England and an enforced crime in Islamic countries, but is not in the US, makes no real difference to the fact that breach of the law as written is what drives the various criminal justice rates in each of the countries concerned.

On the second point, I'd like to know what countries Kieran thinks are, or have been, more just. He may have some good candidates, but it would be helpful to know where we both stand in relation to that point.

[More to follow tomorrow on the main point -- time has run away from me tonight].

Miracle cure?

Hmmm. Given that a lot of Brits think the hole in the ozone layer causes global warming*, I wonder if this news (Antarctic Ozone Hole Could Close by 2050) will have them changing their mind on climate change?

I remember one of the most bizarre letters I ever received to answer officially at the Department of Transport was written in all directions on what looked like a local council leave approval sheet, and finished (as far as I could tell) with the memorable injunction: "Ozone -- PUT IT BACK!"

The rich and social responsibility

Clayton Cramer has an interesting post on his experience with rich kids not feeling that they need to graduate high school. It's an important point. I noticed that the sons of the super-rich at my university were the most likely to not give a fig for other people's property. Part of the erosion of societal structure, it seems to me, has been the erosion of the idea of social responsibility among the upper classes. Consequently, the upper classes interact less and less with those who earn less. I think that it one of the reasons for the sharp divide in public opinion between the ABs and the CDEs mentioned below.

Outbreak of common sense in British policing

Big Mac with fries and PC to keep muggers at bay is how the Telegraph headlines a common-sense initiative to get policemen to be a little bit more involved in their community. Over here, one often sees policemen doing their paperwork in 7-11 stores at night. It's an instant deterrent that also makes law-abiding people feel safer. Policemen need to spend less time in station canteens and more in their local MacDonalds, less time doing paperwork in the station and more time in local all-night stores. It's a simple, sensible idea. Why make a joke about it?

Local parental control is the answer

I agree with a lot in Melanie Philips' latest, Saving the family. She is right to say that family disintegration is the single biggest social problem facing the UK today. However, I have to say that I find her idea of using Statute Law to tackle the problem by broadening Section 28 to be slightly wrong-headed. My preferred solution would be to give local educational control to parents. Melanie objects to the role of "libertines" in the Conservative Party. Well, libertines don't, as a rule, have children. Even those who do are a tiny minority. You tend to get a tad more judgmental and less relativistic about things when you have children. So I think local parental control (either by an Education commission appointed by a body answerable to parents or some other scheme) would probably have the effect of imposing the moral strictures that Melanie wants, without needing to involve central government. My thinking on this is at a very early stage, so I'd love to hear comments.

PP: The Telegraph says something similar (I also agree with its points on the Church therein):

Every test of public opinion shows that an overwhelming majority think it no part of a local authority's job to feed children with propaganda about the joys of homosexuality. The Tories' job should be to campaign for giving parents more say in their children's schooling, so that Section 28 will become redundant.

But if it will become redundant, why not repeal it? Or is the Telegraph arguing for legislation for legislation's sake?

PPP: Peter Cuthbertson's take is here, while Andrew Dodges' is here.

Judge not?

Interesting little interactive exercise on the BBC website. You, the Judge gives you the circumstances of five cases and asks you to deliver the appropriate sentence. I got the answers "right" on three of the five cases, but went for more severe sentences than were delivered in two of them. I am amazed at the leniency shown in what was clearly an unambiguous case of stranger rape (as must be 70% of the participants, who went for the same sentence I did) and in the case of an habitual offender who was quite clearly a menace to public order. The American experience has shown that taking seriously severely violent crimes like rape, and also threats to public order, can contribute to a drop in crime.

Hmmm

Anatol Lieven says the USA should treat Britain as An ally, not a lapdog. Well, yes, of course, but his reasoning is odd. If he hadn't predicated his argument on British polling data, I might agree with him more, but as Tim Hames pointed out last week, there's a divergence in opinion between the social classes in the UK that should be taken into account. Nevertheless, Jim Bennett comments as follows:

I seem to recall having seen the UK poll numbers supporting Iraq having moved to a statistical tie within the last day or two. I also seriously doubt whether Middle Britain gives a rat's ass about most of the international law issues he cites.

However, he is right when he says that sentimental invocations will not maintain the US-British alliance indefinitely. There really do need to be structural mechanisms particular to the Anglosphere to maintain a strong alliance. If we could imagine a formal, aboveground UKUSA structure with a consultative council that would have met already on Iraq and come up with a UKUSA position, it would both have been pretty close to what the US wants and needs, and soemthing that would be a visible demonstration of the UK's position as somehting other than a poodle to the US. It should also have produced some quid pro quos on issues like cooperation against the IRA and against Spanish claims on Gibraltar.

Whoops! There's the problem. It's hard for a British government to demand the US take UK interests into account when it doesen't take them into account itself.

Couldn't agree more, especially on the last point. Allies are different from client, vassal or satellite states. A joint structure would do a lot to protect both nations' interests.

I don't know what you mean, but I have an opinion on it

Public strong on opinions – weaker on knowledge is the conclusion of a Cardiff University study on what the public knows and thinks about scientific issues. I suspect the same would be true here in the States. The evidence is most telling when it comes to our old friend climate change:

Climate change. Two-thirds of respondents erroneously thought that the hole in the ozone layer causes climate change and over a half said that the effect of greenhouse gases is to thin the ozone layer. Yet, a majority, answered correctly less technical and more political questions: 53 per cent knew that one of the predicted climate changes for the UK is more rainfall in winter; and 52 per cent knew that the United States is opposed to the Kyoto Protocol. A majority also correctly defined the phrase 'carbon sink'. Sixty per cent said they were dissatisfied with the UK Government's efforts to respond the challenge of climate change, although it's not clear how much people know about the Government's record.

