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Jack Straw, it is amazing to relate, has been touted as a potential Prime Minister. Who knows, if the implosion of the Brown government gets worse, he might still be in the running for the top job. So it might be useful to realise that among his gifts is one for sublime comedy:
The constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor has commented that when the history of this era is written, the last 10 years will be seen as heralding a “quiet revolution” in the way in which the UK is governed. He is correct.
Quiet or not, there have been major changes. In case our Jack needs a bit of assistance, here are some of them:
- Emasculation of the House of Lords
- Erosion of the right to trial by jury
- Removal of the double-jeopardy protection in court trials
- Extension of blasphemy laws
- Law enabling the creation of a centralised state database and ID card system
- The passing of more than 3,000 criminal offences
- Anti-social behaviour orders – many of which can be imposed without full due process of law
- Civil Contingencies Act, giving sweeping powers in the case of “national emergencies”
- Erosion of right to hold public demonstrations
- Erosion of rights of private property owners to use their premises as they seek fit: bans on smoking in pubs and restaurants, for example
- European Arrest Warrant
Okay, I think you get the general idea. And on the other side of the balance sheet, what can Straw suggest? He talks about the Freedom of Information Act and EU “human rights” legislation. The former is an improvement but hardly compensates for the list above; the latter is a mish-mash: some of the “rights”, as my sneer-quotes imply, are not rights in the classical liberal sense as acting as brakes on coercion, but rather entitlements, or claims, and which interfere with things like freedom of contract, etc.
The general thrust of policy over the past few years has been towards more regulation of personal behaviour in the fields of health, the environment, family upbringing, smoking and diet. About the only emphatic move in a libertarian direction is on the area of booze: 24-hour drinking; yet the government cannot get itself in a consistent frame of mind when it comes to drugs – and alcohol is a serious health hazard when consumed to excess – so we continue with a largely unwinnable war on drugs, which by the way operates to the detriment of our campaign to undermine the likes of the Taliban, etc, and the poppygrowing druglords of Asia, etc. On sex, yes, the government has lowered the age of gay sexual consent to 16 and permitted gay civil partnerships, but a properly liberal approach would be to get the state out of the business or regulating marriage completely.
Generally, an appalling record. The challenge for the Tories, if they have any gumption, is to reverse it, lock stock and barrel (oh, did I mention that the right to self defence is pretty much dead as well?).
It is gratifying to see mainstream journalists such as Alice Thomson also pointing out what we have been doing here for quite some time: people who vote for the Tory party under Cameron because they are revolted by the legacy of Tony Blair are in fact just voting for more of the same as Cameron and Blair are largely interchangeable.
I met two key Blairite special advisers from 1997 last night, they were as thrilled with the Tories’ progress as they were by recent sightings of Mr Brown’s psychological flaws. One said that Cameron would never treat the garden room girls at Downing Street in the way that Mr Brown does. Another wondered what job Cameron would give Mr Blair when (not if) he becomes Prime Minister.
All too believable.
From our special correspondent:
“Party boss Ed “bulging eyes” Balls told a respectful yet cheerful gathering of tractor workers in Omsk that the 10-year plan to increase tractor production by 1000% between now and 2018 was achievable. “Men,” he said, his voice quavering slightly as the chill Siberian wind blasted through, “we can and will produce more tractors, of higher quality, over the next 10 years. Britain needs tractors. Tractors need Britain. It is true that despite our heroic efforts, and the massive, Soviet resources spent by Comrade Gordon, that tractor production continues to lag. But let us not be downhearted. We know that tractor production in the past has been held up by the capitalist sympathisers, wreckers and revisionists working for the late traitor, A. Blair. We can and will do better over the next 10 years.”
At least, that is what I thought he said. Maybe it was education instead…….
For some sanity on how to get the state out of education, check out this website.
Update: related thoughts on home schooling and education by David Friedman (son of the great Milton).
Another update: Fabian Tassano has been a tireless campaigner against the odious idea of keeping people in school until the age of 18. His new book is also very good.
The Spectator magazine is allergic to the city of Liverpool. Now, having never been there, despite some distant family connections to its 19th Century history (one of my ancestors helped to erect the magnificent St George’s Hall), I cannot comment on whether Liverpool is the sort of place that the Germans should have obligingly finished off in 1939-45 or a place full of cheeky, merry Scousers all singing Beatles tunes and watching Everton and the Reds. Sorry, no idea. But there is something – even to my non-PC eyes – rather grating about how the likes of Rod Liddle, the Speccie’s House Yob, never fails to lob a literary hand grenade at the city. Here it is again:
So the mop-headed ingenue teacher Gillian Gibbons has been released from her torment in Sudan without being horsewhipped or banged up for too long. The Scousers – Ms Gibbons is from Liverpool, naturellement – had insufficient time to organise a candlelit vigil for her or a minute’s silence at Anfield, but they did manage to festoon lots of railings with yellow ribbons and bouquets from the local garage.
