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Has anyone ever come across a case of a politician championing the expansion of state regulation from beyond the grave? Is this a first for cemetery regulation?

The Florida Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services Bill has just been passed by the state's House of Representatives in response to the Menorah Gardens scandal, where fees were pocketed by the funeral home and corpses went unburied. This bill is known as the "Howard Futch" Bill since his untimely demise was marred by his internment and relocation, after the plot designated for his widow was filled by someone else. Futch was, by all accounts, a decent man, a Second World War veteran, and like all representatives, inclined to act in order to right perceived wrongs through government action. Now he has a highway and a funeral regulation bill named after him. Still, people will sleep easier in the ground for this:

The bill will require cemetery operators to survey and plot new grounds, establish minimum grave sizes, and put names on vaults. It also will establish a monument dealer inspection program, allow monument companies to join funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums in the pre-need funeral services industry and consolidate the regulation of the industry under the Department of Financial Services....

Why the scandal of unburied bodies requires the monument dealer inspection service or other regulatory actions is beyond me? At the moment, the European Union has only turned its attentions to pet cemeteries as the ever vigilant Euromyths website under David Delaney details here and here.

Once this furore has died down, let us hope other deceased politicians rest more quietly than Howard Futch.

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Lest anyone forget about the "broken-watch principle" (i.e. even a broken watch is still right twice a day), a reminder is served up courtesy of this excellent and unsettling article by Nick Cohen in the Guardian:

Politicians might be despised, but it is a fair guess that if a home secretary or prime minister proposed repealing the Human Rights Act or tearing up habeas corpus a majority of the population would clap their hands and cheer him on. A paradox of our time is that while ministers are everywhere vilified as scheming liars, and bureaucrats as sinister incompetents, large sections of the supposedly cynical and wised-up electorate are eager to allow them to behave like major-generals.

Sadly true. Mr Cohen even goes on to quote H.L. Mencken:

'The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,' said H.L. Mencken. But in modern Britain it's hard to know who is the leader and who is the led. It's easy enough to blame elite politicians, desperate to win the approval of apathetic voters, and elite media managers, desperate to hang on to their shares of declining audiences. But there's also no doubt that politicians are buffeted by an angry and fearful public which isn't overly concerned if the punitive measures they demand tear up civil liberties or, indeed, work.

For such great wrongs are liberties which this country fought Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler to defend abandoned without a squeak.

Mr Cohen's doleful analysis chimes with my own observations and experiences of life in contemporary Britain and because I often come to the same melancholy conclusions I am sometimes accused of 'revelling' in pessimism. But this is not true. It is rather that I am unwilling to ignore the evidence of my own eyes and ears.

For those same reasons, I find myself growing increasingly impatient with analyses of our current woes in terms of historical precendents (the 1930's, the 1950's and the 1970's appear to be the most referred to). If Nick Cohen is right (and the evidence points towards his being right) then comparisons with previous eras are specious. We are facing a whole new situation here.

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Looking for trouble? Well, you've come to the right place:

People who refuse to register for the government's planned ID card scheme could face a "civil financial penalty" of up to £2,500, it has emerged.

David Blunkett said not making registering a criminal issue would avoid "clever people" becoming martyrs.

Got that, dickhead? That is what happens to people who try to be 'clever'. We do not like clever bastards going around being all....clever. So just pack it in, right, otherwise you will be cruisin' for a bruisin'. Are we clear, pissant? Because if not, its two-and-a-half grand and a punch in the face.

Now just piss off, mind your own bleedin' business and do you as you are fucking well told.

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After an enjoyable day out with fellow libertarian troublemaker Andrew Ian Dodge, I settled in a for a quiet night in front of the television and watched about half of an interesting, if rather depressing, documentary about the late British comedian, Frankie Howerd.

He ranks alongside the late Peter Sellers and Terry Thomas in my pantheon of eccentric Brit funnymen. Howerd was the master of the double-entendre, teasing his audiences with riske jokes at a time when censorship of the press and popular entertainment was still relatively strong by modern standards. He is probably best known for his role as a comic slave in the Roman comedy, "Up Pompei!", accompanied by his usual refrains such as "No missus!" or "Titter ye not". (He's an acquired taste, I will admit).

