Defensive gun use in the UK

A grandfather shot his grand-daughter's attacker dead. I wonder how long it will be before he gets taken to court...

Comrades, come running

Excellent analysis by Patience Wheatcroft in The Times of why the extra costs Labour and Europe have imposed on business are bad for the working class. Permanent unemployment levels of 8-10% beckon unless Britain gets its act together and reduces costs on business. Again, this is obvious ground for the Tories to work in. Taxes cost jobs! Why aren't Michael Howard and David Willetts saying that?!?

Educating thugs

Charles Clarke, the new UK Education Secretary, is the son of a former Treasury mandarin, Otto Clarke. I know too little about Clarke senior, but he is described in the index of Corelli Barnett's history of modern Britain simply as "wrangler." From such a lineage often comes greatness, and what I have seen of Clarke junior so far suggests political brilliance and a willingness to take on sacred cows, although I do not sense any real philosophy there. It seems that he may, however be the man to save British education, as Libby Purves suggests in her Times column today.

Yet the main thrust of Ms Purves' article is about educating thugs. I don't think she gets the half of it. Advocating letting children enter the work force at 14 may have been fine in 1920, when there was the option of apprenticeships, but we need a work force better trained for variety now. And I can't see call centers overjoyed at the prospect of being able to employ 14 year-olds. Nevertheless, there probably is a role for "dropping out" later.

Ms Purves gets closer to the problem when she looks at why children are misbehaving in school:

Some are disruptive because they are innately unhappy. That is one of the hardest problems to crack, since it has its roots in the family. Some teachers, especially secondary specialists, say militantly that the pastoral role is not what they are paid for. If so, it is critically important that pastoral skills are respected and rewarded in school, and mental health services (scandalously bad for young people) are available outside it. Some tough schools have had remarkable success with soppy-sounding things: quiet rooms, a time-out routine, even aromatherapy.

This need for human thoughtfulness goes down to the smallest details. Some children are disruptive because, frankly, they are ill-nourished. Surveys show that innumerable children go to school without breakfast. Plenty consider a bag of crisps, a tartrazine-orange drink and a Snickers to be lunch. Schools which offer breakfast, or excellent school dinners, or even just take up their right to subsidised milk, report extraordinary leaps in the children’s concentration.

So she admits children can be disruptive because they have been badly socialized. It's not a great leap from this to admitting that bad (or non-existent) parenting is the root cause of disruptive behavior. Yet Ms Purves' solution is horribly capitulationist:

So it’s not all about sin-bins and thug-punishing. If we have accidentally designed a society where schools are in the front line, fighting to civilise the new generation, let’s admit it, fund it, and go for it.

How about "let's realize there's something wrong with that society and reform to solve the problems rather than just accept it and take taxpayers' money to paper over the cracks"?

Libertarians, take heed

Looking for a certain Madison quote, I came across this one: "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power." All sensible libertarians should hang a copy of this on their wall.

Anyway, I found my quote, which pairs nicely with one by Pitt the Younger:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- Pitt the Younger

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-- James Madison

The Crime Meddler

David Blunkett claims it's about time the victims of crime received justice. Aside from the debate about whether the wishes of the victims is vengeance, not justice, this is a pretty poor excuse for thinking ancient liberties are just a grab-bag you can rummage around in and pull out only those you like. The Telegraph's editorial, Criminal Meddling, says exactly what's wrong with the Home Secretary's arguments:

As for "twisted traditions", it is not altogether clear what Mr Blunkett means by that phrase. But he seems to mean at least three things: the defendant's right to trial by jury for serious offences; his right to have each case against him tried on its merits, without reference to his previous convictions; and his right not to be tried a second time on a charge of which he has been acquitted.

These traditions may sound "twisted" to Mr Blunkett, but there is great sense in all of them. There is no room here to rehearse all the arguments in favour of jury trial. Enough to say that the risk that some jurors may be intimidated, and afraid to convict the guilty, is not a good enough reason to abolish a defendant's right to it.

Nor is it fair, except in the most unusual circumstances, that previous convictions should be read out in court before a jury reaches its verdict. Not unnaturally, the police often arrest people precisely because they have previous convictions. They round up the usual suspects.

The prosecution's job is to establish that a defendant has committed a particular crime - not that he is the sort of person who might commit such a crime because he has done so in the past.

The "double jeopardy" rule, under which a defendant cannot be tried twice for the same offence, also makes good sense. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if no verdict was taken to be final, and every criminal file had to be kept open in perpetuity. Imagine how sloppy the police would become in preparing their evidence, knowing that if they did not get their man this time, there would always be another chance.

The 'twisted traditions' are all enshrined in the US Bill of Rights. Care to come over here and call them 'twisted,' David?

Fight fire with fire

Public safety alert as firefighters decide to strike is the Tories' wet reply to the fire brigades' strike. Not a mention of the fact that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is not allowing the troops who are deputising for the striking firemen to use the fire brigades' equipment, as that would involve crossing picket lines. News for you, John, no-one in the public remembers the 1926 general strike anymore. This is not "echoes of strike-busting" or anything like that.

Anyway, here is what I would say in David Davis' shoes:

"The government calls these strikes Scargillite. Well, we knew exactly how to deal with Arthur Scargill. We put the good of the country first instead of trying to appease the Labour Party's financial backers in the unions. We faced up to the threat head on and broke the power of the people the Prime Minister has called wreckers. But it looks like the DPM doesn't have the courage to face down these people, even with the threat of innocent lives being lost. At the very least, I call on the Deputy Prime Minister to give up his archaic, doctrinaire, Scargillite view that you can't cross picket lines and allow our troops to use the modern equipment of the fire brigades. If he refuses to allow this, I say that every life that is lost to fire while this strike goes on is on his hands. I hope the relatives of the victims will forgive him, because I won't, and nor will anyone on these benches."

Go on, put the boot in, David.

Always the last to know...

The Blogs of War is (are?) back! Huzzah!

Good article alert!

Gene Therapy Undergoes Reevaluation, in the LA Times of all places, seems like an excellent summary of where we are with gene therapy. It sounds to me like the halting of trials everywhere except Britain (!) after the French boy developed leukemia might have been an over-reaction.

Free Speech, as long as this Court agrees

Eugene Volokh has a great take-down of the latest repressive interpretation of free speech adopted by the EU.

Harcore ruling

Thanks to Peter Cuthbertson for this one. One of Britain's worst serial murderers is among a group of prisoners that has won a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that their right to free expression guarantees them a right to receive hardcore porn. Whatever happened to the idea that prisoners' rights can be restricted? Subsection 2 of Article 10 of the European Convention allows exceptions "for the protection of health or morals," so how can this get through? Ye gods.

PP: As you'll see in the comments section, I erred in ascribing the decision to the European Court. The prisoners were claiming a right based on the European Convention, and HM Prison Service had capitulated. British bureaucracy has a history of applying European overarching principles rather more strictly than the rest of Europe. This seems another example to me.

Giscard just keeps on giving

Steven Chapman has the final word on Giscard's definition of Europe to exclude Turkey.

Ideas, ideas

Meanwhile, in a world as divorced from reality as that in which mankind enjoys a new era of peace because we can all shoot up, the anti-globalizers set out their manifesto for Europe:

Top of the list, they sought a demilitarised Europe at peace with itself and the world, an ethical continent that takes a high moral stance against US imperialism. High on the list too was a radical rethink, or complete rejection, of the predatory capitalism the continent now knows. They imagined a Europe that rejected crude market ideology, made institutions fully accountable, put people before profit, and where big business was not allowed to dominate the political or consumer agendas.

There were specifics: Europe, they said, should have open borders, and all people within it should have the right to work and to have a home; it should have a Tobin tax on financial markets and regulation of corporations; there should be no GM foods or pollution; no privati sation of public services; the media should be in the hands of the many not the few; and racism should be driven out.

There was almost complete consensus on three issues: that "neo-liberalism" - the free-market ideas espoused by the IMF and G7 - is a violent political and economic doctrine; that trade with poor countries should be fair; and that one vote every four years given to political parties run by self-serving elites is no way to run modern, complex democracies in a globalised economy.

Reminds one of Cade, doesn't it:

"Cade: Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass; and when I am king, as king I will be--
All: God save your majesty!
Cade: I thank you, good people--there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord."

First thing we'll do...

Alternative comedy

opinion.telegraph.co.uk - Legalisation might be the only way to halt the drugs epidemic argues anti-Thatcher 80s comic Ben Elton. Ben's claim to authority seems to be that he's writing a comic novel with some druggies in it. Good for you, Ben. Mr Elton's article seems to distill the received wisdom on the subject, but, as so often, that wisdom is wide of the mark:

It is a matter of simple fact that a large proportion of people in this country, particularly young people, take drugs.

Let's compare that with the available data (warning - PDF file).

11 percent of people aged 16-59 used drugs in the last year, and six percent in the last month. Large proportion? Yes, the numbers are bigger for young people (16-29) -- 25 percent in the last year and 16 percent in the last month, but these are still smaller than the phrase "large proportion" would indicate. If you took 100 young people at random, you'd find 84 of them hadn't touched drugs in the last month, and 75 hadn't done so in the last year. Only a third of people have ever used drugs. This is a minority, and a small and transient one at that.

