Marmalade Sandwich

Teheran Embassy, Ron Paul, & Blowback

2011-11-29T19:03:00.002Z

Here is a selective timeline of events regarding the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran.

15th May, 2007. At the South Carolina debate between Republican candidates for the US Presidency, Dr. Ron Paul introduces Mr. Rudy Giuliani to the concept of 'blowback', and relates it, among other things, to the invasion of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979:
"I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem."

21st November, 2011. "Britain imposes new financial sanctions on Iran, ordering all UK financial institutions to stop doing business with their Iranian counterparts and with the central bank of Iran." (Daily Telegraph)

28th November, 2011. Dr. Paul issues a remarkably timely warning against the folly of sanctions - and in particular, sanctions against Iran.

29th November, 2011. "Iranians storm the British embassy compound in Tehran and burn documents looted from offices, during a rally to protest against sanctions imposed by Britain, Iranian news agencies report. Britain says it is outraged by the incursion into the embassy grounds." (Daily Telegraph)

It looks to me like Dr. Paul might have a point.

(And yes, this blog remains in hibernation. I keep on meaning to post stuff, but somehow or other, never quite get around to it. Perhaps I'll get one or two more published this year. But I'm not promising. For some reason, I'm really struggling with this blogging business.)

Some thoughts on the LibDems election results

2011-05-06T21:32:00.004+01:00

Most of the results are in for the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and the English Councils. The results are, to put it mildly, disappointing for the Liberal Democrats.

I wish to make three observations.

1) The LibDems did much worse in Scotland than in Wales. The figures for the elections to the devolved assemblies since 1999 are as follows:

While the LibDem vote in Wales was down about 30% on 2007, in Scotland it was down over 50%. There are probably various reasons for this difference, but I have a hunch as to what the main one was. While the SNP had a very good election in Scotland, Plaid Cymru had a poor one in Wales. In other words, disaffected LibDem voters in Wales looked at the alternatives, and while some did go to other parties, principally Labour, none of the alternatives looked particularly attractive, so the LibDem vote held up reasonably well. In Scotland, by contrast, the SNP looked very attractive, and so disaffected LibDem voters deserted to the SNP in droves, but few, it seems, went to Labour. The SNP have managed to make themselves very attractive across Scotland in a way that Plaid Cymru have never succeeded in doing in Wales.

2. The basic electoral problem the LibDems have is that they are part of a coalition government, and the unhappy electoral consequences of this seem to have come as a bit of a shock to many LibDems.

The Telegraph had a headline that read "Local election results: Lib Dems doing worse than 1980s." Actually, the 1980s were fairly reasonable times for the LibDems and their predecessors in the SDP / Liberal Alliance. Even if they didn't do particularly well in local government elections, in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, they did better than they have done in any elections since, and better than the Liberals did in the four elections of the 1970s. The Telegraph headline, in other words, is misleading in that it gives the impression that the 1980s were bad times for the LibDems.

The truth is, as those with long memories may recall, that the most awful time for the Liberal Party's electoral fortunes in the past 40 years was the Lib-Lab pact between March 1977 and March 1978. In a succession of by-elections, the party had dreadful results, and these were universally attributed to the fact that the Liberal Party was involved in an association with the Labour government, and was punished for its association with that government. The benefits of ending the pact were shown when the Liberals won a spectacular victory in the Liverpool Edge Hill by-election in March 1979.

One hesitates to say that history is repeating itself, but what is happening to the LibDems at the moment is remarkably similar to the events of 1977-78. There is another similarity. Those were years of economic austerity - the government had been forced to go to the IMF for a loan in 1976.

The LibDems should not be at all surprised at the collapse in their share of the vote in the last 12 months. They should have seen it coming.

(I might add that the evidence suggests that for the LibDems to be part of coalition administrations in local councils or devolved assemblies in Cardiff or Edinburgh does not seem to have the same negative electoral consequences.)

3. I find Nick Clegg's blaming memories of the horror of the 1980s for the poor performance of the LibDems rather strange. He has been quoted as saying ''For many families in those parts of the country especially, there are also some very strong memories of what life was like under Thatcherism in the 1980s and somehow a fear that that is what we are returning to.''

This sounds like nonsense to me. I don't think it has anything to do with memories of what life was like under Thatcherism in the 1980s. It strikes me as much more likely that many LibDem voters just couldn't stand the thought of supporting a Tory prime minister, and many of those who were able to accept that, just couldn't cope with the concept of cuts in government spending.

But even more basically, I remember what life was like under Thatcherism in the 1980s. After the fairly tough opening years, it was actually better than life under Labour in the late 1970s. Is Mr. Clegg (who was born in 1967) really too young to appreciate that?

Osama bin Laden, the Archbishop, and Magna Carta

2011-05-05T20:53:00.003+01:00

Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has recently said that he was uncomfortable about the way that Osama bin Laden was killed.

According to the Daily Telegraph, when asked at a press conference whether he thought the US had been right to kill bin Laden, he initially declined to respond, but later replied: "I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling, because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done in those circumstances."

I must confess that while my concerns are not exactly the same as the Archbishop's, my belief in due process ["Due process holds the government subservient to the law of the land protecting individual persons from the state. When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law it constitutes a due process violation which offends against the rule of law." (Wikipedia)] does make me somewhat uncomfortable with the whole business.

According to clause 29 of the Magna Carta, which is, I understand, one of three clauses still in force in English law,

"NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right."

OK - I know that Osama bin Laden was not an English Freeman, and that it is generally accepted that he had committed mass murder of hundreds of innocent people, and that what he got was exactly what he gave to others, and was what he deserved, and that it could be said that this happened in the course of fighting a war, and that he was, apparently, resisting arrest.

That last fact, of course, is the key. He was resisting arrest. Had he surrendered, he would have been taken alive. Hence, the US Attorney General, Eric Holder, said:"Let me make something very clear, the operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed was lawful. . . . If he had surrendered, attempted to surrender, I think we should obviously have accepted that, but there was no indication that he wanted to do that and therefore his killing was appropriate."

Does the fact that he was resisting arrest mean that it was appropriate to kill him? Not, in an of itself, it doesn't. Not in the United Kingdom, nor in the USA. Shooting him dead could only be justified if it was done in self-defence, i.e. if he was a threat to the life of one of the Navy Seals. Resisting arrest does not justify shooting dead a suspect, even if he is a mass murderer.

However, as the Archbishop pointed out, he was unarmed.

Which is why I too, am uncomfortable. I am realise that the US Attorney General knows much more about the law than I do, but it does seem to me that very little effort was made to follow due process.

Does the BBC value its credibility?

2011-03-25T12:16:00.008Z

The other night, as part of a series entitled The Bible's Buried Secrets, the BBC broadcast a programme entitled "Did God have a wife?", presented by Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou of the University of Exeter. The programme purported to be a serious piece. In actual fact, most of it was, at best, highly tendentious.

Alas, I could not find a transcript of the programme on the internet, so had to content myself with trying to watch it on an iPlayer, and note down what Dr Stavrakopoulou was saying - a fairly tricky process if your paws are not very good at typing, and you are constantly rewinding to try to get something. It would be so much easier to fisk the thing if the BBC published a transcript. One of the advantages of making documentaries on film is that you are much safer from fisking bloggers!

With apologies then, here is my attempt.

1. In the opening moments of this programme, we learn something. Dr. Stavrakopoulou tells us “According to the Bible, the roots of monotheism can be traced back to the legendary Abraham and a pact he made with God. Worship me, and me alone, and I will give the land of Canaan to your descendants.” Actually, the Bible says no such thing. It says something similar in Genesis 12 and Genesis 17, but it doesn’t actually say what she says it does. She goes on: “So the Bible’s claim is that Abraham landed in Canaan and founded an entirely new belief system . . . establishing monotheism for 1000 years. Well, that’s the story the Bible tells us, but I disagree.” Again, the Bible never says that Abraham founded an entirely new belief system. In other words, in the first few minutes of the programme, we learn that what Dr Stavrakopoulou says about the Bible is not quite accurate and should not be taken at face value. This may be because she doesn’t actually know the Old Testament very well. Or it may mean that she simply isn’t honest. Half way through the programme, she says “The Bible is an unreliable source. It’s not telling us the truth. ” In my opinion, that could be said of Dr. Stavrakopoulou.

2. And she is good at choosing words that put a certain spin on what she says. She speaks of the discoveries at Ugarit since 1928, and what they tell us about Baal worship, and says “but now, scholars can piece together a detailed and more objective picture of their gods. As we are filming, an odd shaped stone is seen sticking out of the ground. It could be a significant find.” The word “now” implies that this is very up to date. (It’s the same with the way she says “We are now discovering that the ancient Israelites had a good deal more in common with their neighbours and enemies. ”) Well, actually the discoveries are about 70 years old. The Ugarit texts were translated in the 1930s - hardly cutting edge stuff. It is all about what happened when your grandparents were young. And the theory that the ancient Israelites had a religion that evolved from something much like their neighbours was popular in Victorian times. But when she says “As we are filming, an odd shaped stone is seen sticking out of the ground. It could be a significant find,” you are supposed to get the impression that this is 21st century stuff. And words like “scholars”, “detailed”, and “objective” add to the spin. By the way, if this is all old hat, why have you not heard of it before? Simply because it has never convinced enough scholars to be generally accepted.

3. Another interesting aspect of the programme is her use of interviews. She speaks to various people - Walter Moberly of Durham University, a German scholar from Tubingen, a Jewish Rabbi, and a Muslim scholar. The German scholar agrees with much of what she says (notice how she says that he “has researched the real beliefs of the ancient Israelites,” - in other words “he has researched the beliefs of the ancient Israelites, and happens to agree with me, whereas those who have researched the beliefs of the ancient Israelites and who don’t agree with me have not actually researched their real beliefs.”), the Jewish teacher doesn’t, and we don’t hear enough of Walter Moberly to know what he believes. But the use of people with a variety of views is designed to give the impression of fairness. The reality, of course, is different. With all due respect, the Rabbi she chose as the spokesman for the opposition was not very impressive. There are hundreds of Christian (and Jewish) Old Testament scholars who could have knocked big holes in her arguments - but there was never a chance that they would appear on the programme. In effect, Dr Stavrakopoulou is like a clever lawyer putting a case. She chooses her evidence carefully and puts the best spin on it, and she chooses her witnesses carefully as well. But she has a couple of advantages over the courtroom lawyer. One is that there is no lawyer for the defence to make the opposite case. The other is that the words of the witnesses that she calls can end up on the cutting room floor if they don’t fit, because film is a medium which enables scriptwriters and editors to have powers undreamed of by courtroom lawyers.

4. And then there is the whole issue of the idolatry of the people of Israel. Dr Stavrakopoulou continues “When submitted to rigorous analysis, the Biblical texts tell another story. I think the evidence now shows that the people of the Bible believed many gods, and the scribes who composed the Bible did their best to conceal this, but not altogether successfully. A close reading of the Bible reveals that its people found it hard to stick to monotheism.” Actually, this is highly misleading. It doesn’t take a close reading of the Bible to reveal that its people found it hard to stick to monotheism. Even a casual reading of the Bible makes it clear that they found it hard to stick to monotheism. The whole story of the Old Testament from the point that God says “You shall have no other gods before me” to the end, is about how the people of Israel constantly went astray. So to say that “a close reading of the Bible reveals that its people found it hard to stick to monotheism” is hardly accurate. But then most of the people watching this programme know virtually nothing about the Old Testament, and even most church attenders in Britain today are largely unfamiliar with it. So Dr Stavrakopoulou can feel free to indulge in misleading statements about what the Old Testament says with little fear of being picked up by the viewers.

When she says, referring to the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel “But in my view this crude caricature of Baal worship is a warning to the people not to lapse from faith in one God. It’s a sign that the Biblical writers believed that the people were straying. Such warnings against Baal worship were found again and again in the Bible,” it is difficult not to laugh. “In her view?” That implies she has spotted something unusual. In fact, it is pretty obvious that the whole thing is “a warning to the people not to lapse from faith in one God. “It’s a sign that the Biblical writers believed that the people were straying,” implies that they are covering up the fact that they believed that the people of Israel were straying when they actually tell us constantly that the people of Israel were straying. She keeps on choosing her words to give the impression that she has spotted something new and exciting that undermines the teaching of the Bible.

5. Dr. Stavrakopoulou has two basic bits of evidence that the ancient Israelites were polytheists. The first is that the Bible clearly says that a lot of them were. There is nothing controversial there. The second claim is the one that is dubious. She claims that the Bible actually has polytheistic texts. We get Genesis 1:26 and Psalm 82 and various other texts trotted out in a triumphant “I told you so” tone, with amusing visual effects. Yes, these texts are unusual, and somewhat puzzling at first sight. But the same is true of much of the Bible, including much of the teaching of Jesus. And these texts have other perfectly good interpretations which don’t support her thesis. She, however, concludes “The Bible is telling us that Israel had its own divine council, it’s own pantheon of gods. In other words, the religion of the Israelites was polytheistic, just like that of the Canaanintes." In actual fact, she has simply chosen a few unrelated texts, taken them out of context, put them together and jumped to a conclusion. There is one major flaw in her thesis. She believes that the monotheistic scribes were not smart enough to spot these polytheistic verses and cut them out of the Bible. That seems pretty unlikely to me.

6. The big issue, of course, is the fact that the Canaanites had a God called El, and he is much the same as the God of the Bible who is also called El. There is nothing particularly surprising here, since Ugaritic and Hebrew are very closely related languages, and ‘el’ is the word for ‘god’ in both languages. The word ‘el’ could describe any god. The fact that the chief God of the Canaanites was basically called ‘god’ isn’t that surprising, and nor is the fact that the Hebrews called their god “God". Dr. Stavrakopoulou admits as much. Nor, I suppose, is it that surprising that when God spoke to Abraham, he should have simply called himself “God.”

But could it be that “El”, the chief god of the Canaanites is also the God of the Hebrews? Well, in a funny sort of way, perhaps it could. The Bible says things that suggest that the Canaanites should have known about the true God. The Bible, for example tells us (in Genesis 10) that the Canaanites were descendants of Noah, who worshipped the true God. So they should have known about the true God and worshipped him - even if they, in their folly, decided to add a few dozen false gods. Romans 1:21-23 says that pagans “knew God” but exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

The most obvious explanation is that since polytheists love to add new gods to their pantheons, (apparently in ancient Rome, some pagans thought that it would be nice to be inclusive and add Jesus to their collection of gods that they revered), the Canaanites had no problem with including the true God in their pantheon. And they turned him into an idol - just as the Israelites did with the true God when they made a golden calf to represent him. It wasn’t that the Israelites worshipped a Canaanite god. It is that the Canaanites adopted the true God into their pantheon, and falsified him. A bit like Mohammed did. He took the God of the Bible as his god, and then distorted him, turning him into a very different god from the God of the Bible. Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs both call their god “Allah.” Is he the same God? In terms of origin and name, and even in many aspects of his character, yes. But in terms of what this God declares to be true, no.

7. The most silly bit of the programme is the bit where she suggests that monotheism presents God as exclusively male, which leads to the marginalisation and repression of women. To quote Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith in the Catholic Herald, “With a charge like this, where can one start? The polytheistic Greeks and Romans denied females all political rights, despite the fact that Athens was under the protection of the goddess Athene, and Rome under the protection of Juno. The Julio-Claudian rulers claimed descent from Venus, but were not noted for their feminism. The idea that polytheism is more friendly to women is simply unsupported by the facts. It is easy to claim and sounds good, but as a serious thesis, it deserves to be dismissed. How on earth did it ind itself in what purported to be a serious programme about the Bible?”

I've read the Bible. I know something about it. When the BBC produces a programme about the Bible, I can see that a lot of it is tendentious rubbish. I am naturally tempted to conclude that when the BBC produces a programme on a subject that I know little about, it may be entertaining, but it will be unlikely to give me accurate information.

Did I hear that correctly?

2011-03-09T10:52:00.002Z

I must confess that I have been shocked out of hibernation by the Prime Minister's comments on the case of Eunice and Owen Johns. (See here and here) Mr Cameron said “This matter was decided by a court in the appropriate way and I think we should rest with the judgement that was made.” He also commented “I think Christians should be tolerant and welcoming and broad minded.”

On the subject of what it means to be tolerant and welcoming and broad minded, I don’t wish to say much. (Though my understanding is that being ‘tolerant’ means that you permit beliefs that you disagree with and believe in allowing people to do things that you personally disapprove of.) Mr Cameron appears to be labelling Mr and Mrs Johns as not being tolerant and welcoming and broad minded. Perhaps he should be pressed on this.

However, I must confess that Mr Cameron’s comments on the judgement that really astonish me. Is he really saying “I believe that the law should ban people from fostering children if they hold that homosexual behaviour is morally wrong?” For most of the 20th Century, to say nothing of the 19th, 18th and 17th, to believe that such a prohibition should be enshrined in law would have been absolutely unthinkable, and any politician who advocated such a view would have been thought to be absolutely mad.

Does the Prime Minister really hold the view that anyone who holds traditional views about sexual morality should be banned from fostering children?

And what will be next? What questions about beliefs and values will prospective foster parents be asked in the future - and what answers will result in them being considered to be unsuitable?

I might have some difficulty getting back to sleep after this.

Does hockey stick graph indicate climate change?

2010-12-03T08:04:00.003Z

It certainly seems to me to be uncommonly cold for this time of year.

(Thanks to Boilerjuice for that.)

US congressional election - some trends

2010-11-05T08:50:00.003Z

I've always been fascinated by elections and election results, and so the recent American 'mid-term' elections caught my eye.

I think that the most significant results are the ones for the House of Representatives - for two reasons. First, because the whole of the US votes in these elections (as it does every two years), whereas the elections for the Senate and for governorships only involved some states. Secondly, because there are 435 different races - as opposed to only 37 for Senate and gubernatorial elections - they are a much larger sample of political views.

If one graphs the performance of the Democrats and the Republicans over the past 40 years, it looks something like this:

(In fact, the 2010 results are not yet finalised. It is expected that 193 Democrats and 242 Republicans will be elected - but that might vary by one or two.)

There are two things that interest me.

The first is that over the past 40 years, the general trend seems to have been for the Republicans to have gained in numbers. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Democrats always had significant majorities, and even when Republican presidential candidates won 'landslide' victories in 1972 and 1984, it didn't translate into great results for the Republicans in the House. The Reagan years (1980-88) may be remembered as great years for the Republican party, but in some ways, they weren't. Americans seem to be much less likely simply to vote for the party than British voters; Americans tend to look at the individual they are voting for.

The first is that the last three elections (2006, 2008, and 2010) have seen very sharp swings - first to the Democrats, then back to the Republicans - with the Republicans doing rather poorly in the 2006 (largely because of the Iraq war) and 2008 (a combination of war, the economy, and the Obama factor) - and the Democrats doing poorly in 2010 (because, I suppose, of, er, well, the war, the economy and the Obama factor).

And the fact that the Republicans have had their best House election since 1946 (when they won 246 seats) does seem to indicate that either the trend is going their way, or that the Tea Party movement has not put the voters off, or both.

Great Repeal Bill wish list 4: Public Order Act - section 5

2010-10-12T08:55:00.004+01:00

Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Sloane feel fairly strongly about abortion. So strongly, that they decided to mount a (peaceful) public protest outside an abortion clinic in Brighton. Their method of making their case was to display a large (7ft by 5 ft) graphic banner which showed a picture of an aborted human embryo. Police were called by a member of staff concerned that patients entering the clinic felt traumatised and upset. The Police arrived and told Mr Stephenson and Miss Sloane to take down their banner. They did so, replacing it with another similar banner. The police then arrested the pair, and took them to the police station. And there they held them for 14 hours before finally releasing them at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Mr Stephenson and Miss Sloane were released on police bail, and are due to return to court tomorrow to hear if they will be prosecuted under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. (Thanks to Gary Benfold for bringing this story to my notice.)

The issue, of course, is freedom of speech. I was somewhat amused by the comments of Ann Furedi, the head of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, who said she fully supported the right of pro-life activists to demonstrate against abortion clinics - but who then added: "There is a distinction between freedom of expression and actions that are designed to distress people who are accessing legal, medical services." Actually, there isn’t. And it’s not as if Mr Stephenson and Miss Sloane simply wanted to distress people for the fun of it. They were trying to make the point that what abortion does to an embryo is something very distressing.

Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act says:

A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or

(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

Section 5 was also the legislation under which Dale McAlpine was arrested.

It seems to me that Section 5 is a piece of legislation in need of repealing. I’ve asked before, but I’ll ask again: “Why do we have a law on our statute book which means that someone can be guilty of a crime simply for using "insulting" words within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused "distress"?” The words “abusive or insulting” should go. In fact, the whole section should go - since the matter of threatening behaviour is covered by Section 4 of the Act.