The programme on Howerd's life focussed on his private life, which was not particularly pleasant. Howerd was a homosexual and in the post-war years up to the 1960s before gay relationships were legalised. In consequence, Howerd conducted his personal life on the fringes of the law, and at times was vulnerable to blackmail.

With all the current concerns about state ID cards, European Union cross-border arrest warrants and the like, it is easy to become despondent about the threats to our individual freedom. But we should not forget that in that much maligned decade, the 1960s, a group of people like Frankie Howerd were liberated from the bigotry of the law. In certain areas, the cause of liberty has taken a leap forward, and we should not forget that fact.

Oooooh, shut yer face!!

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The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has once again pledged to introduce a compulsory national ID card scheme saying that ID cards were an essential tool in the fight against global warming.

Speaking to the BBC today, Mr. Blunkett denied that ID cards were merely a fetish and emphasised that they were a much-needed response to a fast changing world:

"Everbody understands the need to take serious steps to tackle the growing menace of global warming but we cannot even begin to do this without a proper national ID card system".

Mr. Blunkett was also dismissive of the scheme's critics:

"These so-called civil libertarians who try to suggest that there is no link between ID cards and global warming are simply dangerous and deluded. They are terrorists in all but name."

According to a recent opinion poll, every single person in the UK has pledged that they will murder their own children and then kill themselves horribly unless the government issues them with a biometric ID card immediately.

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Recently, this blog noted the repressive measure by the Irish government to outlaw smoking in pubs and restaurants, even though no-one is either forced to work, drink or eat in these privately owned establishments. When thinking, however, about how to frame the arguments against such bans, it is very easy to just rail against the latest nanny state outrage but not give examples of how the market can cater much more effectively for tobaccophobes instead.

Sticking with the issue of smoking in pubs, consider this. In a market order, different pubs will enforce different rules depending on whether the owners figure that they can get the most business by either banning smoking totally, banning it in part of the building, or by installing smoke extractor machines, or even creating American "cigar-bar" type establishments where smoking is positively encouraged as part of the whole pub experience. The point is, the more choice there is, the more opportunities for those who have different tastes to get along in congenial company without the need for unnecessary wrangling.
This also gives a great example of how private property can and does act as a solvent of potential conflicts, a point which collectivists rarely pause to consider.

It is uncertain how health and safety regulations have encouraged bars and restaurants to change the way they deal with this issue, apart from requiring owners of premises to enforce minimum standards. But the trouble with minimum standards is that businesses have no real incentive to raise standards much higher than such a level because the cost is unlikely to bring a commensurate reward. The paradox is that letting the market work could actually raise standards much higher overall.

As with all such issues, you can be sure that legislators rarely bother to consider the law of unintended consequences when it comes to things like this. plus ca change...

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If there were ever an annual Ayn Rand award, here in the UK, for Britain's most outstanding business leader, then a recent contender could easily have been Tim Martin, the founder and chairman of the JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs. He created this chain from virtually nothing, in 1979, and built it into one of the largest leisure businesses in the country. Which is remarkable.

But being a former law student he has fallen into the trap of believing that if a law is passed by a legislature then this automatically makes it a good thing. Because he has just called for a smoking ban to be imposed upon all the privately owned pubs and bars in Britain, following Ireland's recent heavy-handed example.

Now I have no problem with Mr Martin banning smoking in all of his own pubs. But like all the best hypocrites Mr Martin has no intention of doing this, because he realises he will lose too much business to his competition. But this hypocrisy has failed to prevent him from wishing to inflict his own intolerant views upon every other private bar owner and pub smoker in the country.

Which does beg the following question: Are there any truly successful business people here in Britain who we libertarians could actually hold up and respect as role models for the future? Or is it simply impossible in Nanny State Britain for any big business leader to be successful without being mentally flexible enough to accommodate the sinuous and relentless needs of our slave controllers in government?

I need a hero to worship. Does anybody have one?

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Blair is a liar. But of course the notion any politician does not utter more than the occasional porkie pie is a very uncontroversial one. But as I said in the wellspring of lies yesterday, one can but marvel at the bare faced effrontery of it when our political masters stand up and state something is true when any person not wilfully blind (or David Blunkett) can see it is patently untrue just by reading a few newspapers or one of several thousand blogs and websites.

Mr Blair said political objections had been removed and the only obstacle now was technical. He made clear he wanted the project to "move forward" as soon as it was feasible.