Because the people who do use drugs are highly segmentized. Most notably, drug use is significantly higher in London than in the rest of the country and "an analysis of different types of residential neighbourhoods showed uniformly higher levels of drug use among 16 to 29s living in affluent urban areas for 'any drug', cocaine and class A drugs." Single, renting accomodation and visiting pubs and clubs were also risk factors. So drug use in the UK is most prevalent among young urban professionals with high disposable incomes who have not put down family roots. Find a married person or a property owner outside London and you're much less likely to find someone who uses drugs. Young men are also much more likely (230%) to have used drugs in the past month than young women. This seems to back up the idea that people "grow out" of drugs, while they don't from drinking, although I'll be interested to see if this changes as the bourgeois view of cannabis as acceptable spreads. For the moment, however, stable family life is the enemy of drugs, another reason why the family should be encouraged.

It also seems to back up my contention that the drug trade is mainly driven by the demand of an educated, but irresponsible, elite. It is their demand that is contributing to the social breakdown in the working class areas where the drugs are sold and traded. "Parasites" is the word that springs to mind.

Moreover, that demand is probably fueled at least in part on the idiotic idea that certain drugs are "safe." A new report from the British Lung Foundation summarizes the evidence that cannabis smoking is much more detrimental to respiratory health than ordinary tobacco smoking, yet 79% of children think it is safe. Some proper public education in this sphere might reduce the amount of marijuana smoked, which would have a considerable effect on the profit margins of drug dealers. The full report (available here in PDF form) is very interesting reading.

Take it away, regular commentators...

Chuck it, Mandy

Peter Mandelson's cri de coeur that Europe needs Britain might be convincing were it not for some blinding indiocies, such as:

the age-old Franco-German partnership

.
Ah yes, the age-old partnership that has been demonstrated so often over the past few hundred years.

In any event, Mandelson's article is interesting in that it seems to demonstrate that the federalizers are beginning to think of what they can achieve without Britain. The crunch time may be closer than the British Europhiles of the Blairite wing would like. Giscard has put tax harmonization firmly on the agenda, something unacceptable to Gordon Brown, from what I understand. If this is in the Constitution Giscard proposes, then the result will be that Britain and Ireland will have to choose whether or not to remain in the EU:

Mr Giscard d'Estaing also set out his strong views on what should happen to those countries that fail to ratify the proposed new EU constitution. Speaking to the Kangaroo group, a body that favours more economic integration in Europe, he said non-ratifiers would exclude themselves from the EU, but could have economic ties to the union.

"The probability is that of 25 or 27 member states [after EU enlargement] 23 would accept [the constitution] and two or three will refuse," he said. "We have to abrogate the [EU] treaties that exist. If a country says that it does not like the new treaty, there's no existing structure for them to cling to, they cannot seek refuge in the old agreement.

"We should say: you can maintain an economic role, but you can no longer be in this political system. That will be the consequence of refusal."

He said that such countries would play a similar role to members of the European Free Trade Association, which have a free-trade area with the EU, and cited the micro-state of Liechtenstein, with a population of 30,000, as an example.

Remaining within the economic area, but outside the political, is precisely what the British people want, I think. Bring it on, Giscard.

Silly reasoning

This silly Boston Globe editorial tries to argue that the sniper case shows that capital punishment has no deterrent effect. No punishment has a deterrent effect against people who think they'll never be caught or convicted -- "Acid Bath" Haigh is the best example. The snipers clearly thought they were cleverer than the police, so any thought of potential punishment would have been dismissed. The deterrent effect acts against those who weigh up the risks of crime more or less rationally. And recent evidence, summarized in my American Outlook article here, does seem to suggest a genuine deterrent effect there. The research mentioned, by the way, has been backed up by further research by other academics since.

The Post gets it?

The Washington Post's London correspondent, T.R. Reid (I always worry about people who insist on being referred to be their initials) has long failed to understand British politics, particularly in reference to the Europe question. Now, however, it seems that a Post foreign correspondent is beginning to realize that all is not happy in the state of Euroland. In The EU and the Power of the People there is a useful contrast made between the elites and the people. The article summarizes the problems for EU expansion highlighted by the latest Eurobarometer poll:

The poll results are even more striking when viewed country by country. Hungary emerges as by far the most pro-EU of the 10 aspirants, with 65 percent of those polled saying EU membership is a good thing. But the number is 52 percent in Poland, 43 percent in the Czech Republic, 41 percent in Slovenia, 38 percent in Malta, 35 percent in Estonia and 32 percent in Latvia.

If these states do not join, people might begin to think again about whether or not a United Europe is as inevitable as it seems. If they do, then at least there will be a much larger euroskeptic presence in the councils of Brussels.

TCS Column Up

Positively False looks at the question of false positives and false negatives in data. A bit general, but I was ill last week...

Loght posting alert

Home ill today -- some sort of bug -- so don't expect much in the way of posting today. Sorry.

Something else for the Tories to think about

This time from commentator JohnEllis:

The upside of being completely out of power in Washington is that it requires Democrats to think much more imaginatively about the most important issues facing the country. They've been cast out into the wilderness. The wilderness is where parties are reinvented, reimagined and reengineered. Standing for nothing except political advantage leads, inevitably, to defeat. Standing for something is the road back.

Like it or not, New Labour changed more than just its image. It became a party of the center, not of the left (Tories, as well as Old Labour, still haven't realized that). But the Tory modernizers just want political advantage. It's Hague with different policies, and likely to be just as disastrous.

A whisper to the wise

Very important point for Tory MPs to bear in mind in David Brooks' review of the election:

The Democrats, led by Tom Daschle, sold their soul to win this election, and parties that sell their souls to win usually end up losing.

How much of "modernization" is casting off needless baggage, and how much is selling the soul?

New Labour and the GOP

Meanwhile, a similar set of issues present what problems there are for the parties in power.

Issue 1: The trouble with coalitions. Both Bush and Blair have achieved dominance by attracting new members to their coalitions. Both have attracted centrists, who are always hard to please, but they have also attracted others, such as blue collar union workers and economic puritans. This is not like Reagan or Mrs T attracting new voters by a general impression of competence, instead they have been attracted by specific promises. And these promises – protectionism, fiscal prudence – run contrary to the instincts of the party base. Both parties are going to have to annoy traditional followers to retain the support of their new followers. Blair has been doing this admirably for 5 years, and the strain is beginning to show. Bush may not be as skillful as Blair.

Issue 2: The international aspect. Both have gambled a lot that they will be able to deliver successful results internationally. Bush has pledged to wipe out terror, and that is what he will be judged on, however well or badly the rest of his administration does. Blair is spinning a lot of plates internationally: Iraq, the UN, the EU constitution, the Euro. Any or all of these could crash down.

Issue 3: Kicking the enemy while he’s down. Because of the fragile nature of their dominance, neither party can afford to let the opposition get up. They will need to devote a lot of time and effort towards keeping the opposition squabbling and continuing to triangulate them where possible. Blair has done this to great effect for years (the best recent example being the unnecessary adoption debate, which may have killed IDS’s leadership). Can the more diffuse Republican leadership concentrate itself this way?

In short, neither party (or leader) can be said to be as unassailable as Reagan or Thatcher were. Their dominance is based on weaker alliances, and the impact of events outside their control could be disastrous (literally as well as politically). Moreover, their position is artificially enhanced by the opposition’s weakness. Reagan and Thatcher were their countries’ choice. The GOP and New Labour are simply preferred to the alternatives. There’s a lot to think about here.

Tories and Democrats: different policies, same problems

It occurs to me after last nights amazing sweep by the Republicans over here that the Democrats have very similar problems to the Tory party in the UK, and that the Republicans are in a very similar position to New Labour. Let’s look at the similarities, Tories/Dems first:

Issue 1: Weak leadership. The nominal leader (Daschle/IDS) is uncharismatic and has not been able to convince the country that he has any weight as a politician. He is dwarfed by the stature of his external opponent, and has others coveting the position as lead candidate in the next general election, which weakens his ability to present a united front (yes, I know this is a systemic problem in the US, but bear with me). Both parties are likely to fall prey to internecine strife for the next year or so.

Issue 2: Party of the past. Both parties are viewed as out of touch, and their personnel reflects that. Portillo and Howard are daily reminders of an era the British voters would rather forget. The Democrats advanced Mondale as a great hope! Fresh blood is desperately needed.

Issue 3: Loss of center ground. In both countries, centrism is in. But in each party’s case, the electorate has made clear it prefers the other party’s centrists. Thus Shaheen loses while Coleman wins. “Moderation” has not made Portillo or his acolytes any more popular in the country as a whole. Moreover, a move to the Left for the Dems or to the Right by the Tories looks likely only to lose the party support.

Issue 4: Inability to challenge the governing party on key issues. In the US, the Democrats were unable to present a coherent opposing policy on homeland security. In the UK, the Tories have been unable to make any headway on the economy. The electorate trusts the party in power on these key issues. The same is true of less important issues, meaning that the parties have been thrashing about for something – anything – that will make them distinct. These issues (corporate scandals, asylum), while of concern to the voters, have not energized them.