The source of the problem is quite clear. Despite the existence of "intelligent multi-media strategies" that the Cardiff academics recommend, the public still gets its news through the filter of TV and newspapers. The fact that so many get the objectively wrong impression tells us more about the job the media are doing than it does about the public or researchers.

Market-based Freedom Restrictions

Chad Dimpler has some worthwhile comments on Eli's plan for a market-based ID card system. He's a trifle skeptical, dontcha know?

Another good blog

Clayton Cramer is an amateur historian who helped humble the so-called professional Michael Bellesiles. His blog is worth a look, especially if you're interested in RKBA issues.

Clause 4 = Section 28

The turning point in the Labour Party's fortunes came when Tony Blair forced through the abandonment of Clause IV of the Party's constitution, which committed it to workers' control of the means of production. The modern Tory party needs such a defining moment. Michael Gove has identified one: Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbids the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. I agree with him, for these reasons particularly:

Why, when the Conservatives argue that power should be devolved down to local authorities and teachers, do they insist that central Government should continue to retain strict control over the teaching of just one aspect of human biology? What is so important about homosexuality that it, alone, cannot be entrusted to the good sense of local schools to handle? When most voters are, rightly, more concerned about funding, standards, discipline, teacher recruitment and pupil motivation, why are the Tories so anxious to regulate this aspect of school life? Who really looks obsessed with marginal questions here?

Like the National Curriculum, Section 28 is an unwarranted restriction on local responsibility for education. Tie the abolition of the two together, and people will know what the Tory party stands for.

Failed Experiment

Rebecca O'Neill of Civitas has produced Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family, a comprehensive look at what social science tells us about fatherlessness. As Mary Kenny says,

In this short but densely researched publication, Ms O'Neill enumerates the evidence that, in our hearts, we can recognise as fact: that lone mothers are, on the whole, poorer, have more health problems, and are more liable to depression; that children growing up without fathers are poorer, more likely to have emotional and mental problems, get into more trouble at school, and have more difficulties in relationships.

Young adults not living with their biological fathers are less likely to attain qualifications, and women of divorced parents have consistently lower academic achievements.

Divorce dents children's confidence, and many divorces take place in "low-conflict" marriages, which have a reasonable potential for being salvaged. Divorced fathers are more likely to lose touch with their children, and single mothers interact less well with teenagers.

All this is backed by repeated studies and control groups and it all adds up to prove the thesis that it is better to have two married parents: better for the individual and for society, too. This is not a "value judgment", but a rational conclusion from social studies.

It is clearly irrational for any political party to support policies that encourage the fecklessness of young males in siring children and then failing to raise them. The single biggest thing we can do to reduce the crime rate is to instill discipline into these young men by forcing them to live up to their responsibilities as fathers. And if that means a return to social stigma of one sort or the other then we have to ask ourselves if that is worse than disadvantaging generation after generation of children. I cannot see how we can avoid the obvious answer.

Another Prodigal Returns

He hasn't been away as long as Shiloh, but it's good to have the ever-engaging Brendan O'Neill back again. I admire Brendan's stand against any Western intervention in other nations, even though I don't agree with it, and he doesn't deserve half the opprobrium he gets. Good to have you back, Brendan.

Good news, if...

David Blunkett has announced plans to halve the red tape and form-filling undertaken by police. That is a welcome announcement, assuming that it gets implemented properly. The amount of bureaucracy in British police work is staggering, and it much of it is, of course, completely unproductive:

He said that in one case officers spent more than 40,000 hours filling in an obsolete form for stolen vehicles.

Assuming an 8-hour work day, that's 13.5 work years wasted. No wonder the British crime rate is so high...

Declaration of Right (subject, of course...)

Dave Kopel has some important things to say about what the Declaration of Right 1688 says about the right to bear arms in England and Wales (I've never been too clear about the Declaration's constitutional position vis-a-vis Scotland). I wondered about quibbling with Dave's description of "a civic culture of passivity and helplessness" in the UK, given that householders regularly take on burglars, but are then punished by the law that is supposed to protect them. However, he is right that the "civic culture" has abolished the right to self-defense. The effect is blindingly obvious. Compare the words of one Chicago burglar, interviewed by Wright and Decker:

"I rather for the police to catch me vs a person catching me breaking in their house because the person will kill you. Sometimes the police will tell you 'You lucky we came before they did.'"

This would be characterized in the UK as "taking the law into your own hands." How far have we come from Blackstone's recognition that you must have the right to protect yourself when the duly-established law enforcement procedures fail you. Moreover, there used to be a distinction between law and liberty in the UK, as evinced by the John Adams quote on the left. This is not taking law into your own hands, it is you exercising a liberty. If parliament and the judiciary have seen fit to restrict that liberty, then they have overstepped their bounds.

E-mail problems

I've been having significant e-mail problems recently. If you've sent me something recently and haven't received a response, it's probably because my server isn't delivering anything between the hours of 10pm and 8am EST, or at the weekends at all, so please send it me again safely outside those hours. I think it must belong to a British Trade Union...

I'll believe it when I see it

The Iraqi offer to admit inspectors "without conditions" sees me as skeptical as the Administration. There may not be conditions to admitting inspectors, but they already raise conditions for allowing them actually to inspect. Steven Den Beste thinks that if there aren't many of those, it means he's closer than we thought to getting the bomb. I think it's much more likely that he's just spinning out the skein of his fate for as long as he can. This move could, if he plays it right, get him another two years before the UN approves action. It will take resolve on the part of the alliance to hold the UN to making sure inspections do take place quickly, and also to enact the other requirements the President laid down last week. Blair and Bush have to reiterate the full list so that Kofi Annan and the other foot-draggers don't let people think that Iraq has caved. They've potholed.