He risked antagonising civil rights campaigners by claiming they no longer objected to the idea, which would see each citizen required to buy a computer-readable card that would record personal details.

Risks antagonising? Civil rights campaigners no longer object to the idea? Excuse the French, but, what the fuck? Blair is a bare faced liar. The only other alternative to that is that he is so ignorant of goings on outside the cloistered world of 10 Downing Street as to be completely deluded.

I will try my damnedest to refuse to get an ID card and I will openly declare that I do not have one when the sun rises on that evil day. I urge as many people as possible to not just resist but to do so openly when the time comes. They will try to make it very difficult to live without one so we must make the system unworkable by using whatever civil disobedience and intelligent resistance is needed. Do not cooperate with your own repression. Time to get creative, people. Time to get angry.

Cross-posted to:

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It is galling to read endless utilitarian articles for and against banning smoking on commercial (but nevertheless private) property with nary a mention of whether it is actually just to enact authoritarian proscriptions on the acts of others who are, after all, in voluntary close proximity.

At least the erratic Telegraph takes a fairly good stab at doing just that:

Other politicians throughout Europe will be watching the Irish experiment closely. You can be sure that if the Irish surrender to the new law without a strong show of resistance, it will not be long before a similar ban is introduced in Britain.

So Irish smokers have a responsibility to freedom-lovers everywhere to make their displeasure felt. They have already come up with some ingenious suggestions for exploiting loopholes in the new law. We wish them luck in finding more.

We note that prisons are among the very few workplaces exempted from the ban. So anyone incarcerated in the cause of freedom will at least be allowed the consolation of a smoke.

Light up, Ireland. Do not cooperate in your own repression.

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More Tsarism, this time of the Euro variety:

European Union leaders agreed yesterday to rush forward a clutch of EU-wide surveillance measures and created an anti-terror "Tsar" in response to the Madrid bombings.

The list of counter-terrorism measures pushed by Britain, France and Spain at a Union summit in Brussels include plans to retain mobile telephone records, e-mail and internet data indicating the time and address of all websites visited.

White Rose has further EUro-reportage and links about similar EUro-stuff, here and here.

This report also illustrates the point that EUrope is not just a machine to enable foreigners to muck the British around, it is also a machine to enable to British to muck the foreigners around: a sort of universal substitute empire for all the old European imperialists. Having been made to stop tyrannising over their previous imperial possessions, the tyrannising classes have switched instead to tyrannising over each other's nations. Bad luck on the rest of us, but there it is, these people have to have someone to tyrannise over.

Meanwhile, proof that when the Euro elite wants something, it just beavers away until it gets it:

A new summer deadline for agreement on the EU constitution has been agreed by European leaders, putting renewed pressure on Tony Blair and his non-negotiable "red lines".

Mr Blair had seemed content for the troubled constitution to slip off the agenda after December's summit ended in deadlock. But a new deadline for agreement on the document has been set.

Although, when the time comes that the people who want EUrope to fall to bits are finally in the ascendancy, they will have the perfect precedent for saying: "We are going to keep on destroying this thing until we succeed, and will ignore all counter-opinions, of, e.g. voters, because these opinions are anti-historical and do not matter. We are doing what we know to be best. Our opponents are deluded. That's what the founders of this thing did when they started it, and we are merely following their inspiring example."

Trouble is, by the time that happens, those people may be even nastier.

I will read this piece by David Carr to cheer myself up.

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I am beginning to seriously whether our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is having some sort of breakdown:

David Blunkett, the increasingly angry home secretary, is calling for "lifestyle punishments" to shape Britain into a less violent society. He wants the power to confiscate mobile phones and ban people from football matches. He is also wants to counter the "increasing portrayal of violence" on television. Which sounds like censorship.

No, that does not sound like censorship, it is censorship though given the degree of regulation to which TV broadcasting is subject anyway, further measures are redundant.

One unhappy source at the Home Office told the paper: "These proposals are disproportionate, unenforceable and criminalising and do not go to the heart of the cause of these problems. But Blunkett will not be deterred."

Lest anyone forget, the Home Office (in common with the rest of our political superstructure) is staffed by people who earnestly believe that rates of finger-nail growth can be brought under control with the appropriate set of regulations. So if even they think that Big Blunkett's ideas are 'unenforceable', then I reckon some pretty deep cracks are beginning to open in the edifice of British government.