Issue 5: Actual loss of key issues. In some cases, the governing party has completely taken over what was previously a key issue. In the UK, Labour is now seen as better on the economy and at least as good for patriotism. In the US, the Republicans are making the running in urban areas with welfare reform and school choice, thereby blunting a lot of traditional Democrat appeal. Trade protectionism seems to have helped blunt union opposition too.

Both parties are therefore in serious trouble. The Democrats at least have the fallback of Governors’ Mansions, where they can try new things and produce figures of stature. The Tories have no such luxury, because Margaret Thatcher destroyed local government as a source of real power (directly elected Mayors may yet solve this, but not for a while). Both parties need to sort out the leadership problems, get rid of the failed old guard, press hard to recapture the center ground, develop coherent opposing policies in the key areas and work to seize back the initiative in areas traditionally thought of as their competence. This will not be easy, but without these reforms the parties will continue to wither away.

Senatus Consultum Ultimum

Well, looks like I was a little conservative. Here's how it turned out:

AR: Pryor D (Dem gain) -- CORRECT
MN: Coleman R (Rep gain) -- CORRECT
SC: Graham R (Rep hold) -- CORRECT
CO: Strickland D (Dem gain) -- WRONG! Allard R (Rep hold)
MO: Talent R (Rep gain) -- CORRECT
SD: Johnson D (Dem hold) -- TOO CLOSE TO CALL
GA: Cleland D (Dem hold) -- WRONG! Chambliss R (Rep gain)
TN: Alexander R (Rep hold) -- CORRECT
IA: Harkin D (Dem hold) -- CORRECT
TX: Cornyn R (Rep hold) -- CORRECT
NC: Dole R (Rep hold) -- CORRECT
NH: Sununu R (Rep gain) -- CORRECT

Overall balancee: Rep 51 (+2), Dem 47 (-2), Ind 1 (nc), Undecided 1

A stunningly good performance by Republicans across the board or, more likely, a stunningly bad performance by Democrats. More to follow.

Neck sticking out time

Okay, I haven't been following the elections closely, but I'm going to predict that the Republicans will retain the House with no perceptible change (a couple of seats either way seems possible). I'm not going to try to guess on the gubernatorial races, despite their importance as the breeding ground for future Presidents. Here's what I think will happen in the Senate:

AR: Pryor D (Dem gain)
MN: Coleman R (Rep gain)
SC: Graham R (Rep hold)
CO: Strickland D (Dem gain)
MO: Talent R (Rep gain)
SD: Johnson D (Dem hold)
GA: Cleland D (Dem hold)
TN: Alexander R (Rep hold)
IA: Harkin D (Dem hold)
TX: Cornyn R (Rep hold)
NC: Dole R (Rep hold)
NH: Sununu R (Rep gain) -- narrowest result

Overall balancee: Rep 50 (+1), Dem 49 (-1), Ind 1 (nc).

If this is anywhere near accurate, I think the Wellstone funeral will have been the biggest single factor in the Senate changing hands.

Of course, the upshot will be no real change in the policies of the Senate, there being too many centrists in both parties for the rightists to expect big changes, but at least we'll get a few judges confirmed.

Poll pall

Cellphones and Caller ID Are Making Pollsters' Jobs Harder, reports the New York Times. These issues - refusal to answer polling calls and the trickier question of cellphones - have been simmering for some time. Today's elections may be the first where they have a noticeable effect on the polls' reliability. We'll know tomorrow. If so, polling companies are going to have get back to the drawing board. Face-to-face or internet?

Drug use and abuse: the Dutch view

Melanie Philips is probably the leading proponent of the war on drugs in British journalism. In her latest, The drugs policy of harm production, there is the following interesting quote from a Dutch analyst, which I reproduce without comment:

The Ashford conference repeatedly hailed Dutch policy as a great success. In fact, it has been anything but. According to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment, use of soft drugs among Dutch high school students increased by more than 30% over the past ten years.

‘Drug use has gone up, both cannabis and cocaine’, says Hans Koopmans in Dordrecht. ‘The main problem of liberalisation is that we can’t convince youngsters that drugs, particularly cannabis, are dangerous.

‘The idea that as criminalisation hasn’t worked we should legalise is really very naïve. You will just get many more people addicted. As for reducing drug crime, most addicts who commit crime were doing so before they started on drugs. The link between drugs and crime is not that simple.’

The next issue of the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, by the way, will be a special edition on marijuana:

The supplement is comprised of papers presented at a workshop held last year by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Research reported there suggests that marijuana use has many subtle effects on the body's major systems, including temporary impairment of cognitive function, increased heart rate, increased prevalence of chronic cough and acute bronchitis, lower sperm count, and increased neurobehavioral abnormalities for children exposed in utero.

Again, I make no comment.

Goodbye, Rainman

Terrible news in the Murray household. Our beautiful thirteen year-old kitty, Rainman, started exhibiting distressing signs of neurological damage yesterday. It seems she had a brain tumor, and, on the vet's advice, we felt it best to put her to sleep. Rainman was my first real pet excluding hamsters, goldfish and so on, and I miss her terribly already. Kris is deeply upset too. I'll try to post a picture here later as a memorial to our beloved feline companion.

UPDATE:


Here's Kristen's tribute: "We lost Rainman, our cat of 12+ years this morning. We had to put her to sleep as she suddenly and without much warning became extremely ill. The vet's diagnosis was strongly leaning towards a brain tumor of some kind. Since recovery was extremely unlikely, euthanasia was the best choice.

"For those who may not know, Rainman was a girl and the runt of her litter. When my aunt took a picture of her and her littermates shortly after their eyes opened, the flash made Rainman jump and fall over. Family members became convinced she was brain damaged. I had fallen in love with her and one of her sisters and insisted on taking her. I called her Rainman as a sort of defiance.

"She was very smart. Outlived her sisters and a later brother. She ran this household with an iron paw (no velvet glove). She was beautiful, smart and funny. And I can not tell you how much we are going to miss her."

Normal blogging will resume after I've had a good cry.

Result!

Which Founding Father Are You?

Didn't try for this, just found myself naturally answering that way...

Knifed

IDS's leadership entered its final stage this morning. When the Beeb says he took a big gamble in challenging the Parliamentary party to unite, they neglect to mention the odds against his winning are lottery-sized. Rebels who are plotting openly are just going to laugh in his face and step up their campaign against him. Stephen Pollard's analysis is worth quoting in full:

Conclusive proof, once and for all, that Iain Duncan Smith is simply not up to the job. His 'personal statement' this morning had all the right ingredients save for the only one which mattered. His message was fine, as far as it went - 'unite or die'. I am the man you elected, stop squabbling, blah blah blah. But there is no clearer way of demonstrating that you are not in charge than standing before a lectern insisting that you are in charge. And as if that wasn't bad enough, to assemble the nation's press, read a statement for three minutes, and then walk off without taking a single question looks, and is, simply shameful.

The message which has to be taken from this morning's statement is simple: I am not in charge, and I am afraid to be questioned.

Bye bye, Mr IDS. You are a decent man. But you are simply not up to it.

Ruthless action was required to save his leadership, not a call to the field of honor. Rather than facing his opponents openly, he should have disposed of them at once, ruthlessly and efficiently. Withdrawal of the Tory whip, calls to the MPs' constituency chairmen, and good old-fashioned dirty tricks should have been used to pull the rug from under the plotters' feet. I don't think David Davis would have hesitated, which is one of the reasons why I think he's the only one capable of solving the Tory problems.

The Tories' policies are individually popular, it seems, but the electorate views the squabbling party, quite rightly, as a shambles. Leadership is the issue. And leadership is more than going over the top shouting "Follow me!" When that happens, you tend to get shot first. In some cases, you get shot in the back.

Up to a point, Lord Copper

Michael Barone has an interesting review of long-term voter trends. He's right that most of the issues tend to be pointing in a Republican rather than Democratic direction, but he's a little guilty of cherry-picking in this statement:

And young voters are much less statist. Fully 61 percent favor individual investment accounts in Social Security, while 67 percent of the elderly are opposed. Similarly, 58 percent of gen X favor school vouchers, while 54 percent of the elderly are opposed.

The Kaiser poll he mentions is available here in PDF form. Take a look at question 11. When asked whether they would prefer a smaller government providing less (sic) services or a bigger government providing more services, the 18-29 generation went 69%-26% in favor of Big Government. "Much less statist"? Really? Question 12 isn't much different. The future may be Republican, but presently it's big government Republican. Of course, there may be a chance that as these kids have families and see how few services they use and how much of their income is taken by the state, they may change, but similar argument could also be used for potential reversals of opinion over social security and school vouchers.

Stepping into dangerous waters again

How far can you push individual rights when there are third parties involved, such as children? If rights begin to trump values, we need to work out what is most important. Homosexuals, for instance, have, in my opinion, a right to be treated in a fashion free from discrimination. Society has a value that children must be given as good a chance for a decent upbringing as possible. The two principles seem to be coming into conflict in the issue that has just caused a resignation from IDS's shadow cabinet in the UK, the move to allow gay families to adopt children.