Now, to be honest, I don’t like the pictures that Mr Stephenson and Miss Sloane displayed. They would put me right off my cocoa and buns. But that’s not the point, is it?

So let’s hope that Section 5 is included in Mr. Clegg’s Great Repeal Act.

Paying people to have children?

2010-10-06T13:19:00.004+01:00

In many parts of Africa, parents take the view that it is a good idea to have several children, as they are good investment for the future.

In China, the government has, in certain places, adopted a two-child policy, and even a one-child policy.

In Britain, and many other western nations, we have, since the passing of the Family Allowances Act 1945, had a policy of paying people to have children. This has recently become rather expensive, with the result that the government has decided to pay certain people to have children, but not others. (Basically, if either parent earns over £44,000 per year, they will not be paid to have children.) The logic of this has been lost on some people, and it is generally not considered one of the government's better decisions.

However, it is not the details of what the government has proposed that I want to write about - it's the concept of child benefit. What fascinates me is that just about everybody these days (at least in Europe) seems to think that taking tax-payers' money to pay people to have children is a good idea. This idea is a fairly novel one - and does not seem to have occured to many Europeans before the beginning of the 20th century. It still doesn't seem to have caught on with many people in the USA or in Africa - or for that matter in China.

Yes, I know that child benefit is an easy way of providing tax-payer's money to people who might just need it, and I'm not a Malthusian, but this idea of paying people to have children seems distinctly odd to me.

Of course, if you believe that the state is really your parent, then you'll probably think this is fair enough. But the idea that the state is your parent also strikes me as not just odd, but also dangerous.

The state, tax-payers’ money, and religion - Chinese style

2010-10-04T11:02:00.002+01:00

This is not a new story - the BBC reported it in August - but I just found it.

“Christianity is growing in China as never before - and doing so supported by millions of dollars of government funding. . . . On the outskirts of Nanjing, a building site illustrates the scale of the communist state's commitment to supporting the development of Christianity. Local officials say that the building under construction will become China's largest state-sanctioned church - with space for 5,000 worshippers. The land - and 20% of the building costs - are being provided not by local Christians, but by the municipal government. It represents state financial support worth millions of dollars - just one example of the strategy to encourage the development of religion in China.”

Yes, you read that right. It wouldn’t happen in the UK. It certainly wouldn’t happen in the USA. But the Chinese government uses tax-payers’ money to build Christian churches.

Why? According to the director general of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Wang Zuo An,

"Such growth is unprecedented in the history of Christianity in China. Christianity is enjoying its best period of growth in China. Our goal in supporting these religions in developing religious education is that we hope they can train qualified clergy members so that their religions can enjoy better development. . . . . We are making laws and regulations to better guarantee religious belief in China."

What exactly does he mean by “better guarantee religious belief”? The words “laws and regulations” make one wonder. Since when did one need laws and regulations to better guarantee religious belief ? The answer is not in the article, but you can probably guess. It means helping religious bodies which say what the government wants them to say.

Because in China, there are two kinds of Christian churches - state registered churches and unofficial churches. Leaders of unofficial churches are often harassed, and sometimes imprisoned. So why don’t they just become state registered? Quite simply because there are long list of things that preachers in state registered churches are simply not allowed to speak about. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Of course, in China, the government has been calling the tune in state registered churches for decades - so I guess it’s nice for them when the government starts giving tax-payers’ money to the piper.

There remains an interesting question. Mr Wang told the BBC "On the question of whether there is God, the Chinese Communist Party believes there is no God in the world." Isn’t it very strange that the Chinese Communist Party still takes a view on the question of the existence of God?

The Pope, the state, and freedom: Part 2

2010-09-24T16:17:00.002+01:00

(continued from Part 1)

Since the Pope’s visit was a state visit by a head of state, it was natural that, in a speech to political leaders, he should turn to relations between the United Kingdom and the Vatican, and to areas in which the British Government “has been engaged with the Holy See.” And so he did.

I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

Your readiness to do so is already implied in the unprecedented invitation extended to me today. And it finds expression in the fields of concern in which your Government has been engaged with the Holy See. In the area of peace, there have been exchanges regarding the elaboration of an international arms trade treaty; regarding human rights, the Holy See and the United Kingdom have welcomed the spread of democracy, especially in the last sixty-five years; in the field of development, there has been collaboration on debt relief, fair trade and financing for development, particularly through the International Finance Facility, the International Immunization Bond, and the Advanced Market Commitment. The Holy See also looks forward to exploring with the United Kingdom new ways to promote environmental responsibility, to the benefit of all.

I also note that the present Government has committed the United Kingdom to devoting 0.7% of national income to development aid by 2013. In recent years it has been encouraging to witness the positive signs of a worldwide growth in solidarity towards the poor. But to turn this solidarity into effective action calls for fresh thinking that will improve life conditions in many important areas, such as food production, clean water, job creation, education, support to families, especially migrants, and basic healthcare. Where human lives are concerned, time is always short: yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. Surely the integral human development of the world’s peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world’s attention, that is truly “too big to fail”.

It is no surprise that when it came down to specific areas of government policy, the fields that the Pope wished to speak about were the fairly uncontroversial areas of ~~motherhood and appl~~ peace, human rights, development (i.e. the relief of global poverty), and the environment. The Pope highlighted several specifics including the advance of democracy in the past 65 years (an odd thing for the Pope to welcome, since the Vatican is not, as far as I know, itself a democracy) - but (again, not surprisingly) his concern was largely about what governments could do help poor people in other countries.

In particular, the Pope notes “that the present Government has committed the United Kingdom to devoting 0.7% of national income to development aid by 2013.” All three main parties in the UK have had made this commitment, and it is generally considered something that all people of goodwill should support, but I do not believe that it is the duty of government to be charitable with other people’s money - and, to be honest, I don’t see anything particularly virtuous about it either.

The Pope also makes the point that if governments are willing and able to spend huge quantities of tax-payer’s money to bail out large corporations, that they should be able to do the same for poor people in poor countries. One gets the impression that the Pope’s view is that the government was not necessarily wrong to do the former, and should certainly be prepared to do the latter. In other words, when it comes to the extent and role of the state, it seems that the Pope is not just happy enough to go along with the current British political consensus - but that he also probably supports it. So, not much encouragement for libertarian principles there.

The Pope continued:

“This overview of recent cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Holy See illustrates well how much progress has been made, in the years that have passed since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, in promoting throughout the world the many core values that we share. I hope and pray that this relationship will continue to bear fruit, and that it will be mirrored in a growing acceptance of the need for dialogue and respect at every level of society between the world of reason and the world of faith. I am convinced that, within this country too, there are many areas in which the Church and the public authorities can work together for the good of citizens, in harmony with this Parliament’s historic practice of invoking the Spirit’s guidance upon those who seek to improve the conditions of all mankind. For such cooperation to be possible, religious bodies – including institutions linked to the Catholic Church – need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church. In this way, such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association are guaranteed. ”

Having spoken about relations between the UK and the Vatican, the Pope returned the theme of the necessity of “dialogue between the world of reason and the world of faith”. Personally, I think that this is an odd thing to say, as it implies that these are two different worlds - and possibly even that it is not possible to be a person of both reason and faith. I can see Richard Dawkins taking the view that if you have faith, then you are irrational, but I know the Pope doesn’t, so I think that he could have chosen his words better.

And finally, the Pope comes back to his earlier point, and to effectively end his address by again stating the need for such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association to be guaranteed. This was clearly the Pope’s great concern, for it comes out at the beginning of his address (third paragraph: “Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law”) the middle of his address (seventh paragraph: “These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion . . . . .”) and the conclusion of his address. And that is good.

However, there is one thing that strikes me as particularly odd about it. The Pope, in his address, repeatedly refers to Sir Thomas More.

“As I speak to you in this historic setting, I think of the countless men and women down the centuries who have played their part in the momentous events that have taken place within these walls and have shaped the lives of many generations of Britons, and others besides. In particular, I recall the figure of Saint Thomas More, the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose “good servant” he was, because he chose to serve God first. The dilemma which faced More in those difficult times, the perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God, allows me the opportunity to reflect with you briefly on the proper place of religious belief within the political process.”

Thomas More was a faithful Catholic and a man of courage and principle, as depicted in the film A Man for all Seasons. But that is not all that he was. Thomas More was also a firm believer in the burning of heretics.

Some people might say that this was an unexceptional belief for a 16th century man, and that he should not be judged by 20th century standards. There is some truth in that. But even by the standards of the 16th century, More was remarkably enthusiastic about burning heretics. When John Tewkesbury, a London leather-seller found guilty of having a copy of William Tyndale’s book The Parable of the Wicked Mammon was sentenced to burning for refusing to recant, More declared: he "burned as there was neuer wretche I wene better worthy." There were very few other major theological writers in 16th century Europe whose words show such eagerness to have their religious opponents burned.

So, in his address, the Pope spoke passionately in favour of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience - while praising a man who was militantly opposed to both. Thomas More believed that the Roman Catholic Church was right, that everybody else was wrong, and that it was the duty of the state to burn those who were heretics. He believed that heresy should be excluded from the public square. In short, More’s policy was precisely that of those who (to use the Pope’s words) “would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced.” It seems to me that for the Pope to use Thomas More as his starting point in an address that pleaded for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience was, to put it mildly, somewhat ironic.

That Pope Benedict should choose to focus on several aspects of freedom (freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of conscience, freedom of political affiliation and freedom of religion) in the major political speech of his visit to the UK was good news for lovers of freedom. Many religious leaders would, I suspect, not have chosen to emphasise freedom to the same extent - if at all. That he chose to speak about these freedoms as things that we in Britain need to keep valuing is particularly welcome. However, the Pope is clearly not a libertarian yet.

The Pope, the state, and freedom: Part 1

2010-09-22T12:02:00.003+01:00

The recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI was a state visit to the United Kingdom, and so it is not surprising that the Pope did not merely address the faithful, but also spoke to political leaders at Westminster Hall. And, it seems to me, if we are interested in the Pope’s views on matters of state, it is to his address at this meeting that we need to look. Here are some of my thoughts.

The third paragraph set the tone:

This country’s Parliamentary tradition owes much to the national instinct for moderation, to the desire to achieve a genuine balance between the legitimate claims of government and the rights of those subject to it. While decisive steps have been taken at several points in your history to place limits on the exercise of power, the nation’s political institutions have been able to evolve with a remarkable degree of stability. In the process, Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.

In his third paragraph, the Pope considers the limits of state power, and says that “decisive steps have been taken at several points in [Britain’s] history to place limits on the exercise of power,” and this is something that he seems to approve of - as do libertarians, of course. There is more common ground with libertarians here: the Pope used the word “freedom” twice in this paragraph - and freedom was to be a major theme in the address, as he was to use the word a further five times. He spoke of Britain as “as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law.” That sums up our political tradition well, and this is something that libertarians are happy with.

The Pope also said “While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.” The interesting word here is ‘much.’ Catholic social teaching has ‘much’ in common with the British tradition - but how much? He didn’t say - but his comment about using different language is interesting. The most important features of Catholic social teaching would appear, from the Pope’s words, to be ‘safeguarding the unique dignity of every human person’ and ‘fostering the common good’ - rather than safeguarding freedom and the rule of law. So how do we safeguard the unique dignity of every human person? How do we foster the common good? One suspects that the Pope would agree that the rule of law, the equality of everyone before the law, and freedom of speech are important - but how important?

In paragraphs 5 and 6, the Pope spoke of the importance of ethics in public life.

“There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world. Just as “every economic decision has a moral consequence” (Caritas in Veritate, 37), so too in the political field, the ethical dimension of policy has far-reaching consequences that no government can afford to ignore. A positive illustration of this is found in one of the British Parliament’s particularly notable achievements – the abolition of the slave trade. The campaign that led to this landmark legislation was built upon firm ethical principles, rooted in the natural law, and it has made a contribution to civilization of which this nation may be justly proud.”

It is about what we believe is right and wrong. And I suppose nobody is going to disagree. All political philosophy follows from beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. Libertarians, or example, believe that it is wrong for the state to deny people certain basic freedoms. Slavery, which the Pope mentioned, is an example of something that libertarians believe is wrong.

What about economics? The Pope said “There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world.” So - to what extent was the credit crunch caused by dishonesty? No doubt some Rothbardian will rush in and say that the Pope is quite right - that fractional reserve banking is fraud - but I don’t pretend to know about these things! Some people will say that it was caused to a large extent by greed, but greed is somewhat difficult to define. And to what extent was it caused by selfishness - i.e. a lack of care and concern for other people? If any economists are reading this, feel free to share your thoughts.

And so the Pope asked “Where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found?”, and replied that the answer is ‘reason’: “The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.” And the Pope went on to say that where we had religion without the corrective of reason or reason without the corrective of religion, things tended to go wrong - in both the political and religious sphere. “Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.”

This begs the question “Which religion?” Because they don’t all say the same things. Christianity, Islam, and Aztec religion all have rather different things to say. But it also raises further questions in my mind. Is the Pope basically suggesting that legislators, even though they may be basically secular people, need to listen more to the pronouncements of the Catholic Bishops, and the General Synod, and the Chief Rabbi, and other religious groups?

Because if that is what he is saying, it sounds very different to what I find in the Bible. The Bible tells of Old Testament prophets speaking to kings, and (perhaps more relevantly for our day) it tells us of the apostle Paul speaking to individuals in the political realm - such as Sergius Paulus, Festus and Felix (all of whom were Roman governors) and King Agrippa. I simply cannot imagine that the apostle Paul would have said to Sergius Paulus “You need to listen to what the priests at the temple of Aphrodite, and the rabbis of the synagogues, and the presbyters of the churches, and hear what they are saying.” Paul did not encourage rulers who were secularly minded people to listen to faith communities - he encouraged them to become Christians - presumably with the expectation that they would try to govern in accordance with the teaching of Jesus. It seems to me that the Pope’s approach is quite different.

And at this point, the Pope comes to one of his main points - the marginalization of religion:

“In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.”

By the way, living, as I do, in a country where Christmas was not a public holiday until 1958, I can’t see why any Christian would be worried about whether or not we publicly celebrate Christmas. Scotland was at least as Christian in the first half of the 20th century as it is today.

And this brings us to two more of the Pope’s seven references to freedom.

“And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience. These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square.”

I’m not quite sure what the Pope meant when he spoke of Christians in public roles being required at times to act against their conscience. What does he mean by “acting against their conscience?” I suspect that he doesn’t mean doing something illegal or dishonest - but rather something that a Christian might believe is wrong, but that would be regarded by most people in Britain as quite acceptable. Employers have rights, too - and that should include the right to dismiss people who are not doing their job properly. A Christian who doesn’t like it should find alternative work. The problem arises when it is difficult to find alternative work - because one employer has a virtual monopoly in certain fields. And that situation most often arises when the employer is the state. If the roll of the state in modern Britain was rolled back, discrimination against Christians would cease to be a problem - and freedom would be extended.

(To be continued)

Thou shalt love the state thy God . . .

2010-09-20T17:39:00.002+01:00

There has been rather a lot in the news recently about the coming cuts in government expenditure, in particular with regard to the possibility of civil unrest that might result.

And while the ASI blog and Jeff Randal and many others have pointed out that these cuts are actually not as deep as some people would have you believe, anyone involved in local government will tell you that difficult decisions will have to be made, the result of which will be some very unhappy people.

Public sector trade unions are particularly concerned, and are speaking of the need to defend jobs and services. My gut feeling is that they are more concerned about the former than the latter. What really worries people is losing their jobs. For the unions, the state sector exists to protect jobs.

This has been brought home to me by a couple of recent conversations that I have had. One was a with a politician. He told me that many rural communities simply cannot survive on the private sector, because the private sector will never create enough jobs. These communities need a substantial state sector in order to provide employment.

The other conversation was with the head teacher of a primary school. We chatted about the huge growth in the number of people employed in small rural schools in recent decades. She admitted that it was a waste of money, but said (with great feeling) “At least it provides jobs. Where would these people find employment if it were not for these jobs?” In other words, she felt that the jobs didn’t really need doing - but creating jobs, even if those jobs are somewhat pointless, is a reasonable use of tax-payers’ money. The state is there to provide us with a living.

But is that what the state exists for?

And then there is the case of a young man I know called Ben. Ben is a very nice chap. He could, potentially, get a job - though he doesn’t have one at the moment. In fact, because of a hereditary condition, he might have difficulty getting one - and his condition means that he will never be able to be completely independent. He could stay at home with his parents, but, in order to be less dependent on them, he stays in a house with some friends, who would also have difficulties looking after themselves. Ben’s rent is paid by the state, and he lives on state benefits. This is, obviously, a great relief to his parents, for whom his condition has been a great worry over the years.

When I think about Ben, and about my two recent conversations, it is not difficult to see why many people in Britain today greatly appreciate the state. Indeed, we don’t just appreciate the state, we love it - because we depend on it. We look to it to step in and solve our problems, in a way that nobody would have dreamed of doing 100 years ago. It has become our saviour.

But it has become more than that. Ben has relatives who are reasonably well off. They do not, however, give anything to him. They have been advised not to include Ben in their wills. And the reason, of course, is that Ben has everything he needs at the moment, and any additional wealth that comes his way will simply lead to a loss of state benefits. Ben will not benefit from any money that is given to him. The state is, in this case, encouraging people not to provide for their relatives. And that bothers me. Surely people should be encouraged to make financial provision for their relatives?

The state, in other words, is becoming our provider and our life - that which we simply cannot survive without. The state has become not simply a safety net, if everything else fails - it is our first port of call. This is not, of course, the state as people conceived of it 300 years ago, or 200 years ago, or even 100 or years ago - but the modern, welfare state.

To many, it sounds good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just mean wasting money, creating dependency, and discouraging responsibility. Because the state doesn’t just give. It also takes, for it has nothing of its own, and can only give what it takes from others. But the real problem is not the fact that it takes our money. The real problem is that the state finds it very difficult not to tell us what we can and cannot do - and when we are totally dependent on it, we will have little inclination to defend our freedoms.

The state was designed to be servant. But as it has increasingly become our all powerful provider, it looks like it has become our god. Is the state one of the great idols of modern Britain?

50 funny people write to the Guardian

2010-09-16T12:26:00.004+01:00

50 people, some of whom I have heard of, have written a letter to the Guardian to express the view that the Pope should not be given the honour of a state visit to Britain.

What an odd letter.

I could see the point if they said "Look, we know that technically speaking he is a head of state, but we all know that the Vatican isn't really a proper country, and that he is really the head of religious body - so surely a state visit isn't really appropriate."

Or, to put it another way, if they had just sent in their first two sentences and (most of) the last sentence, their letter would have been reasonable.

We, the undersigned, share the view that Pope Ratzinger should not be given the honour of a state visit to this country. We believe that the pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country. We reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the pope as a head of state as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican.

But they seem to be saying "If he held progressive opinions, we wouldn't have a problem with the Pope being accorded the honour of a state visit*, but we really don't like the Roman Catholic Church and its beliefs - and it has made some major mistakes in the past - so we think that a state visit is inappropriate."

However, even the second sentence managed to amuse me. "We believe that the pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country."

Yes, it's that phrase "a citizen of Europe". I'd heard of European citizenship, but I thought that meant "a citizen of a country that was part of the European Union." To refer to the Pope as "a citizen of Europe" implies, to me at least, that Europe is a nation state.

(*And they would probably feel that the £12 million cost of the visit to the tax-payer would be money well spent if the Pope was using his visit to advocate progressive opinions!)

Reflections on "9/11"

2010-09-15T18:04:00.004+01:00

Since I arrived at Paddington Station just over half a century ago, there have been three events that, it seems to me, have, more than any other, changed and shaped the political world.

The world as it was then

The political world at that time - the world of the 1950s, 60s and 70s - was dominated by the Cold War - the ideological conflict in which the west found itself threatened by revolutionary socialism inspired by the thought of Karl Marx. Wars involving the UK, France, and the USA (and other western states) were fought in Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1955-75). And several other wars and revolutions were inspired in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And then there were Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Middle Eastern conflicts in those days were seen as part of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union backing Syria and Egypt, and the USA backing Israel. And most significantly, socialism was the ideology that inspired discontented Arabs. Nasser, Arafat, and the Baathists of Syria and Iraq all used the language of socialism. They were political secularists. And among the more extreme Palestinian factions, like the PFLP, it was Marx rather than Mohammed who inspired the leadership. George Habbash, the leader of the PFLP was not even Muslim. He was Greek Orthodox.