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In his latest post Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber gives the background to, and an unedited version of, his letter in today's Guardian.

I agree with every word of his letter. Paticularly the bit about scavenging for soundbites that the Guardian edited out.

Judging from what I've read in blogs and the press about Cavanagh's unreconstructed views, he did not put forward the standard libertarian argument that to forbid racial discrimination is to violate the human right of free association. (The standard libertarian view is the view I hold. It is quite compatible with thinking that in all but a few special situations racial discrimination is morally wrong, a view I also hold.) According to Edward Lucas in a letter further down the page, "We invited Mr Cavanagh [to the ICA debate that started all the fuss] as a leftwing critic of equality of opportunity. He argued, for example, that it leads to an overemphasis on competition between individuals."

In other words the views I hold would be even more likely than Mr Cavanagh's to be described as pyschotic by David Winnick MP, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. As described by the Guardian this prominent Labour MP's own views appear close to totalitarian. He does not merely think it is pyschotic to oppose the discrimination laws he thinks it is psychotic even to question them.

That's us lot for the loony bin then.

Still, you never know with the Guardian. Tomorrow we might be treated to the amusing spectacle of Mr Winnick saying that he was quoted out of context, just like Mr Cavanagh before him.

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Yesterday I marvelled at the notion that David Blunkett had the gall to suggest that victims of miscarriages of justice should be charged for 'room and board'. That this has not featured on the front page of every newspaper in Britain is also shocking to me. It seems to me that when there has been a miscarriage of justice, the state should bend over backwards to make amends as fulsomely as possible and make lavish restitution for damages done both directly and indirectly for the life it has unjustly disrupted. If justice is administered 'in the name of the people' then surely amongst the endless litany of grotesque uses of the public purse that consume billions and billions of pounds, this would be a rare legitimate public charge that few would dispute.

However what is even more baffling to me that the Tory Party is not queuing up in the Commons to denounce Blunkett in the most extreme language allowed in Parliament. Why are they not trying to use this latest affront to common decency and natural justice and using it to paint the Labour Party as the party which tramples over civil liberties? They should be relentlessly calling for Blunkett's head over this and what do I hear? The sound of silence. Anyone who harbours delusions that the party of Michael Howard will be their champion for civil liberties against the ever more authoritarian Labour government really needs to see them for what they really are.

Regardless of whether or not the government manages to get this measure accepted or not, the mere fact Blunkett can even suggest such a thing without sparking clamourous calls for his removal from office is both a damning indictment of the moral and political vacuity of Britain's political parties and a chilling measure of state of Britain's culture. I sincerely hope to be proved wrong and see a ground swell of anger emerging in the press and polity in the next few days but I am not holding my breath. It would be interesting to hear the views of some of Britain's blogging Members of Parliament on this issue.

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Given my extremely low expectations, it takes a lot for a British government to actually amaze me.

Well they have managed to do exactly that. The people who rule us are not misguided, they are actually evil.

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Slowjoe has spotted something calculated to start teeth grinding here on Samizdata.net

The Register talks about an attempt by the EU to railroad through the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive.

It appears to give the 'rights holder' carte blanche... almost the right to set up a private police force.

The interesting thing is that the rapporteur did an end-run around any debate. She also happens to be the wife of the head of Vivendi Universal.

Slowjoe

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What does the FBI do if it has a search warrant to track down one miscreant on a network? Why they seize the whole data centre of course!

I'll attempt to make the seriousness of this more apparent in a non-cyber world example. Imagine the local police are looking for a document that is evidence of a possible crime. The Judge gives them a warrant based on probable cause. When they search the file cabinet at that address, they can't find what they are looking for. So they corden off the entire apartment building and seize all the file cabinets containing all of the personal and business records of everyone living there. They cart those off with total disregard to the impact on lives and businesses. Then they tell everyone their file cabinets will be returned as soon as they've made a permanent State copy of their entire contents.

What sort of society would you say you were living in if that happened?

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Just as the Tory Party (the party that has given us Chris Patten, Edward Heath and Ken Clarke) cannot be counted on to reverse the march into regulatory Euro-statism (they at best slow the rate at which it happens), similarly the Tory reaction to plans by Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett to lower the burden of proof in criminal cases where the state really wants to convict someone is one of essential support.