I find this issue particularly odd given the obvious problems with the current adoption practices in the UK. Before we allow such a major change in society's definition of what is an acceptable family, we need to be sure to a pretty high degree that children in homosexual families - unarguably a new phenomenon - are not generally worse off than those of heterosexual families. We don't know that yet, because the studies that are cited in support of that view are all statistically flawed -- see this PDF if you are interested in the technical arguments. There are studies that I know of, but am unable to find the references for (I've got queries out and will update), that demonstrate that children from homosexual families do worse than those of heterosexual families at school. Robert Lerner, author of that PDF, discusses some possible reasons why here.

This is clearly not an issue of anti-homosexual bias. This is an issue where it needs to be demonstrated that children will come to no harm. I will be happy to approve of the measure if that can be done. So far it has not, and, from the evidence we have, I'm not sure it will be.

UPDATE LATER THAN THE ONE BELOW BUT MORE DIRECTLY RELEVANT TO THE ABOVE: Melanie Philips has a great article on this whole debate here.

UPDATE: There is, of course, more to this than the principle. Both Ken Clarke and Michael Portillo defied the whip and voted against the official Tory stance. I'd be very surprised if the 25 signatures needed to trigger a No Confidence motion did not arrive very soon. As IDS only had the support of around a third of MPs when he first stood, I imagine he will lose the No Confidence vote. A three-way contest will probably result between Portillo (but only if he has the support of a substantial number of MPs - no embarrassing repeats of last time), Clarke and Davis. By the time it is over, I should be surprised if the Tories have not been overtaken by the Lib Dems in the polls. Then, if Clarke has won the party will formally disintegrate. If Portillo has won, the party will grow increasingly irrelevant as it attempts to portray itself as New Labour lite. If Davis has won, then I imagine a genuine Conservative vision will be presented. The question will be whether anyone listens to it. The party stands on the brink of the abyss.

Fount of Justice

One odd side effect of the royal butler trial has been a call for the Queen to be subject to court rules, a problem ably discussed in the Telegraph editorial, Regina v Regina. The monarch is the "Fount of Justice," from whom British justice flows. It would be genuine upheaval of what the British judicial system is about to subject the fount of justice to judicial procedures. I have regularly argued that the judicial powers exercised on the monarch's behalf by the Prime Minister should be given to an independent Lord Chancellor (appointed independently by another independent Appointments Commission, exercising the Monarch's powers as "Fount of Honour"), and I personally see no problem when the Monarch may be engaged in "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" (to coin a phrase) of subjecting the Monarch's person to appropriate proceedings (almost certainly ad hoc). Yet the general principle of monarch as witness and so on seems wrong to me. The Monarch is not above the law, nor is she the law (shades of Judge Dredd), but is an embodiment of the law, and it is that dignified role that demands different treatment. The USA, of course, has no such dignified embodiment, however much an invariably squabblng Supreme Court attempts to portray itself. This may be part of the reason for the low opinion of the legal system in America generally.

Unhealthy situation

It sounds like Dr Dalrymple has written another depressing monograph, this time of loutish patients 'expecting sex on hospital wards'. Unfortunately, the Social Affairs Unit is years behind the times and there is no mention of the publication on its web site yet (one of these days more British think tanks will wake up to the idea that they gain influence by having their views freely available on the web). Once again, however, it seems that the curse is disorder and incivility rather than actual criminal behavior. Disorder and incivility are best controlled by the community itself. This is a question of manners, not law.

A November Conspiracy

Bungled conspiracies and early November make good bedfellows. Stephen Pollard asks some tough questions about the recent "royal butler" trial in the UK,wher it appears that there was no evidence against the defendent whatsoever, and that the Police knew as much:

Inquiries can, relatively easily, pinpoint what went wrong, and who was to blame. But there is also a deeper problem. For it stretches credibility to accept that so many people involved in this case failed so badly, and so repeatedly, in doing their jobs. There was, surely, another factor at work. Cock-up is almost always a more likely explanation than conspiracy, but cock-up will not do this time. It is plain that someone, or some group, wanted to see Paul Burrell behind bars for reasons that are still unclear.

Were it not for the judge, Mrs Justice Rafferty, none of this would have emerged, and Mr Burrell might still be on his way to prison. The prosecution was informed last Monday of Mr Burrell's pivotal audience with the Queen, in which he told her he had various items in safe keeping. But they did not disclose it to the defence until forced to by the judge at the end of the week. Why not?

It seems that the Royal Family were kept as much in the dark as the defence about the case, and may even have been deliberately misled. To quote Cicero, cui bono? Far be it from me to suggest that those most likely to benefit from further sleaze attaching to the institution of the Monarchy are those who might gain more power from its abolition...

Happy Blogiversary!

Natalie Solent is one year old today. Well, her blog is. So is Samizdata. As it's my real birthday today, too, I now realize I got two great extra presents last year. It's this blog's anniversary on Monday, although I'd been doing essentially the same thing since June last year on Conservative Revival, not that anyone was reading it...

Petain speaks

Illuminating interview with Chris Petain in The Spectator. He's very much on the defensive about the differences between Europe and America. Meanwhile, J. Danforth Hannan argues that Britain should act just a little more like France when it comes to foreign policy. Up to a point, Dan. Remember Suez?

Eurocrash

A lot of people have been pointing to this pragmaticScots article: Europe on the brink of collapse. It argues, with rather fewer facts than I would like, that the European economies are galloping towards Gomorrah:

It is not the world slowdown that has caused this performance collapse, but the interaction of entirely self-inflicted wounds: over-regulated labour markets, a relentless rise in the government share of the economy, a growing tax burden, regulation out of every orifice and a desperate rearguard action against all and every attempt to dismantle state aid and subsidies. The same clique that greeted the bursting of America’s new economy bubble as proof of the flawed Anglo-Saxon model is the same one that, now their own economy has fallen into a far deeper slowdown than that in the US, turns to blaming US policymakers for not doing enough to pull the rest of the world including the EU out of the mire. To listen to Europe’s political elite is to hear the pathetic cry of the bankrupt that someone else spent all the money. As for Germany, the powerhouse of the 1950s and 1960s has long given way to lethargy and laziness. Reds and Greens attack what is left of a once proud enterprise culture. They declaim their country in the Bundesrat like latter-day Tom Paines. But truly, it is they who pity the plumage and forget the dying bird.

Despite all this it has long been the belief of EU apologists in Britain that if only we engaged "at the centre of Europe" we would "win the argument" and slow the drive to ever closer union and ever greater centralism. But this is to ignore the fact that there are large sections of opinion in continental Europe that do not share the political and economic attitudes of the Anglo Saxon world one iota. Indeed, not even in the disintegration of the Growth and Stability Pact is there much cause for British reformists to cheer. It was Prodi no less, who repeated his call last week for "a single economic government for all countries that share the same money", with more power to the Commission to enforce a Stability Pact duly doctored to his liking.

This call was echoed by members of the EU’s latest triumph of hope over experience, the Convention on the Future of Europe, whose economic committee called for the introduction of qualified majority voting on tax harmonisation and for strengthened economic co-ordination between the member states.

As the economist Stephen Lewis eloquently argues: "In the circumstances it is questionable whether UK ambitions in the EU are realistic."

Euroland is sewing the wind. It shall reap the whirlwind.

The voice of a federast

A Eurorealist activist wrote recently to Andrew Duff MEP, the man who came up with the so-called secession for a federal Europe, in these terms:

Dear Mr Duff

Your letter to The Times of October 2nd in response to my earlier published letter on the 'exit clause' and your proposals for the process involved in UK secession from the EU, referred to your proposal for "a novel second
class associate membership".

As I find this a most interesting concept, I would like to hear from you the precise processes you envisage involved if the United Kingdom should wish to accept this grade of UK membership of the European Union.

I would further welcome your observations regarding the statement contained in the 1975 pamphlet Britain's New Deal in Europe Fact 3 "The British Parliament in Westminster retains the right to repeal the Act which took us into the Market on January 1, 1973. Thus our continued membership will depend on the continuing assent of Parliament" (my italics & bold type) Is it your intention that your proposals for the 'exit clause' regarding the UK leaving the EU, disregards this statement made by the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson? Do you disregard the principle that no government is bound by Acts passed by previous governments?

My understanding of your proposal is that our continued membership of the EU requires the backing of three-quarters of the Council of Ministers, in addition to two thirds of the European Parliament and ratification by the
parliaments of every other single member state. Such a proposal if approved, would appear contrary to the assurance that Harold Wilson gave the people of the United Kingdom in 1975. Do you agree or disagree?

I welcome your comments regarding your proposals for my further consideration and understanding.

Mr Duff responded thusly:

Daer Mr Randall

Thank you for your letter of 4 October.

I enclose for your interest a copy of my draft constitution which I hope you will set the question of secession and of associate membership of the European Union in the wider context.

As for Harold Wilson, I never believed him at the time of the 1975 referendum and therefore need not begin to do so retrospectively.

