Peter Riddell slams Labour and Tory “peripheral initiatives” on economy

Peter Riddell is the doyen of Times columnists and his insights into politics are usually pretty spot-on. It was therefore gratifying to see him arguing in yesterday’s column that the “irrelevant initiatives and hectic trips around the country” of Gordon Brown and David Cameron are merely a substitute for action, and that their many and varied proposals are economically flawed and designed to buy-off political constituencies rather than achieve macro-economic recovery.

Brown's pledge to create 100,000 jobs and Mr Cameron's new savings package do not address the cause of the deepening recession: the lack of credit. Everything else is secondary… [T]he job and savings initiatives are distractions. They address symptoms not causes…

Both the Brown and Cameron initiatives are about political positioning: to demonstrate their concern about the recession and to show they are doing something. The most damaging charge now is of inaction. The plans are also aimed at potential supporters, with Mr Cameron generating a positive response from Tory websites and activists seeking tax cuts, even though he has been criticised by independent commentators.”

Riddell is entirely correct. The only way this recession will end is if the equilibrium between borrowing and lending is established, and preferably at a level that sees interest rates reflecting real time preferences, rather than being massaged down by governments in an effort to stimulate short-lived but vote-winning “booms” (today rebadged as “soft-landings” and even “recoveries”).

I am not entirely sure I agree with his thrust that this should be achieved by the Government pumping vast sums of extra money in to the banking sector: today’s Times headline brings tears to the eye. Excess credit expansion is what brought us to this sorry state and further credit expansion is only going to bring us her again in the future (‘If you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging’). However, whether one accepts that the economy needs to go through a period of readjustment or you believe that masses of liquidity needs to be pumped into the banking sector to stop an outright collapse, the fact remains that bail-outs for car companies, government make-work schemes and financial gestures are not only going to fail in their objectives, but will in the process make the situation a lot worse.

Riddell is not nearly firm enough in this, however, and occasionally lapses into Keynesian fantasy. “Bringing forward capital projects makes sense,” he claims, before admitting that it “is unlikely to have more than a marginal impact.” Similarly, he thinks that “There is a case for boosting saving in the long term, but not in the short term when the need is to raise spending,” ignoring the fact that money saved equals money spent: banks can’t hang onto money for long, and sooner or later it has to be invested in businesses or – as the result of more misguided government intervention – used to buy government bonds, which means that either way it ends up in the “real economy”. One man’s saving is another man’s (or company’s) borrowing and spending.

He also gives his blessing to the idea of extended state guarantee for loans that has been proposed by both the government and the Tories. But this is an extremely dangerous proposal for two reasons. Firstly, businesses are currently going bust because lenders are not willing to extend credit to them for fear that they will go bust anyway and thus default. If government guarantees these loans, banks will have no reason to exercise one of their primary roles – as arbiters of who is credit-worthy and who is not – and will be inclined to loan money to all and sundry, knowing that the bank is shielded from loss. The result will be that the government will end up with huge numbers of loan defaults to cover.

And that creates the second problem, which is the moral hazard facing the government as a result of these loans. According to Riddell, “The answer is not unconditional bailouts, as in the 1970s, but some way of breaking the credit logjam”. But once a firm that has outstanding loans backed by government guarantee is faced with bankruptcy, it will have a far more powerful hold over government when it seeks a bail-out. The argument that a subsidy of a few million will avert a collapse and default that saddles the taxpayer with a debt of tens of millions will be hard for government to resist. Conversely, the flood-gates of industrial policy will be open as government will expect influence in return for its largesse: as Riddell himself admits, “the larger that government guarantees become - and they could be enormous - the greater the demand for specific commitments in return.”

Weimar Zimbabwe

Usually, when one thinks of Zimbabwe, it is fascism that comes to mind.

A demegogue leader; a repressive police state; an internal racial minority (caucasin, this time, rather than semitic) scapegoated and used to divert the anger of the masses... The parallels with Nazi Germany are legion.

Yet Hitler was at least able to keep the currency stable (I'm prepared to be corrected by any Economics History experts out there, but I understand that part of Hitler's appeal was that the Reichsmark kept its value).

By comparrison, the Papiermark was the currency that people would take into the bakers in a wheel barrow, only to emerge with bread and a bag full of papiermarks. Friedrich A. Hayek needed 200 pay rises in eight months (yes, that is more than one a day!). People demanded their wages in the morning, because by the evening they would be worthless.

Imagine!

Or if you can't, read the article in the Times about the economic meltdown now underway in Zimbabwe. One quote stands out as an exemplar of what hyperinflation entails: "Golfers buy their mid-round drinks at the start, because prices will have risen by the ninth hole".

Mugabe isn't even a competent dictator. The end can be only jsut around the corner.

Do the Lib Dems matter and does anybody care?

Tim Hames is not normally kind to the Liberal Democrats. So it was with some surprise that he devoted today’s op ed piece in The Times to an article explaining why the Liberal Democrats matter. Criticising his colleagues (“the cynical puditocracy”) for not taking them seriously, Hames argues that

The Liberal Party and its successors have held firm to similar principles
for about 150 years. Their credo includes a staunch belief in individual
liberty, a confidence in the capacity of man to improve the chances of all in
society, a determination that political individuals and institutions should be
constrained by written rules and a dedicated internationalism.