So... we are left with only one half-way significant party who seems to care even the slightest about civil liberties in the court room: The LibDems. But then again, when it comes to regulatory statism and abridging economic free association in society at large, the LibDems are even more keen than Labour to replace all social interaction with politically derived formulae for just about any kind of behaviour you can think of.

And people wonder why I urge folks not to vote for anyone? So how does one resist the increasingly panoptic regulatory state? Good question.

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There is a sense in which I pity this government. No, really I do. When someone is prepared to exploit any sort of human tragedy in order to get what they want, one is forced to conclude that they have very little left in the way of self-respect or decency.

I don't think any of us truly appreciate just how badly our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, wants a national ID card system but the desire must be intense enough to burn a hole in his soul. It has now got to the stage where there is no bad news too pathetic enough not to be manipulated into a ID card propoganda opportunity, be it a shooting in Shropshire, a murder in Manchester or a child-abduction in Cheltenham.

The latest ghastly incident to be turned into a government rhetorical tool is the 19 illegal Chinese immigrants who were drowned off the coast of Lancashire over the weekend:

A coroner has set up a commission to identify all the mainly Chinese cockle pickers who died after being caught by high tides - but none have been named.

A group of more than 30 cocklers were trapped by rising water in the Hest Bank area of the Lancashire bay on Thursday night.

Alongside the calls for 'more regulation' (the chief reflexive response), Mr Blunkett popped up on the late evening news (sorry, no link) in a laughable attempt to persuade everyone that a national ID card would prevent this sort of thing happening again.

Complete and utter rubbish, of course. But that does not matter. What matters is the drip-drip propoganda required to facilitate 'acculturation'.

Mr Blunkett and his underlings must trawl through the daily news bulletins desperately seeking the kind of heartstring-tugging stories that they use to piggy-back their pet project into the public realm. Like teenage crack-whores, there is no part of their dignity these people will not sacrifice in order to get their fix. How sad, how pathetic.

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Reproduced below is the text of yesterday's press release from the Libertarian Alliance:

"Any Excuse for a Police State: Blunkett Secret Trial Plans as Bad as Foreign Conquest", Says Free Market and Civil Liberties Think Tank

Home Secretary David Blunkett wants to bring in laws allowing pre-emptive arrest of suspects, secret trials without juries, with state-chosen defence lawyers, on undisclosed evidence provided by the security services, and a lower burden of proof. He says this is to protect the country from "terrorism".

"Nonsense", says Dr Sean Gabb, Director of Communications for the Libertarian Alliance. "We did none of this in the second world war, when the enemy was poised to invade from across the Channel, and killing 60,000 British civilians in bombing raids. We did none of this when Irish terrorists were killing thousands of state and civilian victims within the United Kingdom.

"The truth is, this government wants a police state and will use any excuse to get one. We are told these new laws will only apply in terrorism cases. That is a lie. We were once told that confiscation orders would only be used for drug dealing cases, and after normal conviction: now we have a Confiscation Agency trying to seize assets from suspected criminals without the need for criminal charges. This legislation would soon become the normal mode of trial of all offences.

"Do you want a criminal justice system where you can be tried in secret by another Lord Hutton, on the basis of secret evidence supplied by the same security services that did such a good job at proving Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? I don't. Looking at these proposals, anyone who fell asleep in 1940 and woke today might almost think the Germans had won the war. I wonder if all those who fought to prevent that ever suspected our own government would behave like an army of occupation?"

Perhaps that is now how they think of themselves.

[This article has been cross-posted to White Rose.]

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If it was not so late and if I had not had such a long day, I would launch myself into a rooftop-raising rant about this. But it is late and I am weary and, besides all of that, I am beginning to wonder precisely what good a rant from me (or anybody else for that matter) would do anymore:

Home Secretary David Blunkett wants new anti-terrorism laws to make it easier to convict British terror suspects.

He has discussed lowering the standard of proof required by a court and introducing more pre-emptive action.

Possible plans, revealed on his six-day trip to India and Pakistan, also include keeping sensitive evidence from defendants and secret trials before vetted judges.

Is there any significance to the fact that David 'Mugabe' Blunkett elected to unveil his sinister plans on a trip to South Asia? Was he driven into delirium by the heat and the dust? Or maybe a particularly acute case of Delhi-belly left him feeling all bilious and vengeful.

But civil rights groups have condemned the proposals as shameful and an "affront to the rule of law".