Ah, those sentimental scousers. They are such thickies, aren’t they?
Meanwhile, that strange Frank Spencer manqué Gibbons returns safely to Blighty all jolly with stories about how the Sudanese prison authorities gave her lots of apples, what lovely people they all are, and she doesn’t regret a thing, etc. Fine, love — however, on that latter point, we do, so you can pick up the travel bill for the Muslim peers who supposedly sprang you from chokey, you deluded, asinine fool.
She may not be the brightest light in the harbour, but I would love to see Rod Liddle put in an Islamic slammer for two weeks. The benefits would be salutary.
My own rather uncharitable view is that she was released from prison far too soon; having told us all that Islam was a gentle and peaceable religion, she should have been allowed proper time inside to reflect upon this interesting perspective. And without apples. The whole affair also made me worry about my children’s education; teachers interviewed on TV seem to get more stupid, further down the league tables of sentience, with every year that passes. And now we have Gillian Gibbons. Please God, they can’t all be that thick, can they?
Quite possibly, Rodney, she is as dumb as a stump. Naivete might be the worst thing she can be accused of (I must agree to sharing his nagging worries about the sort of folk who are schoolteachers these days). But this sort of gratuitous name-calling against a person imprisoned and threatened with flogging for something so batshit insane is beyond the pale. But hey, let us not turn up the chance to take the piss out of those sentimental scousers.
His article does move on to better ground here, however, where I think Liddle has a decent point:
But – whisper it quietly – some considerable good may have come of the whole shebang. The most unequivocal and persistent protests about Ms Gibbons’ arrest, back home, came from Britain’s self-appointed guardians of Allah, the Muslim groups. Including the Muslim Council of Britain. Note the word ‘unequivocal’. They protested loud and strong and without those previously ubiquitous caveats always beginning with the conjunction ‘but …’. As in ‘We condemn this outrage entirely, but you have to understand that…’ This time there were no buts, just condemnation. And it was truly heartening to see a niqab-clad British woman protesting outside the Sudanese embassy holding aloft a placard bearing the photograph of a teddy bear, under which was written, with wit and acuity, ‘Not in my name’.
Quite possibly true. It may be the case that the sheer, oh-my-god-how-mad-can-they-be craziness of the teddy bear-as M. has made even the more ardent Muslims wonder whether certain regimes are taking their professed religious beliefs a step too far. He may be right.
With all the combination of self-inflicted disasters hitting the British government – lost data, Northern Rock, dodgy donations, ranks of senior military officers stating the bleedin’ obvious about lack of funding – it has been an extraordinary time for the Conservatives. Dead in the water, so we were told by the commentariat, back in September, David Cameron suddenly discovered the wonders of tax cuts – inheritance taxes, to be exact – and the momentum of politics suddenly shifted. There is still a huge way to go as the next general election is some way off, however, and in this environment, the spotlight will shine a lot more brightly on Cameron now that his prospects of getting into 10 Downing Street have increased. This is as it should be.
And one or two people have already concluded that Cameron is a bit of thug under that Etonian gloss. I have noticed the same thing. Thuggery has its limited uses, of course; if it means Cameron has the killer instinct in standing up to the government, excellent. If it brings closer the time when the current government, with its dotty plans for ID cards, etc, get removed, that is good. But there is a nagging worry that I have; with politicians who lack a clear set of principles to distinguish them from their opponents, it creates a vacuum.
I think that Cameron, in general, is not very different from the man he shouts at across the Dispatch Box of the House of Commons, apart from his rather different social origins, speech inflexions and choice of friends. Into that space that might have once be filled by large political differences enters personal animosity. True, in the 1980s, when politics was in some ways far more ideologically charged than it is now, Margaret Thatcher could be pretty savage to poor old Labour leader Michael Foot (personally a most charming man, apparently) and she treated Neil Kinnock (remember him?) as a joke.
But in some respects, as politics crams in to the supposed ‘centre ground’ and ideas matter less, the hunt for power becomes even more vicious. I am not entirely sure this is smart for Cameron to play the schoolyard bully. We Brits are a funny lot. People might, just might, start to feel sorry for Brown (please stay with me on this one). They might think, “Kerist, we all have bad weeks in the office”. I know I do. So that fatal fair-mindedness of the British may assert itself. Which would be a shame, since Brown, wrecker of pensions and much else, deserves to be kicked out.
The next election is in two years’ time. To adjust a famous quote from the late Harold Wilson, that is a bloody long time in politics.
