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… is they are all racists, apparently. The paradox inherent in such a declaration might not be lost on Trevor Phillips, were he not now one of the official arbiters of what is and is not forbidden thought and speech in Britain. How extraordinarily coincidental that this line should emerge from a New Labour appointee just before the Home Secretary is due to announce that settlement of Bulgarians and Romanians here will still be controlled after they become EU citizens. October 23rd, 2006 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I believe it was the late Ray Charles who bewailed his melancholy lot in the song lyric, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”. Looking back over the last hundred years or so, one could readily draw the same dismal conclusion about ideas. At one level, this is to be welcomed. The 20th Century was not short of idea, most of them ranging from bad to downright horrific and which have now been defeated, discredited, marginalised or have just plain run out of steam. Gulags ‘R’ not us, thank you very much. Fine, except that it leaves us standing on the other side of the equation with no ideas at all, merely an awful lot of inertia and a dour determination to just carry on from one day to the next. Yes, it’s all very ‘end of history’. In fairness that sort of works but only until the point where that persistent bloody nuisance history starts all over again. In other words, until about now:
I suppose it is entirely consistent that a former communist like Mr. Reid has the capacity to understand the power of ideas, though perhaps his use of the term ‘Al Qaeda’ is entirely diplomatic when what he really means is Islam itself. For Islam is not only an idea, it is a big idea and very powerful one to boot. It is not going to be defeated by Western soldiers traipsing around in the dust of Basra or Helmand provience, regardless of how well trained, armed and motivated they may be. Nor will be it defeated by outright persecution in the West (should that be the next course of action). The Romans tried that in response to Christianity and look where it got them. No, something else is needed though, precisely what, I cannot yet say. I can say that the official UK government effort, which, thus far, consists of this rather feeble outreach effort is bound to go nowhere. ‘Moderation’ is not an idea, merely a temperament. Appeals not to rock the boat are futile when set against a determined plan to sink the boat. Besides, the very fact that it is driven and financed by HMG means that it will almost certainly have the very opposite of its intended effect. If this was a ‘battle of guns’, then we have all the best and biggest guns and there would not be even a trace of reasonable doubt about the eventual outcome. Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, but so bloody what? Mr. Reid is nearly right. This is a not a ‘battle of idea’ it is a ‘war of ideas’ and we are in the midst of that theatre of war completely unarmed. October 22nd, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Henry Porter, the British journalist, gave a lecture recently, which is reproduced in the Independent newspaper here, which lays out in trenchant terms the sheer magnitude of the Blair government’s assault on civil liberties. None of the broad points will exactly come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog but I link to it because it is a pretty good primer on the issue for those who have not thought much about this issue. Here are a couple of excerpts:
I like the way that Porter directly confronts the nonsense ‘argument’ that “only the guilty have anything to fear” line that one hears being trotted out in favour of things like abolition of Habeas Corpus or eroding the presumption of innocence in the Common Law. This is a fine article that deserves to be widely read. At the end, Porter recommends, among other things, a wholesale effort to teach children about how the laws protecting liberty were acquired, and why they were acquired, in the first place. For it is in its attempts to obliterate history, or make us feel deeply ashamed of it, that the real menace of New Labour’s modernisation obsession first revealed itself. It may strike some critics of libertarianism as paradoxical, given that libertarians are usually seen as fans of modern life, that any defence of freedom must be steeped in an understanding and appreciation of history, including the Classics. Perhaps our modern legislators would be far less of a menace if they had bothered to study the speeches of Pericles or Cicero. October 21st, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Having given up trying to stay PM and handed over the kulturcampf to Mr Brown, St Anthony now wishes to save the world:
I am not interested for this purpose in whether he is right about ‘catastrophic tipping points’. It is entirely possible he is. It is interesting that this is certainly not from his own knowledge. And since actually no one knows enough about climate to say under what conditions, never mind when, a catastrophe, bifurcation, flip, transition… whatever you would like to call it… might occur, then the fact the firm limit of years is reported as as little as 7 in some places, and up to 25 elsewhere, should not worry us. What should, is the contradiction between the millenarian rhetoric and the irrelevance in its own terms of the hair-shirt policy that we are being exhorted to adopt. If the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause catastrophe at some threshold level, then capping emissions from human activity merely postpones reaching the threshold. By not very much. If things are that bad either: (1) We should find ways yet unknown to make global human greenhouse-gas emissions close to zero or net negative. (Sorry, no cooked food – except sun-baked and geyser-boiled – until we do.) Or (2) we should enjoy the party at the end of the world. But it seems those in charge do not know the difference between quantity and rate. Now that is really scary. Reality I can cope with. I am aware I’m going to die, and probably suffer disease and loss first. That the course of my life will be determined not by biology, physics and economics, but by messianic imbeciles with no grasp of any of them, is harder to bear. For me; the non-exclusive or: technofix plus fun. For the Head Boy; “Repent, o ye sinners or burn in hell on earth! Go, and sin no more. (Than you did in 1990).” October 21st, 2006 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mary Ann Sieghart has written an interesting article about the rush to subject more or less everyone who comes in contact with children to checks by the state. She rightly points out what a paranoid example this sets by presupposing that people are pederasts. I heartily agree with her article and see this as one of the more extreme examples of the state replacing social interactions with politically mediated ones.