One can see that there are tensions between these… Yet only the most harsh
would not concede something to the consistency with which they have clung to
their cause for so long. It certainly compares well with a Labour [and]
Conservative Part[ies].

He goes on to note that the Liberals may not have won many elections in a century, but much of our political platform has been delivered. As to the future, Lib Dem poll ratings could very easily rebound to the low-to-mid 20s. “A year from here, the party could be in much better political shape.”

He concludes with a comment on the leadership election and our future as a party that is worth considering: “Bizarrely, Mr Clegg and Chris Huhne, his rival, have happily agreed to contend that there is not much of a difference between them. This is inaccurate in terms of strategy. Mr Clegg is more inclined to emphasise the libertarian trait in the Liberal tradition, while Mr Huhne is comfortable with the collectivist outlook. The two would appeal to quite different kinds of voters. This is not a decision about ‘presentation’ alone, as was plain from their first hustings held on Saturday.

The Liberal Democrats have to be less introspective to prosper. They should stick with their principles but, as Mr Clegg is insisting, also be prepared to acquire a more practical streak. There is no shame in being able to enact your own agenda directly. The party has to have a hunger for power, albeit, realistically, as a junior coalition partner. The two words they need to convince the country of are ‘we matter’.”

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Generally, the comments attached to news items are "rabid and stultifyingly ill informed" (to quote Chris Morris on Brasseye). However, that chap from London with the stats on voting numbers is clearly a genius and people should listen to him more.

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On a separate note, Times Online also seems to be having great difficulty coping with its fame. While the print version proudly notes that it increased its online traffic by a record 39.1 per cent to Guardian Unlimited’s 28.8 per cent (I suspect that it had less far to climb), the website has been failing to load do to this “extremely heavy traffic”. Maybe it’s time Mr. Murdoch bought a bigger server.

Damn private equity and the all reactionary, White Guardist plutocrats

An excellent article by Anatole Kaletsky in today's Times. I don't always agree with him, but he's bang-on-the-money in his critique of the current assault on Private Equity firms.

It would have made Big Brother IX far more interesting

I love Matthew Parris. Today the redoubtable Tory columnist has a sympathetic word to say about Ruth Kelly, who has been let down by her future boss, and has an excellent suggestion for making the Labour deputy leadership contest more interesting.

It makes Thursday’s bearable.

It would be nice to believe you, Gordon

Gordon Brown has published an article in the Times today in which he trumpets the “Education for All” campaign. Before his promise to help educate the 80m children worldwide who do not go to school causes you to reach for the champagne, however, two words of caution.

Firstly, the bottle is already empty, as Brown has been making this promise for years. What is new is his focus on providing what one might call ‘emergency education’ for children who are displaced due to war or disaster. “For the first time, we propose to do for education what the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières already do for healthcare — provide education even in fragile states and war zones.” Which is all very admirable, but it would be nice if Brown gave credit where credit was due. Only two nights ago, Lynne Featherstone told an audience of Lewisham and Beckenham North Liberal Democrats that she had first proposed this at International Development Questions. This had taken Hilary Benn by surprise, but he had agreed to her proposal. Now, Brown is proclaiming it as a great Labour innovation. It isn’t the first time our policies have been stolen.

Secondly, as he has overseen (from the commanding heights of the economy at 1, Horse Guards Road) the UK’s national education failure, one might question whether he is the right man to bring education to Africa. In the UK today, a quarter of school leavers are functionally illiterate. This is a particularly germane statistic at present as the current generation of school leavers are a Labour generation, having known almost nothing of education under any other government. Yet basic literacy and numeracy are beyond the power of this government, despite pouring record amounts of money into education, one has to question whether it will be any more effective in Africa.

Gordon Brown as the solution to Africa’s woes has been an image that the Chancellor has paraded for some time. As his impending promotion nears, expect to see more saintly images of the dour-looking Scot. Pinches of salt are recommended.

Distance from power keeps us honest

In another piece of groundbreaking journalism, the Times has invited Big Brother and Manchester University psychologist Geoff Beattie to rate the honesty and evasiveness of British politicians.

It will be of no great surprise to Liberal Democrats to discover that their leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, gave direct and frank answers most frequently, while Home Affairs spokesman Nick Clegg was least likely to avoid the question.

Labour scored consistently badly, with all Government Ministers proving more evasive than Campbell or even the Conservative front bench. Interestingly, the most evasive politician of them all was the “straight talking” Home Secretary, John Reid.

But before we start pushing Foci through letterboxes and touting our honesty on doorsteps, we should note Beattie’s warning: “There is not some factor that make [the opposition] psychologically more straightforward than Labour.” Rather, they were affected by “the constraints of government”.

Thus, “I wouldn’t for a second say that Conservative [or, presumably, Liberal Democrat] politicians are more straight-talking. Once they get a chance to go back into government, I’m quite sure they will be equally evasive.”

Liberal Democrats often like to point out that they are a less venal bunch than the other parties, noting that nobody joins the Lib Dems because of a hunger for office or power. Perhaps by remaining on the opposition benches it also gives us the chance to be more honest and open. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Libby Purves sings a liberal song (though sadly it’s not The Land)

Regular listeners to Midweek on Radio 4 will know better than I whether Libby Purves is a liberal-minded soul (it is possible to be a journalist and still have one!), but her column in The Times, today, is certainly singing a Liberal Democrat song.