That no one UK Parliament can bind its successor is a rather worn cliche. Our commitment to the European Union is as permanent as one could ever envisage. As you know, EU law has supremacy over national law as the (very wide) competences of the EU are concerned. And there is no graceful way of exiting the Union.

It would always be possible for a Westminster Parliament to renege on its Treaty obligations,of course, but I hope you are not advocating that the British break their word.

Your sincerely
Andrew Duff

A central principle of British law is dismissed as a "rather worn cliche." These essential liberties are tiresome aren't they? That's the voice of the tyrant through the ages.

Ultra Vires

British Arts Minister Kim Howells has described the Turner Prize in somewhat colorful terms. Leaving aside the propriety of a Minister of the Crown swearing in his official capacity, the propriety of making his statement at all is an important issue. As the Telegraph leader, The artless minister, points out:

Whether Mr Howells is right about the Turner, however, is not the point. As a junior minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, he is one of the few people in the country who is not entitled to air his opinions about art. Even if the Turner Prize were paid for by the taxpayer, rather than sponsored by Channel 4, as it is, Mr Howells would still be trampling all over the principle on which state subsidies for the arts have been based ever since Keynes created the Arts Council in 1946: that the Government be kept at "arm's length" from decisions about how the subsidies should be spent.

Indeed, it would be better to abandon state sponsorship altogether than to allow governments to control culture. Such power corrupts even in the hands of a figure of real distinction, such as de Gaulle's culture minister Andre Malraux, let alone a Howells. Having studied art in the 1960s, Mr Howells owes allegiance to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock and Francis Bacon - all of whom would have been damned by the culture ministers of their day. Just about the only thing to be said for Turner entries like Fiona Banner's Arsewoman in Wonderland is that they lack the imprimatur of Kim "Il-sung" Howells.

Quite right. Even though I tend to agree with the thrust of his comments, Mr Howells (I thought it was Dr Howells?) should keep his big fat gob shut.

Blimey!

According to ABC news (Australian version), the new WHO World Health Report finds that Australia has the worst quality health care, presumably in the developed world, with 17 percent of patients incurring harm. The UK and Denmark are the next worst, at 10 percent. The US sees only 4 percent of patients harmed. I'm skeptical of these numbers and shall be examining the report to find out their source (see this article we wrote for LM), but, assuming they are equally valid, I hope that others will start to recognize the very high quality of US health care.

Driven to distraction

Iain Coleman points to this WSJ article about the relative difficulty of getting a driving license in the UK compared to the US. From my observation, there are proportionally more incompetent drivers in the US than the UK, and I think the current UK standards are about right. I do worry about the tougher standards that are being introduced, though. Eventually there will come a tipping point where enough people will say "stuff it" and drive unlicensed (and probably uninsured) to make it a serious issue. When that happens, I expect the motor accident rate in the UK to rise, not fall. Doubtless HMG will react by making the examination tougher (modular? with coursework?) and not understand why the accident rate is driving when it is refusing to license drivers. Perhaps one day cars will be banned entirely...

Nullification crisis

The Instapundit has an insightful post on jury nullification. He argues that we give police and prosecutors unreviewable power to let criminals go, so why should we worry more about juries doing it?

Vitae Lampada

THERE'S a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,(*)
An hour to play and the last man in. (**)
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat, (#)
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red, --
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; --
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honor a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year
While in her place the School is set
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind --
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

-- Sir Henry Newbolt

More Newbolt poems can be found here.

GLOSS
* This means the ball is likely to rise from the pitch unsighted, resulting in a smack in the face by a leather ball at high speed.
** Bottom of the ninth and two out, no-one on the bases.
# The equivalent of a Letter Jacket

Faith, hope and charity

Well, here's a surprise. Faith does affect behavior (grateful to Best of the Web for this one). It seems that young people who attend Church regularly are significantly better socialized than those who don't:

The survey of high school seniors showed that, for those who report attending church at least weekly:


43 percent said they had never smoked a cigarette.

49 percent said they had never gotten drunk.

55 percent said they never go to bars.

70 percent said they had never tried marijuana.

72 percent said they never have received a traffic ticket.

76 percent had not shoplifted in the past year.

48 percent said they had not been truant in the past year.

82 percent said they had never been suspended or expelled.

The same group of students were more likely to have parents who limited the amount of time they can go out with their friends on school nights, the survey showed. They are also less likely to argue with their parents, and more likely to participate regularly in both volunteer work and athletics or exercise.

The full study can be found here. I haven't analyzed it properly yet, but its reported findings are in line with other research.

Keep going, Howard

Howard Fienberg, of Kesher Talk, was released by my organization on Monday, the day he returned from his honeymoon. Obviously, I can't say anything about the circumstances, but I am very glad to see him back up and swinging so quickly. He has a new article at TCS - The Missing Link. More power to your elbow, Howard. Missing you here.

Through a glass darkly

Anatole Kaletsky looks at the skeleton EU Constitution. Rightly, he realizes that it posits a massive transfer of powers away from the people to a bureaucracy. He then wonders why it seems so difficult for anyone to conceive of properly democratic European institutions. He gropes towards the right answer:

I suspect that the failure to come up with a constitution which would improve the democratic legitimacy of Europe has much more to do with the absence of a European “demos”, than with the selfishness and cynicism of European bureaucrats and politicians. That is why the idea of transferring real power to the European Parliament has so little support anywhere in Europe, while direct election of a European president is dismissed as absurd.

But if there is really no such thing as a European political consciousness, if pan-European political parties are impossible, if an elected president is inconceivable – and if such manifestations of democracy become even more fantastical as Europe continues its eastward enlargement — can the Union’s past successes justify further transfers of sovereignty from the democratic nations of Europe to the bureaucratic centre? That is the crucial question for the Constitutional Convention to answer. So far, there has been deafening silence.

The EU is trying to unite people who don't want to be united, thank you very much. "American" in 1787 meant something more than being a citizen of Virginia or Rhode Island. To an Englishman, Dane or Italian, European is first and foremost a geographical expression. Only the elites see it as something bigger, just as they have often done in the past. That is why this whole project is driven by elites for the benefit of elites. And when elites ignore the people, they store up trouble for themselves.

Laughter in court

When Alan Coren and Miles Kingston were the presiding geniuses behind Punch, it was worth reading. I'm glad to see Kingston still producing hilarious fantasies like the one reproduced at Samizdata - The glory of the English Courts. I stress that the transcript provided is fictional.

Whispering Campaigns

Iain Duncan Smith has taken the unusual step of naming the people conducting the whispering campaign against his leadership. They include Douglas Hogg MP, the late Lord Hailsham's son and the man mostly responsible for the mad cow disease fiasco that destroyed Britain's confidence in scientists (although Stephen Dorrell, Health Secretary at the time, should also bear some of the blame). This leads the Telegraph's veteran cartoonist, Garland, to produce what I, and most who are interested in both politics and cricket, I imagine, consider a hilarious cartoon:



My opinion of this whole silly episode is echoed in the Telegraph leader, opinion.telegraph.co.uk - Selfish Tories:

Even if Mr Duncan Smith were Pericles and Churchill and Gladstone rolled into one, he could not have sorted out in 13 months the mess that has accumulated for nearly 15 years. His party needs a huge collective effort of self-discipline to think about what is wrong with Blair's Britain and what they can offer instead. If they conclude that the answer is another leadership contest, they are mad.

For goodness' sake, Tories, GROW UP!

What causes mass shootings? Ego!

The ills vested on the world by inflated egos are again demonstrated in the case of the Tucson nursing school killer. He sent a 22-page letter explaining his actions to the locla paper:

Flores recognized the world would soon be questioning his motives, and in his letter he sought to debunk some theories he expected people will float.

"To the sociologist, it wasn't the Maryland sniper," he wrote. "I have been thinking about this for awhile."

"To the psychiatrist," he wrote, "it's not about unresolved childhood issues. It is not about anger because I don't feel anything right now."

Addressing Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, he said the gun control debate isn't relevant. "A waiting period or owner registration would not have stopped me. I have a concealed carry permit but I have never brought a gun to the University, (until now)."

Although Flores said his rampage wasn't about revenge, in the end he tried to justify Monday's murders as just deserts for an uncaring university.

"The University is filled with too many people who are filled with hubris. They feel untouchable. Students are not given respect nor regard."

Flores' letter underscores a key personality trait that he shared with others who have committed similar crimes, said forensic psychologist Paul S.D. Berg. The trait: narcissism.

"Look how self-indulgent this is," Berg said Tuesday night, after passages of the letter were read to him. "Everything is about 'me.' "

If someone is selfish and self-indulgent they are much more likely to behave antisocially. Why do we constantly overlook this factor when working out what's wrong with the world?