Event 1: The Iranian Revolution

Then along came the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Militant Islam, which had been a fairly insignificant force in the 1960s and 70s, now became a major force among the discontented people of the Middle East. Socialism had not delivered the goods. Perhaps Islam could. And anyway, socialism was essentially western, and Marx was European, and the communism’s preference for atheism had never been particularly popular in the Middle East. As the Lebanese Civil War raged, Hezbollah emerged as a major force. And a few years later, an Islamic Palestinian group called Hamas came into being. And the west started to worry about militant Islam - even if it was still more worried about Marxist socialism.

Event 2: The collapse of the Soviet Union.

As a result of changes in domestic and foreign policy in the Soviet Union brought in under Gorbachev’s leadership, the Cold War came to a fairly sudden end. In 1989, the Soviet backed regimes in Eastern Europe effectively collapsed. In 1990 Germany was reunited. In 1991 the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union came to an end. Civil wars broke out in what had been Yugoslavia, but the world seemed to be a less threatening place. And among the discontented in the Middle East, secular socialism’s credibility as a revolutionary force dwindled further. All the time, the power and influence of militant Islam was growing.

Event 3: The September 11 attacks

Nine months into the new century, the world changed again. It wasn’t just that the Turks were at the gates of Vienna. They were now at the gates of every city in the western world. And Islam was every bit as terrifying as communism had been in the Cold War era.

And so it remains today. Furthermore, the Cold War era seems like ancient history. Brezhnev has been dead for nearly 30 years, and it is a quarter of a century ago that Gorbachev began his program which was to lead to the winding up of the Soviet empire. It is not just that Islam is the great threat to Western civilisation; it feels like it has always been that way.

And it seems to me that this has had two major effects in the way people in Britain think. The first, and most obvious, is that there is a real and widespread fear of Muslims, and of also fear of Islam per se. There were those in Britain who feared Muslims and Islam 10 years ago - but the levels of concern are far higher today. The rise of Islamic militancy has changed the way that we see Muslims. Islamic militancy, however, is a phenomenon that was virtually unknown 40 years ago, and that a large proportion of the world’s Muslims don’t have much enthusiasm for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Muslims do vary considerably. I would differentiate, by the way, between how we view Muslims, and how we view Islam per se. I don’t judge Islam (or any other faith) by its adherents, but by what I know of its founder and of its teachings.

It seems to me that the 9/11 attacks have had another effect on the way some people in Britain think. Many people are increasingly suspicious not just of Islam, but of all religion. After all, for decades now, I have been hearing people saying that all religions are basically the same. We’ve all heard it. (Remember Steve Turner’s satirical poem, Creed?) And if they are all basically the same, it follows that Christianity is as dangerous as Islam. Since 9/11, it has become common to hear people in Britain claiming that religion is the cause of most wars. Very few people would have made such a claim 15 years ago. 50 years ago it would have been almost unthinkable for someone in Britain to have made such an idiotic assertion.

There is one other thing that, as a Christian, I find interesting. Both the old threat to the west (revolutionary communism) and the new threat (revolutionary Islam), have one thing in common. Not just in theory, but also in practice, both have proved to be strongly hostile to Christianity.

Gloria mundi

2010-09-13T08:46:00.004+01:00

According to Total Politics, this blog has been voted one of the top 50 Scottish blogs for 2010. In fact, it managed to place at number 30 - which is a bit of a surprise. I must confess that while it is very nice to be accorded such an honour, the really nice thing is that some people must have made the effort to vote for it. Thank you very much, whoever you are. I am very touched.

I suppose the funny thing is that Stewart Cowan actually got to the story and mentioned it 10 days before I did. (Thanks, Stewart! It's good to see that your blog made the list as well.) I've not been spending much time in the blogosphere recently, and I'm not the only one. Quite a few bloggers seem to be giving up, or going into abeyance - though I see that Tom Paine is back, and even Cranmer has risen from the dead. (I must confess considerable curiosity about the latter, who has made many enigmatic comments about his struggles.)

I also notice that quite a few of the blogs that I read have already appeared on the Total Politics "top blogs" lists, and I hope that several more will do so over the next few weeks as the lists are released.

Freedom of the Press. Yes, but . . . .

2010-09-11T13:40:00.002+01:00

Today is the 9th anniversary of what Americans generally refer to as 9/11. The events of the day were shocking, and what shocked me most at the time was the ease with which the attackers were able to launch their devastating attack on the World Trade Center. Security procedures obviously needed to be tightened up. And they were - probably rather more than was necessary.

Alas, that was not all that happened. The war on terror was launched, which was to include the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. (For my thoughts, see here.) And the British and American governments passed legislation which seriously (and, in my opinion, unnecessarily) curtailed basic freedoms.

However, this year, 9/11 is particularly dismal. This is because, for the past few days, Terry Jones has been constantly in the headlines, because he planned to hold a Burn-a-Koran day. Mr. Jones, is the pastor of an independent congregation in Gainesville, Florida called the Dove World Outreach Center. The BBC says that it has about 50 members. (The DWOC website refers to him as Dr. Jones, and describes him as President of Dove Charismatic Ministries.)

Now it seems to me that the interesting thing about all this is not Mr. Jones’ plan to burn a few copies of Koran. The interesting thing is the amount of media attention that his plan received. And it struck me that if Mr. Jones could become instantly famous for announcing that he was going to hold a Burn-a-Koran day, so could I. Needless to say, I have no such plans, and nor to most other Christians in Britain - or the USA. But Mr. Jones does, because (not to put too fine a point on it) Mr. Jones is a nutter. (There are plenty of them around, no matter where in the world you go, and I'm not convinced that American Christians are, on the whole, any nuttier, on average, than other people.) But Mr. Jones has managed to become rather better known than most nutters, and to have worried a lot more people. Which is quite understandable, because it was felt that his action would probably lead to a rather extreme reaction from some other nutters. (Though if I’m being honest, I have to say that his planned response to the 9/11 incidents is actually fairly mild compared to that of some leading politicians . . . . )

Anyway, the point of the matter is that this nutter should simply have been ignored. He should have been allowed to get on with his book burning. The media should have realised that his plans were rather incendiary, and should have given them no publicity at all. That way I would not have heard of them, and nor would you, and nor would the Muslim world. Alas, the media failed to do what they should have done, and as a result, Mr. Jones is famous.

When Herostratus burned the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus in the year 356 B.C. in an effort to achieve fame, the authorities in the city of Ephesus, in order to discourage copy-cat incidents from fame-seekers, banned the mention of his name. You can see why.

It would have been utterly wrong for the authorities to ban the mention of Mr. Jones or his plans. Freedom of the press is important. But with freedom comes responsibility. And in my view, the behaviour of the press in this instance has been irresponsible. And the problem with that is that irresponsible behaviour brings freedom into disrepute.

Freedom-lovers, take note.

The strange justice of Sexual Offences Prevention Orders

2010-08-31T22:50:00.002+01:00

Well, my holiday turned out to be rather a long one, with the result that my blog has become rather neglected. However, I was reading a story recently that disturbed me, and I thought that I ought to raise my disquiet.

It concerns the case of a 22 year old man who was jailed for a total of 14 months for the crime of . . . twice in the space of two days being in the same room as a young girl.

My eyes widened. It seemed like an odd thing to be sent to jail for, even in 21st century Britain. Apparently the man had breached the terms of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), which was made following his conviction for a sexual offence in November 2005 - when he would have been about 17 years old. The SOPO banned him from remaining or residing in any home which was also occupied by young girls. He was also forbidden from approaching, speaking to or communicating with girls aged under 16.

However, he recently became friendly with a local teenage boy who had two young school-age sisters. This friendship caused concern to his supervising team and at a meeting it was decided to disclose his background to the girls' parents to ensure he was kept away from them."

And so a social worker and police inspector called at the home to see the mother. They were invited into the property and on entering the kitchen found the accused sitting there along with a number of teenagers, one of them being an underage girl. It turned out that two days earlier he had been present in the house in the company of the other sister. No one has ever suggested that anything sexual occurred, simply that the order was breached.

But it gets worse. In court, the defence provided further details on the case - which were not challenged by the prosecution. On the first occasion, the 22 year old went to visit his friend after learning that he was alone in his mother's house. While he was there, one of his friend's sisters got off the school bus and went into the kitchen where the two men were sitting. There was a fleeting conversation before the girl went into her bedroom and that was the extent of the contact.

The second meeting was even innocuous. The 22 year old again arrived at the house in question along with his friend, but refused to go inside because he knew one of the girls was present. He eventually went inside on the insistence of his friend's mother, because it was raining. She then was going to supply food. While the man was in the house, the police called. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, there is no question that the 22 year old man was warned. He knew about his SOPO, and he knew about the consequences of breaching it. But 14 months in jail for sitting in a group of teenagers, one of whom was a girl under 16? It seems somewhat disproportionate to me. And it seems to me that the terms of the SOPO were extreme - especially as it seems that the man was probably 17 when the first offence was carried out. In fact, at the recent court case, the man’s defence stated that a psychologist's report on her client deemed him to be at a low risk of re-offending sexually but at a high risk of breaching the SOPO.

I don’t even know the full facts of this case. I do not know the anything about the man, or about the original offence he was convicted of. I have no doubt that what he did was wrong, and was very serious. (I may be wrong, but I would assume that since he was not in prison when breaches of the SOPO took place earlier this year, that whatever he did was consensual.) OK, it could be argued that he was lucky that in 2005 he was given a SOPO instead of a long jail sentence. But it still seems to me that this SOPO was ridiculously wide ranging. Sexual crimes against young girls are serious. But has society’s horror at such crimes led our politicians to take measures that are completely disproportionate?

SOPOs, by the way, were introduced by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, section 104. Why is it that the first decade of the 21st century seems to excel all others for dubious legislation?

How times have changed...

2010-07-05T06:50:00.004+01:00

Jonathan and Judy are home from school, so we are off to the seaside for a few days. Before I grab my bucket and spade, though, here's an interesting bit of nostalgia.

For over 40 years, there's been a book entitled the How and Why Wonder Book of Weather on the bookshelves of Number 32. It's part of a very worthy and educational series of books for children. I've not looked at it for years, but the other day, for some reason, it came off the shelf.

And at the end of the book, I found this very interesting experiment.

Sigh. You don't get stuff like that in children's books these days.

Eigg on their faces?

2010-07-01T10:47:00.010+01:00

The 95 people of the Isle of Eigg had much to be happy about a few months ago. They had just won £300,000 in a competition called "The Big Green Challenge." This was all a result of their new (2008) electricity system, based on 'renewable energy'. (Before this, there was no mains electricty on Eigg.) To quote Wikipedia:

"The new system incorporates a 9.9 kWp PV [photovoltaic] system, three hydro generation systems (totalling 112 kW) and a 24 kW wind farm supported by stand-by diesel generation and batteries to guarantee continuous availability of power. A load management system has been installed to provide optimal use of the renewables. This combination of solar, wind and hydro power should provide a network that is self sufficient and powered 98% from renewable sources. The system was switched on, on 1 February 2008."

You will note that the 'renewable' sources are able to produce, in theory, 146 kilowatts. The two diesel generators are able to produce 160 kilowatts - 80 each.

Graeme Downie of Nesta was impressed:

"You only have to look around you here on Eigg to see what the community here has managed to achieve - a 32% reduction in carbon emissions in just one year. That's remarkable when you consider that the Scottish government's target for 2020 is a 42% reduction."

A few months later, it's not quite so rosy. The doubters have long been asking the question - what if the wind doesn't blow? And in Eigg, it didn't. It didn't even rain much, which meant that there wasn't enough water for hydro-electric generation to take place.

(And here, it needs to be remembered that while hydro-electric generation using dams and reservoirs is a reliable method of generating electricity, the scheme on Eigg used run-of-river generators, which means there was no reservoir, and hence the whole scheme was vulnerable to water shortages.)

Luckily, the lights have not gone off - thanks to the standby diesel generators. But people are having to reduce their electricity use - going back to boiling kettles by gas and doing their washing at night. And deep fat fryers, apparently, "are a definite no-no.”

Of course, it's no great hardship for people who didn't have mains electricity at all until two years ago, but it does raise questions.

For example, I'd like to know how much electricity the wind turbines have actually contributed to the system. In theory, they can produce up to 24 kilowatts - but what have they actually produced in practice?

I'd also like to know why rationing is having to go on if the diesel backup generators are actually capable of producing more electricity than all the renewable sources put together.

But the big question is about what this says about the national grid depending on wind power (and run-of-river hydroelectricity). On a national scale, the consequences of weather dependent fluctuations could be serious. I think we should take this as a gentle reminder that it will be a very long time before the national grid is able to put any great dependence on 'renewable energy'.

H/T The Devil's Knife.

p.s. Am I the only one who thinks that the wind turbines in the picture are not exactly attractive?

Politics, establishment religion, & outsider religion

2010-06-26T22:47:00.004+01:00

(I'm afraid this post is rather long. In fact, it should keep readers going until the middle of July. Before reading it, make sure you are sitting comfortably, preferably with a mug of cocoa and a supply of buns.)

I’m still on the subject of the way that Christians in Britain see political issues, with particular reference to the recent election. This post follows from my last post, in which I considered the list of questions that the Rev. Guy Davies, a Baptist pastor, put to the candidates in his constituency.

One of the things that interested me about the questions that Mr. Davies chose to ask was that his concerns were remarkably similar to those that the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales expressed in their leaflet “Some issues and questions for Parliamentary Candidates.”

While Mr. Davies had 12 questions for candidates, and the bishops dealt with five areas, both basically had nine areas of concern, and of these nine, six were common to both.

Common concerns

1. Secularisation and the place of religion in society.
Guy Davis: Do you believe that Christian values have a beneficial role to play in contemporary society?
CBCEW: What do you think is the place of religion in society?

Notice the difference in phrasing. The Catholic bishops speak about the place of religion, Mr Davies about Christian values. I think that bishops have asked the better question. It is more open ended, and more likely to get a candidate thinking. It also has the potential to get a more interesting response.

But I suspect that the underlying concern is the same. Both clearly feel that the Church and the Christian faith are being marginalised in modern Britain by aggressive secularism (and also, perhaps, ‘multi-faithism’). The Archbishop of Canterbury has the same feeling. In his recent sermon for the new parliament, he spoke about the way our society has been “regarding religious communities with the mixture of patronage and nervousness that has become uncomfortably common of late.”

This is not just a question of Christians to ask of politicians. It is also one that we Christians need to ask ourselves. What should be the place of religion, and specifically Christianity, in our society? Should Christianity have a privileged position? Does Luke 6:22 have anything at all to say to us on this subject?

2. Religious freedom
GD: Do you accept that people who believe that heterosexual marriage is the only proper context for a sexual expression should be free to say so without falling foul of the law or loosing their jobs? Do you believe that churches should be free only to employ people whose beliefs and lifestyle are in accordance with Christian teaching?
CBCEW: Religious belief is not just something private: it helps create a society that wants to see everyone flourish. It has a contribution to make and must be allowed to do so in accordance with its teachings.

This is closely related to the first point. Indeed, the words “and must be allowed to do so in accordance with its teachings” come just before the question “What do you think is the place of religion in society?” bishops’ leaflet.

Notice that both Mr. Davies and the bishops use similar forms of words about religious groups being allowed to operate in accordance with their teachings. Mr. Davies only asks about freedom for Christian churches, the bishops (in rather curious phrasing), say that “religious belief” must be allowed to make its contribution in accordance with its teachings. While that is rather inelegant, I like the fact that they request this freedom for all religions, not just one. (If you want freedom for yourself, you should be prepared to give it to others, on the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” principle.) In addition, I feel that it might have been wiser for Mr. Davies to ask “Do you believe that churches should be free only to employ people whose beliefs and lifestyle are in accordance with their teaching?” After all, different people have different views about what constitutes “Christian teaching”.

3. The place of marriage
GD: Do you believe that ...it is the duty of the State to do all it can to strengthen and encourage the institution of marriage?
CBCEW: Families are the basic building block of any stable society. Marriage provides the best context for bringing up children and must have the clear support and encouragement of Government. What will you do for marriage and the family? What practical measures will you take to encourage and support stable family life and the institution of marriage?

The phrasing is remarkably similar. But why do they believe that it is the duty of the State to strengthen and encourage the institution of marriage? What is the particular concern? The rising divorce rate? The rise in cohabitation? Do they really believe that anything that the state is likely to do will have any significant effect on divorce or cohabitation rates? The Labour government abolished the married couples’ tax allowance in 1999, but cohabitation and divorce rates was rising long before that. (Of course, it would be completely wrong to have a tax and benefit system that actually penalised married couples.)

4. Abortion
GD: Do you believe that the law on abortion is too lax, too restrictive or about right?
CBCEW: valuing life. That means opposing abortion ....What does respect for life mean to you? Do all lives have the same value? ... the unborn?

It’s no surprise that abortion is a political issue for Christians. The bishops, however, are careful to avoid being seen as single issue fanatics, and put opposing abortion together with opposing euthanasia, and life-cramping poverty, and the neglect of the elderly.

5. Euthanasia
GD: Do you think that the law on euthanasia should be changed?
CBCEW: valuing life. That means opposing ...euthanasia

Again, no surprise.

6. The environment

GD: How does your Party propose to protect the environment both at the local and international level?
CBCEW: Our care for each other is also shown in how ...we use – or abuse – the environment we share. We must be good stewards of God’s creation, not selfish exploiters of it. What is our responsibility to safeguard and protect the environment?"

This is an interesting one. It is something that Christians speak about a lot these days - but which, historically speaking, has not been a major concern of Christians. This, of course, is because during the 20th century, people have become a lot more aware of the potential for pollution to permanently damage the earth. Over the past 50 years, the environment has become a major political issue, and curbs have been put on air and water pollution in the western world.

I have a problem with this issue. It is summed up by the way Mr. Davies begins his question. “How does your party propose...?” Mr. Davies’s first seven questions are all “Yes or No” questions. They all begin with “Do you believe?” or “Do you accept?” or something like that. This one doesn’t. And I suspect Mr. Davies knows the answer that he is looking for in the first seven questions. He knows what he wants the law to say about abortion and euthanasia and freedom of religion. I suspect that when it comes to the environment, he doesn’t know what legislation he wants. He knows that protecting the environment is important, and so he includes a question on it. I even have my doubts that the Catholic Bishops know exactly what sort of environmental protection legislation they want. So I guess if Mr. Davies were to ask me, as a hypothetical libertarian candidate, how my party proposed to protect the environment both at the local and international level, I’d probably want to return the question and ask him what exactly he thought should be done, and why.

Other concerns

In addition to the 6 common concerns, Mr Davies and the bishops each had three additional concerns.

In the case of the bishops these were the treatment of immigrants (an issue that was clearly very important to the bishops judging by the amount of space they gave it), neglect of the elderly (this was covered very briefly), and poverty (both nationally and globally). In my opinion, the issue of poverty is like the question of the environment. We all know it’s an important issue - it’s just that we don’t know what to do about it. (And anyone who thinks they do know how to solve the problem of poverty is, in my view, hopelessly deluded.)

In the case of Mr. Davies, the three additional concerns were homosexuality (in particular the recognition of homosexual marriage), sex education in schools, and the local issues concerning hospital and swimming pool closures.

Should we expect so much common ground?

As I say, I was interested that there was so much agreement between Mr. Davies and the Catholic bishops in the concerns that they raised. One might say that this isn’t so odd, since these are issues that one would expect Christians to be concerned about. But we should bear in mind that there are two big differences between Mr. Davies and the bishops. First, they are Roman Catholic, and Mr. Davies is a staunch Protestant - he works part time for the Protestant Truth Society. Second, the bishops are a collection of people with a large organisation behind them, which includes people with political expertise, who have the resources to put together a carefully crafted and thought out document. Mr Davies is simply an individual with, as far as I am aware, no particular expertise in politics. And yet he and the bishops came up with a very similar list of concerns.

(By the way, if we wanted to compare like with like, and were looking for a large Protestant organisation which reflects the theological viewpoint of Mr. Davies, one could do worse than looking at the Christian Institute. They produced an election briefing, which Mr. Davies recommended on his blog, in which they stated “The Christian Institute believes that there are three touchstone issues for Christians in 2010: religious liberty, the sanctity of marriage, and the sanctity of human life.” In other words, they share four of the 6 concerns common to Mr. Davies and the Catholic bishops: freedom of religion, the place of marriage, abortion, and euthanasia. The two that are missing are the place of religion in modern society - probably because they felt that this was simply too general a point - and, very interestingly, the environment.)

The outlook of the ecclesiastical establishment

And what makes this even more interesting is that when I looked at the political concerns raised by members of the ecclesiastical establishment in Scotland in the run up to the election, the picture was entirely different. Not one of the six figures from the ecclesiastical establishment mentioned abortion. Not one mentioned euthanasia. Not one mentioned marriage. Not one mentioned the place of religion in society. And, note this, not one mentioned concerns about the erosion of freedom (religious or otherwise) in Britain. (The four issues that they particularly highlighted, by the way, were the treatment of immigrants, poverty, disarmament, and the environment.)