Return of a Favorite

A couple of days after I finally remove the recommended star from her link, Shiloh Bucher returns to action at shilohbucher.com. It's good to have this excellent blogger back.

The Sound of Silence

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting blog entry on Lawrence Wright's New Yorker piece on Al Qa'eda. This struck as me as telling. After the failure of Operation Infinite Reach (the "million dollar missiles vs two dollar tent" operation under President Clinton), bin Laden exalted in his survival:

When bin Laden's voice came crackling across the radio transmission - "By the grace of God, I am alive!" - the forces of anti-Americanism had found their champion. Those who had objected the the slaughter of innocents in the embassies in East Africa, many of whom were Muslims, were cowed by the popular response to this man whose defiance of America now seemed blessed by divine favor. The day after the strikes, Zawahiri called a reporter in Karachi, with a message: "Tell the Americans that we aren't afraid of bombardment, threats, and acts of aggression... The war has only just begun; the Americans should now await the answer."

We have heard nothing from OBL (or even Zawahiri, I imagine). Surely "By the grace of God, I am STILL alive" would rally his forces even more. A better example of divine favor in the face of enemy onslaught I cannot imagine. Yet we hear nothing. A clear case, it seems to be, of the dog that does not rant in the night.

Unequal treatment

Kieran Healy makes some comments about Virginia Postrel's commendation of my article about African Americans and college/prison. He says:

This doesn't seem like a helpful way to present the data. The number of young white prisoners in the U.S. is large compared to almost any other prison population in the world. But it's very small compared to the number of white college students in the U.S. Does this mean we should be happy with the incarceration rate? Murray is rightly criticizing a bad analogy, but then exploits the same analogy to make his own point about the large ratio being "very good news".

I'm not sure whether Kieran actually read my article, rather than just Virginia's comments, but the article had three points. First, the JPI's numbers were objectively wrong. Second, the analogy they used was flawed, and that there was a better analogy available which implied something different. And third, in order to make a case that education spending suffering in comparison to corrections spending disproportionately affected African-American men, they ignored the data about the substantial increase in African-American women in college, something that seems to indicate that educational opportunities were made available to that community, and taken up.

As for the general point about incarceration, no, we should not be happy with the incarceration rate, but that rate is a product of other factors. In a just society, and I happen to think the American experiment is one of the closest to "justness" that there has ever been, the incarceration rate reflects the level of criminality in communities. Spending on corrections is therefore reactive. The plain fact is -- and the New York Times got this right -- the increase in incarceration in the 90s was driven by an increase in violent crime. Bill Spelman of the University of Texas at Austin built a model to assess the effect of prison expansion since the 70s on the violent crime rate. His conclusion was that by the late 90s, if we had not expanded our prisons, America would be suffering about 1200 violent crimes per 100,000 population. The actual rate was less than 600. The expansion of prisons was necessary, it seems to me.

At base, we have to think about what drives people to turn to crime rather than self-improvement. This is the central question of criminology, of course. Education is a part of the answer, but public education is but a part of that, and there are other, cultural factors as well. The JPI study was, in my opinion, simplistic, flawed and inexact. In its choice of headlines it also showed poor judgment. It deserved the treatment it got.

Where's Osama?

More rumblings from the Arab world that Bin Laden is as dead as Robert Fisk's reutation in the blogsophere. A UAE newspaper, quoted in The Mirror, quotes an "eye-witness" who says

"On the 24th night of Ramadan (Dec 10) and at a late hour, there were some scary explosions in the place where Osama bin Laden's cave was.

"The cave was completely erased from the ground and became nothing. This was the only cave of the 15 that was destroyed by an enormous 52ft missile and there is no doubt that bin Laden died.''

Now from this evidence, Marc Herold would count Bin Laden as a casualty. I'm not so sure it's the conclusive evidence we're looking for, but it's another pebble on the cairn.

Ye gods!

The British Government, which is, of course, omnipotent and omniscient, has decided it is going to reduce the number of people who want to kill themselves. Jolly good. One of the ways they are going to achieve this laudable aim is by "reducing the availability and lethality of suicidal methods". The evidence they use to support this assertion is:

Some measures to reduce suicides have already been taken, including cutting the number of pills sold in paracetamol packs.

The number of deaths related to the painkiller fell 10% between 1998 and 1999 after the move.

Notice it doesn't say "the number of deaths fell," just "the number of deaths related to the painkiller" fell. In fact, according the the official statistics, the overall number of suicides rose between 1998 and 1999. When it comes to suicide, substitution is easy. If you don't have enough paracetamol to kill yourself, you jump off a cliff or step in front of a speeding truck. The measure might have reduced "accidental" suicides, where someone was just crying for help and didn't really intend to die, but I often wonder how many of those there really are.

Nevertheless, the Government's omnipotence is again demonstrated by its next aim, "improving the reporting of suicidal behaviours in the media." No pesky free press if it's going to send out the wrong message, eh?

Ball dropped again

Despite my criticism of him, I do believe that British Home Secretary David Blunkett has sound instincts on certain issues, such as the introduction of a citizenship test for applicants for UK citizenship. However, all too often, as soon as these ideas get off his desk and onto the agendas of those "entrusted" with drawing up the nuts and bolts of their application, the essential common sense of those ideas gets forgotten. The citizenship test is a case in point, it seems. According to this BBC report (ignore the stuff about Blunkett "proscribing" that immigrants speak English in their homes -- a typical exaggeration), the academic in charge of drawing up the test

... has played down suggestions that the test is a hurdle designed to weed out applicants for citizenship.