Thanks to Instapundit, I came across this staggering collection of photo images of vandalised speed cameras – called “Gatsos” – on the sides of British roads.
The website I have linked to gives the impression that it is generally rather in favour of this practice, on the grounds that many such cameras are difficult to spot and hence set up as a sneaky way to catch out motorists to make money from fines, rather than actually trying to slow down speeds to cut the risk of accidents. A recent book by Christopher Booker and Richard North contends that the obsession with reducing speed limits on Britain’s roads has not reduced the amount of accidents, although it has made the driving process even more tedious than it can be already.
Frankly, I am not able to judge whether North and Booker’s analysis is correct, although they present a formidable number of facts to demonstrate their argument. Rather, what the extraordinary collection of images of vandalised speed cameras demonstrates is how far Britain has retreated from quiet deference to the rule of law. I think that society needs to have laws and certain laws need to be enforced and respected. It is a perversion of the argument for freedom to state that it implies a lack of respect for the law. Not so. But what is also clear is that in a society burdened with a rising weight of regulatory, nannying regulations, that a degree of blowback, if I can use the term, will occur. Which is a pity. Motorists who hammer along roads in streets near schools and houses are a menace.
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a work colleague about the kind of sport shown on the BBC television channels (not Sky or the satellite stuff). One thing that came up in conversation was how little boxing there was on the BBC. Was this just because Sky and the paid-for TV channels had bagged all the top fights? It seemed so, but was there something else going on, like a PC revulsion on the part of the BBC top brass about puglism? It seemed a bit odd. When I was a youngster, there was always some boxing match in the offing featuring the likes of Barry MacGuigan, or Joe Frazier, Lloyd Honeygan, Nigel Benn, Frank Bruno (“know wot I mean, ‘Arry?”) Chris Eubank, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard… the list was endless. Some of the matches were brutal and there were tragedies: Michael Watson was seriously maimed in a fight; Ali, of course, suffers from a severe form of Parkinson’s which must, surely, be linked to the injuries he sustained. Boxing has always had a sleazy side too; some of the money-men involved in the sport probably have spent a lot of time brushing up against the law. In the early days of the big fights in Las Vegas or London’s East End, there was more than just a whiff of organised crime involved.
But – there is a but here – boxing is more than all that. Competitive pugilism involves a lot of skill, just as martial arts do; it is a terrific way to keep and get fit and it is also a good way for potentially wayward youngsters with lots of testosterone to channel their aggression and learn to act like a man in a fair fight under the guidance of a referee. And for all that boxing can be and is a brutal sport, I have watched some matches that had me sitting on the edge of my seat in excitement: I particularly remember the epic fight, in 1985, between MacGuigan and Predoza. Absolutely electrifying fight. And I defy anyone to watch an old video of Ali, in his fights against Patterson or Frazier, and not admit to be astonished by the man’s athleticism and skill.
British boxing is now in the best state that it has been in for years. Boxers like Ricky Hatton and others are blazing a trail; the countries of the UK look to be able to field a decent bunch of entrants for the Beijing Olympics next year. And even the BBC, which recently seemed to be turning up its nose at the sheer vulgarity and general non-PCness of boxing, seems to be covering boxing quite a lot all of a sudden, invalidating my earlier wonderment about whether the BBC had killed the sport from its programmes. No longer. Good. Boxing has been through a fallow time in Britain over the past few years and there remain legitimate worries about the potential injuries that can be inflicted. But if you accept – as a genuine liberal must – that grown-up adults can and should be able to consensually fight and accept the consequences, there should be absolutely no suggestion that boxing be banned, any more than say, wrestling or other contact sports which can cause injury, including life-threatening ones.
There is also a cultural issue worth throwing into the mix: boxing seems to be one of the few sports that have drawn in young Muslim men in Britain, apart from cricket. That has to be a good thing.
Disturbing reports have emerged that Gordon Brown is rude to his secretaries – or garden girls, as they are known inside Downing Street. He is said to shout at them abusively. On one occasion he is reported to have impatiently turfed one of the girls out of her chair and sat down to use the keyboard himself.
All recent prime ministers – Thatcher, Major, Blair – were loved by the garden girls. All recent prime ministers from time to time endured problems. Only Gordon Brown has vented his frustrations on secretaries, who can never answer back or speak for themselves. In the end this intemperate and regrettable conduct may cause him as much damage as Mr Abrahams.
– the sting in the tale of an article in the latest Spectator by Peter Oborne under the heading At the heart of the Labour funding scandal is the moral collapse of a once-great party.