It's not an 'affront', it's a point-blank dismissal. 'Lowering the standard of proof'? 'Pre-emptive action'? 'Secret trials'? 'Vetted Judges'? What next? Trial by Ordeal, Ducking stools, Iron Maidens and The Rack?

The truly frustrating thing here is that not only is Big Blunkett unlikely to be opposed to any meaningful degree (the Conservatives are already weighing in on his side) but his ripping up of our last remaining bulwarks of civil liberty is probably going to make him more popular. That is because civil liberties are unpopular. They are merely the boring obsession of pot-smoking hippies and wishy-washy do-gooders; a shielding sanctuary behind which terrorists and child-molestors can hide from justice.

So, go ahead, Mr Blunkett, kick the crap out of them. With a bit of luck nobody will miss them until they have gone (by which time it will be too late).

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Cecile du Bois is getting grief at her school for opposing affirmative action. Her teacher asked her what she thought about it, and Cecile told her the truth. She is against it. And for that, she got all the grief.

And I'm not complaining, I am merely expressing my frustration with the atmosphere of being "weird, and going against the flow". My very own friend advises me not to speak my mind if I am going to offend anyone. And yes I did, I poured it all out, given the opportunity because the discussion was on womens rights and for some reason my teacher asked me if I agreed with affirmative action. Does affirmative action relate to womens rights? Not in my world it does. I guess in her world where being against illegal immigration and calling African-Americans "black" are racist, it does. Well, if asked a question, I am compelled to answer honestly. My mother suggested I could have asked her what it had to with Mary Wollstonecraft, but I was so flustered by her laughter at me, I replied. I said "No". And did that cause commotion!

Go to Cecile's blog and read the whole thing.

I can just about understand (although I despise) the way that Cecile's classmates (if that is the right word) are treating Cecile, but some way ought to be found of communicating to Cecile's 'teacher' that she is now being deservedly trashed for profoundly unprofessional conduct on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and everywhere else in the world where the blogosphere counts for anything if this posting has the desired effect.

Isn't education supposed to encourage people to tell the truth and to stick up for their ideas? Someone she can not manipulate and ridicule should also tell this Grade A Bitch of a teacher that there are impeccably non-racist arguments against affirmative action, like: affirmative action exposes all those people from ethnic minorities who do get ahead to the accusation that they are only did well because they were given an unfair advantage, even if they actually got ahead entirely on their own merits and by their own efforts. Affirmative action encourages racism, in other words. Hasn't this ignorant woman even heard of this line of argument?

And even if she has not, she has no damned business encouraging all her other pupils to pick on one pupil, just for expressing an opinion, honestly and courageously.

If you agree with me about this, please do at least one of the following things.

1. Add a short comment to Cecile's own blog, supporting and sympathising, and do it now. Warning: when I tried to do a quite long comment I came up against a thousand character limit, so don't try to write at too great length. Something short and nice, and soon.
2. If you are yourself a blogger, then write about this thing yourself, and link to this posting. Link to Cecile's blog as well, of course, but the particular advantage of linking to this piece is that the number of linkers will be automatically counted and announced here, and people reading this will be able to swing straight over to your blog, and then link to you themselves. I'm going to do a piece about this on my Education Blog just as soon as I can.
3. Put a supportive comment here as well, especially if you want to say something that makes use of more than a thousand characters. Cecile will definitely get to read it because I've already promised this posting in my comment at her blog.

It is not strictly relevant to the rights and wrongs of how she is now being (mis)treated, but since it may cheer her up, I will add it anyway. In my opinion Cecile is a terrific writer, and very possibly destined for literary superstardom. (She is certainly obeying rule number one for being a writer, which is to Live Interestingly, and rule number two, which is to get started with Living Interestingly good and early.) Be sure to scroll down, past all her links to other people, to the links to her own archives and previous postings. I particularly enjoyed her description of going to the movies with her Dad and brother, which Cecile's Mum also liked. LOR: LOL.

If only for coining the phrase prostitute college, Cecile du Bois is destined for world fame sooner or later.

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Paul Smith is a man with a profound interest in driving and road safety. As a driver myself I, too, have a vested interest in these matters. Whenever I depart from point A I much prefer it to be overwhelmingly probable that I will reach point B with all my favourite limbs and organs in situ and functioning as nature intended.