A complex web of asocialization, drugs and cooking

The Starving Criminal by Theodore Dalrymple is possibly one of the most important things I've read all year. The good Doctor takes as his starting point a recent study that showed that criminals in the UK who were fed vitamin supplements were much less likely to offend while still in custody. He goes on to relate his own experience with malnutrition in the criminal class. Its prevalence is, he feels, at base a reflection of the lack of socialisation related to eating in the lowest British socio-economic classes today (with one exception, which proves that it is not poverty that is the cause):

It never takes many links in a chain of reasoning to get from their smooth and raw magenta tongues to the kind of family breakdown favored by a certain ideology of human relations, encouraged by our laws and fiscal system, and made viable by welfare payments. It is the breakdown of the family structure—a breakdown so complete that mothers do not consider it part of their duty to feed their own children once they have reached the age at which they can forage for themselves in a refrigerator—that promotes modern malnutrition in Britain. Such malnutrition, according to the public health establishment, now affects millions of British households. And it is hardly surprising if young people who have not learned to socialize within the walls of their own homes, who have not learned even the minimal social disciplines required by people who eat together, should be completely antisocial in other respects.

One of the things British prisons could usefully do, therefore, but do not even attempt, is to teach young men how to eat in a social fashion. Instead, they reinforce the pattern of solipsistic consumption by making prisoners take their food back to their cells, where they eat it in the same solitary and furtive fashion as they masturbate.

As to whether the malnutrition consequent upon a profoundly asocial way of life itself contributes to antisocial behavior, by affecting the brain and hence the capacity of the malnourished person to make reasonable choices, only future research will prove. I personally do not find the idea inherently improbable.

This problem appears to be exacerbated, although not caused, by the use of drugs (as it is the drugs' use that is the issue, the legalization argument is irrelevant here, so please don't start that up again in the comments section):

About two-thirds of these malnourished young men take drugs, upon which they spend sums of money that, however obtained, would secure them nightly banquets. The drugs they take suppress their appetite: the nausea induced by heroin inhibits the desire to eat, while cocaine and its derivatives suppress it altogether. The prostitutes who stand on the street corners not far from where I live—they work a shift system and commute in from a nearby town in buses chartered by their pimps—are likewise grossly malnourished (they often end up in my hospital), and for the same reason. You’d think famine were stalking the land.

Not all the malnourished are drug-takers, however. It is when you inquire into eating habits, not just recent but throughout entire lifetimes, that all this malnutrition begins to make sense. The trail is a short one between modern malnutrition and modern family and sexual relations.

Dalrymple goes on to explain how the "liberal" intelligentsia have approached the issue:

The existence of malnutrition in the midst of plenty has not entirely escaped either the intelligentsia or the government, which of course is proposing measures to combat it: but, as usual, neither pols nor pundits wish to look the problem in the face or make the obvious connections. For them, the real and most pressing question raised by any social problem is: “How do I appear concerned and compassionate to all my friends, colleagues, and peers?” Needless to say, the first imperative is to avoid any hint of blaming the victim by examining the bad choices that he makes. It is not even permissible to look at the reasons for those choices, since by definition victims are victims and therefore not responsible for their acts, unlike the relatively small class of human beings who are not victims. One might extend La Rochefoucauld’s famous maxim that neither the sun nor death can be stared at for long, by saying that no member of the modern liberal intelligentsia can stare at a social problem for very long. He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control. And out of this need to avoid the rawness of reality he spins utopian schemes of social engineering.

Their solution has been to invent the concept of the "food desert" where evil capitalists refuse to sell nutritious foodstuffs to the working class, who are therefore forced to eat the bad stuff. But this concept is knocked out by the exception mentioned above: Indian stores in the middle of these "deserts" sell good, cheap foodstuffs to Indian families who have retained the concept of cookery as an important social and cultural activity:

Moreover, unlike the people who spoke so fluently of the food deserts, I had, in the course of my medical duties, visited many homes in the area. The only homes in which there were ever any signs of genuine cookery and of eating as a social activity, where families discussed the topics of daily life and affirmed their bonds to one another, were those of the Indian immigrants. In white and black homes, cookery meant (at its best) re-heating in a microwave oven, and there was no table round which people could sit together to eat the re-heated food. Meals here were solitary, poor, nasty, British, and short.

The Indian immigrants and their descendants inherited a far better and more elaborate cuisine than the native British, of course, but this is not a sufficient explanation of their willingness still to buy fresh food and to cook it: they continue to cook because they still live in families, and cookery is a socially motivated art. Even among Indian heroin addicts (principally Muslim), the kind of malnutrition I have described is rare, because they do not yet live in the solipsistic isolation of their white counterparts, who live alone, even when there are other people inhabiting the house or apartment in which they themselves live. Drug addiction is thus a necessary condition for much of the malnutrition that I see, but not sufficient.

As Dalrymple says, the malnutrition problem is Britain in miniature. The abandonment of traditional rules of social behavior in the 60s and later have caused severe practical problems for the working class. Drugs exacerbate those problems, but without them already existing drug consumption would be much less. The solution advanced and, sadly, accepted by all major players is to legislate and bureaucratize at the macro level, when the real problem is in hearths and homes. This is where the Church could be playing a role, but it has abrogated that. Local morally-based charities seem to me to be the only solution, but they will be undermined continuously by the bureaucracies. I'd be grateful for other suggestions.

Taxing Times

Is the unthinkable being thought? According to the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury is contemplating a complete overhaul of the tax code (link for subscribers only, I fear):

The Treasury Department is weighing proposals for a historic overhaul of the US tax code, including scrapping the current income tax and replacing it with something simpler. On the table are a range of familiar and not-so-familiar options, including a European-style, value-added tax, a national sales tax and a flat income tax. Officials also are mulling changes in the way the U.S. taxes multinational companies on their overseas income." Treasury officials say the decision to proceed with any major changes likely will take months of further study and approval from President Bush. Any proposals would be scrutinized for their impact on budget deficits and would prompt questions about their fairness to specific groups. In the end, an overhaul proposal likely would become an issue in the 2004 presidential election.

I fervently believe that the simpler a tax code is, the less scope there is for cheating, with the result that energy gets spent in more productive ways. Reagan's tax reforms demonstrated this. Those who might be hit worse by a switch to regressive taxes will benefit from more money being available to employ them. In the end, I believe everyone benefits. Perhaps Paul O'Neill doesn't deserve all the opprobrium directed at him over the past couple of years.

Must Read

Jim Bennett and Rand Simberg take a look at what might have happened in 1942 if certain current attitudes had prevailed then over at Transterrestrial Musings. Very funny.

How to lose influence

The European Convention has published the "skeleton" document, drawn up by Giscard and his boys, to form the basis of discussion for the European Constitution. It's clear to me that Britain would be adversely affected by letting this process continue while remaining a member. In one important area, Britain would surely lose influence. As The Independent states:

The union would have "legal personality", with the power to sign treaties and take a seat on international bodies such as the United Nations.

Now would other nations be content to allow EU member countries essentially a voice and a half, being represented individually and collectively? I doubt it. Surely the only point of having an EU representative at the UN is for it to be the sole representative of its members, as is the case in the WTO. France and Britain would therefore lose their permanent Security Council status. That would be a serious diminution of British power and influence. This is an issue Eurorealists should be forcing into the debate. I doubt many Brits would be happy with the prospect.

PP: YACCS is playing up, so comments are down at the moment. Jim Bennett therefore e-mails some important views:

Re a single European seat in the UN -- there is a precedent for dual representation, although the Euros may not like the analogy: Ukraine and Belarus were both "represented" with their own seats in the UN from the start even though they were also "represented" by the USSR as well. Of course the other republics were not "represented" individually. But the whole thing is a farce: nobody in those nations was represented no matter how many seats they held.

I see George Will is gone capitulationist today in the Post; advocating a single European Security Council seat for Europe. Perhaps that threat would get some Brits moving at last. Ironic that the UK can veto the whole UN but soon won't be able to veto the EU.

Well said.

You go, Hugo

The CEI's Hugo Gurdon tells America the truth about the EU.

Motivational blogger

Jim Henley has several posts wrapping up his excellent coverage of the sniper case, among them this one on the killers' motive. Terror? No, says Jim. Money, pure and simple.

Student of history, but not of literature

The Lincoln Plawg's John Smith has been getting a lot of play with his disagreements with a Yale professor's assessment of the War on Terror. I'm not sure I find it that convincing. He makes a great deal of what really happened at Agincourt, but that's not what Prof Gaddis is talking about. He is referencing Shakespeare's Henry V, not the real monarch of the same name. He could have made it more explicit, and certainly muddies the water somewhat, but I think I'm correct in saying that. Here is the motivation of Shakespoke's Henry:

His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.

I doubt the wisdom of issuing Prof. Gaddis' arguments, but I think the criticism is a little misplaced too. What a lot of tennis balls!

Well done, Tony Blair!

Our Tone has risen again in my estimation. A Frenchman of some note has accused him of being rude:

M Chirac, who strongly defends the policy because France is the chief beneficiary, reportedly told Mr Blair: "You have been very rude and I have never been spoken to like this before."

It seems Tone has had enough of the appaling idiocy that is the CAP. The French don't like being told home truths. Perhaps someone should send le Premier a copy of Tim Hames' article from yesterday.

Erm...

In Safety: Another Problem With Poverty the New York Times alleges that studies show that pverty causes children to be hit by cars. Sounds like lax parenting to me, which probably also causes poverty, but who am I to judge?