When I lived in England, not so long ago, one of the minor pleasures of rural life was walking across a couple of fields, along a public footpath through a copse, discovering a small medieval country church, and going inside to contemplate the divine for a few minutes. In those days, the churches were unlocked. They’re not anymore. Presumably there were local lads who would steal from the Lord even then, but not a significant segment of the population who targeted houses of worship. So today there’s wire mesh over the beautiful (one assumes) stained glass to stop thieves pinching the lead from the windows. It’s a small loss, but a telling one. The police have no leads, and the buildings have no lead. Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it was stolen last Thursday.
– Mark Steyn, on escalating metal thefts in Britain.
Some good news: the price of copper and zinc has fallen hard in global markets, so hopefully my front door-knocker is safer than it was a few months ago. Even so, Steyn’s take on the spate of burglaries is telling. A friend of mine, who lives in south Suffolk, near Sudbury, suddenly found the other day that he could not make phone calls from his landline as copper wires had been stolen. In centuries past, horse-thieves were hanged, as their activities damaged the economic system – horses were vital. We do not hang thieves any more – restitution is arguably a better punishment by getting these folk to put victims right – but such crimes are just not taken seriously enough. In parts of England there are still places where mobile phones do not work very well. If some jackass cuts people off from their landlines and someone has to call the emergency services but cannot do so, stealing copper wires is not just bloody inconvenient, it could play a part in someone actually dying.
Theft of copper wires is not just a British phenomenon…
One potential argument I can see brewing in the aftermath of the latest scandal surrounding the government – over party donations from dubious characters – is that this all “proves” the need for tax-funding of political parties. It does no such thing, of course. If parties receive funding from you and me, regardless of whether we vote for them or not – an outrageous impost – then existing parties will benefit at the expense of new, or yet-to-be-born, parties.
The best option remains that anyone, barring criminals or declared enemies of this nation, should be allowed to give whatever they want to any political party, period. The only proviso is that such donations be placed on the public record. If little green men from Mars want to donate to UKIP or Labour, I have no problem.
I might have a look at a bookie or spread-betting site to see what odds they give for Brown not making it for the rest of the parliamentary term. Might be worth staking a few quid that he will not surive.
The government has managed to lose data on 25 million people this week. An impressive achievement, you must agree. Question: what information about yourself would you most hate losing? I think my bank account number comes top of that list.
I am old enough to remember the run-up to the 1979 general election, and a lot of what swung that for Thatcher was the feeling that our country seemed about to descend into a state of South Americanness. This extraordinary lost data discs business is, I think, particularly wounding to the Brown regime, for it gives off that same vibe, of a government descending into anarchy, and not in a good way. The whole world is now sniggering at Britain.
However, good news for Brown comes from a commenter on this posting at Guido’s:
There are about 13million children under the age of 16, most of whom have two parents. So that gives us about 25million individuals listed. However, only about a quarter of these will have bank details listed, so the BBC’s claims that the bank details of 25million people have been lost is actually misleading. It is probably about 7million.
Oh, only seven million. That’s okay then.
This comment reminds me of an amazing peacenik meeting I once attended, almost as long ago as the 1979 election, in which the speakers on the platform all took it in turns to explain how ghastly a nuclear explosion over a built-up area would be and that therefore we should chuck away our nuclear weapons, and a particularly bonkers middle-aged woman in the audience, called Daphne if I remember it right, got up to explain that actually, if you got lucky with the prevailing wind, and if proper civil defence measures were taken, it might not be that bad. The looks on the faces of the platform speakers were truly treasurable. I got up and said that the speakers certainly had me convinced me that nuclear war would indeed be rather nasty, and how about the replacement of Soviet communism with liberal democracy, as the least implausible way to end the nastiness? But that’s another story.
Getting back to this lost discs thing, I agree with everyone else here who is, quite rightly making such a fuss of this business. Don’t collect the damn data into these huge compulsory gobs in the first place.
Whatever David Cameron, says now …
Mr Cameron said people were “desperately worried” and they would “find it frankly weird” that Mr Brown still wanted to go ahead with plans for a national ID cards scheme and register.
… his conclusion if and when he becomes Prime Minister (which this whole thing makes that much more likely) will presumably be that it will be a sufficient answer for his noble self to be in charge of the government’s compulsory databases, and that all will then be well.
But it does occur to me, just as Black Wednesday saved the pound from being swallowed up by the Euro – which it surely did, whatever you think about that – this fiasco might just have done something similar to the database state. Not abolished it, or even reversed it seriously, but at least thrown a bit of a spanner into its works. Suddenly, ID cards are looking truly scary, combining malevolence with incompetence – Soviet even – to Mr and Mrs Average. I wrote that before reading what Guy Herbert said in the previous posting but one here, and I see that he reaches an identical conclusion. If so, good. Campaign for Database Disarmament anybody?
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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