I find this interesting. Mr. Davies, as a Baptist pastor, has far more in common with the Catholic bishops of England and Wales than he does with his six fellow-Protestants from Scotland. And it seems to me that this is because he and the bishops are outside the establishment, whereas the six Scots are part of the establishment. It could be argued the difference is actually that Mr. Davies and the bishops stand for traditional Christianity, whereas the six Scots do not. But surely traditional Christianity is not so completely marginalised in the Church of Scotland that not a single traditional Christian was selected when six people were to be asked about their thoughts on the election?

Which is why I propose an alternative way of categorising Christians - those who follow establishment Christianity and those who are outside the establishment. The six Scots are comfortable in modern Britain, and one of the reasons they are able to feel comfortable is that they see no signs that our traditional freedoms are disappearing. They are basically optimistic about the political future of British society. Mr. Davies and the bishops are not comfortable in modern Britain. They appear to have a feeling of foreboding about the future. And one of the reasons for that is that they have at least some awareness that freedoms long taken for granted are being taken away by our political leaders. Whatever you may think of their theological views, at least they have their eyes open.

Christians and political issues - a Baptist perspective

2010-06-24T20:15:00.008+01:00

Before the General Election, I blogged a bit on the way that various church leaders saw the election, and in particular, what they saw as the main issues. (People from the Scottish ecclesiastical establishment here, here and here, and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales here.)

Well, the election is over, but the matter of how Christians in Britain see the political landscape at the moment remains an interesting and important one. So I trust that no-one will mind me returning to this subject, and going back a couple of months.

The Rev. Guy Davies, a Baptist Pastor and blogger, came up with a list of questions about political issues, and sent them to the candidates of the three main parties in the constituency of Westbury. Interestingly enough, he only sent his quiz to the candidates of the three main parties.

Anyway, here are
1) the questions
2) the answers that I would have given if a) I been the Libertarian Party candidate in Westbury and b) I was trying to be brief, and
3) my comments on the questions.

1. Do you believe that Christian values have a beneficial role to play in contemporary society?

Answer: Absolutely.
Comments: "Values" is a slightly odd word. Furthermore, people might not agree about what constitute Christian values. If we mean things like honesty and integrity and compassion, I don’t think anyone is going to disagree. In fact I find it difficult to imagine anyone saying no. Even Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchins would probably have answered “yes” to this one - had they been candidates in the election.

2. Do you believe that marriage is for a man and a woman alone and that it is the duty of the State to do all it can to strengthen and encourage the institution of marriage?

Answer: Yes to the first question, No to the second.
Comments: Two fairly straightforward questions. The first, it seems to me, is about personal opinions, the answer to which doesn’t actually tell us about the policies favoured by the candidate - the second is, however, definitely about policies.

3. Do you accept that people who believe that heterosexual marriage is the only proper context for a sexual expression should be free to say so without falling foul of the law or loosing their jobs?

Answer: Yes to the first question. To the second, I would say that I think that an employer in the private sector should have the freedom to fire someone for expressing such a view. That is the necessary corollary to my answer to the next question.
Comments: Again, straightforward questions - and ones that would not have been on anyone’s list of questions for candidates 20 years ago. Who would have thought that our freedoms would have gone so quickly?

4. Do you believe that churches should be free only to employ people whose beliefs and lifestyle are in accordance with Christian teaching?

Answer: Absolutely.
Comments: An important question. It’s about a very important freedom.

5. Should school governors be given discretion over the contents of sex education lessons and should the concerns of parents be taken into account when deciding what children are taught?

Answer: Absolutely.
Comments: The education of children is the business of parents, not the state.

6. Do you believe that the law on abortion is too lax, too restrictive or about right?

Answer: Too lax.
Comments: That’s my personal answer. In this matter, libertarians have a huge variety of views, generally passionately held.

7. Do you think that the law on euthanasia should be changed?

Answer: Not really. There’s undoubtedly room for improvement, but I think it’s about right.
Comments: Again, not all libertarians agree with me. However, I’m not completely alone. Tom Paine wrote a piece on his blog that I liked so much that I cross-posted it.

8. Given the closure of the Westbury Hospital and the mooted closure of the Westbury Swimming Pool, what more can be done to promote the health and wellbeing of the people of this town?

Answer: Quite a bit, I’m sure, but not much of it is the business of the state. If you, as a citizen, have ideas on promoting health and wellbeing, then I’d encourage you to put them into practice.
Comments: Health policy is big issue. And in the end, it isn’t realistic to expect there to expect there to be a big hospital (or swimming pool) in every town in the country. I don’t doubt that swimming pools do contribute to the health and wellbeing of people, but many people manage to get exercise and stay healthy without going near one. It must be 30 years since I was last in one.

9. How does your Party propose to protect the environment both at the local and international level?

Answer: Actually, my party’s manifesto doesn’t say anything about that.
Comments: That’s a dreadful answer, isn’t it? But it’s true, and Mr Davies did ask what my party proposed. Hopefully that will be remedied in the near future. In the meantime, I’d have to give my opinion, which is: “With respect to the local level, our policy is that we will maintain waste disposal services, and if it can be established beyond reasonable doubt that someone polluted someone else’s property, we will prosecute them and fine them for the damage that they have caused. With respect to international level, it is effectively impossible to do anything - though I believe that if it can be established beyond reasonable doubt that an individual or a business operating in Britain polluted the territory of another nations, the British state should penalise the guilty individual.
Edit: I've had further thoughts on this, and hope to post them in the near future.

10. Is British society broken, and if so how does your Party hope fix it?

Answer: British society is deeply flawed because of the fall of man and human sin, and I suppose that as such, one could describe it as ‘broken’. However, it is not within the power of a political party or the state to fix it. As you sir, should know.
Comments: Odd question!

11. Why should the people of Westbury give you their votes at this General Election?

Answer: Because they are concerned about the erosion of freedoms that has been taking place in our country.
Comments: It's useful to include a general question like that. A candidate might give an interesting or revealing answer.

By the way, if you want to know how the candidates replied to Mr. Davies's questions, see here for Labour, here for the Conservative, and here for the LibDem.)

p.s. I hope to follow this up with another post on the subject.

Spend, spend, spend!

2010-06-22T15:07:00.006+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I wondered if the government would really cut public spending.

Well, we now have the budget. And according to the Telegraph's report on the budget,

-Government spending will be £637bn in 2010/11
-Government spending will be £711bn in 2015/16

That compares with an estimate for £631 bn for 2009/10, and an actual figure of £575 bn for 2008/09 (according to UK Public Spending).

So it looks like overall public spending is not going to be cut (though the budgets of several departments and programmes, of course will). Spending will rise in 2010/11 by 0.95% over the previous year, and by an average of 2.2% a year over the next 5 years.

Of course, inflation (CPI) is currently running at 3.4%, so if that rate continues and if public spending actually does turn out to be what the government intends, then, in real terms, public spending will be cut - though not exactly drastically. But I'm not sure whether or not government spending projections take inflation into account.

Edit: Thanks to Burning Our Money, this handy graph explains all. I think.

Edit 2: The Wall Street Journal says "In real terms spending is actually projected to carry on going up—from £637 billion in 2010-11 to £711 billion in 2015-16—but that still represents the biggest squeeze since World War II."

Real terms? That is simply amazing.

(Thanks to Tim Worstall, who also appears to be surprised.)

The length of blog posts

2010-06-22T12:51:00.003+01:00

When I published my last post, I was surprised by how long it looked. I checked, and it was (excluding title) 1,203 words long. Oh dear. My previous one was a more manageable 339, but the one before that came to 1,763. I'm beginning to wonder if my posts are getting too long. It's partly that they are taking me too long to research and write, but also because I'm aware that some people take one look at a long post, and their heart sinks.

I know. Kevin at Anna Raccoon wrote a very good post recently about the situation in Thailand. 9,081 words! What I saw the length of it, I despaired, and my first inclination was to go away. I was sufficiently curious about Thailand that I stayed, and I am now somewhat better informed. And then there are the amazing and learned discussions between Albert and Indigomyth (and others) to be found in some comment sections of this blog....

Of course, some people can get away with it. Leg-Iron's last 5 averaged 1,351 words (and one was up to 2,493). But then not many people can write like Leg-Iron.

Phil Walker writes beautifully brief posts. His last 5 average only 208 words, though the one before that was a little longer at 681.

Patently is also good at brief posts. His most recent 5 posts average only 214 words. He did once write a post of 1,689 - but it was prefaced with "Warning: long discursive post. Go and get a cup of tea."

I feel that I really ought to keep my posts brief. But I just don't seem to be able to say the things I want to say in 500 words.

Bloody Sunday: unanswered questions

2010-06-18T12:56:00.001+01:00

Well, I didn't intend to write anything more about Bloody Sunday, but I found that I couldn't get it out of my mind. For a start, I was fascinated that while freedom-loving bloggers like Daniel Hannan and Raedwald and Blue Eyes, generally considered to be well to the right of centre, welcomed the conclusions of the Saville Report, most right-of-centre people (i.e. the ones who post comments on Daily Telegraph blogs) really didn't like it. Mr. Hannan didn't seem to be very popular with his regular readers.

So I started reading the report's summary of the events of the day. (Yes, I know. I said that I wasn't going to study it closely. But I paid for it. And if I pay for something, I want my money's worth.)

The report seemed to me to be fair and balanced - unlike Wikipedia's articles on subjects related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. (Is it just me, or are Wikipedia articles on politically contentious subjects often biassed?)

Anyway, the Saville Report made interesting, if depressing, reading. Paragraph I.2.6 for example:

The situation in Londonderry in January 1972 was serious. By this stage the nationalist community had largely turned against the soldiers, many believing that the Army, as well as the RUC, were agents of an oppressive regime. Parts of the city to the west of the Foyle lay in ruins, as the result of the activities of the IRA and of rioting young men (some members of the IRA or its junior wing, the Fianna) known to soldiers and some others as the “Derry Young Hooligans”. A large part of the nationalist area of the city was a “no go” area, which was dominated by the IRA, where ordinary policing could not be conducted and where even the Army ventured only by using large numbers of soldiers.

In other words, the city was being slowly destroyed. Which, I suppose meant that the police and the army couldn't stand back and do nothing. But they were also viewed as agents of an oppressive regime, so anything they tried to do was likely to further inflame feelings.

Could things have been different? Well, just suppose that libertarian principles had been used in governing Northern Ireland. For example, the Libertarian Party manifesto calls for "Chief Constables to be locally elected, and given a large amount of autonomy." (Would much of the city have been a "no go" area for the police if the Chief Constable of the city of Londonderry in 1972 had been elected by the people of that city?) The LPUK manifesto also affirms the 9 Peelian principles of policing. Go and read them. If they had been adhered to, the situation on the ground in Stroke City would have been very different that day.

Another bit of the report that struck me was paragraph I.4.3:

In our view the organisers of the civil rights march bear no responsibility for the deaths and injuries on Bloody Sunday. Although those who organised the march must have realised that there was probably going to be trouble from rioters, they had no reason to believe and did not believe that this was likely to result in death or injury from unjustified firing by soldiers.

The march had been banned. The organisers of the march - the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) - decided however, to go ahead, knowing that there would probably be trouble, and that a number of people who would participate in the march would be looking for trouble. So they expected trouble - and must bear some responsibility for it. Nevertheless, they can hardly be blamed in any way for the deaths that took place. However, I found myself wishing that they had never bothered organising the march.

BUT. The banning of the march was an infringement of freedom of association. (All marches in Northern Ireland were banned by the government at that time - IV.2.8 - and it's not difficult to see why the government had done so.)

And the march was to protest against internment without trial, which had been introduced the previous August. And internment without trial was (and is) a breach of the ancient liberty given by the writ of Habeas Corpus. (It's all a bit like the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005). And furthermore, it was widely believed (correctly) that many of those who were interned without trial had no involvement in the violence, and (again, correctly) that some of those who were interned without trial were being mistreated by the security forces. To make matters worse, the interned were "almost without exception Catholics from the nationalist community." (IV.2.10) In other words, the government was not acting according to libertarian principles, to put it mildly. With the result that many nationalists had come to the conclusion that the state was not their friend.

But there is something else about the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association that is important. Why were they so angry? What were the grievances of the nationalist community? One of the great grievances was the allocation of council housing. That was the issue that brought about the first civil rights march, which took place in August 1968. That march was sparked by the allocation of a council house in the village of Caledon to a teenage Protestant single girl. Catholics were understandably incensed that she had been given priority over Catholic families.

And at this point, the libertarian in me says "You see what happens when politicians and their appointees start deciding who gets housing?" If only the state had not taken away the money of Catholic taxpayers to build these houses. If they had allowed the Catholic taxpayers of Caledon to keep their money, they could have used it to start their own housing association and build their own houses and decide themselves who should be housed in them. But it was not to be, because Northern Ireland was not a libertarian state. If only the founding fathers of the Northern Irish state had been staunch minarchists, none of this would ever have happened.

Oh, and the unanswered questions about Bloody Sunday? Well, the rest of you probably all thinking about Martin McGuinness. But I'm not. History is not just about politicians and soldiers and movers and shakers. It's also about ordinary, rather apolitical people. What was Bloody Sunday like for them?

On the afternoon of Sunday 30th January, Colonel Derek Wilford, the Parachute Regiment's top officer on the ground, had taken up a position close to Great James Street Presbyterian Church. One of the first shots fired that Sunday afternoon, by a member of the Official IRA, actually hit a drainpipe running down the side of the church building.

My curiosity is about how this affected ordinary people going to that church that Sunday. What was the morning service at Great James Street Presbyterian Church like that morning - just 4 or 5 hours before the shootings occurred? Was there an atmosphere of foreboding because of the planned march? Did people stay away? Or were things fairly normal? And would I be right in thinking that the evening service was cancelled that day?

Those are the questions I want to know the answers to.

Bloody Sunday killings and public sector employees.

2010-06-16T08:22:00.003+01:00

The Saville Report is out. I'm not going to study it closely. Nor am I going to say anything about the £191 million pounds that it cost the tax-payer. I'm just going to comment on one thing.

The Telegraph report said that the report "blamed the 10 minutes of chaos on 20 individual paratroopers who “lost their self-control” and shot civilians in the back as they tried to flee."

Now, it seems to me that it would not be helpful to prosecute the soldiers concerned - especially since members of the paramilitary organisations have been given amnesties. But the relatives of the victims do have a genuine grievance, and part of the cause of that grievance is that the soldiers were allowed to get away with doing something that they would not have been allowed to get away with if they had not been government employees. Or, to put it another way, the impression was given that if you work for the state, you can treat the public as you like.

I thought of the way that the police treated Dale McAlpine. An innocent man was dragged away and put in the cells for 7 hours. What the police did was wrong, but the police constables involved could be fairly sure that they would not suffer any serious consequences because they worked for the state.

I'm not saying that there is an equivalence between their actions and those of the soldiers involved in the Bloody Sunday shootings. But there are parallels.

And it's not just soldiers and police officers. A lot of people who work for the state have the ability to make life difficult for people they deal with - whether through malevolence, incompetence, or simply a love of pushing people around - in a way that they would not get away with if they worked for private companies.

If the Saville Report tells us one thing, it is that employees of the state have often been unduly protected from having to take the consequences of their actions.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon for the new parliament

2010-06-15T09:08:00.006+01:00

Last Tuesday, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached the sermon at the Service for the New Parliament at St Margaret's Church. So I hurried over to read it, to see what he had to say.

As I read, my eyes got bigger and bigger. It all sounded very grand, but I wasn’t always exactly sure what he was trying to say, and I did wish that he could have spoken in ordinary, plain English.

General observations

He took as his text: “Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give God what belongs to God, ” and you will get a good idea of what he was saying (and how he was saying it) from his concluding words: “For a social model more clearly focused on the flourishing of committed and creative citizens, we need a strong ground for the affirmation of fixed and non-negotiable dignity in all human beings. You may or may not as an individual share the perspective of faith; but in the difficult years ahead it will be worth remembering that giving God what belongs to God is something that is not a matter of dry and unwelcome duty but a release of human possibilities that we all need to witness and in some degree share. May this Parliament mark a new level of enthusiasm and imagination around the call to honour God-given dignities by creating strong citizens of our nation and of the world; may the work of our elected leaders be for the sake of gathering and not scattering; and may the divine image in men and women, recognised or unrecognised, be the vision that directs us towards a fresh political energy and moral vision.”

His general theme is clear enough. He was speaking about the importance of dignity. (I know this, because he used the word 19 times in the course of the sermon.) More specifically, he was advocating ‘shared dignity’. (He used this unusual phrase three times.) I think that what he meant was that it was most important that we all valued other people and treated everybody with respect. I don’t imagine that anyone is going to argue with that, because it’s all very vague.

In terms of specific application, what we got was: “a political renewal that looks for a vital, decisive commitment to human dignity and social trust will not get far without a capacity to tune in to the themes of religious practice, the narratives and rhythms of embodied faith, not least, though not exclusively, in the life of the established Church.” In other words “Politicians ought to listen more to what religious people are saying, and in particular, the religious establishment.” To which the obvious response is “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” But the reason is obvious. The Archbishop thinks that religion is being marginalised these days. He spoke about the way our society has been “regarding religious communities with the mixture of patronage and nervousness that has become uncomfortably common of late.”

Political reflections.

Some bits of what he was saying sounded politically interesting. He said “If you are profiting from Caesar's government, don't grumble about paying Caesar's taxes.” And I wanted to say “But what if Caesar is burning your money?”

He said “But never forget that the ultimate point of any human political order is giving God what belongs to God – setting human agents free, acknowledging and reinforcing the dignity in which God has clothed them.” And I wondered if he really meant that the ultimate point of government was to set people free - because I would certainly like to see a government that was dedicated to doing just that.

He said “And of course it is trust that has in the last couple of years been one of the most signal casualties of our national and international politics. It isn't only that people have felt they have not been told the whole truth about some matters; much more importantly, they have felt that those who hold both financial and political power have exercised it for self-interest not for the common interest.”

OK. But those who hold financial and political power always will tend to exercise it for self-interest, rather than for the common interest. That is simply human nature. The solution is that the size and scope of the state power should be strictly limited so that the amount of power that politicians have will be limited. And, for that matter, when the scope of the state grows to the point where government spending accounts for a major proportion of the nation’s economy, the result is that those who have political power also have huge financial power, which is a very worrying concentration of power in a small number of people. The solution, again, is that the scope of the state needs to be curtailed so that government does not control a high proportion of national spending.

And in a most interesting paragraph, the archbishop said “We react against certain kinds of strong government or 'big' government on the grounds that we don't want to be patronised or bullied or stripped of the fruits of our own work.”[And rightly so, Your Grace!] And the mistake is then to hand over all responsibility to non-state agents – which in practice often means non-accountable interests. [Absolutely, Your Grace! The Government shouldn’t hand over its responsibilities to private companies or Quangos or charities. It should hand responsibility back to the people!] Or, on the other hand, we try to make sure that government controls all outcomes and averts all risks by law and regulation. And this produces a culture of obsessional legislation, paralysis of initiative and pervasive anxiety.” [Well said, Your Grace! Libertarians will all say a hearty ‘Amen’ to that.]

Biblical and theological assessment.

The Archbishop, of course, was not giving a political talk, but preaching a sermon. And the way that he got from his text (“Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give God what belongs to God”) to his conclusion struck me as very curious. He began with the words: “Give Caesar what belongs to him, says Jesus. And how do we know what belongs to him? It has his image on it. Then: give God what belongs to God. The implication isn't spelled out, but it's clear enough. What belongs to God can be identified in the same way; it has his image on it.”

Note the words “it’s clear enough”. The Archbishop is, in fact, completely wrong here. It isn’t clear at all. Most Christians, reading about the incident in which Jesus said these words (see Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, and Luke 20:20-26) would not jump to that conclusion. Readers might well ask “What does belong to God?”, but Jesus assumes that his listeners will know the answer to that question - and it has nothing to do with the coin or the image.

And it isn’t just ordinary Christians and other readers who will not think that it is at all clear. Biblical scholars have been reflecting on these words of Jesus for 2,000 years - and very view have taken the view that the implication of Jesus’ words is that what belongs to God is that which bears God’s image. I suspect that none have thought that this implication is “clear enough”.