He said it would focus more on practical issues about living in the UK.

If a test isn't designed to weed out those who don't know the answers, what is its point? But, really, no questions about UK history and what it means? Instead, it seems they'll be tested on what you can buy at a newsagent's shop. Another opportunity missed, and one that future generations will not thank Mr Blunkett for.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

My latest Tech Central Station article is up. It looks at the role of statistics in the Abortion Wars.

A cautionary tale

Orrin Judd, a man I admire more and more, uses a grudging Independent admission of respect for the President as a launching pad for a catalogue of how the literati have consistently underestimated that estimable man.

Privatizing ID Cards

My friend Eli Lehrer makes a case for a market-based ID card system. It's an interesting idea, certainly.

Sense and Science

Sir Howard Newby, a name that I'd fact-check if he rang me up, is the new President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In his address to his organization's annual conference yesterday, he raised some important issues, striking particularly at the idea of the precautionary principle:

“There is a growing suspicion of the benefits that continue to flow from the growth of scientific knowledge,” Sir Howard said. “The idea is that the growth of scientific knowledge might bring forth monsters. The consequences, I fear, could be where areas of scientific inquiry and technological applications will be denied us. This will lead to benefits being denied, particularly to those groups that need new drugs and so forth.”

Sir Howard, a professor of sociology, said there was a disconcerting gap between the risks that people were prepared to take in their everyday lives and those that they would accept in the public sphere. He will spell out his concerns today in his address to the festival, entitled “The Dream of Reason Brings Forth Monsters”, after a celebrated etching by Goya.

“People are happy to take some remarkable risks in their personal lives — throwing themselves off cliffs on hang-gliders, even driving down the M4 on a Friday afternoon. But in the public domain they demand a total elimination of risk.

“The scientific community struggles to tell the public and politicians that it cannot solve that problem. The demand is whether a particular course of action is risk-free, and the answer must always be no. Nothing is ever certain: risk is attached to everything. What worries me with this increasing anti-intellectualism is that the public is putting unreasonable demands on the scientific community. Science cannot remove human moral fallibility. Science does not possess a magic wand that can be waved to remove the problems of society.”

The point about science's powerlessness in the face of human moral fallibility is important. I wonder if Mary Warnock agrees?

Hoaxer with international reach

I was so busy looking at the numbers in the AP story about the National Crime Survey on Monday that I missed the biggest thing in there. The AP had been hoaxed by a couple of "pretend" experts. Neither Ralph Myers of Stanford nor Bruce Fenmore (nor his "institute") exist. Nevertheless, this didn't stop two British newspapers also quoting them. The Daily Mail had this:

Prison works as violent crime in U.S. hits new low
By George Gordon

VIOLENT crime in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years.

According to a government survey, there was a nine per cent drop in such offences last year.

That is lower than at any time since surveys began, back in 1973. Experts said that tougher jail terms played a big part in the drop.

'There is overwhelming evidence that people who commit assaults do it as a general course of their affairs,' said Bruce Fenmore, of the Institute of Crime and Punishment in Chicago.

'Putting these people behind bars drops the rate.' Ralph Myers, a criminologist based at Stanford University said: 'It is clear that crime is on the decline in a significant way, and has been for some years.' He argued that a contributing factor was the strong economy of the Nineties, resulting in improved neighbourhoods and less motivation for crime.

But he agreed with Mr Fenmore that 'crime has also been impacted by the implementation of tough sentencing laws at the end of the 1980s'.

The statistics, based on interviews with victims and therefore not including murder, reveal that the violent crime rate has plunged by half since 1993.

etc.

The Independent also quoted the experts, although rather less creatively, here. How unfortunate that the Indy's man in DC is called Buncombe.

Humble pie all round, I think.

Lord Mythbuster

It's debunking day on Europe today, it seems. In the Telegraph, Lord Lamont debunks several myths about Britain's experience with the Exchange Rate Mechanism in the early 90s. His conclusion:

The ERM experience did do Britain some good, but the recovery would not have been so robust had we not been able to escape. It is impossible to believe Britain would have done better subsequently if we had remained within the ERM. The ERM's break-up gave me the opportunity to construct a new monetary framework, which worked better than the European Central Bank's.

Perhaps the most important point about September 16 is that it helped to keep Britain out of the euro. It demonstrated to people that a single monetary policy is unlikely to work well both for Britain and the rest of Europe.

The ERM experience is a massive warning from history for Britain. Quite why so many are willing to ignore it is beyond me.

Blair's Circus Tricks

Writing in The Times, Tim Hames (who has had a welcome return to form recently), sums up the problem for Tony Blair with his conception of his current strategy. As Jim Bennett pointed out a few weeks ago, Blair is performing a circus trick, trying to ride two horses at once. He thinks that war with Iraq will help him become President of Europe, essentially. Well, Tim's taken a look at the raw polling data and finds a problem with this approach:

The last ICM poll revealed that 30 per cent of the electorate thought that Mr Blair should back Mr Bush on Iraq (52 per cent were opposed to the notion). In a separate question, 28 per cent declared themselves willing to adopt the euro in a referendum (59 per cent were against it).