Admitting the impossibility of achieving true equity of public services across the entire UK or even one of its constituent nations, she cries out for a greater devolution of powers, a renewed localism. She even calls for a local income tax. I’m beginning to suspect we have a fan.

“[D]evolve more!” she cries. “Bin the council tax, which hits people who
can’t help that the local property market made their little house technically a
treasure, and now penalises those who build conservatories with their own taxed
income. Have local income taxes instead (adjusted to help genuinely poor
regions). Give money and power to local assemblies and local referendums;
reserve to Westminster and Brussels only the most solemn powers of justice,
defence and security. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and let some of them be
prettier. Then the people who get the worst flowers can challenge local leaders,
locally, and sack them briskly when they fail.

It might even make us feel more of a United Kingdom. Look at the freedom of
US states and mayors: that doesn’t make them feel less American. More so, if
anything, because in freedom there is pride.”

Vote Purves, I find myself crying. Purves for president!

Well, not for president – the notion causes a shudder down my spine. And she’d need to stand on a Liberal Democrat ticket. But the general sentiment is largely correct. I would reserve justice, defence and security solely to London; Brussels should be restricted to the single market, competition law and environmental issues that overlap national boundaries. The economy, too, cannot be devolved. But health services? Education? Minimum wage law? Taxation? – not just how much, but how! If Kent wants to adopt site value rating while Sussex keeps the Council Tax and Essex opts for a local income tax, let them do so, and let the best man win. If Yorkshire wants to adopt a lower minimum wage than Warwickshire, good luck to it; the cost of living is lower, anyway, and they will attract businesses ready to put their unemployed to work.

Britain, and certainly England, is among the most centralised states in Europe. Yet there is no particular advantage to that centralisation. Economies of scale only really operate in agriculture and manufacturing; service industries exploit niches, which is why there are local financial advisers but not local chemical works, and why GPs have not been replaced by hospitals. Most English counties are more populous than American states such as Alaska (less populous than Gloucestershire) or nation states such as Malta (on a par with Dorset) or Luxembourg (smaller than Buckinghamshire). Yet they are quite capable of running their own health and education services. While some local authorities would need to pool their resources tiny (Scilly has less than 3,000 residents), it is worth noting that only one of the nine English regions has a population smaller than Denmark.

I would also oppose the fad for unitary authorities (popular with some Liberal Democrats). As America and France demonstrate, many powers could be devolved further still, to boroughs, parishes and even wards. Locally elected Mayors of communes and district attorneys, with real power and real budgets, would do more to re-engage the population with elections than a dozen email and postal voting pilots and a hundred get out the vote campaigns. If we are truly liberal we need to trust the people, and where they need to act collectively we need to trust them to do so locally.

I look to a future where ministers refuse to answer questions on the lack of dentists in Newcastle or school admissions in Brighton with the phrase “That is a matter for the member’s local authority and I suggest he takes it up with his colleague in the local council”. The government may be beyond our reach but we can hold local officials to account. With more power over local issues, councillors will have more responsibility, and with more responsibility for influencing our neighbourhoods, we will all have more power.

Zimbabwe in danger of becoming next DR Congo

The spiralling crisis in Zimbabwe is about to take an ominous turn. Until now the situation has been a tragic but domestic issues, but it appears on the verge of becoming an international crisis.
It seems a long time since President Mugabe began to use the coercive power of the state to confiscate land from white farmers and distribute it to the majority black population. The situation has long-since morphed from being an ethnic and class struggle among Zimbabweans to an unequal and often brutal conflict pitting a black-African government against a largely black-African opposition. Over the past few years this crisis has become increasingly tragic and violent.

But until now it has mercifully remained within the borders of Zimbabwe (if one ignores the millions of refugees that have now fled to neighbouring countries). The Mugabe regime has been ostracised internationally: Zimbabwe has been suspended from the Commonwealth, it is under an arms embargo, its assets in Europe have been frozen and its leaders are banned from travel to most of the civilised world (i.e. those bits that respect democracy and the rule of law). But this does not represent an internationalisation of the conflict. This is simply the refusal of civilised countries to have anything to do with kleptocrats and tyrants. Similarly, the criticism of the government by foreign countries is not intervention but interaction and – one would hope – influence. That influence would be more effective if it came from South Africa, but Thabo Mbeki has been pusillanimous in his criticism.

Fortunately, despite the one-sided nature of the conflict, spiralling inflation (the world’s highest rate, at 1,700 per cent), collapsing trade (those white farmers didn’t half sell a lot of tobacco!) and stupidly thuggish land-clearances have undermined the regime to such a degree that it is now struggling to pay its police force. Large numbers of police have resigned due to poor and unreliable wages; commentators are predicting that the situation is reaching its endgame.

Mugabe has one more ace up his sleeve, however. According to The Times he plans to draft in around 2,500 Angolan paramilitary police. Nicknamed “Ninjas” because of their black uniforms (from boots to balaclavas), they terrify the Angolan people. Now they are being lent to Mugabe to help crush dissent. “I doubt if any of them speak English” a police source told the Times. “They can only be here for riot control and to back up our own riot police.”