Craig Evans, in his commentary on Mark (2001) says “The precise meaning of Jesus’ statement is not obvious.” He goes on to say that Justin Martyr (a leader in the Christian Church about 100 years after the time of Christ) “understood Jesus’ pronouncement to mean that tax was to be paid to Caesar, but worship was to be given to God alone, and not Caesar,” and Dr. Evans thinks that Justin is probably correct. Howard Marshall, in his commentary on Luke (1978), writes “There may [note that word!] be the thought that men as bearers of God’s image, should recognise his authority over them,” and tells us that this view is put forward by Günther Bornkamm, in his book Jesus of Nazareth. And R.T. France, commenting on Mark (2002) writes that the pronouncement ‘...and to God what belongs to God’ “is entirely open-ended, and must be filled out by the reader’s understanding of God’s claim on his people,” and in a footnote adds “The thought that as the coin bears Caesar’s image so a person bears God’s image, and that therefore what is owed to God is ourselves, attractive as it may be, is certainly not explicit in the text and is not required to make sense of Jesus’ pronouncement.”

So the Archbishop is wrong in saying that it is clear that what belongs to God is that which has his image on it. In fact, most New Testament scholars would suspect that he is probably wrong in thinking that this is what Jesus had in mind.

From this shaky start, the Archbishop’s methodology does not get better. He goes on to speak of how, according to the Bible, human beings bear the image of God - which is fair enough. The obvious implication, you would think, is that when Jesus says “give God what belongs to God”, he means we should give ourselves to God. But no, that is not where the Archbishop goes. He discourses on the image of God, and tells us that it basically refers to “a particular kind of liberty and dignity,” but he doesn’t tell us where he gets this.

From here, we get another massive logical jump: “So perhaps to give God what belongs to God is to set human beings free to relate to God and to fulfil their calling to be creative in the world.” Perhaps. But it seems very unlikely - to put it mildly. However, it allows the Archbishop to arrive at his desired starting point for his political thoughts: “the ultimate point of any human political order is giving God what belongs to God – setting human agents free, acknowledging and reinforcing the dignity in which God has clothed them.” Even this, however, involves another logical jump: where did he get the idea that “the ultimate point of any human political order is giving God what belongs to God”? He didn’t explain that one either.

And my conclusion? The sermon is an interesting example of how the ecclesiastical establishment in modern Britain attempts to speak to the nation about the issues of the day. I'm not much the wiser about whether the Archbishop has a good grasp of politics, but I think that his grasp of the Bible and of preaching is definitely rather shaky.

Will the government really cut public spending?

2010-06-09T17:03:00.008+01:00

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the cuts in public spending that the government will, apparently, have to implement, in order to deal with the budget deficit.

I'm wondering if it is really going to happen. You see, I am old enough to remember the last time time that the government were making savage cuts. It was back in the early years of Mrs. Thatcher's administration. I remember the loud protests and the cries of pain. But Mrs. Thatcher was made of stern stuff, and was not about to be deflected.

Except that she never actually managed to cut public spending. Oh, some savings were made, but overall public spending just went on rising. Don't believe me?

Here's the graph to prove it - taken from UK Public Spending.

And if you want to see it adjusted for inflation, the blue line on graph below (courtesy of the Institute for Fiscal Studies) represents Total Managed Expenditure (TME) in real terms from 1948 to the present. (TME comprises expenditure by the entire public sector – namely, the central government, local authorities and public corporations.)

OK, the Conservatives did cut public expenditure in real terms in 1985/86 and 1988/89 - but it took them several years to do it, and even after these cuts, it was higher in real terms than it was when Mrs. Thatcher came to power in 1979.

If Mrs. Thatcher's administration didn't cut spending, do you really believe that a government led by Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg will?

Great Repeal Bill wish list 3: Section 44 Police Powers

2010-06-08T18:39:00.008+01:00

In the last 13 years, parliament has passed a lot of acts dealing with the threat of terrorism. The first of these was the Terrorism Act 2000. Section 44 of of the said Act, which gave police powers to stop and search people who might be involved in terrorist activity, has proved to be the most controversial, because it gave them the power to randomly stop someone without reasonable suspicion, providing the area has been designated a likely target for an attack.

The uses that these police have found for these powers have been many and varied.

There was the detention of Walter Wolfgang. Mr Wolfgang was ejected from the 2005 Labour Party Conference for heckling, and when he attempted to re-enter the conference, he was detained and held by the police under Section 44 powers.

Then there was Phil Smith. Mr Smith was planning to take some pictures at the turning on of the Christmas lights in Ipswich. He was challenged by a police officer who asked if he had a licence for the camera. After explaining he didn't need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal "stop and search", then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more.

And of course there are the train spotters. Last year Mr. Norman Baker, who is now Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Department for Transport, discovered that Section 44 powers had been used to stop 62,584 people at railway stations. At the time he commented “The anti-terror laws allow officers to stop people for taking photographs and I know this has led to innocent trainspotters being stopped. This is an abuse of anti-terrorism powers and a worrying sign that we are sliding towards a police state.”

I know of no evidence that Section 44 is actually necessary. The police would probably claim that it is, but I’m not sure why I should believe them. The evidence I see suggests that while the police like to have these powers, they are simply not able to use them properly - and are regularly using them improperly.

So Mr. Clegg, please repeal Sections 44 to 47 of the Terrorism Act 2000. They aren't necessary, and they are taking away our freedom.

Correction: Mr Phil Smith was not actually stopped under Section 44. He was stopped for "unauthorised photography." (I bet you didn't know that the police in this country can stop you from taking pictures of Christmas lights on the grounds that you are "unauthorised".) Other photographers, however, have been stopped under Section 44 powers.

Do the poor do better under Labour?

2010-06-07T12:52:00.007+01:00

From Burning our Money, this interesting graph.

We regularly hear about how the gap between rich and poor is growing in the UK (See also here). But it seems to me that surely the important thing (at least if one is motivated by concern for the less well off rather than ideological egalitarianism) is not the size of the gap between rich and poor, but how well the less well off are doing in real terms. And figures released by the Institute of Fiscal Studies show that, in real terms, they have been getting richer rather than poorer over the past 50 years.

The graph shows that households at the 25th percentile point for Before Housing Costs income (i.e. those that earn less than the richest 75% but more than the poorest 25%) have seen their income rise by 89% in real terms between 1961 and 2009. (The figures for those at the 5th and 15th percentile point are 80% and 88% respectively, while for those at the 50th percentile point it is 109%.)

Interesting stuff, and Wat Tyler has discoursed thoughtfully on the meaning of poverty.

However, I found myself wondering about something else. Do these less-well-off people (i.e. those at the 25th percentile point) do better under Labour governments or under Conservative governments. Accordingly, I adjusted the graph.

Upon studying it, I was not much the wiser, so I crunched the numbers, and made some interesting discoveries. I calculated that over the 25 years the Conservatives were in power, the people at the 25 percentile point increased their income by, on average, 0.987% per annum, while over the over the 23 years Labour were in power they increased their income by, on average, 1.714% per annum.

And so I might have concluded that the poor do better under Labour.

But I didn't, because there are three obvious problems with the methodology I employed.

1. Britain isn’t isolated from the outside world - and the prosperity of people in Britain is affected by events over which our government has no control.

2. The household income of people in Britain at any given time is affected by where we are in the boom and bust cycle.

3. The economic policies of a new government don’t start having an effect the day they take office - it takes months, perhaps even years. So surely it would be fairer to assume that the prosperity of the country in the first year of a new administration is actually the result of the policies of the outgoing rather than incoming administration.

I don't have the data to take into account the first two factors, but it was easy enough to recalculate the figures on this basis of the third, and so I did so.

The results were very, very different. Under Labour, the average rise in household income for these folk was 1.289% per annum, while under the Conservatives, it was 1.373% per annum*. And the reason is largely that there was such a huge jump in basic household income for people at the 25 percentile point between 1964 and 1965 (I have no idea why) that whichever party gets the credit for this jump comes out ahead.

And so the conclusion that I would be inclined to draw is that over the past 50 years, at least as far as household income of the less well off is concerned, it really didn’t make much difference which party was in power.

*(Incidentally, the figures indicate that the most successful administration was that of Mr. Heath in the early 1970s; the least successful were the Wilson administrations of the 1960s and 1970s.)

Great Repeal Bill wish list 2: The Knife Ban

2010-06-03T09:00:00.004+01:00

The Criminal Justice Act 1988 introduced, at Section 139, the new offence of having an article with a blade or point in public place. It makes interesting reading, but the gist of it is that any person who has an article with a blade or sharp point (other than a folding pocket knife with a blade less than 3 inches long) in a public place is guilty of an offence - unless a) the person is able to prove that a) he had good reason or lawful authority for having the article with him in a public place or b) he had the article with him for use at work or c) he had it with him for religious reasons or d) he had it with him as part of a national costume - any national costume would do.

It is very difficult not to laugh. This one is utterly, utterly ridiculous, and would have puzzled most of our ancestors thoroughly. I find it very odd to think that if I were to pick up one of Mrs. Bird’s bread knives in the kitchen, walk out the door, up the path, and out the garden gate, and on to Windsor Gardens, without a good reason, I would become guilty of a criminal offence. However, thanks to the wisdom of our politicians, that is exactly what would happen.

Actually, I don’t tend to do this, so I don’t think that this one affects me personally. But then I imagine that Rodney Knowles and Brian Seaton thought that it didn’t affect them, either. And even if one is not charged, one could well end up (like Dale McAlpine) spending a few hours in the cells if a police constable doesn’t think that your reason for carrying a knife is good enough.

Now I know that some people are going to say “Aaaargh! We’ll all be murdered in our beds if the knife ban is repealed!” I must confess to grave scepticism. I certainly don’t remember feeling any safer in on the streets in 1989 than I was in 1987. And Austria, where the knife laws are considerably less restrictive than those of the UK, is not known for particularly dangerous streets. (In fact, Vienna is reputed to have a pretty good quality of life.) I know of no evidence to suggest that the 1988 knife ban has done anything to reduce violent crime in Britain. (See discussion here and here.)

I’ll say it again: Every adult should be free to use their legitimately acquired property in whatever manner they choose, so long as in doing so, they do not harm or infringe upon the freedom of others. Carrying a knife hurts no one. So it should not be a criminal offence. And banning the carrying of knives does not stop malicious people carrying knives. So what is the point?

In the grand scale of things, repealing Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 is not that important. But it would be a sign that the government is moving away from knee-jerk responses to problems and from the obsessive desire that politicians seem to have for banning things.

(Yes, I know, I know. “If retaining this legislation saves the life of just one young person in Britain . . . .” Sigh.)

Some social trends in America

2010-05-27T17:41:00.006+01:00

I noticed the following from Gallup: “Americans' support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. At the same time, the percentage calling these relations "morally wrong" dropped to 43%, the lowest in Gallup's decade-long trend.”

What really intrigued me was the findings with regard to religious affiliation (at the bottom of this table).

Four years ago, the views of Catholics were somewhat less traditional than those of Protestants, with 46% of Catholics saying that homosexual relations were morally acceptable, while only 36% of Protestants said so.

Now, however, the views of Catholics are a lot less traditional than those of Protestants - with 62% saying that such relations were morally acceptable as opposed to only 42% of Protestants.

It’s interesting that Catholics were less traditional in than Protestants in their views four years ago. But the change in outlook in the past four years is even more fascinating. Why the wholesale flight from traditional views among American Catholics over the past four years? Apart from the possibility that the poll is just wrong, the only explanation I can think of is that it is fallout from the publicity about child abuse in the Catholic church. But that's just a guess.

Great Repeal Bill wish list 1: The Smoking Ban

2010-05-26T09:44:00.006+01:00

I am not a smoker. I never have been. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke. In fact, I can smell cigarette smoke out of doors 10 or 20 yards away. We bears have sensitive noses. When airlines brought in complete bans on smoking, I rejoiced. (“No-smoking seats” were not much use when someone was puffing away three rows behind you.) And I never had much time for FOREST.

But when the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Health Act 2006, even I thought that this legislation was excessively draconian.

The words used in the Health Act 2006 are “Premises are smoke-free if they are open to the public.” The problem is that most places open to the public are private property. And people should have a right to do as they wish with their own property. The libertarian principle is that every adult should be free to use their legitimately acquired property in whatever manner they choose, so long as in doing so, they do not harm or infringe upon the freedom of others.

Let me use an example. Over 20 years ago, friends of mine put a “No Smoking” notice on their front door. I commented on it, and they told me how strongly they felt about smoking. They also told me that the reason they put it up was that some visitors felt that they had a basic right to smoke in their house. But the visitors didn’t - because the house belonged to my friends, and it was private property, so my friends had a right to use their property in the manner they chose. If visitors wished to smoke, they were free to leave the property.

So it is with the smoking ban. Just as no-one has a basic right to smoke on someone else’s property, no-one has a right to demand smoke-free air on someone else’s property. If I go into a shop or pub or restaurant and think that it is unpleasantly smoky, I am free to leave.

The great British smoking ban is not something that inconveniences me in the slightest. In fact, it makes my life rather more pleasant. But it also strikes at the freedom of others. And since I value my freedom, I am obliged to value theirs as well. It’s the old “do to others what you would have them do to you” principle. If it would be intrusive for the state to demand that I allowed others the right to smoke on my property, it is also intrusive for the state to demand that I forbid others from smoking on my property.

Nick Clegg said “We will repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom.” Well, this is intrusive. It inhibits freedom. And since we have had smoking in Britain for several centuries, and managed to survive without the great smoking ban, I submit, Mr. Clegg, that it is clearly unnecessary. I hereby request that you repeal sections 1 to 12 of the Health Act 2006.

Nick Clegg, Freedom, the State, and the Great Repeal Act (1)

2010-05-24T12:40:00.009+01:00

Nick Clegg, it seems, gets all the best lines.

At least he did last week, when he gave his speech on political reform. There were absolutely amazing lines in it - things like “This government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you,” and “we will radically redistribute power away from the centre, into your communities, your homes, your hands,” and “This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. ”

He promised “sweeping legislation to restore the hard won liberties that have been taken, one by one, from the British people.”

He said “you will get more control over ... the schools you send your children to”

He said “You know better than I do about how to run your life.”

He said “thousands of criminal offences were created under the previous government.... Obsessive lawmaking simply makes criminals out of ordinary people.”

He said “We will ask you which laws you think should go.”

He even said “So, we'll get rid of the unnecessary laws, and once they're gone, they won't come back.”

In fact, believe it or not, he said “we will repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom.” Yes, he used the word “all”.

My eyes opened wide as I listened to all this. And I wasn’t the only one. Apparently Charlotte Gore’s housemate said “This is real? We can really have this?” and Miss Gore felt the same. I’m afraid that I’m clearly in a cynical mood these days, because what I thought was “Frankly, I just don’t believe it.” Again.

So why don’t I believe it?

1. When he said “We will repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom,” the crucial word is not “all”, but “unnecessary”. Who is to say what laws are unnecessary? As Tim Carpenter says, in a helpful analysis of Mr. Clegg’s speech, “He will be the one to determine “unnecessary”. I suspect Labour thought all those rules “necessary” for their purposes.”

2. I am sure the government will indeed ask us which laws we think should go. But they will be the ones who make the final decisions. Mr. Clegg set out some of the government’s plans in his speech.

“So there will be no ID card scheme. No national identity register, a halt to second generation biometric passports. We won't hold your internet and email records when there is just no reason to do so. CCTV will be properly regulated, as will the DNA database, with restrictions on the storage of innocent people's DNA. There will be no ContactPoint children's database. Schools will not take children's fingerprints without even asking their parent's consent.”

That is good - but it only scratches the surface.

And, it seems to me, while it promises that, in at least some respects, there will be no advance in the power of the state in the future, it does nothing at all to give back the freedoms that have been taken from British citizens over the past 30 years. The rhetoric in the speech is brilliant - the detailed proposals are, frankly, disappointing.

3. Mr. Clegg states “My starting point is always optimism about people. The view that most people, most of the time, will make the right decisions for themselves and their families.” So, is he going to allow us to buy 100w incandescent light bulbs? I rather doubt it. I’m not actually sure that he thinks we should be allowed to buy them. But in any case, Westminster has no power to do so because power has been handed over to the EU, and Mr. Clegg does not want to see any change there. And is he going to allow us a choice about whether we wear seat-belts in cars? Again, I very much doubt it. Because while he may believe that most people, most of the time, will make the right decisions for themselves and their families, he believes there are some people that will not, so we have to make intrusive rules for everyone.

4. Mr. Clegg says “This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state.” Again, a question is begged. Which advances of the state are illegitimate? Catholic adoption agencies felt that it was an illegitimate advance of the state when the state enacted the 2007 Equality Act banning adoption agencies from discriminating against homosexual prospective parents. Mr. Clegg and his party supported that legislation, and I don’t remember him appearing to be particularly proud when Catholic adoption agencies opposed it. Mr. Clegg spoke of “the repeal of illiberal laws” in his speech, but what does he mean by illiberal laws - does he mean laws that curtail freedom, or laws that he considers ‘unprogressive’?

5. And while we are on the subject of the advancing power of the state, there is plenty of evidence that Mr. Clegg wants the state to have even more power. In his speech last week said “you will get more control over ... the schools you send your children to.” So, does that mean that he wants the state to have less control over schools and what they teach? You might think so, but just a few months ago, in an interview with Attitude magazine, Mr. Clegg apparently said “Faith schools should be legally obliged to teach that homosexuality is "normal and harmless". That sounds like an increase in state power over schools to me.

6. Some of the things that Mr. Clegg promises in his speech actually seem to me to be contradictory. He speaks about the tyranny of vested interests, and then says that he is going to take tax-payers money and give it to one of the favourite vested interests of politicians: the major political parties. This is simply scandalous.

7. Mr. Clegg says “This government is going to break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people.” He also says “We know that devolution of power is meaningless without money.” He is quite right in this. Which means that if he wants to devolve power to the people from the state, money must be left in the hands of the people, not put into the hands of the state. That means massive cuts in tax and in public spending, and that has never been LibDem policy. In fact, it hasn’t been Conservative Party policy for a long time.

In short, I’m sure that the coalition will, in some respects, protect the freedoms that we have traditionally enjoyed in this country for generations. However, I’m not hopeful that there will be any great advances. And as for the state giving up power and handing it back to the people? Frankly, I don't believe it.

Urban design can bring people closer to God?

2010-05-21T10:13:00.002+01:00

From the April-June 2010 issue of East Asia’s Billions, a magazine of OMF International, comes the following rather surprising quote from a Mr. Paul Robinson, who has been teaching a course on Urban Design to architecture students at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

“Once the students graduate and start working as architects their designs will include a greater awareness of the poor and the natural environment. The result will be a better-designed city, where informed design will create an environment that influences human morality for the good and brings people closer to God through creative and responsible design.”

If he had ended that quote with the word ‘good’ - I’d have thought “Sounds a bit optimistic, but then I don’t know much about this urban design business.” (However, I would found it slightly more convincing if Mr. Robinson had written “an environment that influences human behaviour for the good.”)

But when I am told that a better designed city brings people closer to God, I am utterly baffled. Really? Where in the Bible does he get that? And what does he mean by “closer to God”?

And if a better designed city brings people closer to God, then surely how much more can a centrally planned state? Great utopian visions float before my eyes. It’s amazing what Christian socialists think that they can achieve.

Frankly, I just don’t believe it.

Peter Tatchell, champion of free speech

2010-05-19T07:45:00.006+01:00

It seems that charges against Dale McAlpine, the street preacher who was arrested under the Public Order Act 1986 after telling a PCSO that homosexuality was a sin, have been dropped.

I would be very interested to know why the charges were dropped. A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service is quoted as having said "We keep cases under constant review and following a further review of all the evidence in this case we were no longer satisfied that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and we have therefore discontinued the proceedings against Mr Mcalpine," but this doesn't tell me much. The crucial words appear to be "no longer satisfied." Why did they initially believe that there was sufficient evidence? What changed their minds? I'd really like to know, but I doubt that we will ever be told.

Peter Tatchell believes that his own intervention might have been a significant factor. Despite the fact that Mr Tatchell strongly (to put it mildly) disagrees with Mr McAlpine's opinion, he offered to testify in defence of his right to free speech. “Although I disagree with Dale McAlpine and support protests against his homophobic views, he should not have been arrested and charged. Criminalisation is a step too far. Despite my opposition to his opinions, I defend his right to freedom of expression. Soon after I offered to appear as a defence witness and to argue in court for Mr McAlpine’s acquittal, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case. The sudden withdrawal of charges may have been mere coincidence but perhaps not.”

To which I say "Well done, Mr. Tatchell." It's not often these days that we hear of people defending the freedom to express opinions they disagree with. The spirit of the age seems to be much more enthusiastic about banning people from expressing offensive opinions. And this is not the first time that Mr. Tatchell has spoken up for freedom of speech. He recently criticised the fine of £1000 imposed on Shawn Holes, an American street preacher who was convicted of "uttering homophobic remarks" in Glasgow.