The British government and its various agencies claim that they share this interest as well. Moreover, they assure us that the solution to the problem lies with forcing everyone to drive more slowly and punish those drivers who fail to comply. Hence the virus-like proliferation of the 'GATSO' or 'Speed Camera' which (just by complete coincidence I am sure) has also raised tens of millions of pounds for the public coffers from already over-taxed motorists who infringe blanket and arbitrary speed limits.

In response to the wave of discontent this has caused, the government, the police and the various lobbyists that support them, have doggedly stood their ground and explained that, yes, it is all very regrettable but the point of the GATSO's is most assuredly not to raise revenue (no, perish the thought!) but merely to save lives. In other words, they are relying on the canard that freedom must be sacrificed in order to achieve safety.

Well, they are wrong and Paul Smith has made it his business to prove, publicly and beyond argument, that they are wrong. His website, Safe Speed, cuts a swathe through the cant and the piety:

We have never seen any credible figures that put road accidents caused by exceeding a speed limit at even 5% of road accidents. We object to speed cameras mainly because they fail to address the causes of at least 95% of road accidents. The Government claims of 1/3rd of accidents being caused by excessive speed are no more than lies according to the Government's own figures.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

Mr Smith has amassed a treasure trove of documentary, audio and video evidence that entirely discredits the myth that Tax Speed Cameras are anything whatsoever to do with either road safety or saving lives. In fact, so confident is Mr Smith in his own research that he throws down this gauntlet:

So here's the challenge. We promise to publish here (in this box, on the first page of the web site) web links to any serious credible research that implies a strong link between excessive speeds and accidents on UK roads.

So if you are one of those people who thinks that the GATSO is a life-saver, you know exactly what to do.

In the meantime, more power to Paul Smith and his campaign for common sense and reason. When we eventually win this battle, the victory will be due in no small part to the dedication and integrity of people like him.

Cross-posted on White Rose.

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Are politicians actually capable of thought and articulation or they merely making noises in return for which they think they are going to get rewards?

Barely two weeks after Michael Howard trumpeted his alleged belief that "the people should be big and the state should be small", he weighs in on the side of big state and against the little citizen:

A future Conservative government would reverse Labour's downgrading of cannabis from Class B to Class C, Tory leader Michael Howard has said.

His intervention comes a week ahead of the change to Class C, which will place cannabis alongside anabolic steroids and prescription anti-biotics and mean police will rarely make arrests for possession of small amounts of the drug.

Mr Howard said: "After thinking about this very carefully, we have come to the view that the Government's decision is misconceived and when we return to office, we will reclassify cannabis back to Class B."

Mr Blunkett's changes introduced a "muddle" which would send a signal to young people that cannabis was legal and safe, when it was not, said the Tory leader.

Well, there is a germ of truth here in that HMG is most certainly in a 'muddle' but at least it is a muddle which is shambling along, after a fashion, in a sort-of, vaguely right direction. The motives may not be entirely logical or even honourable but I think it's results that count here.

But am I to believe that Mr Howard has thought about this 'very carefully'? Cannabis is only illegal because people like Mr Howard demand that it be so and the question of whether or not it is 'safe' (whatever that means) is entirely irrelevant. If he genuinely wants to the state to be small then he is hardly likely to achieve that aim by reinforcing the principle rubric behind big government, i.e. that it is necessary in order to manage the citizen's health and welfare.

So is Mr Howard (a) disingenuous or (b) really not thought this through at all?

I think we have a right to know.

(1) (170)

According to this Guardian article and the this one in the Independent the Labour MP turned talk show host, Robert Kilroy-Silk, is under fire for having written an anti-Arab article. I have read the Sunday Express article concerned on a forum but have not been able to find it in linkable form.

Predictably the Commission for Racial Equality is making noises about lawyers and prosecutions and public order. I will be amazed if they actually do anything. The point of the CRE's threats is not to carry them out, but to have a chilling effect on the next person who wants to write in a similar vein.

(The issue of whether Mr Kilroy-Silk should write as a freelance while working for the BBC is a separate one which I shall ignore here.)

Here is something the CRE and other race relations bodies ought to remember but will not: freedom of speech and relatively good race relations go together. In fact it is broader than that. Freedom and relatively good race relations go together. Pogroms happen under tyrannies. I call it the "pressure-cooker effect."