Crime time

I was interviewed extensively by USA Today yesterday about the new FBI crime figures, but they spiked the story (they just ran a short piece in a sidebar). That's the problem with telling journalists there isn't a story there. The editors often believe you. Anyway, my view can be found in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story, Reported crime up 4.2% in state.

The limits of intelligence

Well, my TCS column this week attracted this comment:

Dear Mr. Murray;

I found your article without value; in particular, giving play to Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute and Alan Harris
of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for their less than insightful insights tells me that you are probably a skeptic and probably a member of MENSA. If you still want to drop names, do it when you are alone - not on the Internet!

BTW, my definition of a skeptic is one who believes in nothing, being fascinated by their own intellect. Sad!

Regards.

Anthony J. Sanner
Fair Oaks, CA US

This bright spark runs a website that seems to think that a blotch on a film is evidence of alien activity. What a lark!

Huh?

Well that was bizarre. I just received an e-mail from Newt Gingrich...

(Nothing substantive, I hasten to add, but if you're reading, Newt, keep up the good work on health care!)

Profiling idiocy

My friend Eli Lehrer puts the boot into the idea that profiling is a scientific method in Profiles in Confusion, reprinted, as it were, from the current Weekly Standard. I've also been saying this for quite some time.

Proposal for the WTC Memorial

My good lady wife has been putting her creative juices to work, and came up with this proposal for the WTC memorial:



Her description:

This is a rough, rough sketch of what I'd like to see on the footprint of the twin towers. Two towers within an open cage frame. The new towers would be no higher than the floors which hit the twin towers, so one would be about 100 stories and one would be about 80 stories. The new towers' footprint would be about one to three feet smaller than the old twin towers so that they fit within the footprint leaving space for a encircling reflecting pool and the open cage frame. This frame would be exactly the dimensions of the old twin towers encasing the buildings within and extending to the height of the old towers, like benevolent ghosts enveloping a new home. The frame would be illuminated at night from within and lights on the top of the new buildings would have continue the illumination to the sky. The rest of the 16 acres can be developed as needed.

Seems a lot better to me than most of the proposals so far.

Timbo!

Don't miss Tim Hames' excellent Times summary of where we are in the War on Terror and how Jacques Chirac's grandstanding is a senseless obstacle to progress.

UPI column up

I forgot to blog this last week, because the UPI web site was playing up. My latest Recent research suggests ... column looks at the recent report on the reliability of polygraphs and at a couple of other bits and pieces.

PP: Wilde has some biting comments about polygraph reliability from personal experience.

TCS column up

My latest Tech Central Station column is up. The Limits of Rationality looks at an attempt to argue that giving more weight to terrorist attacks than to traffic accidents in political decision-making is irrational.

Didn't they read Gramsci?

Seems like Blogger is back, so I hope this will actually publish! Revealing comments in this Telegraph editorial on the task facing the new Education Secretary:

The central premise of the Blairite approach to education has been the centralisation of decision-making in Whitehall. This policy followed a path begun by the previous Conservative government. To appreciate why successive governments thought it imperative to take power from individual schools and teachers, it is necessary to recall how remote much classroom practice had become from any traditional - or even rational - understanding of the function of education.

Teaching methodology and curriculum content were in the hands of an interlocking network of teacher-training establishments, local education authorities and teaching unions that was accountable to no one outside its own ideological circles. The protests of parents and employers made government action seem inescapable.

The Thatcher government proposed a "core curriculum" and "pencil and paper" tests to ensure that children would be equipped with basic skills. Taken over by educational vested interests, this transmogrified into a monolithic national curriculum. Tony Blair, having adopted educational standards as his personal crusade, then pursued this notion of government diktat to its logical conclusion.

The Tory approach seemed sensible to me at the time, but then I was a know-nothing student. I had thought Mrs T was a student of Gramsci. The right approach would have been to destroy the institutions (or their iconic privileges) that had been inflitrated by the revolutionaries (who are, of course, still there). The analogy to privatization should have been obvious. Any meaningful reform of teaching has to start with the teacher training colleges. Without that, it is doomed.

Poxes on both houses etc

Moving office today, so posting will be light even if Blogger Pro ever actually publishes any of the posts I've been making. In the meantime, check out Mark Kleiman's excellently balanced take on the Nevada marijuana legalization ballot.

Sniper Latest

It really does look like they've got their men. And it seems they were undone by their own stupidity, as well. I think people that are jumping on the surname "Muhammad" as evidence of terrorism are being a bit silly at present. If the elder suspect is Islamic, it'll be Nation of Islam-style. Their terrorism has been terrorism only in the most banal sense of the word. I'll be very surprised if they have any connection to a recognizable terrorist group.

By the way, I am happy to admit my theory about young, bored kids was completely unfounded...

PP: Color me surprised. There's a prima facie case to be answered if what is said in this Tech Central Station article is at all accurate.

Big Brother No Longer a Cliche

Over at Samizdata, Perry de Havilland has snapped a picture of this monstrous poster:



Welcome to the reality of Tony Blair's Britain.

Many a true word

The Media Research Center takes a look at John Simpson, liberator of Kabul and doyen of the BBC's foreign correspondents corps. He seems to be growing more and more ludicrous as the years go by; the last report I saw from him he appeared to be deliberately impersonating Sir David Attenborough. The MRC suggest that he is Britain's Geraldo Rivera. This may be true. Pity the BBC treats him like Dan Rather.

Red Robbo

Nick Robinson (666) is to become the Chief Political Correspondent for ITN, the news service for the independent channels in the UK (and less biased than the Beeb, not though you'd notice). Nick was an extremely wet but prominent Tory at Oxford and his views seem, from what I can discern, to have hardened slightly, but that probably places him squarely in the Blairite range. Nevertheless, it is good to see someone like him at so prominent a media position. It does mean, of course, that he will no longer be running his occasional bloggish Newslog, so I shall have to remove it from my blogroll. One interesting insight in the last one, however:

My favourite test of whether someone is really "New Labour" in their hearts is to ask them (when no-one's listening of course) if Margaret Thatcher was right to defeat the miners.

The true New Labourite - and there aren't that many - will confess that without that happening, the Blairite project would never have been born.

That's what they're getting at when they talk of these strikes being "Scargillite".

I'd be very interested to see how many Labour MPs and activists (or indeed, members of the public) would answer "yes" to that question. That would be a true guide to whether or not socialism has really been defeated in the UK.

Resigned to Failure

Thanks to Mommabear for pointing out below that Estelle Morris has resigned. She admitted she wasn't up to the job:

It appears the former teacher has told the prime minister she felt comfortable in her previous role as schools minister under then Education Secretary David Blunkett but found the step up to cabinet rank too much.

If more people who clearly aren't up to the job admit it (looking in the direction of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), Blair will have a nice slimline cabinet before long. Meanwhile, my MP and old college acquaintance, the Schools Minister, has also got into an embarrassing scrape:

David Milliband had an unfortunate encounter this week as he toured the studios justifying the Government’s behaviour in the A-level fiasco and the sacking of exams watchdog chief Sir William Stubbs.

Enroute to one he spied a young woman with a cute baby. Ever the politician, he walked over and beamed “Oh look there’s a little voter.” “Do you know who I am?” came a cold reply from the mother, “I am Sir William Stubbs’ daughter.”

The minister then spent the rest of the day trying to avoid any similar encounters by refusing to appear in the same studio as Sir William.

London Metro 18 October 2002.

Chortle.

Testing times

Another excellent article on sp!ked, Testing Britishness by Josie Appleton. It points out that the reason the Home Office is having trouble drawing up new citizenship tests is because our rulers don't know what Britishness is. Some extensive quotes:

On 9 September 2002, Blunkett established an advisory group to set 'life in the United Kingdom' naturalisation exams for immigrants wishing to become British citizens. The group has also been given the remit of designing a naturalisation ceremony. Professor Bernard Crick, who is chairing the committee, says Prince Charles told him the position was a 'poisoned chalice' - probably one of His Royal Highness' more sensible judgements.

Many of the 'common values' Crick floated in a Sunday Times article on the subject are based on a mythical notion of Britishness, rather than one that actually exists. 'I suppose', he said, without much conviction, 'this is a democratic country that values freedom and rights, toleration, plain speaking, care and compassion for others, truth telling, openness, and the giving of good reasons in public…life and debate' .

Freedom and rights? British governments over the past few years have been busily eroding civil liberties, including the right to silence and the right to free association - and they faced little dissent in the process. Giving good reasons in public debate? From the Commons to the comment pages, the evidence suggests that the level of reasoned public debate is at an historic low. The rest of Crick's values are the vague components of good character, which it would be hard to argue were more prevalent among the British than any other nation.

When not telling fibs about British truth-telling, Crick resorted to tautology: 'It seems to me that we become British by living in Britain and treating one another as British', he said. Yes…and?

Crick also wrote about giving immigrants lessons in paying bills, and telling them how post offices, banks and courts work. It is nice of the British government to provide new arrivals with a Rough Guide to getting about in Britain, but this is hardly the point. It's hard to believe that all this angst about assimilation stems from immigrants' problems with posting letters or paying bills - which are technical aspects of life in a new country that are not very hard to pick up.