This is blatantly illegal and represents a dangerous escalation of the crisis. The principle of national sovereignty does not only exist to protect governments from external meddling; it exists as well to protect people from unpopular governments. The people of Zimbabwe know that with patience and resilience they will eventually prevail against Mugabe. But no people can guarantee to prevail against their government if that government relies on foreign troops to crush dissent. Indeed, it is a fine line between foreign support and foreign occupation, as the history of the Soviet Union makes clear.

Fortunately, the world is not powerless to affect this decision. Action is needed promptly, however. Firstly, it must be made plain to President José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola that intervening in the internal affairs of another country is unacceptable. He is welcome to give vocal support and continue to deal with the regime if he wishes – if he has no self-respect – but sending his shock-troops to help crack down on the opposition must not be tolerated. If he proves resistant to persuasion and obdurately sends in his thugs, he will be complicit in the violence and oppression that is taking place there, and must be punished alongside Mugabe and his henchmen. In the first instance, this should see an extension of the travel ban and arms embargo extended to Angola. If the intervention continues, Angolan assets in Europe and America should be frozen. Finally, if the situation escalates and Angolan troops commit murder or human rights abuses, charges should be filed before the International Criminal Court.

It is possible, however, that the situation may worsen. Violence begets violence, and there is a danger that foreign intervention may tip Zimbabwe over the edge into civil war. One need only look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo to see what that would mean. (Ironically, Angola and Zimbabwe intervened in the Congo, supporting the unpleasant regime of Laurent Kabila.)

However, there is danger here for Angola as well as Zimbabwe. One of the few clear cases where intervention in a foreign country is deemed legitimate is where it is an act of counter-intervention to drive out a foreign power that is upsetting the natural balance of political forces within a country. All things being equal, civil wars play themselves out: nobody had a right to intervene in the English or American civil wars. But when a party steps in to help one side – as Serbia did in Bosnia, for example, or Liberia in Sierra Leone – it is acceptable and perhaps even desirable to redress the balance and punish the meddling nation.

Angolan intervention in Zimbabwe would therefore open the door to an African or even Western military response that has until now had no justification. Jaded readers may point out that Iraq and Afghanistan raise doubts about the efficacy of Western military action. However, a Zimbabwean campaign would be more like Sierra Leone or East Timor. Mugabe’s backers would collapse and flee very quickly; what little support he has is bought with money that is rapidly losing its value. There is a strong and popular opposition that would unite the country – though it would have to contest open and fair elections with Zanu-PF and other parties so that there was no suggestion that a puppet government was being installed. And once the currency was stabilised and trade restored, Zimbabwe’s battered but naturally strong economy (it was once the bread basket of Africa) would begin to boom.

Military intervention should be a last resort, and considered only if another country sent troops to support Mugabe’s regime. Sadly, the alleged deployment of Angolan paramilitaries is the first stage of just such an intervention. The world must act now to forestall such a deployment if a humanitarian catastrophe – and perhaps warfare – are to be avoided.

More heat than light in global warming debate

Last week I reported on The Great Global Warming Swindle, Martin Durkin’s documentary claiming that the “climate change consensus” was a conspiracy of bad science, protected because it justifies massive research grants, that will ultimately retard the development of desperate Third World nations. My original article contains a précis of the programme and is followed by comments providing links to some counter-arguments.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the various arguments, I was at least glad that a debate was taking place. I had been aware for some time that there the so-called consensus was actually a widely-held prevailing belief, and that there were scientists out there that demurred. I was also aware that there has been a lot of vitriol directed at those who do not accept the orthodox view (and, to be fair, vice versa). As a liberal I find that uncomfortable; I believe that open and honest debate both uncovers lies and strengthens the truth. I had hoped that this programme would stir up such a debate.

Sadly, it seems that the elevated tone I had hoped for was a façade. The Times reported yesterday that Dr. Armand Leroi of Imperial College, London, wrote to Mr. Durkin to point out that the correlation between solar radiation and global temperature, posited in an article in Science in 1991, had been subsequently disproved. Mr. Durkin responded to this by explaining that Dr. Leroi was “a big daft cock”. Dr. Leroi was rather shocked by this: so much so that he has since withdrawn from a project that he was planning to work on with Mr. Durkin that was to discuss race. Race “is such a sensitive topic that it requires great care and great balance,” explained Dr. Leroi.

Simon Singh, a scientific author who had been copied into the exchange, intervened by writing “I suspect that you will have upset many people [Mr. Durkin]… so it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather than just resorting to one-line replies. That way we can figure out what went wrong/right and how do [sic.] things better/even better in the future”.

Mr. Durkin’s response concluded with the suggestion that Mr. Singh “Go and f*** yourself.”

Mr. Durkin has since apologised (via the Times, it seems), saying that “I regret the use of intemperate language. It is so unlike me.” That seems unlikely considering he originally considered calling his programme Apocalypse My Arse.