The numbers 30 and 28 may imply that these were essentially the same people — Blair loyalists — and they would be the Prime Minister’s political base for the Iraqi invasion and the euro enterprise. They are not. There is a huge class distinction at work here. The relatively affluent are more sceptical about war with Iraq but less hostile towards the single currency. The comparatively poor face the other way entirely. As a consequence, the proportion of the public (my thanks to Nick Sparrow from ICM for providing the data) who thought both that Mr Blair should back Mr Bush on Iraq and that Britain should embrace the euro was a whopping . . . 7 per cent.

I do not believe that it will be difficult for the Prime Minister to make converts on Iraq. These recruits will, however, come disproportionately from the social groups which are already most sympathetic to his position (the C1/C2s, Ds and Es). The anti-Americanism of the ABs is, the evidence indicates, really deep and even the sight of cheering liberated citizens on the streets of Baghdad adorning US troops with flowers would not help much.

And how can Mr Blair best mobilise those who might rally to him? First, by offering an appeal to a distinctly traditional form of patriotism. Secondly, by emphasising the historic nature of Anglo-American ties. Thirdly, by emphasising that Britain has a global (not just regional) role and world responsibilities.

These are perfectly decent arguments. They are already beginning to have an effect on Middle England’s attitude towards Iraq, even if Middle Islington is not very impressed by them. They are also precisely the arguments that explain why much of the public is resolutely distrustful of the EU and supremely disinclined to vote for membership of the euro.

The distinction between the solid, working/middle class, Euroskeptic, Anglospheric core and the flighty, upper/nouveau class, Europhile, anti-American literati is shown to be real by the polling data. Two nations. Blair has to pick which one he's for. More by the luck than judgment, I think he's making the right choice.

Mythbuster: Captain Euro's enemy?

Dastardly Tory Roger Helmer MEP takes on ten common statements used in defense of the EU and debunks them for The Bruges Group. How dare he!?!

High water mark for the Nanny McState?

Since devolution, members of the Scottish Parliament have chosen to exercise their limited powers wherever they can, handing down bossy, interfering laws aplenty. Has that tide now turned? They have decided not to outlaw smacking of children by their parents, a move which surprised me. I wonder what David Farrer will have to say on the subject.

Drugged

As promised, I thought I’d flesh out some of my more recent thoughts on drugs. Drugs are harmful to society for three basic reasons:

1. The psychopharmacology of some drugs leads some individuals to act in anti-social ways.

2. When an individual becomes sufficiently habituated to drug use, he may not be able to support his habit through his normal income and therefore may turn to crime to support this habit. Note the use of the word habit – this can occur before addiction.

3. The economics of drugs sales can lead to systemic violence such as shoot-outs between suppliers or punishment of subordinates.

I thought I’d look at four different proposed solutions to these problems:

The war on drugs.
Decriminalization
Legalization and
(My preferred solution) A ‘reformation of manners’ that provides a stronger civil society that discourages drug use.

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what the “equilibrium” state of drug use is. Until relatively recently, it was very low. There is no real tradition, Coleridge and de Quincey aside, of drugs being particularly widely used in the Anglosphere. According to the US government, 7.1% of the population aged 12 and over uses illegal drugs (about 16 million people). This compares to 47 percent who drink alcoholic beverages (about 107 million, of whom about 13 million are heavy drinkers) and the 30 percent that smoke (c.69 million). It is obviously still a tiny proportion of the population. Would it be higher if there were no war on drugs? Almost certainly. Given the propaganda that drugs are harmless, ably dealt with by Mark Kleiman below, I imagine that a considerable number of people who are currently inhibited from experimentation by the various legal and social sanction in place would try illicit drugs. The argument that anyone who might like to try pot already has done so strikes me as very odd.

But let us suppose that the equilibrium level of drug use in the US is a conservative 10 percent of the population aged 12 and over – about 22 million. With that assumption we can look at the various benefits and disbenefits the proposed solutions bring:

The war on drugs reduces the psychopharmacological effects on people by restricting the numbers who use drugs by sanctions. It may, however, increase them somewhat by exposing those who do use the drugs to harsher effects. The war on drugs also seeks to reduce the habituation effects by imprisoning those who commit drug-related crimes. The war on drugs’ great problem is that it creates an illegal market, which leads to systemic violence. There is, however, every indication that the systemic violence involved in the illegal drugs industry has shrunk considerably since the early 90s.

Drug legalization, on the other hand, would almost certainly increase the numbers affected by the psychopharmacological effects of drugs. It would probably also increase the numbers of crimes committed to pay for drugs. It would certainly, however, reduce the systemic crimes as the illegal industry would presumably be unable to match the economies of scale as legal industries took over. There would, however, almost certainly be a substitution effect as not all of those employed in the illegal industries would turn to legal activities as well. Moreover, if some drugs remained illegal (does anyone really advocate legalizing PCP?) then some illegal supply industry would remain. Moreover, the legal industry would almost certainly look to maximize its customer base. The number affected by problems 1 and 2 would rise above the equilibrium level as a result.

I should also add here that the experience in the UK with the significant black markets in alcohol and tobacco should show those people that advocate the "legalize and tax the bejeesus out of it" approach that that strategy would do nothing -- or very little -- to shrink the illegal industry.

Drug decriminalization strikes me as the worst of all worlds, raising the numbers affected by problems 1 and 2 while doing nothing about 3, except possibly encouraging an increase as the illegal industry took advantage of the increased customer base. I can easily see crime rates rising to the levels of the early 90s as the industry expanded again. Indeed, this seems to be what happened in Brixton following the decriminalization experiment there. Later falls in the number of street crimes were more likely affected by the general blitz on street crime ordered by Tony Blair, which may prove very hard to sustain. The UK has, of course, chosen this route. I shall be very interested to see how things shape up over the next few years.