There is, however, something else that fascinates me. Mr. McAlpine was charged under the Public Order Act with “using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.” Many people will recall an incident in which Mr. Tatchell could conceivably have been charged himself under those terms. In 1998, On Easter Sunday, 12th. April 1998, Peter Tatchell entered the pulpit in Canterbury Cathedral during the Archbishop’s sermon, and started addressing the congregation. He was charged with "indecent behaviour in a church", contrary to section 2 of the 1860 Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act, but was aquitted.

Why Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act and the not the Public Order Act? I don't know. I suspect that it is because Mr Tatchell's behaviour undoubtedly caused some distress, he was, careful to ensure that while his words were not "threatening, abusive or insulting."

Which, I guess, means the legal question is "Were Mr McAlpine's words threatening, abusive or insulting?"

The political question, however, is this: Why do we have a law on our statute book which means that someone can be guilty of a crime simply for using "insulting" words within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused "distress"?

One for Nick Clegg, I think.

Edit: Thank you to Albert for pointing me toward this fascinating video of Dale McAlpine's arrest.

Note the quote from the constable making the arrest: "It is against the law. Listen mate, we're pretty sure. You're under arrest for a racially aggravated Section 5 Public Order offence."

Wow. Not just a Section 5 Public Order offence, but a racially aggravated Section 5 Public Order offence." Oh dear.

Notice, by the way, that Dale McAlpine was aware of Lord Waddington's amendment (attributing it, in the pressure of the moment, to Lord Carey), and of the meaning of the word 'homophobia'. The constables involved don't seem to have been quite as clued up.

The General Election: Numbers Crunched (1)

2010-05-11T20:30:00.014+01:00

I've been reflecting on the results of the voting at the General Election, and looking at the numbers*. Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Turnout
Turnout was 65.1%, which was the highest this century. (2001 was 59.4%, 2005 was 61.4%.) However, it is also the 3rd lowest since 1945. The fourth lowest was in 1997 with 71.3%. So it seems that while there has been more interest in this election among the British people than there was for the previous two, levels of political interest and enthusiasm are, historically speaking, low. Why was turnout higher? I don’t know, but I do wonder if the “prime ministerial debates” (which, in my opinion, were not a good thing) were a major contributory factor.

My own opinion is that a low turnout is not, in itself a bad thing, but is a sign of a deeper underlying problem. I don’t think it is a good idea to try to boost turnout by artificial means, since this may treat the symptom, but does nothing about the underlying lack of enthusiasm for the political process.

2. Opinion Polls

The exit poll turned out to be fairly accurate - predicting that the Conservative Party would have 307 MPs elected, Labour 255, and the LibDems 59. In the event, the totals were 306, 258, and 57. The exit poll, was however, widely disbelieved at the time - the LibDems were expected to do considerably better. Dan Hannan’s comment was typical “I’m going to stick my neck out here. I believe the exit poll predictions will move during the night: the Tories and LibDems will do better, Labour worse.” This was largely because most opinion polls had given the impression that the LibDems would do considerably better than that, and might win about 80 seats. However, it turns out that the exit polls were the ones to be believed - they recorded the people who actually voted. Toby Young reckons that many people recorded by the ordinary polls as LibDem supporters in the run up to the election were people who were not actually very committed to voting.

Which brings us to the opinion polls themselves. Here is what the polls were showing. (All figures taken from ukpolling report).
The first column shows an average of the polls taken is the last 3 months of 2009, the second column those taken in the first three months of 2010, the third column shows the state of the polls in the first couple of weeks of April (the opening days of the campaign), before the first “prime ministerial debate”, which led to a surge in support for the LibDems, and the fourth column shows the final 18 polls of the campaign - those that should have been expected to predict the final results most accurately. The actual voting turned out to be somewhere between the figures suggested by the polls at the beginning of the campaign and those at the end. In other words, the campaign had changed minds, but not as far as the polls led people to believe. Or, to put it another way, the LibDem surge was very real - it just wasn’t quite as big as we thought. But on the whole, the polls were (once again) shown to be a fair, if not infallible, guide to how people would vote.

3. The major parties: short term perspective

Which parties had a good election? It depends how one judges. One yardstick is to compare performance with expectations - that is, to compare the actual share of the vote cast for parties on election day with the share of the vote predicted by opinion polls in recent months. But which opinion polls? How recent? Let’s try a variety of approaches.

Very short term (a couple of months): Assuming that opinion polls were basically accurate, the Conservatives were down about 2 percentage points on where they were a couple of months before the election, the Labour were down about 1.5 points, and the LibDems were up about 4 points. In other words, the LibDems had a very good campaign, while Labour and (especially) the Tories had disappointing campaigns.

Medium short term (6 months): Compared to the opinion polls 6 months ago, the Conservatives were down 4 points, Labour up 1, LibDems up 5.5, and minor parties down 2 points. Very disappointing for the Conservatives and the minor parties, not bad for Labour, and again, very good for the LibDems.

Long short term: Over the course of the past few years, if one excludes Gordon Brown’s prime ministerial honeymoon, the Conservatives have averaged about 40% in the polls, Labour 30%,and the LibDems about 17 or 18%. So on that basis, again, disappointing for the Conservatives, respectable for Labour, and very good for the LibDems.

Summary: Looking at things from a short term perspective, the Conservatives had a disappointing election, Labour had a reasonable election, and the LibDems had a very good election. Alas, because the opinion polls had raised expectations to unreasonable heights, it didn’t actually look that good at the time.

4. The major parties: longer term perspective

How well did the parties do compared with previous elections? There are various measures one could use to assess performance. Much of the time, comparisons are made on the basis of the share of the vote received. My opinion is that this assumes either that turnout is the same for every election, or that variations in turnout are meaningless. I don’t accept either assumption. I would expect that if every party fought a poor campaign, turnout would be low - whereas if all parties fought good campaigns, turnout would be high. In other words, the success of a party should not be measured by its share of the vote, but by how many people it can persuade to vote for it. However, just to compare raw numbers is not helpful, since the size of the electorate varies. So the best measure of the success of a party is the proportion of the electorate that it can persuade to vote for it.

Here, then, are the figures for the three main parties since 1970.

Clearly, by this measure, the election was a disaster for the Labour Party - a result even worse than their defeat under Michael Foot in 1983. One crumb of comfort for Labour is that it wasn’t quite as bad as the result the Conservatives had in 2001 under William Hague.

For the Conservatives, the picture is more mixed. It was their best result since the Conservative victory in 1992. However, it was worse than any result the Conservatives achieved between 1945 and 1997. David Cameron may be on the verge of becoming Prime Minister, but these are not good days for the Conservative Party.

For the LibDems, a good result in terms of votes - but not a great one. Not only was it not as good as the performances of the Liberal / SDP Alliance in 1983 and 1987, it actually fell short of the Liberal performance in February 1974.

Summary: No comfort for Labour, a little comfort for the Conservatives, and a fair amount of comfort for the LibDems.

*(Numbers are incomplete, since the constituency of Thirsk and Malton has yet to vote.)

The ecclesiastical establishment and the election: 3

2010-05-06T15:25:00.004+01:00

When the Church of Scotland magazine, Life & Work, published the thoughts of the Rt. Rev. William Hewitt and the Rev. Ian Galloway, they also spoke to four other figures who might be described as part of the ecclesiastical establishment. For the sake of completeness, I will report their comments, and give my brief thoughts thereon.

1. The Rev. Iain McLarty, Moderator of the Church of Scotland's Youth Assembly:

“It may be a cliché that youth and idealism go together but youth involvement in politics always seems to peak when there are large moral issues to be dealt with such as civil rights and opposition to war.
“The Obama campaign was successful in gaining the support of young people because it gave them a vision of radical change to support. Politicians need to be aware of these issues that energise young people because they are often the big issues which are given political lip service in manifestos before getting lost among the smaller battles fought every day.
“While nobody would deny that this election is primarily about the economy, we need to make sure that issues such as climate change and global poverty are not ignored, both adversely affected by the economic downturn and needing urgent action if their effects are not to become irreversible.
"These are also issues where the churches are particularly vocal. Perhaps this concurrence is unsurprising given the idealistic message of the Christian faith but it is worth bearing in mind when thinking about how we as a church can
influence the political agenda.”

Much of this is basically praise of idealism - which is good, as long as one remembers that in the political realm idealism is often naive and sometimes seriously misguided. In terms of policy, there is a realisation that the economy is the main issue in the election, but a desire that climate change and global poverty should be further up the agenda of the parties.

2. Betty Dunn, National Convenor, Church of Scotland Guild:

"The Guild’s current Theme is “Called to Act Justly”, and its major concerns have been issues of justice, including human trafficking, prostitution, domestic abuse, conflict and poverty - all issues where faith engages with politics.
Speaking personally, I’d highlight several key areas for which all parties must have clear strategies as we approach the election.
The global financial crisis will have long-term consequences for our children as well as us. As families struggle with debt and unemployment here, we’re also conscious of world debt and the need for fairness for the poorest countries.
Social issues like health care, elderly care, and support for families are priorities in both building a healthy society and addressing the violence and callousness often driven by alcohol and drug abuse. A better way must be found for housing immigrants to our country and quicker processes developed to establish their legal status. Overcrowded detention centres and prisons aren’t helping towards a more just and safe society. And Afghanistan, with its tragic losses, must be a foreign policy priority. Sadly of late, many politicians have been found to be lacking in honesty and integrity in public life and perhaps total transparency in government will be a significant factor as people go to the polls."

A lot of issues covered there, none in any great detail.

3. The Rev Kathy Galloway, Head of Christian Aid Scotland:

“Christian Aid Scotland is asking people to Vote Global, that is to do all they can to make this General Election count for the world’s poor. These are the questions we’d like to hear answers to. Tax dodging by unscrupulous multinational companies denies poor countries at least $160 billion a year. This is more than one and a half times the amount poor countries receive in aid. With greater transparency in companies financial reporting, developing countries could claw back this money for health, education, and fighting poverty. In line with our Tax Justice Campaign, we’ll be asking ‘What would you do to tackle the tax havens and make sure that everyone pays the taxes they owe, so all countries can continue to invest in vital public services?
A ‘Robin Hood Tax’ of just 0.05% on International Financial Transactions could raise billions to tackle climate change and poverty. Do you back this idea?”
And, along with all organisations concerned with global poverty, we’ll be asking the climate question: Climate change kills 300,000 people every year, mostly in poorer countries. What would your party do to stop further climate change and ensure sufficient funding to help developing countries cope."

This is much more specific. Climate change is a crucial issue, and we are told that it kills 300,000 people every year. Something in me is just instantly sceptical about such a claim, and it turns out that I am not the only one. Mrs. Galloway quotes this statistic as if it is proven fact. Does she know that it is merely a questionable guestimate?

Her other interest is tax. She wants some businesses to pay more. Now, I'm completely opposed to people and businesses using dishonesty to avoid paying taxes. But can I actually believe the facts that she quotes?

And more to the point, the assumption in her argument is that it is better for money to be in the hands of governments (and, in particular, politicians in developing countries) rather than in the hands of employees and shareholders. (After all, where else do profits of multinational companies go?) I think that this assumption is very questionable.

I'm very interested in her use of the term "Robin Hood Tax", by the way. It seems like an admission that such a tax is basically a form of theft.

4. Lynne Paterson, Tearfund Scotland:

"Around a fifth of voters in marginal seats - and many of our campaigning supporters and churches - include climate change in their top priority issues ahead of the General Election. some 85% of the UK population support the use of renewable energy. No party can ignore this when close political battlegrounds will go to the wire on myriad issues - all competing for coverage. In presents an opportunity for UK environmental and development charities to ensure that the demand for tough action on climate change is heard on doorsteps by prospective candidates. We are urging people to ask them the climate question.
Tearfund, as part of the Ask the Climate Question coalition, has been central to campaigning at UK and international levels for the reduction of carbon emissions. Working together with our church partner organisations worldwide we see the effects of catastrophic climate change on the poorest communities.
We can also do our bit to limit the emissions through lifestyle changes. Moreover, when it matters to us that climate change is urgent and candidates of all parties need to prioritise it, it matters considerably more to the 500 million people globally that are currently at risk from climate related disasters.
This isn’t about telling people how to vote. It’s about ensuring that votes count for the urgent issues and that no party avoids the climate question. Make sure you ask it."

So, for Tearfund Scotland, there is basically only one issue at the election: climate change. What can one say? Is Lynne Paterson oblivious to the fact that the science is not actually settled? Is she unaware that a high proportion of the British electorate are sceptical about anthropogenic climate change? Has she followed the debate? Has she read A W Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion?

In fact Tearfund knows very well that this is a matter for debate. However, it has decided that it knows what the truth is, and has put together a briefing to help supporters respond to the sceptics. In other words, Tearfund is not just in the business of providing development aid and disaster relief, it is also in the business of ~~propaga~~ education. Sadly, many aid agencies seem to take a similar line. It is one thing for Tearfund to believe that anthropogenic climate change is taking place. It is another for it to take upon itself the role of propagandist for that view.

Summary: So that's six voices from the ecclesiastical establishment on the subject of the General Election. Compared to the leaflet produced by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, it's really quite disappointing. Much of what is said is vague, and when specific comments are made, they are often tendentious. The CBCEW leaflet is, by contrast, carefully worded and well thought out - even if I don't agree with all of it. One gets the impression that the Catholic bishops take the General Election more seriously.

And do you notice what's left out? None of the six said anything at all about liberty or freedom. They didn't even hint at it. They either have not noticed the erosion of freedom of speech in modern Britain, or it doesn't concern them at all. The bishops, even though they did not use the words 'liberty' or 'freedom' showed an awareness that there is a problem.

The Catholic Bishops and the General Election

2010-05-05T17:35:00.008+01:00

(This is a quick post, in response to a request for comment by Albert.)

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) has issued a leaflet entitled “Some issues and questions for Parliamentary Candidates.” It bears the instruction “Please refer to this guidance when canvassers or candidates call,” and says

“Here are some issues and questions which may help inform your decision on who to vote for. They are open questions with no single ‘right’ answer. But from the responses given you may form a better idea of how far any particular candidate will be addressing the needs of the common good. You may well, of course, have other questions of your own to ask. This list is not exhaustive.”

It covers five areas, and in each it makes statements, and then follows them up with questions for candidates.

1) Firstly in valuing life. That means opposing abortion and euthanasia, and life-cramping poverty, and the neglect of the elderly.

What does respect for life mean to you? Do all lives have the same value? Older people and the infirm … the severely disabled … the unborn?

I know what it means to oppose abortion and euthanasia. It means to ban them - though obviously there are questions about exactly how such legislation would be framed. However, I do not know what it means to oppose “life-cramping poverty” and “the neglect of the elderly”? Clearly, it doesn’t mean banning poverty. It also begs the question “What exactly is the role of the state here?”

I find it interesting, by the way, that there is nothing about valuing people’s property. I guess that the CBCEW doesn’t think that it is a political issue at the moment - though nor, to the best of my knowledge is neglect of the elderly.

2) Families are the basic building block of any stable society. Marriage provides the best context for bringing up children and must have the clear support and encouragement of Government.

What will you do for marriage and the family? What practical measures will you take to encourage and support stable family life and the institution of marriage?

I agree with the first two statements, but not the third. I cannot see why marriage must have the clear support and encouragement of Government. Christians often make this assumption, but when I think of people I know whose marriages have broken up, I don’t honestly think that anything the government could reasonably have done would have helped at all. Why should the state be involved in marriage?

3) Migration is not about numbers, it is about human beings. Wherever the Government sets the boundary on who can or cannot live here, it must apply its rules with fairness, decency and respect for the individual.

What beliefs and values underpin your approach to migration? And how will you show them in practice?

I completely agree with the statements, and I think that all libertarians would. As stated in my previous post, libertarians believe in the free movement of people - but take the view that this is just not realistic at the moment while Britain a large welfare state which provides generous automatic tax-payer funded benefits to those who are granted asylum. (LPUK policy is as here.)

I think it is interesting that migration is perceived by the CBCEW as one of the 5 major issues in the election. The focus is broader than just the question of the treatment of asylum seekers.

4) Our care for each other is also shown in how we support the development of the world’s poorest people, and how we use – or abuse – the environment we share. We must be good stewards of God’s creation, not selfish exploiters of it.

What do you think is our responsibility to the poor, in this country and overseas? What is our responsibility to safeguard and protect the environment?"

I completely agree with the statements. With regard to the first question, my answer is “Individuals have a moral responsibility to help the poor, both in this country, as does the church. The state has a duty to ensure that its policies do not directly discriminate against the poor. The state likewise has a duty to ensure that those who pollute the land, air and water of others should make appropriate recompense."

5) Our faith is at the heart of our lives. Religious belief is not just something private: it helps create a society that wants to see everyone flourish. It has a contribution to make and must be allowed to do so in accordance with its teachings.

What do you think is the place of religion in society?

This is an interesting one. The phrasing (“and must be allowed to do so in accordance with its teachings”) indicates that the CBCEW believes that religious freedom is under threat - something which I think is true, but which Church of Scotland leaders like the Rt Rev William Hewitt and the Rev. Ian Galloway do not seem to be concerned about. (That apparent lack of concern is interesting, and worth noting.)

I agree that faith is at the heart of people’s lives, and that religious belief is not something private. However, defining religion is somewhat difficult. (So for that matter, is defining the word ‘faith’.) I do not agree with the statement that religion, per se, helps create a society that wants to see everyone flourish. I take the view that Jesus Christ is the eternal, incarnate Son of God and that his teachings are objectively true, and that where people try to put them into practice, it is a good thing. I also take the view that religious beliefs which go against the teaching of Jesus Christ are not helpful to society.

Libertarians believe that people should be allowed freedom to express any opinions, whether those opinions are right or wrong. Libertarians believe that people should be free to bring up their children according to their own belief, as long as that does not involve physically harming their children. Libertarians believe that people should be allowed to practise their religion as long as such practice does not involve the initiation of violence against other people. Human sacrifice would be banned.

Summary: All in all, I think that the bishops’ questions are reasonably well balanced. They reflect, of course, the emphases that one would expect the Catholic Church to have: the place of religion in society (which, I suspect, is basically about the freedom of Catholic schools to operate as the Catholic Church wishes), marriage and the family, and abortion - which, while not a major issue as far as the mainstream media are concerned, is very important for the Catholic Church, and for others who regard Britain's abortion laws as seriously flawed. The environment, poverty, and immigration all get a mention as well. There is nothing about the economy, but that does not surprise me much.

The statements and questions are kept fairly vague - keeping to general principles, rather than specific policies, which is probably very wise of the bishops. The words are carefully chosen so as to avoid controversy. And I note that the words “freedom” and “liberty’ are absent!

The ecclesiastical establishment and the election: 2

2010-05-05T09:42:00.005+01:00

Following on my previous report on what the ecclesiastical establishment is saying about the election, here are the views of the Rev Ian Galloway. Mr Galloway is Convenor of the Church of Scotland’s Church and Society Council - which effectively means that he is the Church of Scotland’s spokesman on political affairs.

“We want to know what values politicians will use when deciding how best to respond to challenges such as widening inequality and the legacy of the economic downturn. Economic injustices such as debt, homelessness, unemployment, and child poverty are not easily solved, but they should not be ignored.”

Hold on a minute. Debt is an injustice? Surely if I borrow money, then I have incurred a debt. What is injust about that. And homelessness? Let’s imagine that a bear arrives in Britain as a stowaway and managed to get to Paddington Station, armed only with a suitcase and a notice that says “Please look after this bear.” If no one takes m the bear home, then the bear is homeless, which is very unfortunate for the bear. But according to the usual meaning of the word, it isn’t unjust. And the same is true of employment and child poverty. To be unemployed or poor is unfortunate for those concerned - but hardly unfair.

"Politicians need to know that life is really tough for millions of people. The values we want to see in the decisions they take need to put the needs of the poor and the marginalised first."

The values that politicians have are very important. But even more important are effectiveness of the policies. What sort of policies should be implemented to help one parent families in council flats? Patently’s answer might surprise a lot of Scottish voters.

"Amongst the most marginalised are asylum seekers. Justice for them would be an end to the threat of detention for children and families seeking sanctuary from persecution. We want all candidates to know this matters to us."

He’s got a point. Asylum seekers sometimes have a rough time seeking to get into this country, and the processing of applications for asylum is far too slow. Libertarians believe in the free movement of people. Alas, this is just not realistic at the moment while Britain a large welfare state which provides generous automatic tax-payer funded benefits to those who are granted asylum.

"This election will be a key moment in the future of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons. We have invited congregations to send a postcard message to their candidates asking them to scrap Trident if they get the chance. Imagine the difference that could be made to millions of lives if we didn’t spend billions of pounds on nuclear weapons."

Well, if you accept that Trident is utterly pointless and serves no useful purpose in defending this country, fair enough. If you don’t accept that premise, then you might want to imagine the difference that would be made to millions of lives if it turned out that the country did not have adequate resources to defend itself in the event of a real threat.