I am disappointed that the debate has so quickly degenerated to this level. However, I am encouraged by one comment from Mr. Durkin that the Times reported, that he has asked Channel 4 to stage a live debate on the issue. However, I wonder whether this is really the debate we need to have. Ultimately, global warming is just a scientific curio until it intersects with public policy. It is for scientists to argue and debate about the truth of the problem; us mere mortals must merely accept what wisdom filters down (though there is undoubtedly a question mark over government funding being directed towards research supporting the status quo). Policy-makers must act on the prevailing scientific evidence, even if there is still some doubt; I can think of at least one government that lost an enormous amount of power and influence because it resisted the prevailing view of science.

What is needed, therefore, is not a public debate on the science, but a public debate on our response to the prevailing evidence. Too much of the environmental policy debate is dominated by socialists and Gaiaists, those who believe that the solution rests in a massive expansion of state power and those who think that man is a blight on the planet. Too often have I heard otherwise rational people peddle the lie that there are too many people on Earth; that we need to reduce the human population to a “sustainable” level. Even more often the solutions offered seem strangely reminiscent of the state-planning consensus of the post-war world.

I believe that we can have a sustainable environment and a tolerable climate, with room for humans and polar bears alike, without giving up our freedom or our right to have children. But if that is to be achieved liberals must wrest control of the debate from the crypto-socialists and enviro-fascists, and offer a liberal alternative. The debate is more urgent than ever.

Another shocking statistic

I found this snippet in the Times:

One in three households across Britain depends on state benefits for at least half its income, according to a report released today by the right-of-centre think-tank Civitas. It says that the figure is far higher for single-parent homes, with 61 per cent relying on state support compared with 9 per cent of two-parent households

(The actual Civitas report says “some 30 per cent of households”, but the editors of the Times clearly feel that percentages are beyond their readership.)

While I have not had the chance to verify this, I find it deeply disturbing. As the welfare state expands, it begins to lose its original purpose of ensuring a healthy and cohesive society in which nobody need want for education, health care, nor for food and shelter if they are out of work. Instead, it has become a massive patronage system, whereby an ever greater proportion of society has become dependent on the state for their living.

At the very least, this places an increasing burden on the more productive elements of society, creating tension between those who pay taxes and those who receive benefits. The contributors become resentful, while the beneficiaries increasingly come to see benefits as a natural state of being – it becomes normal to go through life on welfare. The more people are beneficiaries of the state, the harder it is to reform welfare to reduce costs and encourage greater independence, as those with a vested interest in the status quo gain greater political clout.

More importantly, the creeping expansion of welfare undermines the autonomy which is an essential element of a free society. Instead of individuals being in control of their own destiny, making decisions about how they lead their lives that benefit both themselves and their neighbours, they become vassals of the state, infantilised by permanent paternalism.

The fact that a third of households rely on benefit for over half their income is not a sign of a prosperous society giving generously to the most needy. It is not a sign of the success of our welfare state. It is a sign of terrible failure that in one of the richest countries in the world, a third of households are reliant on hand-outs.

A novel solution to policing in Northern Ireland

As part of the peace process, the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is required to recruit equally from the Protestant and Catholic communities. Even though the Catholics remain in a minority within the province, the PSNI is required to recruit on a 50-50 basis.

In practice, this is proving hard, as many Catholics remain suspicious of the police. When it was the Royal Ulster Constabulary it was largely Protestant and many considered it to be partisan. Thus even now only 21 per cent of its officers are Catholic and PNSI has struggled to recruit sufficient numbers of Catholics.

But a novel solution has manifested itself courtesy of one of this blog’s favourite topics, immigration. The Times reports that “Nearly 1,000 of the province’s burgeoning Polish community have responded to a police recruitment drive – and they are nearly all Catholics. Poles accounted for 12 per cent of the 7,749 applicants…”

Is there no problem that can’t be solved by immigration? Our hospitals rely on immigrant nurses and doctors as well as porters and cleaners; the army has relied on recruits from the Commonwealth for years; now the police are recruiting officers from among immigrant communities.

Some complain that this undermines the purpose of the 50-50 rule because it is not ensuring that the police force adequately represents the Irish community. However, this is a mistaken concern. In many ways employing Poles is preferable to employing Catholic and Protestant Irish who have been influenced by the long period of “The Troubles”. Of course there is a need for both sides of Northern Ireland’s divide to be represented in the PSNI. But I can think of nothing better for the province than that hundreds of its police officers have never been involved in the conflict and are interested in nothing other than dispensing justice and upholding the law impartially and neutrally.

Of course Ian Paisley is correct (a sentence that I never thought I would write, even if I am in this case referring to the son of the DUP leader) to say that “You should not recruit on a religious basis”. It is discriminatory and should be illegal in any arm of government. However, Northern Ireland faces particular problems in which the police force is intimately involved. This may not be the time to stand up for liberal principles (another sentence I never thought I’d write!). As long as the quota system is a temporary measure that will ensure a balanced police force and so restore the faith of the Catholic community in the impartiality of policing in the province, it should be tolerated.

Sadly, experience tells us that temporary measures generate vested interests. I can well imagine a future where the PSNI has won the trust of the whole Northern Irish community, but where groups within the province resist efforts to end the quota system. This is the experience of Affirmative Action in the United States. Ironically, perpetuating protectionist measures tends to do more harm than good, even for those so protected. But if in the short term it goes even part way to shoring up the peace process, it will be a price worth paying.