Finally, there is the route I prefer, which is a general strengthening of civil society leading to stronger families and stronger communities. This should reduce the equilibrium number of drug users, and so should reduce problems in all 3 categories (except possibly in 3, temporarily, as gangs fight for a smaller pool of customers).

There is some interesting evidence that drug use goes through trends, the three most recent having been heroin injecting, coke/crack and marijuana/blunts. The first two overlapped considerably, but those who use marijuana/blunts are unlikely to use heroin or crack. Two questions spring to my mind: is the current era just another fad which may be replaced by a worse drug, which may well encourage other drug use? And, what effect did the war on drugs have in seeing off the crack trend? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but am always interested in views.

Now there comes the comparison with alcohol. As Orrin Judd has mentioned recently (I can’t quite seem to find the exact source), prohibition was very like gun control, in that it attempted to restrain a very strong cultural component. As the usage figures make clear, however, drugs – even marijuana – are nowhere near as integrated into mainstream culture as alcohol and guns are. In some ways, as Norman Dennis implies in his review of alcohol and drug use in the UK, drug use can even be thought of as an alien invader into our culture. It may be one that we adopt as part of our general culture, but I doubt it. To that extent it may remain a folly of the youth subculture – like Trotskyism – but bans on it will never be comparable to the problems that prohibition brought with it. Banning booze is like trying to ban the word “the.” Banning drugs is like trying to ban the word “ontological.”

All in all, then, I remain highly skeptical that legalization would be any better for society than the war on drugs. I am convinced that decriminalization would be worse. If a stronger civil society emerged, however, then there might be scope for limited marijuana growth and exchange as Professor Kleiman suggests. Until that day, however, people are still going to try to sell what they grow to other people who can’t be bothered or are simply not capable of it. And it is part of the weakness of our civil society that there are so many that simply can’t grow plants.

Ideas for Iraq

This may seem a little premature to some, but Jim Bennett brainstorms a blueprint for rebuilding Iraq.

That speech

Excellent. The President reminded the UN what it is supposed to be here for. The UN has a choice: stop acting as a shield behind which tyrants and dictators can hide, or face irrelevancy. The way he outlined what the UN has already asked for was perfect. His best performance since his address to Congress after 9/11.

McKinney for President!

Kesher Talk reports that Cynthia McKinney, who helpfully informed us that President Bush knew all about 9/11 before the event and whose father, also defeated yesterday, told us that it was the J-E-W-S that engineered here defeat, is considering running for President under the Green label. All you favorite Tranzis in one place! Yippee!

Getting away with it

Closed Circuit TV was supposed to be a deterrent to crime in the UK. Yet a deterrent is useless if the threat behind it is empty. This case study of how a crime was treated by the police shows how undeterred robbers are by CCTV now they have realized that it is simply a paper tiger.

The new Secretary of State

Interesting article about Colin Powell's position in the administration from Toby Harnden in the Telegraph. Toby points out Powell's repeated failures, as well he should, but it seems to me that one point goes unsaid following from this paragraph:

For the first hour of the Camp David summit, it was Vice-President Dick Cheney who mapped out the strategy for removing Saddam with the President and Prime Minister. Note-takers were also present, but only these three spoke.

It seems that Tony Blair is acting as Secretary of State of the USA. I wonder how the Founding Fathers would react to that...

Fringe benefits

The Anglosphere at work in the matter of child abductions. Someone really needs to start cataloguing examples like this and comparing them to intra-EU co-operations.

More thoughts on marijuana

The thoughtful Mark Kleiman, who has impressed me with his thinking on this issue, comes out against legalizing the sale of marijuana:

My view is that the risks are substantially greater than most of my well-educated boomer friends believe. Taking the entire population of people who have used cannabis at least five times, the risk in that group of becoming a heavy daily cannabis user for a period of at least months is something like one in nine. Being a pothead isn’t nearly as bad for you as being a drunk, and it usually doesn’t last as long, but it’s still not a good place to be.

That seems to me a strong enough reason to oppose the legalization of cannabis on any commercial basis; I hate to think what RJR and Miller Brewing (or whoever just bought Miller Brewing) could do if they had cannabis to market the way they now market tobacco and beer. (In my ideal world, there would be no law against growing cannabis, using it, or giving it away, but selling it would remain banned. That wouldn't prevent sales activity entirely, but it would help keep it discreet and prevent advertising.)

Marijuana is very much the grey area of the drugs debate. In many ways, it's a judgement call, where the facts can be used to back up both sides of the argument. I intend to flesh out my thoughts on this issue today if I get the time. Watch this space.

The BBC news page St Paul's tribute to US victims and many of the links from it add to the images so admirably provided by Perry in the link below. I found it especially interesting that Her Majesty the Queen, in her message to Brits in New York, should honour the

"courage and determination" of the armed forces and "others who are striving to bring those responsible for this outrage to justice and to prevent similar atrocities in the future"

before going on to point out

"The dreadful attacks of September 11 may have threatened freedom, innocence and other values we hold dear, but they also inspired grace, charity and courage.

These are the words that you expect from the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, far more indicative of the beliefs of her people than the whinings of the future Primate of All England.

Those are the views of one nation, admirably captured by its Sovereign. Yet there also exists another Britain, one far smaller, but which holds many positions of power. Peter Briffa shows us the thoughts of that other nation, and shows us just how foolish they are.

I think part of the story of the past year is that the ruling political party in the UK has been shown to be divided between these two nations. It is to his credit that Tony Blair has drifted away from the mensheviks in this divide, something I did not expect of him. His mettle will be tested further when the dilemma he faces (Stephen Pollard's insightful take on this issue is here) comes to its high tide, probably in the next few weeks. If he can rise to this occasion, both Britain and America ought to be thankful.