So, all in all, Mr Galloway seems to have fine ideals. I am less convinced about whether all his views are well thought out. Pretty typical of church leaders, some might say.

An opportunity to make freedom of speech an election issue?

2010-05-03T13:27:00.004+01:00

I've been reading the accounts (Telegraph and Mail) of the arrest of Dale McAlpine, a street preacher, in Workington. Mr McAlpine is just the latest in a string of street preachers in Britain to be approached by police for questioning about alleged homophobic remarks. If the story is as reported is is pretty worrying.

Tim Worstall comments

"I have a very strong feeling that the actual crime here is pissing off a policemen. And that might be an even greater problem than the restriction of free speech one. That we’re hiring people into the police force who have such thin skins, are not able to understand that what is illegal and what might hurt a policemen’s fragile ego are not the same thing, that’s a problem."

He may have a point. There has always been a problem of people with an agenda who like a police uniform because it gives them an opportunity to bully people who annoy them. And seven hours in police cells is not minor bullying - it's pretty serious.

But the real issue is freedom of speech, and the blatant abuse of the 1986 Public Order Act. In the context of the latest arrest, the remarks of Lord Dear, former Chief Constable of the West Midlands, speaking on the debate on the Waddington amendment last year, are very interesting.

“ . . . prior to the Waddington amendment, the police regularly received complaints from homosexual groups that exception was taken to remarks that homosexuality was deplored on religious grounds. The police were forced to act. They operated, as we have already heard alluded to, against a background of the Home Office’s guidance notes on how to handle hate crime under the Public Order Act 1986, to which the issue of sexual orientation was added by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.

"The so-called guidance notes in fact required rigid adherence. Any complaint of hate crime, by whomsoever made, even a bystander, had to be recorded as such and fully investigated. No exercise of discretion was countenanced. Accordingly, the police, and later the CPS, when faced with a complaint concerning remarks about sexual orientation, would follow the Home Office’s guidance notes, go through the whole procedure of interview, sometimes following arrest—fingerprinting, taking DNA samples, police bail, sometimes charge—even though pretty well everyone in the official process knew that there was little or no chance of a prosecution, much less a conviction, following.”

". . . With the Waddington amendment in place, the police are released from the virtual straitjacket imposed on them previously; they can exercise common sense and good judgment on the day; and they can police with the light touch which is so often sought and required by society.”

Hmmm. Common sense? Good judgment? Light touch? I don't think so.

There is, of course, another issue. The Conservative Party manifesto has sections (p79) entitled "Restore our civil liberties" and "Protect our freedoms". The Liberal Democrat manifesto says (p93) "Liberal Democrats will protect and restore your freedoms." Yet the leadership of both parties have, as far as I am aware, been totally silent on the police harassment of street preachers over the past 13 years.

I realise that they cannot comment specifically on this case, since Mr. McAlpine has been charged, and his case has not yet come to court. However, they have just been handed an opportunity to speak out about the erosion of freedom of speech under successive Labour governments. Somehow, I can't see them taking it. I suspect that they are scared that they'd be accused of being libertarians. Or something like that.

The ecclesiastical establishment and the election: 1

2010-04-30T08:57:00.004+01:00

As an alternative to reading bloggers and the main stream media, I thought I’d find out what members of the ecclesiastical establishment are saying. As reported at ekklesia, the Church of Scotland’s magazine, Life and Work invited some religious leaders in Scotland for their opinions. Here are the thoughts of the Rt Rev William Hewitt, Moderator of the General Assembly.

“I would want to stress the importance of taking part in the democratic process. Voting is not only a civic duty, but is a right we should cherish. We remember those people in the past who won the right to vote, and those around the world who envy us for having the freedom to choose our own government."

Not controversial, and I’d basically agree. But I would want to add that I think that deliberately abstaining, whether by spoiling one’s ballot or by not casting a ballot at all, because one believes that none of the candidates is worthy of a vote, is not a failure to do that civic duty.

“Some people say that there is no point in voting because the parties are all the same. This is unfair, as we elect individuals, whose values and opinions will always be different. We have a responsibility to discover what our candidates are saying and what the party manifestos are proposing.”

Important points, and I agree (though it is true that there is not much difference between the main parties). How many people actually bother finding out about candidates and the content of manifestos? Not many.

“We all know that the major issues of economic recovery, education and health will dominate. However the Church is pushing for an end to Trident, both from a moral and an economic point of view.”

In other words, the Church of Scotland thinks you should probably vote for the LibDems, the Greens, the SNP (we’re talking about Scotland, after all), or one of the smaller socialist parties. It would rather that you didn’t vote for Labour, the Conservatives, or UKIP - or the LPUK.

I, personally, don’t have strong views on this one. I can see that an independent nuclear deterrent is expensive, and it is possible that our defence budget may be better spent in other ways. However, I tend to go with the maxim “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” In other words, I believe in deterrence, and while I believe strongly that we should not invade other countries, make pre-emptive strikes, or initiate violence, the UK should be heavily armed to discourage other nations from attacking us - and that probably includes having a nuclear deterrent. If we do not have our own nuclear deterrent, we are basically either asking our friends to shelter us with theirs - in other words passing the buck, and freeloading off someone else - or we are saying that only knaves, outlaws and terrorists should have nuclear weapons. And both of those positions seem unacceptable to me.

It is also particularly important to vote for a party that respects human rights and to make sure that no racist or fascist candidate can be elected.

This is interesting. There are two things that are particularly important - i.e. more important than scrapping Trident. One is that we should vote for a party that respects human rights. This is, to put it mildly, vague. What human rights does he have in mind? He doesn’t say - which is odd, considering this is particularly important. So I must assume that this is related to Mr Hewitt’s belief that it is important “to make sure that no racist or fascist candidate can be elected” - i.e. that parties that respect human rights are those that don’t contain racists and fascists.

The use the word fascist concerns me. I agree with George Orwell that it is almost “impossible to define fascism satisfactorily”, and that “the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless,” and also with the Rev. John Richardson that “the use of the word 'Fascist' is (still) an excuse for not thinking, not defining and not engaging.”

In this case, it seems that Mr. Hewitt means the BNP, but doesn’t want to actually mention them. And I’m not impressed when he says “we must make sure that no racist or fascist candidate can be elected.” The use of the words “can be” instead of “is” implies that he wants a ban on racist and fascist candidates. I hope he doesn’t mean that. But even if he doesn’t, this still strikes me as silly. Who cares if a couple of BNP candidates are elected? We have a couple in the European Parliament, and it hasn’t brought about the end of civilisation as we know it. A couple of effectively BNP MPs in Parliament would inflict a lot less damage on the country than the Labour Party has over the past 13 years.

I’m not a fan of the BNP, but I find the view that the BNP are uniquely evil to be somewhat questionable.* In fact, I suspect that the BNP are the modern equivalent of the prostitutes and tax-collectors in the gospels - the really evil people that all good Pharisees and respectable folk should avoid like the plague.

*Edit: I notice that the YouFundMe website says "YouFundMe is a project open to candidates from all registered UK parties (except the BNP)." That seems odd to me. Is it for legal reasons, or is it just a bit of self-righteousness?

Bigotgate, Cleggmania and the PR election

2010-04-29T11:33:00.004+01:00

I woke up this morning and discovered that Gordon Brown was still leader of the Labour Party. I thought he probably would be, but after yesterday, I wasn't certain.

Yesterday wasn't good. His conversation with Gillian Duffy and the aftermath was politically disastrous. I don't know the future, but I suspect that he will not be leader of the Labour Party in 10 days time, and that his unfortunate remarks will cost several Labour MPs their seats.

Let's be honest. The PM came over as two-faced, as holding voters in contempt, and as viewing anyone who has concerns about immigration as being a bigot. His attempted clarification - that he had misunderstood what Mrs Duffy said to him - only made matters worse, since it looked like an admission that he was slow on the uptake and out of touch with voters. When in a hole, stop digging.

In a way, it shouldn't matter. Two-faced? To be honest, a lot of people I know are two-faced and what they say varies enormously with the company they are in. So I'd expect it of a politician. Holding voters in contempt? I'd expect most politicians to do so, at least some of the time. Viewing people who have big concerns about immigration as bigots? Most middle-class progressives do.

Interestingly enough, I first heard the story not from the media, but from a friend - and he clearly felt a good deal of sympathy for Gordon Brown. (To the best of my knowledge, he's not a Labour voter.) But I think that's going to be a minority reaction. Labour's hope of winning the election ended yesterday.

I suspect that this will turn out to be one of the two key moments in this election. The other, of course, is the first "prime ministerial debate"*. And both moments were not really about policy - but about personality and image. The Prime Minister's image is probably at an all time low, Mr Clegg's at an all time high. And, to be honest, image is what really counts with the majority of undecided voters.

And so it's 1997 all over again. A young, fresh face - untainted by high political office - and, effectively, an unknown quantity - talking about change and offering something new and different - is ready to take up his appointment with destiny. Because a lot of people are ready, if not to believe him, at least to give him the benefit of the doubt.

* I must confess that I am very uneasy about this. There is no question that these debates played a large part in creating the LibDem surge. All credit to Nick Clegg, he performed well. But surely it is also true that the decision about which parties should be included is, in itself, a contributory factor to the surge. Which means that the LibDems have been given publicity that was denied to parties like UKIP and the SNP.

To exclude Nick Clegg would have been unfair - even though no-one seriously thought of him as a potential prime minister a month ago. To include UKIP - who beat both Labour and the LibDems in the recent European elections - would have really meant that the Greens and the BNP would have had to be included, not to mention the SNP, and probably Plaid Cymru.

Should the debates have been allowed to take place at all? I don't have any answers - just uneasy feelings. And the shocking way that the BBC behaved at the Norwich North by-election (see here and here) makes me even more uneasy.

Philip Lardner and press misrepresentation

2010-04-27T21:47:00.003+01:00

The BBC, the Times, the Independent, the Telegraph, the Scotsman - and, for all I know, several other news providers as well.

All, without exception, have printed a sub-headline which is not true - at least not according to the stories they printed underneath. All say that the Philip Lardner, the Conservative candidate for North Ayrshire and Arran was suspended by the party for describing gay people as "not normal". All then proceed to quote the remarks which Mr Lardner apparently made. Nowhere does he say that gay people are “not normal”.

He says “I will support the rights of parents and teachers to refuse to have their children taught that homosexuality is 'normal' behaviour or an equal lifestyle choice to traditional marriage.”

He says “I will not accept that their behaviour is “normal.'”

Notice the difference. Mr Lardner says he does not accept certain behaviour as normal; the newspapers and BBC all said that he described certain people as “not normal.” Those two things are not the same. There is a significant difference. I do various things which might well be described as “not normal” - but that is not the same thing as saying that I am not normal.

I'm curious about three things: 1) Do these people not see that their story isn't strictly accurate? 2) Was the inaccuracy a deliberate attempt to make Mr. Lardner look worse in the eyes of readers? And 3) Will they spot the inaccuracy and correct it?

There is also, of course, the matter of the Conservative Party. Mr Lardner does seem to be a rather accident prone candidate - a couple of years back he was in hot water for speaking enthusiastically about Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian Prime Minister. Why the Conservative Party allowed him to be nominated for North Ayrshire and Arran this time is beyond me.

But that is not the only thing that concerns me about the Conservative Party in Scotland. I am even less impressed with the way it has reacted to this incident. The Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, Andrew Fulton, is reported as saying "These views have no place in the modern Conservative party."

These views? The view that homosexual behaviour is not normal has no place in the modern Conservative party? That seems remarkably close to saying that the view that homosexual behaviour is morally wrong has no place in the modern Conservative Party. And that, effectively means that traditional Christians have no place in the modern Conservative Party.

Edit: A key phrase in that post was "at least not according to the stories they printed underneath." I have now seen the Pink News report (thanks, Stewart) which includes the following words from Mr. Lardner:

Christians (and most of the population) believe homosexuality to be somewhere between 'unfortunate' and simply 'wrong' and they should not be penalised for politely saying so – good manners count too, of course.

So while Mr. Lardner does not actually say that "homosexual people are not normal" - he does, in that sentence, give the impression that he himself fails to distinguish between homosexual people and homosexual behaviour. Such a failure is unfortunate. And, dare I say it, 'wrong'.

We get the politicians we deserve

2010-04-27T09:13:00.001+01:00

Or at least that was the conclusion after reading Dan Hannan’s tale of a chat with a voter. (I suspect we get the governments we deserve as well.)

But it did make me think of some of the worst reasons for deciding who to vote for.

1. The candidate is local.
Yes, I can see that carpet-bagging career politicians are not ideal, and that a local candidate may have local knowledge, but there is no guarantee that a local MP will be any better than someone who has no connection with the area.

2. The candidate is one of us.
Evidence suggests that in US Democratic Party primaries in 2008, a lot of black people supported Barack Obama because of his skin colour, and a lot of women supported Hilary Clinton because of her sex. Not intelligent. I still remember hearing women who said that they voted Conservative in the 1979 General Election because Margaret Thatcher was a woman, and were then horrified by the policies of her government.

3. The candidate is a Christian.
(Not unrelated to the above.) Many Christians believe that a Christian will usually make a better MP that a non-Christian, and will basically vote in a way that reflects their own views. In reality, this is often not the case.

4. The candidate seems nice.
Or is a good family man. Or is young and good looking. Or has lots of charisma. Or comes over well on TV. Yes, otherwise intelligent people think like this.

5. The candidate is a good constituency MP.
The legislation that MPs pass in parliament is what will determine the kind of country we live in. Constituency work, in the end of the day, doesn’t really matter. But a lot of people haven’t realised this.

As Dan Hannan implies, there is one, and only one, intelligent way to decide how to vote - and that is according to political principles and policies of the candidate. It’s not always easy to find out, but some people don’t seem prepared to even try.

What’s a bear to do? Spoil the ballot?

2010-04-26T09:00:00.002+01:00

The other day I was chatting to a friend. He volunteered the information, without me mentioning the subject, that he probably wouldn’t vote in the General Election. This is not because he is apolitical or apathetic. (He’s actually very political, and has stood for the local council as an independent candidate in the last two elections. He didn’t get in, but he got a respectable number of votes.) It’s just that he has no confidence in any of the major parties.

So what will I do on election day? That’s not easy. The temptation to vote tactically has been removed by the fact that I live in a safe seat. For all practical purposes, my vote will make no difference, because everyone knows who’s going to win. I can vote according to my conscience.

But this doesn’t help much. If there was a Libertarian candidate, or a libertarianish independent, in my constituency - that’s who I’d vote for. But there aren’t many libertarian candidates, and none around my neighbourhood. If there were a UKIP candidate in my constituency, I’d settle for that. But there are over 100 constituencies that UKIP isn’t fighting, and I live in one of them. I might even be prepared to vote for a Hannanite Tory, but our local Conservative candidate does not impress me. What do I do?

The obvious answer is to spoil my ballot. I’ve done it before several times. My wife plans to do so. But I’ve decided that I don’t want to. A spoiled ballot does not communicate anything at all. Have a look at historical election statistics on the internet. You can find out what how many votes each candidate got; you can find out what the turnout was, but you won’t find the number of spoiled ballots. The number of spoiled ballots is a statistic that nobody is interested in - which means that spoiling one’s ballot is pointless. And in my case, people would just assume that I spoiled it because bears aren’t very good with pens, and I just wasn’t able to make the mark I intended to make.

So I have come up with an answer which I think might be a little better. If no candidate is much good, one should vote for the least dangerous person on the ballot paper*. Many constituencies have one or more fringe candidates - independents, supporters of local hospitals, Official Monster Raving Loonies. And fortunately, mine does. I may not agree with him about much, but if he were elected, he would not be part of the government in the event of a hung parliament. It’s a protest vote, pure and simple. Not great, but I think it’s a better option than spoiling my ballot or staying at home.

*Hat tip to Tom Paine at the Last Ditch for that one. And, at the risk of grossly over-simplifying, doing the least damage means not voting in favour of passing more laws (and, of course, voting in favour of repealing ones that we already have.)

The General Election: What is a bear to hope for?

2010-04-23T09:38:00.004+01:00

Confession time. I just can’t get up any enthusiasm at all for the General Election. Why? I simply cannot see anything good coming out of it. All the likely outcomes seem, from my point of view, to be bad.

Another Labour victory? The Labour Party’s record over the past 13 years has been absolutely terrible. Old freedoms are fast disappearing.

A good showing by the LibDems and a hung parliament? The Liberal Democrats, despite having some good points, are, on the whole, no better than Labour.

A Conservative victory? The Conservative Party is, in my opinion, better than Labour or the LibDems, but not much. I continue to hold the view that I have held for many years, that the Conservatives have the potential to be OK, but in the end, they always disappoint. And under David Cameron, they are less promising than ever.

My estimate of David Cameron is that other than a loyalty to his party, his country, and his own poltical career, he has no strong political beliefs or convictions. I may do the Mr Cameron an injustice, but my guess is that Simon Heffer’s assessment is accurate. It also seems to me that Mr. Cameron is one of the less libertarian figures in the Conservative Party. Of the likely election results, an overall Conservative majority would yield the most palatable goverment. But this would serve to bolster Cameron’s leadership, and weaken the hand of those in the Conservative Party who love freedom and distrust government. So in some ways, a disastrous result for the Conservative Party might, strangely enough, be a more hopeful result.

The minority parties don’t fill me with hope either. This is partly because none of them are likely to make a breakthrough, so they are all fairly irrelevant. Plaid Cymru and the SNP have the potential to win some seats and be in a position of power in the event of a hung parliament, but they seem to me to be no better than Labour and the LibDems. The Green Party and the BNP are no better. They both talk about freedom, but one gets the impression that it is their kind of freedom, freedom on their terms, that they are dreaming of - and if you want other kinds of freedom, you are out of luck.

UKIP have their faults, but they are easily the best of a bad bunch. And because of that, since I’m not a political purist, I hope that they do well. I’d love them to get 7 or 8% of the popular vote - and win Buckingham. Alas, I can’t see it happening.

And Libertarians? There are a couple of LPUK candidates - Nic Coome in Devizes, and Martin Cullip in Sutton and Cheam - as well as a handful of independents who are standing on a platform of upholding freedom. I hope they do well, but even if they do spectacularly well, they are not going to be a factor in the next government.

So what am I hoping for? Oddly enough, that all of the big three parties do badly. Ah well, I can dream.

The very air we breathe is statist

2010-03-25T08:51:00.003Z

In Life and Work, the magazine of the Church of Scotland, Dr. Murdo Macdonald (policy officer for the Church of Scotland’s Society Religion and Technology Project), writes on the subject of defence spending.

One sentence in the article jumped out at me:

“Many in the developed West have been rightly critical of developing countries which spend significantly larger proportions of their budgets on military hardware than they do on more benign expenditure such as health and education: for example, the governments of Ethiopia, Yemen and Sri Lanka all allocate more than 15% of their budgets to military expenditure.”

Most people will see that as an uncontroversial statement. (So would I, a few years ago.) But probe a little deeper. This is all about government expenditure. It simply assumes that governments will spend money on health and education, because the state is responsible for health and education. This is taken as a given.

In actual fact, as recently as 200 years ago, no-one assumed that the state was responsible for health and education. The view that the state was responsible for education largely arose in the 19th century, and the view that the state was responsible for health was unusual before the beginning of the 20th century. In other words, for most of the history of human civilisation, people (in this country and elsewhere) assumed that the state was responsible for defence, but not for health and education.

The same, in fact, is true in the Bible. Dr. Macdonald begins his article by citing passages of Scripture in which Israelite kings (i.e. the state) took responsibility for (rightly) building up the defences of their country. The Bible never, however, suggests or even hints that health and education are the responsibility of the state. One suspects that the ancient Israelite prophets would not have seen any problem with the state spending more money on defence than on health and education.

The truth is, that while Dr. Macdonald begins his article by referring to Scripture, the assumption behind the sentence which I have quoted owes far more to the political culture of the past century than it does to the teaching of the Bible.

But some are more equal than others

2010-03-18T09:05:00.007Z

You couldn’t make it up. Well, I couldn’t anyway. Catholic Care, a Catholic adoption agency has won a court ruling that means that it will not be forced to place children with homosexual couples.

The amusing thing, however, is that the reason that it has won this unexpected victory is that the government inserted a clause in the 2007 Equality Act, Regulation 18, which states:

Nothing in these Regulations shall make it unlawful for a person to provide benefits only to persons of a particular sexual orientation, if—
(a) he acts in pursuance of a charitable instrument, and
(b) the restriction of benefits to persons of that sexual orientation is imposed by reason of or on the grounds of the provisions of the charitable instrument.