And then, in the next snippet by her, she writes lamenting the fact more people do not join political parties. Tellingly she mentions the two main (and largely indistinguishable) political parties.
I find that interesting as on one hand she clearly laments the destruction of civil society by the regulatory state and on the other, she urges people to join the institutions who are responsible for doing precisely that. In effect she might just as well be saying: “it is terrible that gangs which threaten people with violence are invading our neighbourhoods and fostering a climate of fear… I wonder why more people are not empowering themselves over other people by joining a gang?” October 20th, 2006 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
It does warm the cockles of one’s heart to read a lede like this:
Of course there is an agenda accompanying this report from an organisation calling itself Unlock Democracy. UD is a joint project of Charter 88 and the New Politics Network, and their aims are far from pure:
The group cannot seem to keep broken links (which are supposed to lead to their own project sites) off of their main website, but they do manage to get governmental ‘support’ for their People and Politics Day. (I have contacted the New Politics Network to ask what form that ‘support’ takes, and await a response.) The day boasts speeches from Tory chairman Francis Maude, Theresa May, various Lib Dem and Labour politicians, and even the leader of UKIP. Exhibitors include the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, British Union of Anti-Vivisectionists, and the League Against Cruel Sports. So the good news is that political parties face death. The bad news is, there are people who are trying to keep them alive, and getting governmental support to do so. The surprising news is…nowhere to be found. UPDATE: New Politics Network’s press officer, James Graham, responded to my query about whether or not taxpayer money is funding this event:
Well, that makes it okay, I guess! (Not.) October 19th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The threats to liberty in Britain are too numerous to keep track of. Thanks to Josie Appleton on Spiked! for this, which I had entirely missed before now:
It is a House of Lords Bill, but has Government backing. The Bill would create an Independent Barring Board (IBB), which would maintain “barred lists” preventing listed individuals from engaging in “regulated activities”. “In respect of an individual who is included in a barred list, IBB must keep other information of such description as is prescribed.” [cl.2(5)] As the Bill was originally presented, you would have no right to damages if you were mistakenly or maliciously included in a barred list, and nor would anyone else. And the IBB would have been an absolute finder of fact, with appeal allowed only on a point of law. So among the things the IBB would have been independent of is responsibility for its actions. Now things are slightly better, but there’s a cunning pseudo-compromise. You can sue. And you can now appeal the facts. But the criteria applied in the application of policy to an individual case – the core of what the IBB would do – is expressly (with a shade of Guantanamo) deemed not to be a matter of law or fact, and are therefore not to be subject to examination by the courts [cl.4(3)]. The schedule of “regulated activity” is 5 pages long in the printed copy. So you’ll have to look it up yourselves if you are interested. The practical effect? Well, as an example, as I understand it, if the Bill were currently law, I would be committing a criminal offence in paying someone I trust to look after my elderly mother, who is currently convalescing from an operation, without both of us being made subject to official monitoring first. Once it is in force, if you wish to be self sufficient – even if you don’t value your privacy, and are confident that theree’s nothing about you to which an official could possibly have objected in the past, and that you might not be confused with anyone else – you’ll need to know if a family member is going to be ill in sufficient time to fill in all the forms and wait for them to be processed. Better leave it to the state – which is of course always perfect. October 18th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 From The Guardian yesterday:
There are two things I find fascinating about this. Not that it explicitly suggests staff may want to report students to the authorities for “using a computer while Asian” – something which if followed would bankrupt every scientific, economic and medical faculty in the country, from the postage and staff time used in denouncements – but the institutional presumptions involved, and the political context. → Continue reading: October 17th, 2006 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
You can guess the context.