Remembrance

I haven't blogged so far today because I came down with something yesterday morning and had to come home quite ill. It has, however, meant that I was able to spend today with my wife and daughter, which somehow seems appropriate.

A year ago today my wife told me before I left for work about her disturbing dream, that her bridesmaid who worked in the World Financial Center was running for her life with a dust cloud following her. An hour later, I was riding to the Pentagon on the bus, as usual, with a friend of mine who used to be something senior in the Conservative Party but who was visiting us on vacation. As we drove into the Pentagon's grounds I turned to him and remarked how open the Pentagon was to terrorist attack. I commented that a Canary Wharf or Baltic Exchange sized fertilizer bomb could probably do some serious damage. I left him at the Pentagon at 8:45, where he was planning to take a tour.

At the end of the day, my friend had avoided being in the Pentagon at the time of impact by simply being too discouraged by the length of the queue and caught a metro out of the Pentagon station at almost the exact time the plane hit. It took him several hours to let us know he was okay, which we still have not forgiven him for. I was able to contact all my friends in New York to acsertain they were fine, as was the friend Kris had her dream about. But her boyfriend of six months, a man I never met but who had obviously made her very happy, had been on the 100th floor of the North Tower.

One year on, it still feels as if everything happened yesterday. For all the progress we have made -- the destruction of one of the cruelest regimes in the world, the likely death of the prime mover of the atrocities and the crippling of his network, the recognition that other cruel regimes - that no-one will shed a tear for when they are gone - have to go if the cities on their hills are to be able to continue shining -- the work has only really just started. This past year has been mostly a triumph over the evil-doers and the idiotarians, but there are still so many of them about, in positions of power both internally and externally, that the task may seem at times Sisyphean. Yet this post, more than any others, tells me that we are winning throughout the Anglosphere (a concept whose time finally arrived one year ago).

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and make his face to shine upon you, now and forevermore.

Where's Osama

Dead, dead, dead. The new tape provides no evidence that he's alive. Meanwhile, an Al Jazeera reporter thinks he's dead, given his recent research into Al Qa'eda. I can't find a web link to the AP story, but here's what Brit Hume said on Fox yesterday:

"A new report suggests that Usama bin Laden may, in fact, be dead. Yosrri Fouda, a correspondent for the satellite television network al Jazeera, tells the Associated Press he spent two days in June interviewing two top al Qaeda operatives. Fouda says that during the course of their conversation, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be one of the highest ranking al Qaeda members still at large, once referred to bin Laden in the past tense, and that a general sense of disarray leads him to believe that bin Laden could be dead. Al Jazeera announced last week, by the way, it will broadcast the interviews as part of its coverage marking the anniversary of the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

That past tense slip is the best evidence yet.

Starch is good for you

Early days on this one, but it seems that years of nanny-state advice to eat a high-fiber diet was simply wrong. Cold starchy left-overs like potatoes and baked beans are much better than bran or muesli at reducing bowel cancer. I wonder if people who turned to eating bran flakes on government advice can get compensation for the misery they endured?

Draco lives

The civil rights group Statewatch is rapidly becoming a significant ally in the fight against Euro-integration by continually pointing how the EU is eroding civil liberties. The now allege that September 11 was used to push through a host a measures aimed at suppressing dissent, under the guise of guarding against terrorism:

Damage to public property is now a terrorist offence if it is part of a campaign to change the political, economic or social order. The definition would appear to cover such groups as the Greenham Common women's movement or anti-globalist protesters.

This definition was quietly extended on Dec 27 2001, to cover even "passive" support of terrorism, blurring a distinction in English common law between conscious crimes and mere association. The measure was slipped through using a technical procedure that circumvents parliamentary debate.

The EU also pushed through an EU-wide arrest warrant, which was presented as an anti-terrorist measure but covers most ordinary crimes.

"This does away with all the checks and balances of the existing extradition procedure. There is no habeas corpus, no appeal, no rights for the suspect," said Statewatch, a body of independent researchers with Left-leaning political views.

If you think Ashcroft is bad, just read this.

HRT risks

Some eminently sensible comments on HRT and its risks from mathematicianJohn Allen Paulos.

War-war or jaw-jaw?

The Indepundit finishes his excellent Saddam Files series. Combine this with The Scotsman's matter of fact dossier, if I may call it that, and the editor of the Wall Street Journal's summary of how the new thinking on rogue states works, and you have a comprehensive case for action. I hope that Blair and Bush can articulate it in upcoming days.

Culture?

They call it the compensation culture, but there's nothing cultured about this at all. Natalie Solent has the tale of the woman awarded damages because someone's face distressed her.

PP: The media reports on this appear to have been exaggerated. Interesting that they should seem so credible, though.

Blogging 101

Must be on offer soon at UCLA. Mark A. R. Kleiman, whose thinking on the problems surrounding drugs I recomended reading below, has a blog. Like Eugene Volokh, he's a UCLA professor.

Blog makes print

My comments on the abortion/death rate study posted here are quoted in yesterday's Washington Times story, Abortion, death rate linked in study.

The mote in God's eye

Fascinating picture in this BBC astronomy story. The latest speculation as to the nature of "Hoag's object" is that the outer ring is "the shredded remains of the galaxy that passed nearby." The brain-aching vastness of creation is summed up in that simple phrase. I think I've just entered the Total Perspective Vortex. Link spotted at The Group Captain's.