The conclusion that free speech promotes racial harmony is not obvious at first sight. Words lead to deeds, one might think, and so, obviously, harsh words will lead to harsh deeds. Nonetheless you may make some headway among sceptics if you ask them whether in their own lives they think it better to bottle up resentments or to voice them before they become explosive.

Do a little mental scan now of those countries where freedom of speech has reigned longest and is most secure - aren't they also the countries that people of all races are desperate to get into? Partly that is because free countries are rich (riches being consequence of freedom) but it is also because they are the places where race conflict means a riot not a massacre.

Now do a similar mental scan of those physical areas and institutions within the free countries where race is an ugly issue. You will find the PC crowd have been active for decades in these areas. Yet things never seem to get better. The Commission for Racial Equality never seems to report success any more than the Race Relations Board did before it. I find it hard to believe that all of this failure is just a cynical ploy to keep their jobs. Most people mean well, even race relations advisers. It's just that, unfortunately, some attempts at cure do more harm than good.

I am not saying, "restrictions on freedom cause racism". Race hatred is older than political freedom. What I am saying is "restrictions on freedom disable the safety valve".

When people have had no practice, and cannot get any practice, in saying legitimately harsh things about a non-western culture - yet feel them anyway, and with reason - then it is no surprise that when speech finally bursts out it is all a mish-mash of good points mixed in with prejudice.

Which is more or less what I think of Kilroy-Silk's actual views. Seeing as he has his own TV show, he himself cannot be said to have been prevented from getting practice in being critical about Arab society in a nuanced manner. (Nor was there anything stopping him from doing the minimal research necessary to know that the Iranians are not Arabs). However the general level of the dialogue is low. There is a disconnect between the actual danger and evil of Islamo-fascism and the nicey-nicey way the media talk about it and I see his angry hammering as a product of that. He sees plain savagery and sees it called militancy and he thinks, by God, I am going to say what I think.

I support his right to free speech without qualification. But is his article one to be proud of?

Yes and no. Here is a typical paragraph:

What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?

Part of me says, Yep. Damn straight. Arabs did dance in the streets. Most terrorists are Arabs. Scarcely any other part of the world has punishments more barbaric than those in Arab lands, Saudi Arabia in particular, and no other part of the world is more misogynistic.

However I do not like the way that the word 'them' shifts its meaning. Sometimes it means the actual 9-11 attackers, sometimes the large numbers of Arabs who clelebrated the murders, sometimes the whole culture as manifested by its most spectacular and violent expressions.

I call it lazy, bigoted and emotive reporting when I see lines like "...the America that shoots schoolchildren at Columbine and executes them in the electric chair." I made that example up, but I bet you can find real parallels. (You could try a Google for "George Bush's America" or "John Ashcroft's America.") In places Kilroy Silk's article shows exactly this tendency. The last line, oddly not quoted in either the Guardian or the Independent, really was offensive: "...That says it all about which country deserves the epithet loathsome."

All in all I didn't admire the article. But every morning there is a new crop of articles written from the other side that display every one of Kilroy-Silk's faults and then some and they don't have Trevor Phillips calling the cops. Nor should they. They, too, are the steam from the safety valve.

That was meant to be the end of the post, but I can not resist saying how struck I was by a quote (in the Independent article linked to above) from Professor Haleh Afshar, a Middle Eastern expert at York University:

"[Professor Afshar] said the article displayed a dangerous "ethnocentricity". She added: "He does not have a history that goes beyond September 11. The world begins on September 11 for him but I would like to tell him that the world actually began 3000 years before Christ."

(4) (33)

Today, the US Supreme Court issued a decision that will live in infamy. It upheld the core provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. I confess I have not yet digested the full 300 page turd dropped on the Constitution by our masters at the Supreme Court, but I would observe that any decision of this length is bound to be flawed. It does not take many words to apply the simple phrase "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech" to overturn legislation; it does, however, take many, many words to obfuscate the meaning of that phrase sufficiently to uphold legislation that, in part, prohibits the airing of campaign commercials in the weeks before an election.

I will address one of the fundamental flaws underlying the entire project of regulating campaign finance - the claim that money does not equal speech.

First, though, allow me to state that it is perfectly consistent with freedom of speech to outlaw bribery and other permutations of the quid pro quo that may crop up in connection with campaign finance activities. Outlawing bribery in such circumstances is no more a restriction on freedom of speech than outlawing t