Yes; they did disclose the “bcc”. The accompanying leaflet sets out the complaints procedure. It ends, inevitably, on a minatory note:
October 16th, 2006 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
An almost-hidden jewel in London’s collection of museums is the Gilbert collection of jewels, furniture and historic art in Somerset House, on the banks of the Thames near the Temple tube station. At the moment, there is a retrospective exhibition of the work of the great Tiffany jewellery business, going back to that firm’s origins in the middle of the 19th Century. In some ways, the rise of the house of Tiffany mirrors America’s own rise as a mighty economy, since the industrial progress of that country created vast fortunes, and naturally, people wanted to show this wealth off. And boy, did they do so. I strongly recommend this collection for anyone who wants to see the jewellers’ art at its greatest. My only word of caution: if you are thinking of taking someone there for the start of a sophisticated date, be warned. The jewels there may give your other half Big Ideas. Very Expensive Ones. Gulp. October 15th, 2006 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
India Knight has written an article in the Sunday Times about the realities of life for Muslims and decrying ‘Islamophobic’ views like Jack Straw’s dislike of the Islamic veil. Many of the points she makes are fair ones but I think the underlying premise of her article is completely mistaken.
Fine, but Muslim women wearing veils is hardly something new: they have been a common spectacle on British streets for a good twenty years, so something has changed. The reason why people who were previously tolerant of the more outwardly outlandish Islamic ways was that there was no sense that Muslims were trying to impose their sensibilities on others outside their narrow community of religious believers. I am not saying there are widespread calls amongst Muslims in Britain to force all women to wear veils, but if Jon Snow (who is certainly no Islamophobic reactionary) is to be believed, there is indeed widespread Muslim intolerance for any exercise of free speech which they find offensive… and by intolerance I do not mean dislike or disrespect (respect is never a right) but rather support for the use of force (legal or extra-legal) to prevent people ‘insulting’ Islam. Tolerance is a right, but it is one entirely contingent upon it being reciprocated, because tolerating intolerance makes no sense whatsoever. Simply put, because so many Muslims refuse to tolerate non-Muslim criticism of their ways, that inevitably means that fewer and fewer secular (or Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Confucian, Buddhist) people in the UK are willing to tolerate adherents of a set of beliefs in which intolerance of others appears to be endemic. As I have said before, I have little time for any religion but if people want to live in ghettos with their co-fantasists so that their weird values are the local community norms, I regard that as a problem, but a manageable and tolerable one. It is when they want to extend their influence over others by force that I stop tolerating them. So even if what India Knight says about the realities of life for most Islamic women is true… so what? The nature of life for people who choose to be Muslims is not the root of antipathy to Islam by non-Muslims. Islam is not a race, it is a set of beliefs and therefore it is a choice. As it is something people choose to believe in, it is therefore something upon which they can and should be rightly judged by others. When someone wears the outward trappings of a set of beliefs (such as a hijab, a KKK outfit, a crucifix, a Hammer and Sickle, a Nazi armband, an Ayn Rand tee-shirt), it seems strange they should not expect to be judged on the basis of what those beliefs mean to others. I dislike the Islamic veil for much the same reason I dislike people who wear pictures of a Hammer and Sickle upon their shirts, not because of what they are (they are just bits of coloured cloth after all) but because they represent a set of beliefs which are incompatible with post-Enlightenment civilization itself and also indicate the wearer will probably not be willing to tolerate me expressing what I think of them if they are true to their beliefs, regardless of how politely I phrase my remarks. That is what I find intolerable. October 15th, 2006 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the key rights that makes civil society possible is the right to free association: the right to deal with people who want to deal with and the right to dis-associate yourselves from those who (for whatever reason) you disapprove of without threat of force being used against you. As a result it should be no surprise that in the ongoing struggle to replace the interactions of civil society with entirely political mediated interactions, that the right to free association is under attack yet again. The right to decide who you must to do business with is being fought for by Catholic and Muslim institutions who do not want to be forced by law to deal with people who are homosexuals (i.e. people acting sinfully according to their beliefs). Yet no one is even discussing the fact that individuals, such as shop owners or landlords for example, might also want the right to free association Why is this right being discussed only in terms of ‘group rights’? The right of Catholic or Muslim institutions not to have people forced on them by law? What about the rights on everyone else to make their own minds up who they will or will not associate with and do business with? October 15th, 2006 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
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