... [On Blunkett's idea that immigrant parents speaking English at home would help to 'overcome the schizophrenia which bedevils generational relationships']. The idea that English-speaking ability of their parents has anything to do with youths' lack of sense of belonging in British society is simply absurd. These are second- or third-generation immigrants, who were born and brought up in Britain. It is the absence of values and sources of cohesion in mainstream British society that underlies their lack of 'shared participation' - not their parents' cultural intransigence.

Appleton finishes by saying, "Before Britain starts trying to test immigrants, it should test itself." Indeed it should, and I'd like to suggest that testing History might be the starting point. A people is the product of its history, and so understanding its history must be the key to understanding a people. The history of Britain is one of struggles of beliefs, worldviews and classes, of struggles for liberty and for a better life. From understanding those struggles comes an understanding of the product that resulted. The British have mostly forgotten those struggles, and hence have forgotten what they are. Tell them about their past and they will understand themselves.

Nice one, Brendan

Brendan O'Neill tells the truth about the not-so Nice referendum.

It f***s you up, the nanny state

Helene Guldberg of sp!ked effortlessly exposes the idiocy of a British government guide to parenting and the philosophy behind it in Parenting by numbers. The obscenity in the post title, by the way, is a reference to a Philip Larkin (?) poem, also referred to in the article. I haven't suddenly decided to abandon civility...

Irish Ayes Are Smiling

Here, complete and unedited, is the statement of The National Platform as to why Irish voters approved the Nice Treaty in the second referendum on the subject:

Dear Friends,
In response to several enquiries from outside Ireland for a summary account of why Irish voters voted Yes last Saturday to exactly the same Nice Treaty as they rejected last year, I give below for your information the principal reasons as my colleagues and I see them.

There were two major differences between Ireland's Nice Two referendum and Nice One.

(1) In Nice Two, in contrast to Nice One, there was no public money behind the No-side arguments, because of the removal of this function from the neutral statutory Referendum Commission last December. This body had been given large sums of public money in Nice One to put the Yes-side and No-side cases. That particularly helped the No-side, as they are the poorer of the two. The fact that there was substantial public money behind the Yes-side and No-side arguments in Nice One also meant that private interests did not bother advertising on that occasion. In Nice Two by contrast,the removal of its Yes/No-argument function from the Referendum Commission cleared a free field for private advertising. This was in a ratio of approximately 20 to 1 in favour of the Yes. Thus, for example, the Yes-side posters were mostly put up by private companies that were paid so many euros per poster to do so, whereas the No-side posters were put up by volunteers.

(2) The change in the referendum question: The question the Irish people were asked to vote on in Nice Two was essentially a trick question. There was an extra clause in the contitutional amendment in Nice Two compared with Nice One. This extra clause said that Ireland could not join an EU defence pact without holding a referendum to change its Constitution.This had nothing to do with the Treaty of Nice and was quite irrelevant to the Treaty's ratification. It was inserted as a third clause in addition to the the two clauses that were needed to ratify Nice, and all three had to be voted on as one. This extra clause, if it were to be put to the people at all, should properly have been put as a separate referendum proposition, on which people could vote separately. Instead people voted last Saturday on a three-clause amendment which contained two different joined propositions, to which only one answer could be given, a Yes or a No.

This trick question in Nice Two meant also that the Referendum Commission's other main function, to inform citizens what the referendum was about - for which it was given double the budget of last year (viz. 4.5 million euros) - was inherently confusing, and was biased significantly towards the Yes side. In the event, the Referendum Commission, which was the principal aid to the No side in Nice One, was objectively of significant help to the Yes-side in Nice Two.

These two changes to the basic referendum rules enabled the Irish Government and its allies successfully to impose their campaign agenda in Nice Two. They succeeded in representing Nice Two as a vote for or against "Jobs and Growth," "EU Enlargement," or "Putting Neutrality into the Irish Constitution" - which were largely irrelevant to the real issue. Most Yes-side voters voted in effect for these desirable things, thinking that they were voting on the Treaty of Nice, but without being aware of the actual content of the treaty, which had little or nothing to do with these matters.

The Yes-side's success in imposing its agenda in the last two weeks of the referendum campaign, deriving mainly from the above two factors, was helped by appeals for a Yes vote from the 10 Prime Ministers of the Applicant countries, by the likes of Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa making similar appeals, by the ambassadors of the Applicant coutries writing a Yes-side letter to the Irish Times, by the Czech and Polish ambassadors actively campaigning for a Yes, by the Irish Catholic Hierarchy positively supporting the Yes side, which they had never done in previous EU-related referendums, and by a number of other factors that variously affected the Yes-side and No-side votes. But in our judgement they were of small significance compared to the two factors mentioned.

The National Platform is of the view that were it not for the above two changes in Nice Two as compared to Nice One, the No side could have won the 19 October referendum. As it was, the 37% No vote - much the same as last year's No - was very creditable in the circumstances. That vote remains as a strong block to oppose the EU State Constitutional Treaty that is already being prepared for 2004/2005.

Yours faithfully,

Anthony Coughlan
Secretary


PS. Below is an information note on the Nice Two constitutional amendment which has been prepared in response to various queries from abroad. Please feel free to use it or adapt it as you see fit, without need of acknowledgement, if you or your organisation should receive similar queries.
________________

IRELAND'S CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO RATIFY THE TREATY OF NICE: aninformation note

22 October 2002

Irish referendums are forms of direct legislation, like in Switzerland and various other countries, and many states of the USA. The citizens of the Republic of Ireland are legislating to amend the Constitution of their State, which they originally adopted in 1937 and "gave to themselves" by referendum, to use the words of the Constitution's preamble.

Irish referendums are therefore constitutionally different from referendums in the United Kingdom,for example, which are advisory in character, for sovereignty in the UK is regarded as resting with the Crown in Parliament, not with the people.

The Irish Parliament(Dáil) puts a Bill before the people, which they then legislate on. In EU-related referendums Irish citizens are legislating to hand over sovereignty - i.e. legislative,executive and judicial power - to the EU institutions in the areas covered by the EU Treaty in question. This only the people themselves can do, as they are the repositories of sovereignty under the Irish Constitution. This important principle that EU treaties entailing the surrender of sovereignty must be ratified by referendum in the Republic,rather than by parliamentary majority vote, was established by the Irish Supreme Court in the 1987 Crotty case.

So on Saturday last, 19 October, the Republic's citizens were legislating on the 26th Amendment of the Constitution Bill, and the question on the ballot paper was: Do you approve of the 26th Amendment of the Constitution Bill? Citizens vote Yes or No to that. If they vote Yes, the Bill becomes an Act when signed by the President, and the Constitution is consequently amended - in this case permitting the Irish State to ratify the Treaty of Nice.

In every Irish polling booth there was legally required to be a prominent notice on the wall stating what the 26th Amendment to the Constitution Bill says, so that people will know what their vote means. The campaign leading up to the referendum should also have served to make them well aware of that.

The text of the constitutional amendment set out in the Bill is given below. One should note that in the Nice Treaty Re-run referendum, in contrast to the Nice One referendum last year, there are two separate joined propositions to which only one answer was permitted. The third clause has no legal connection with the first two, so it was a trick question to a degree. The Nice Two amendment was different in that respect from all previous Irish constitutional amendments.

The third clause dealing with a referendum on a hypothetical EU defence pact - which had nothing to do with ratifying the Treaty of Nice - should properly have been put as a separate constitutional amendment from the first two clauses. But they were lumped together as two different joined propositions, to which only one answer could be given. This was part of the Irish Government's trickery in seeking to overturn last year's democratic rejection of the Nice Treaty and to get the Treaty through this time.

Below is the constitutional amendment set out in the 26th Amendment of the Constitution Bill. It consists of three clauses that constitute one amendment. The three clauses add three subsections to Article 29 of the Constitution:-

- To insert in the Constitution a proposed new subsection: Article 29.4.7:

"The State may ratify the Treaty of Nice amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related Acts signed at Nice on the 26th day of February, 2001."

(This has the effect of ratifying the Treaty of Nice)

- To insert in the Constitution a proposed new subsection:Article 29.4.8

"The State may exercise the options or discretions provided by or under Articles 1.6, 1.9, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13 and 2.1 of the Treaty referred to in subsection 7 of this section but any such exercise shall be subject to the prior approval of both houses of the Oireachtas."

(This relates to the enhanced co-operation provisions of the Treaty.)

- To insert in the Constitution a proposed new subsection:29.4.9

"The State shall not adopt a decision taken by the European Council to establish a common defence pursuant to Article 1.2 of the Treaty referred to in subsection 7 of this section where that common defence would include the State."

This involves a constitutional prohibition on Ireland joining an EU common defence, although it does not prevent the other EU states forming such a defence pact among themselves if they should wish to do so.

Sounds like a quite splendid piece of jerrymandering by the Dail. The Referendum Commission's rules promoted fairness, so they changed the rules. Nice.