"That's quite enough Dyslexogate, thank you"

David Aaronovitch has written an excellent op ed. on "The Ruth Kelly Affair".

As well as exposing the real hypocrisy - journalists who tut-tut about her decision when over half of them privately educate their own children - he takes a swipe at Labour back-benchers who put ideology over the interests of the child (the point I made yesterday).

I know a comment piece is good if it is both informative and humorous. Enjoy.

Losing sight of the child

There is something unseemly about the row that has erupted in the Labour Party over Ruth Kelly’s decision to send her child to a private school.

Labour’s commitment to state provision has always made it difficult for Labour ministers to school their children privately. Yet the fact remains that private education can provide better outcomes for children that state schools.

This is not always the case: past Labour administrations were crammed full of and led by grammar school boys who had got the best state education by passing their 11+ exams (or their parents paid for the privilege). But since Labour dismantled the two-tier grammar school system, our current Labour Prime Minister has been drawn from the ranks of the private schools.

In fact, debate still rages over whether private education always provides better outcomes for children. Every few weeks another study emerges arguing either that children from private schools enjoy better outcomes as a result of their education, or that there is no discernable difference.

Whether or not parents should have a right to educate their children outside the state system, and whether parents should be allowed to take the money their children would have costed the state and spend it elsewhere if they see this as in their child’s interests are important but macro-level debates. What is so disgusting about the reaction of Labour members to Ms. Kelly’s decision is that it shows absolutely no concern for the welfare of the child.

Take these quotes in today’s Times:
Ian Gibson (Norwich North): "I think it’s wrong. You should set an example as a minister and support your local school. It is a slap in the face for the teachers and the pupils in the school that the child has been taken out of."
Ann Cryer, (Keighley): "MPs should try to get state provision for their children because that is what we believe in."
Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak): "I think it goes against the principles of the Labour Party. It makes me wonder about the sort of people who achieve high office who are in New Labour."
Margaret Hodge, Trade and Industry minister: "Given our commitment to state education, it is an issue of public interest."

Not one of these Members of Parliament even qualified their statements by suggesting that Ms. Kelly’s main concern as a parent should be the welfare of her children. A government minister may choose to sacrifice their own interests for their career – say, by spending time on an NHS waiting list rather than paying to go private. For a minister to sacrifice their child’s interests would be disgraceful. For the minister’s colleagues to berate her for not doing so is disgusting.

Ms. Kelly’s child struggles with dyslexia. Whether or not state education should be able to provide her child with the best schooling is beside the point. The child’s parent has made an informed choice about what is in the interests of her child. We should respect that choice.

We may of course cite that choice as proof that Labour is failing to provide state education that meets the needs of children with special educational needs, but we should not condemn Ms. Kelly for recognising that fact and responding by doing what she can for her child. It does not matter that she was once Education Secretary. What matters is the welfare of her child.

That is what the likes of Gibson, Cryer, Jones and Hodge fail to appreciate. Too wrapped up in the battle of ideology, they have lost sight of the child.

Just a cog in the machine

I think I may have come across the epitome of Labour’s belief in command and control. It is also the most egregious example of government waste so far. The Taxpayers Alliance are going to have a field day with this one. The next Bumper Book of Government Waste is going to have a special chapter just for this.

The Times reports that £7 million has been spent conducting a time-and-motion study, the upshot of which is that staff at National Insurance are being told not only what they may and what they may not put on their desks, but what must sit where. The “Lean” programme by logistics consultants Unipart actually sets out where a civil servant should position their phones, their mouse and even their pens to provide for optimal efficiency in desk usage.

The idea that we are all identical and that the Government knows best what we need and how we should go about leading our lives is rooted at the heart of the socialist idea of progress (Liberal progressives, by comparison, believe that progress is good but should be allowed to advance naturally rather than being driven by a controlling mind – the state; ‘conservative progressive’ is an oxymoron).

I have never been an advocate of the “clear desk policy” (as you can see!) and firmly believe that a man’s desk is his kingdom (and “The king is emperor in his kingdom”, as the French could have told us 600 years ago). In fact, a messy desk may represent a representation of the mind of its owner:

People spread stuff over their desks not because they are too lazy to file it, but because the paper serves as a physical representation of what is going on in their heads—“a temporary holding pattern for ideas and inputs which they cannot yet categorise or even decide how they might use”, as [Alison Kidd, a psychologist] puts it. The clutter cannot be filed because it has not been categorised. By the time the worker's ideas have taken form, and the clutter could be categorised, it has served its purpose and can therefore be binned. Filing it is a waste of time. (In praise of clutter, The Economist, 19 Dec. 2002)

More to the point, it is one small way that an individual can express their freedom in the workplace. Not all workplaces are dark, satanic mills, but many (and Whitehall in particular) try to impose a rigid uniformity on their employees. A few “inactive” tea cups and a photograph of one’s children are not clutter; they are a workers cry that "I am not a number, I am a free man!".

The Lean Programme appears to be a terribly misjudged attempt to achieve a notional productivity rise at the expense of worker’s freedom. It is a sad statement of the mindset of Labour ministers. It is also a pointless waste of our taxes; at a time when the Government is complaining that Freedom of Information legislation is too expensive and are trying to save £12 million by curbing our right to hold ministers to account, I for one can think of better ways to spend that money.