Antmusic's lost its savour

Steven Chapman draws our attention to a sad tale involving Adam Ant, former Prince Charming of the new romantics. Apparently, he was humiliated in a London pub for his dress sense. As the Observer's reporter puts it,

When he came back later that night, he had a gun with him.

Dramatic and terrifying. Except the next paragraph tells us that it was a replica. So he didn't have "a gun with him," he had something that looked like a gun. There can be no intent to kill or maim with a replica, merely frighten or intimidate (perhaps in self-defense, as turned out to be the case here). "When he came back later that night, he smashed a window and ran away" would be a better description of what happened.

Another indication of how deep-set the anti-gun hysteria is in the British leftist worldview.

Everyone's getting in on the act

The National Interest is probably the most readable of America's foreign affairs journals, with some interesting side issues such as the debate between Robin Fox and Frank Fukuyama on human rights. They now have expanded with an on-line supplement, In The National Interest. Great potential here, I think.

Cats and dogs living together

Wonders will never cease. First I convert to Blairism, now Junius finds himself agreeing with sp!ked's Mick Hume. France's backing for American intervention in Iraq cannot be far off.

US crime down again

No surprise to me, but Violent Crime Fell 9% in '01, Victim Survey Shows. I predicted that the NCVS would show another decrease, despite the small increase in crime reported by the FBI earlier in the year. It's the lesser crimes, like simple assault, that are decreasing the most, showing that America is becoming a simply more civilized place. Moreover, I remain sure that part of the reason for the disparity between the two surveys is that more people, feeling more civic-minded, are reporting crimes, so driving up the FBI numbers. I shall have more to say on this when I actually see the report, which I should do soon.

Meanwhile, something struck me about this line in the AP report:

The share of violent crimes involving guns held steady at about 26 percent.

How disingenuous. Most people reading that would think that gun crime has not fallen like the rest of violent crime. Of course, if violent crime has fallen, but the share of it committed with firearms remains the same, then gun crime has also fallen. More detailed figures when I've seen the report.

Stoners please try to read all of this...

Very interesting PBS interview from a few years ago with Mark Kleiman of UCLA on the subject of what we know about marijuana -- the science, the social effects, the enforcement and so on. Kleiman points out the weaknesses in the positions of both "hawks" and "doves" on the issue. His analysis of the real intents behind the campaign for Proposition 215 in California is illuminating, as is his analysis of the gateway drug allegation, but I find it interesting that PBS should highlight this statement above all:

If we legalize marijuana or any other drug, either we will have a private industry whose profits depend on creating and maintaining addicts, or we will have a public beauracracy whose revenues depend on creating and maintaining addicts. Somebody's going to get a revenue stream from selling licit drugs, and whoever gets that revenue stream is going to try and maximize it. What you might call the political economy of drug legalization is a bigger problem than the legalizers seem to grasp.

There's a lot of food for thought in this interview, for people on both sides of the issue.

Timbo: First Blood Part II

Tim Hames pre-empts most of next weeks op/eds by giving us the pro forma version:

“On September 11, with the twin towers reduced to rubble and the side of the Pentagon still smouldering (add a few hundred words of extra semi-poetic text), America had the sympathy of the whole world (gloss over those who cheered or blamed it all on US empathy for Israel). That sentiment held fast during the military campaign in Afghanistan despite the casualties inflicted.

“But this week, with the White House poised to invade Iraq, that solidarity has been squandered. What an appalling testament to the arrogance, ignorance and unilateralism of the bellicose Bush Administration (insert the preferred choice of Wild West metaphor, ramble on the same theme for several hundred more words, send off invoice for fat fee afterwards).”

Tim then puts his case for pre-emption, in pretty strong terms. He considers his opposition brainless, no less. Strong stuff.

Wouldn't be surprised at all...

BBC Launches "Grief 24" to provide round-the-clock grieving news to the people of Britain. This is a satire, I hasten to point out. A real BBC Grief 24 would of course include patronising homilies about the woes of the Palestinians whenever a suicide bomber struck a school bus...

Aren't we forgeting something?

Swedish politician calls for more porn on TV to boost birthrate. Hmmm. Simple application of cause and effect? Yet what Ms. Kirpikli forgets is that this declining birthrate has occured during a period in which the frequency of recreational sex has increased (I believe Bjorn Lomborg has something about this in his investigation of sperm counts). What Ms. Kirpikli really wants is something that will encourage people not to use contraception. Now how do you do that on television?

Freedom of inaction

Steven Chapman, Brendan O'Neill's evil twin, has an excellent analysis of what the reaction to 9/11 from the Tranzis tells us about their view of virtue.

Age and guile beats youth, innocence and a lousy knowledge of history

I very much enjoyed this tale of naval derring-do from Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal. I wonder what Steven Den Beste thinks about it? (Thanks to Chris Bertram for the link).

Bad news for Euroland

It's not been a good few days for Euroland. Besides the simple marginalization of its leaders on the Iraq issue by Blair, Bush and Putin, now the chances of it enticing Britain into its economic parlor look even slimmer. Support among British exporters for adopting the Euro, the one real trump card the "yes" campaign had, has slipped under 50% for the first time. Meanwhile, the Vice-President of the Bundesbank has warned of an impending deficit disaster:

The Bundesbank, as a branch office of the European Central Bank, is not what it was, but when Jurgen Stark, its vice-president, warns that member states are not taking the pact seriously, it would be foolish to ignore him.

For a banker, a warning about "backsliding into the fiscal sloppiness that prevailed during the 1970s" is about as strong as it gets.

Well, if they adopt the politics of the 1970s, they might as well have the economy to go with it...