A sportsmanlike attack on the polluter pays principle

The Times is clearly a kind employer that likes to develop its staff, because occasionally it lets specialist columnists loose on its general comments page. So it was on Tuesday when Martin Samuel, “Sports Writer of the Year at both the What the Papers Say awards and the Sports Journalists' Association Awards”, wrote a typically ill-informed piece about waste disposal and the polluter pays principle.

There is a simple logic to his point that he does not ask for his food to be over-packaged or to be inundated with unsolicited mail, and that it is therefore unfair that he should have to pay for unwanted waste. Why it is beyond his wits to return his junk mail to the sender I do not know? If we all sent our junk mail back it would quickly dry up, as the sender would be hit by the cost of disposal and either they or an increasingly-unamused Royal Mail would have to pay for the return postage.

The problem with Mr. Samuel’s basic argument is that he thinks packaging is something that is done to us by supermarkets against our will: “We did not ask for green beans from Zambia to be available 12 months a year, cased in two layers of Cellophane and a black plastic tray.” Perhaps not, but if we did not buy them they wouldn’t be available. The fact that they are suggests there is a market for them; somebody, somewhere is thanking The Lord (or Tesco) that they can make that Green bean tempura they’ve been planning since Boxing Day. The rest of us are thanking whomever we see fit that companies constantly vie to offer us new opportunities – some of which we like and some of which we reject. Mr. Samuel could chose not the buy the green beans if he wanted – just as he could return his unwanted mail – and he would not have to pay to bin the waste, but again that thought seems to have escaped him.

Supermarkets do over-package goods, of course, but they undoubtedly do so for a reason. Having stood next to shoppers who are prepared to spend precious minutes of their lives hunting for the most perfect pepper, I can see why supermarkets want to cushion their wares. More to the point, though, if there is a demand for less packaging, the supermarkets will package less. Next to the GM-free, organic, fair trade, locally produced, low-carb, tuna friendly products will be the low-packaged section. The market, Martin, will provide, but only if there is a demand. Demand will be generated when the polluter pays.

Mr. Samuel has no time for the “Polluter pays” principle, however. The problem, it seems, is that he does not consider himself a polluter – at least, not by choice. Instead, he harks back to a world where wardrobes did not come flat packed but were delivered by men you called “mate”, though more often than not they were actually bought in jumble sales and had a broken leg, because Ikea had yet to drive down the price of new furniture. He longs for local shops (less choice, lower quality) and more people in manufacturing jobs (lower wages, more expensive products).

The polluter pays principle does not “presume that when we wake in the morning we are immediately the bad guys”, but it does recognise that we all have an impact on our environment and that the way to minimise that impact is to make people pay proportionally to the amount of pollution they create. At present, we pay through our taxes so that low-polluting poor people (who buy neither shrink-wrapped green beans nor lots of new furniture) subsidise rich people with houses to furnish and dinner parties to host. Similarly, it would not matter if “Tony Blair’s winter holiday equates approximately to waste pollution from your side of the street for the next 12 months” because Mr. Blair would pay for the pollution from his holiday while your side of the street would pay (individually) for the pollution they created.

Using the price mechanism to ensure that polluters pay for their wastefulness while the conscientious are rewarded with low bills is fair. It is also an effective way of making individuals pressure companies (silently, through a billion tiny purchases). It is a fairly simple but incredibly effective means of solving societies ills in an equitable manner. However, it is economics, which isn’t a subject that I imagine they discuss much over the Sports Desk.

The Ecstasy and the agony

There is an odd article in Times 2 today. Under the none-too-original heading The Ecstasy and the agony comes the subtitle As the first wave of Ecstasy users reach their forties, research suggests the drug can cause long-term brain damage. At last, one might be forgiven for thinking, conclusive evidence that Ecstasy is a harmful narcotic. Except that the bulk of the article paints a far more mixed and indeed contrary picture.

It begins by pointing out the deficiencies in most existing scientific research: the read-over from lab rats to humans is not applicable; the purported link to Parkinson’s disease was based on a confusion between MDMA and methamphetamine; most “drug casualties” have used a wide variety of legal and illegal intoxicants in massive doses, thus rendering it impossible to draw conclusive links between any single cause and an effect.

Instead, the article casts serious doubts on evidence of any long-term risk. While between one and two million people were dropping a pill a week in the UK, there were less than 20 deaths a year – and these from secondary effects rather than from the toxicity of the drug. According to Valerie Curran, Professor of Psychopharmacology at University College, London, “If you look at people who have given up for a year, there’s very little evidence of damage that persists”.

The problem is most tellingly captured by John Henry, Professor of Accident and Emergency Medicine at Imperial College, London. “I wanted to start research on the effects of Ecstasy years ago and they told me, ‘don’t be an idiot’. I really think that if we studied schoolchildren and found out who used E and then followed them up to see what happens, we’d have the answers by now.”

Professor Henry goes on to imply that there has been minor cognitive damage (“one or two or three IQ points”) which has effected in excess of a million users. This adds up to a lot of lost intellectual capital, but the real message here is that Government’s heavy-handed blanket ban on the drug has impeded research into the long term effects.

The truth is that thirty years after it was banned in the UK and twenty after it became the party-drug of choice for the all-night dancer, we continue to know very little about the risks. As with cannabis and other narcotics, prohibition has exacerbated rather than alleviated the problem. Scientific research is difficult as one cannot give willing volunteers the drug. It is not easy to find long-term users because they are inevitably covert about their use. Meanwhile, the criminals that feed the demand are unscrupulous; they do not have quality control, they are not regulated, and the customer has little come-back if s/he is harmed by their product. People who fear they are suffering a negative effect often hide their use from emergency services. Seeking help for long-term use is stigmatised and may leave a trace on medical records that will have other social and economic costs. Rather than protecting citizens, prohibition drives up to two million of them to deal with criminals every week – and this is just the Ecstasy users. The billions of pounds they generate feed organised crime on Britain’s streets and fund murderous civil wars in South East Asia and elsewhere.

Professor Curran sums up the domestic case for a more intelligent and liberal approach: “We should accept that people are gong to take drugs and say: ‘Here is the science. Here is the risk-benefit profile. It’s your informed choice.’ Instead we’re in this crazy world where everything is pushed underground and drugs are put in the hands of criminals. I’m not saying we should legalise – that’s a big step – but in Holland, where there are coffee shops [for cannabis use] there haven’t been any major disasters through making cannabis available”.

It is not in the character of Labour or Conservative governments to trust people to make informed decisions about their own desires and the risks they face. They tend instead to treat individuals like children, to be swaddled and protected from all risk. The result is a thriving criminal underworld, misery exported to the Third World, and a future public health situation about which the scientific and medical authorities have no knowledge. Prohibition has failed.

Brown’s retrospective taxes are affront to the rule of law

I’ve been stung!

I’d better declare my interest now, as I believe one should be open about one’s interests. A few weeks ago my wife and I bought two airline tickets to Cape Town. Gordon Brown has since announced that people like me – airline passengers who bought their tickets before this month’s pre-budget report – will be taxed. This gives us no option to change our behaviour to avoid the tax – unless we sacrifice the £450 ticket to avoid the £20 fee – so not only is it unfair and arbitrary, it will not in any way reduce carbon emissions.

The Times reports that “Airline passengers face long delays at airports from February because check-in staff will be required to collect the increase in departure tax announced last week. More than seven million people had already booked flights before the announcement in the Pre-Budget Report that Air Passenger Duty will double from February 1. Those passengers will have to pay the extra tax when they check in for their flights.”

This is a blatant violation of the legal principle that laws must be prospective. By applying this new tax ex post facto to airline tickets bought before the pre-budget report, it has denied purchasers to ability to make informed decisions knowing in advance how the Government would tax their activity. Those who have bought airline tickets in all innocence prior to the pre-budget report are now landed with extra fees that they could not predict – indeed, that they had every reason to assume would not apply, as ex post facto taxation violates the principle of the rule of law.

It is an excellent example both of the Chancellor’s lack of principle and of his mendaciousness. The alleged justification for this tax hike is to reduce pollution caused by rising air travel. But those who bought their ticket prior to the pre-budget report could not predict the new tax and so it can have had no impact upon their decision. Thus, in its retrospective application, it is merely another arbitrary expropriation of private wealth without justification on either environmental grounds or on the principle that taxes are applied generally.

Applying this new tax retrospectively is another example of the Chancellor’s arbitrary seizure of private wealth.It is an entirely unprincipled effort to make a seemingly randomly selected group of citizens help finance his public spending profligacy. That I am one of those caught in his web is my bad luck. I hope those more fortunate than I will nonetheless share my disgust.

Letter to the Times

In today's Times, Anatole Kaletsky writes Anarchy or tyranny? I choose tyranny. His argument is that rather than political stability resulting from economic success, the reverse is true. While his assessment is correct, his recommendation is surprisingly flawed for the Principal Economic Commentator of a leading newspaper.

In response, I have written the following letter to the Editor.

Sir,

Anatole Kaletsky makes an elementary error in choosing tyranny over anarchy (Anarchy or tyranny? I choose tyranny, 30 Nov). While he is correct to suggest that economic benefits require social and political stability, this is because the exercise of basic economic freedoms rely upon the rule of law to make outcomes predictable. The rule of law, however, is as opposed to tyranny as it is to anarchy: to talk of "The tyranny of the law" is an oxymoron.

There is an alternative to the two poles that Mr. Kaletsky juxtaposes, one that epitomises both the rule of law and the freedom of the individual. It has been the basis of both the social stability and the economic success of the United Kingdom for over three centuries. In therefore reject the choices Mr. Kaletsky offers. I choose liberty!

Regards,
Thomas Papworth

Liberal Polemic in the news

On Wednesday I reported that Peter Riddell had published a piece in The Times about the Number 10 petitions site in which he noted that "As one blogger has pointed out, there is no chance to say whether you disagree, apart from creating a rival petition."

I suggested that this might be a reference to my article on the subject. I wrote to Mr. Riddell to ask him whether my suspicion was correct and on Friday he wrote back to confirm that it had indeed been my article to which he was referring.

Mr. Riddell remains very interested in how the Number 10 petitions site will develop so keep watching his articles in The Times for more information.