In other words, charities to continue to discriminate if the stated aim of the charity was to provide services to people of a particular sexual orientation. (This loophole was inserted to ensure that gay charities could not be sued for discrimination by heterosexual couples.) Catholic Care simply wrote an explicit reference to serving heterosexuals into its constitution, and won their case.

One can only fall about laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. To quote Ogden Nash:

Any hound a porcupine nudges
Can't be blamed for harboring grudges.
I know one hound that laughed all winter
At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.

The serious side of this is that the government specifically wished to allow one group to discriminate in a particular way, while not allowing other groups to discriminate in a different way. In other words, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

In October 2008, the Libertarian Party sent copies of Orwell’s 1984 to MPs with an insert which said “This book, contrary to what your leader might think, is NOT an instruction manual, but a warning.” Well, it seems that maybe some politicians think that it is actually Orwell’s Animal Farm that is the instruction manual.

There has been a predictable amount of annoyance at the court’s ruling. The National Secular Society have shown themselves to be a radically unlibertarian organisation - in much the same way that the British Humanist Association did a couple of months ago. Surely there must be some organisation to represent secularist libertarians? Or is secularist libertarianism as much a contradiction in terms as theocratic libertarianism?

Edit: The Telegraph's article portrayed the reaction in terms of Christians vs. Secularists - e.g. "Secular campaigners condemned the judge's decision as "alarming" and "a major setback" for gay rights." I think this is somewhat simplistic. I was glad to see Nikhil Arora, an atheist who disagrees with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, welcoming the ruling over at the Adam Smith Institute blog.

So one bad law deserves another?

2010-03-04T10:53:00.002Z

The House of Lords has just voted (in my opinion, rightly) to allow civil partnerships to be registered in places of worship. The result, however, is that, according to the Telegraph, “Traditionalist bishops and peers fear that vicars could be taken to court and accused of discrimination if they turn down requests to hold civil partnerships on religious premises.”

To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised. Some people seem to have an urge to sue anyone for just about anything. And I wouldn’t even be surprised if the courts found in their favour - which would, in my opinion, be utterly wrong.

Lord Waddington is quoted as saying that a clergyman “prepared to register marriages but not to register civil partnerships would be accused of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of services and pressure would be brought to bear on him to pocket his principles and do what he believed to be wrong”. He may be right.

The problem, however, is not with Lord Alli’s amendment. The problem is that to ban discrimination in the provision of goods and services is wrong. If a trader at Portobello Market refuses to sell me a jar of marmalade just because I’m a bear, that’s his right. It’s a free country. At least it used to be. I may be young, but I’m not childish enough to want to want to take away his right.

If it was not for the authoritarian laws which forbid people from discriminating in the provision of goods and services, we wouldn’t have Lord Waddington and the traditionalist bishops arguing for retaining the authoritarian law that forbids places of worship from being used to register civil partnerships. It seems that one authoritarian law requires another.

Please could we have some more freedom?

And yet more on scrappage

2010-02-23T16:25:00.007Z

It's a funny thing, and I can't explain it, but of all the things that Her Majesty's Government have done in the past few years, the one that really makes me irate is the scrappage scheme. I wrote a mild mannered tirade against it when we were threatened with it, and I wrote another when its introduction was announced.

Hence, when I saw an article in the Times telling us that the evidence suggests that the scheme will actually result in an increase, rather than a decrease in CO2 emissions, I couldn't resist another quick post.

Research by the US Department of Energy calculates that the average new car sold in 2009 required the energy equivalent of 1,540 gallons of petrol to manufacture. The figure dwarfs the fuel savings of 61.2 gallons per year and means that it will take 25 years before the new car repays its “fuel debt”.

And that doesn't even take into account the energy used in scrapping cars and the environmental impact of shipping Korean superminis half way around the world. Yes, if you turned in your faithful old banger for a shiny new '59 reg' Hyundai i10, you are one of those evil people who is destroying our planet. :-)

I must confess that my suspicion is that the government always knew that the measure would do nothing to reduce global CO2 emissions, but thought that it would look like a nice piece of environmental window dressing.

Civil Partnerships and Religious Premises

2010-02-23T11:53:00.002Z

In a letter to the Times this morning, a group of gentlemen have argued that the current law which prohibits civil partnerships from being registered in any religious premises in Great Britain should be repealed, and they write in support of an amendment which would do just that. They argue on two grounds - the spiritual independence of churches, and the principle of non-discrimination. Indeed the way they end their letter (“We urge every peer who believes in spiritual independence, or in non-discrimination, to support it.”) indicates that they are aware that there are people who may support one of their arguments but not the other.

I personally am not convinced by their argument concerning non-discrimination, and agree with the Bishop of Winchester that “churches of all sorts really should not reduce or fudge, let alone deny, the distinction” between marriage and civil partnership.

(On the other hand, I am not convinced by the argument of the Bishops of Winchester and Chichester that changing the law would put unacceptable pressure on the Church of England. As long as the law does not compel the Church of England, then the Church has the ability to decide what it believes is correct, and the duty to withstand pressures from society.)

I do, however, believe that the argument concerning spiritual independence is valid - and that the law as it stands is very strange. If the Quakers and the Unitarians want to register civil partnerships in their places of worship, then that is a matter for them, and not for the state. Traditional Christians will be horrified at such things happening, but their horror should be directed not at the state for permitting these things, but at the Quakers and Unitarians for wishing to do them. If traditional Christians want freedom to proclaim that homosexual activity is wrong, and to exclude practising homosexuals from their membership, then they should be willing to allow freedom to religious bodies which think otherwise.

Ali Dizaei, promotion, and the public sector

2010-02-09T21:17:00.001Z

Readers of the works of Michael Bond may not realise this, but it is not unknown for bears go into a winter sleep state, akin to hibernation. And so it has been in recent weeks. However, I am now sort of awake, and have been rubbing my eyes with astonishment at the news that a senior London police officer has been jailed for a very serious offence.

I read with interest the Telegraph’s comment on the affair, and particularly noted the following lines:

“He repeatedly exploited the consequent tensions by becoming a serial complainer against alleged racist behaviour in the force, while fending off persistent allegations of wrong-doing himself. Curiously, this did not prevent the Iranian-born Dizaei being promoted to the rank of Commander – perhaps because the appointment was in the gift not of the Commissioner but of the Metropolitan Police Authority . . . ”

The implication is not only that Mr Dizaei managed to pull off the extraordinary feat of being promoted in the police service despite having faced persistent allegations of wrong-doing - but also that his promotion was not based on his suitability for the job, or his competence, but on political considerations. The Metropolitan Police Authority is not, after all, a body largely made up of police officers, but a body dominated by politicians and political appointees.

This struck me, because I have been reflecting on the whole business of promotions in what is usually known as the public sector, but which might more accurately be described as the state sector. What I have observed is that in the state sector, it sometimes happens that people are promoted simply because their faces fit, and the boss wants to be surrounded by a team of ‘yes-men’, while more competent and able candidates are passed over.

This happens in the private sector too, of course. But in the private sector, there is a mechanism for sorting this out. A business which persistently appoints people because their faces fit, i.e. for ‘political reasons’, will eventually find that it becomes uncompetitive, because customers and clients will go elsewhere. In other words, the business itself will suffer.

In the state sector, there is no such mechanism, because clients cannot go elsewhere. And so it is usually only the members of the public who have to deal with incompetents who will suffer. The people in charge - who make the questionable promotions and appointments - rarely do.

The obvious moral is that where possible, goods and services should be provided by the private sector, rather than the state. That is not, I suspect, always possible, and I personally don’t believe that policing should be handled by the private sector.

However it does seem to me that the promotion of Mr. Dizaei indicates two things. First, police appointments should be made by the police, rather than by politicians and political appointees. Second, the senior police officers who are in charge of police promotions should be accountable to the public, so that if promotions policy is seen to be wrong, the police officers in charge can be removed by the public. And the simplest way to achieve that is to have chief constables who are directly elected by the voters - which just happens to be Libertarian Party policy.

Section 28, Nick Clegg, the state, and education

2010-01-20T21:36:00.003Z

Thinking about Nick Clegg’s recent remarks has got me thinking again about Section 28.

For centuries, education has been a bit of a battleground. Long ago, the Jesuits, recognising just how powerful a tool education could be, apparently said “Give dme a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” Hence the question of who educates children, and how they do it, has always had the potential for great controversy. The Dutch even had a schools war.

Over the years, parents have often been in disagreement with teachers about what their children are being taught, teachers have often been in disagreement with school authorities, and school authorities (who, in past centuries, were often religious bodies) have been in disagreement with parents. Naturally, two of these groups have often formed an alliance the third.

Which brings us to Section 28, one of the most emotive educational battlegrounds in recent British history. The problem arose in the 1980s because several people were concerned that some teachers and school authorities were involved in teaching children that homosexual behaviour was normal and harmless - a proposition that many parents did not wish their children to be taught. The state, in the form of central government, felt that such parents had a legitimate grievance, and stepped in by passing legislation.

That legislation said:

A local authority shall not -
(a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;
(b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.

What this actually meant was a matter of some debate. The government issued a statement which said “Section 28 does not affect the activities of school governors, nor of teachers. It will not prevent the objective discussion of homosexuality in the classroom, nor the counselling of pupils concerned about their sexuality,” which came as a bit of a surprise to some, who hoped that it would affect the activities of school governors and teachers.

So - what is a libertarian to make of section 28? It seems to me that there are five questions to be asked.

1) Libertarians believe that central government should not curb the freedom local government, unless local government is using its freedom to infringe the freedom of individuals. Did this legislation do so? It seems to me that central government was definitely curbing the freedom of local government. But was it merely stopping local government from doing something that local government should not have been doing?

2) Libertarians believe that central government should not curb the freedom of schools and teachers. Did this legislation do so? It seems to me that the answer is “probably not.”

3) Libertarians believe that central and local government should not take and use tax-payers’ money except for the defence of individuals and their property. Is the promotion of homosexuality a legitimate use of tax-payers money? Here, much depends on how one defines “promotion of homosexuality”, but I think that the answer is “No - the promotion of homosexuality is not the business of government.”

4) Libertarians believe that the education of children is basically a matter for their parents, rather than for state. Was Section 28 merely supporting the right of parents? The answer to that might be “yes.” Parents were never likely to be asked by local authorities (or local authority schools) what they wanted. (And what if parents wanted different things?) But since the government declared that Section 28 did not affect the activities of school governors or teachers, it did not actually affect the balance of power between schools and parents.

5) Libertarians believe that laws, particularly prohibitions, should only be passed when necessary - so was this legislation really necessary? The answer is that while it was not necessary, it was, broadly right in that it was designed to prevent a branch of the state from using its powers (with regard to the education of children, and to the spending of taxpayers’ money) in a way that libertarians would consider improper.

In other words, Section 28 did not actually say “You shall not teach that homosexual behaviour is normal and harmless.” But even if it had, it would have given schools (and teachers) three options. They could either teach that it was abnormal and / or harmful. Or they could teach that it existed, but make no value judgement. Or they could simply not mention homosexual behaviour in the course of lessons. (The latter was the course of action taken by the schools that I attended in the 1960s and 70s. In fact, nothing much was said about the rights and wrongs of any forms of sexual behaviour, even in English classes.) Which means that Section 28 gave schools and teachers far more freedom than Nick Clegg’s proposals to make it mandatory for maintained schools to teach that homosexual behaviour is normal and harmless.

I’m left wondering what all the fuss with regard to Section 28 was about. It was, it seems to me, neither what its friends hoped nor its enemies feared. It was, from a libertarian point of view, hardly a terrible piece of legislation. But it did nothing to take power over education away from the state and hand it back to parents, and it did nothing to stop tax-payers’ money being spent on questionable projects.

And as such, it must be viewed as a waste of time - a mere symbol for culture warriors to get worked up about.

UKIP and burkas: it's minarets all over again

2010-01-18T11:58:00.004Z

Many bloggers have already covered the fact that UKIP are enthusiastic about banning burkas. Lord Pearson said it first, and my hope that Nigel Farage would disassociate himself from this idiocy were quickly dashed. As someone who has been sympathetic to UKIP, I am particularly disappointed.

But let us look at the reasons Mr. Farage gives.

"I can't go into a bank with a motorcycle helmet on. I can't wear a balaclava going round the District and Circle line."

Possibly - but you can wear a motorcycle helmet or a balaclava in public should you so desire. These items of clothing are not banned.

"And the real worry - and it isn't just about what people wear - the real worry is that we are heading towards a situation where many of our cities are ghettoised and there is even talk about Sharia law becoming part of British culture."

If people want to live with people of their own culture, then why shouldn't they? That may lead to difficulties, but it is not a problem per se. As for Sharia law, people may talk about it becoming part of British culture, but talk is cheap. The important thing is to make sure that it does not become part of British law. But I can't see how banning burkas will help.

A "different" culture was "being forced on parts of Britain and nobody wants that", added Mr Farage . . . .

Who is he talking about? Muslims? New Labour? In as much as I am culturally different from my neighbours (and I must be, because by taste in music is rather different from theirs), I can appreciate such sentiments. But having to put up with things in other cultures which we don't particularly like is part of maturity.

"There is nothing extreme or radical or ridiculous about this, but we can't go on living in a divided society," he told The Politics Show.

I'm afraid that I must respectfully disagree, Mr. Farage. I think that it is extreme, radical, and ridiculous.

Mr. Ed Balls says that no sensible party would back a ban on face veils. Well, if anyone had told me a week ago that within 7 days, I would be strongly agreeing with Mr. Balls and strongly disagreeing with Mr. Farage on a political issue, I would never have believed it. But it has come to pass.

There is, however, the big issue here. Mr Farage, again:

"What we are saying is, this is a symbol. It's a symbol of something that is used to oppress women. It is a symbol of an increasingly divided Britain."

Ahh, we are back to Swiss minarets: perfectly harmless to anyone, and yet worthy of a ban, because they are a symbol. And if the Swiss feel so strongly as to vote in a referendum to ban symbols, then UKIP may believe that the British feel likewise, and that there are votes in banning burkas.

This fear of symbols, and desire to ban them, is interesting. Swastikas are banned in Germany; indeed, a few years ago, some German politicians called for the banning of swastikas throughout the EU. There was also the de facto banning in Northern Ireland of the flying of the Irish tricolour.

Peculiar, isn't it?. People have this incredible desire to ban symbols of whatever it is that currently happens to be the "threat to civilisation as we know it". For Northern Irish unionists, that happened to be Irish Republicanism; for Germans it is Nazism; for many in modern Europe, it is militant Islam. But does banning symbols actually do any good? I've yet to see any evidence that it had any positive effect in either Northern Ireland or Germany.

UKIP seem to think that just because burkas are symbols of things that they fear, they should be banned. This view, it seems to me, is totally irrational. Sadly, UKIP isn't alone in this irrational view. Indeed, if the Germans, the Swiss, and the Northern Irish can be taken as representative, irrationality seems to be the norm rather than the exception.

On being offended (2)

2010-01-14T21:02:00.002Z

I like this quote from Kevin DeYoung:

The weakest offense-taker can now bully multitudes of intelligent men and women through the emotional manipulation that goes with chronic offendedness.

Seems like a fair comment on our times.

Nick Clegg, faith schools, and bullying

2010-01-13T19:35:00.004Z

According to the Telegraph, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said that faith schools should be required to have anti-homophobic bullying policies in place. “If they're suffering higher rates of homophobic bullying and violence then we need to put serious pressure on them. It needs
to be a requirement.”

So what are we to make of this? Well, let us note first of all that Mr. Clegg uses the word “if.” He is not sure about whether faith schools are suffering higher rates of homophobic bullying and violence. Are they? According to a report compiled by Stonewall in 2007, 75% of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils attending faith schools claim to have experienced homophobic bullying, as opposed to 65% of LGB pupils generally. So perhaps they are. But who is to know? To claim to have been the victim of bullying is not the same thing as to have actually been bullied.

But Mr. Clegg’s suggested remedy leaves me somewhat concerned, for the following reasons.

1. He seems to believe that faith schools should be lumped together and singled out for serious pressure, despite the fact that 75% is not that much higher than 65%. Yet Mr. Clegg’s words would suggest to the casual observer that he thinks that faith schools have a significant problem that other schools do not have. Even if one accepts the findings of the Stonewall report at face value, it is probable that some faith schools do not have a significant bullying problem, and that some non-faith schools do. This business of lumping all faith schools together is a bit like the way some people say “If members of a certain ethnic group are considerably more likely to be involved in crime, then we need to target that ethnic group.” And I think that Mr. Clegg would not like that.

In passing, I might add that his approach reminds one of the approach of the government to home education. A review of 74 local authorities found that while 0.2% of children in the UK population were known to social services, the figure was 0.4% among those who were educated at home. The government’s response to these statistics has been to propose draconian and intrusive regulations for home educators.

2. The idea that the way to address the problem is to insist that schools have “anti-homophobic bullying policies” in place is depressing. Everyone has to have a policy in place for every eventuality. If a school has good leadership and good discipline, there is no need to have a policy in place, because bullying will be appropriately dealt with.

3. As a libertarian, I do not believe that it is the job of central government to insist that individual schools have any policies at all in place. This is simply not a central government function. (No doubt Mr. Clegg will be absolutely horrified by my saying this.)

4. And why this big concern about homophobic bullying? Why not simply be concerned about bullying per se? And of course the answer is because some people are obsessed with hate crime. As Tom Paine, over at The Last Ditch, says:

Why is the Left so obsessed with “hate speech” and “hate crime?” If I am injured, I want justice, whether my attacker was motivated by hate or merely indifferent to my plight. If my goods are stolen, I don’t care if the thief was driven by envy, hatred or greed. I just want my stuff back and the thief out of circulation.

If I am being bullied, does it really matter whether I am being bullied because of my expressed sexual preferences, or because the bully finds my voice irritating, or he doesn’t like the fact that I have different tastes in music from him, or whatever? Or course not. The problem is not homophobia - it is bullying.

Yes, I know that Mr. Clegg is a politician, and when he is being interviewed by Attitude magazine, he will be playing to the gallery and making a pitch for the LGBT vote. But I still find his words rather disappointing.

Edit: I also note that that Mr Clegg has apparently said that faith schools should be legally obliged to teach that homosexuality is "normal and harmless."

Liberal Democrats? That is about as illiberal as it gets. "Stalin Democrats" would be a more accurate name. I'm sorry, but they have just joined the BNP and Labour in the "parties that I would not even consider voting for" category.

Faith schools and libertarianism

2010-01-12T13:31:00.004Z

Cristina Odone, (who has, at various times been editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman), has a piece in the Telegraph entitled “Why does Labour hate faith schools?”

Now, I don’t know if Labour really do hate faith schools. Nor do I know if Miss Odone is correct in her assertion that Ed Balls “so loathes the notion of religious-based education that he prefers to tolerate Britain's increasing social inequality.” But I do know that faith schools don’t go down well with some people.

The British Humanist Association is fairly representative of those who are opposed to faith schools. What do they want?

“An end to the proliferation of maintained faith schools; discrimination in admissions and employment in faith schools outlawed; a comprehensive curriculum across all subjects, including beliefs and values education, sex and relationships education, and citizenship education to be taught objectively in all schools.

Ultimately, all faith schools should be absorbed back into the secular schools sector, becoming inclusive community schools. We campaign against ‘faith schools’, and for an inclusive, secular schools system, where children and young people of all different backgrounds and beliefs can learn from and with each other. ”

I am most amused to read that they want to see all faith schools absorbed back into the secular schools sector. Back? The implication is that faith schools were once in the secular schools sector, and that in the good old days, all British schools were secular. This, of course, is not quite so. At one time, in fact, almost all British schools were, in some sense, Christian schools - and the trend has been for their Christian character to be eroded over the decades.

The hope that all subjects, should “be taught objectively in all schools,” is laudable, though somewhat naive. After all, who is to define what constitutes objectivity?

One also wonders if they really mean that “all faith schools should be absorbed back into the secular schools sector.” Does that mean that faith schools will be banned, and only secular schools will be permitted?

And their call for a comprehensive curriculum across all subject implies that they accept the received political wisdom that it is the job of the state to decide what is taught in schools. The implication is that it is the state that shall decide how children are educated, rather than parents. There may be some humanists who are libertarians, but they don’t seem to wield much influence in the BHA.

So, what do libertarians think about faith schools? Well, actually the LPUK manifesto doesn’t mention faith schools or religion. That is quite deliberate. We support a voucher system, similar to the one that was introduced in Sweden in the 1992, giving parents a free choice of what kind of school they send their children to. That is because we believe that it is parents, rather than the government, that should decide how children should be educated.

My journey to Libertarianism: 8

2010-01-09T09:02:00.003Z

In which a young bear gentleman from Darkest Peru hears hopeful sounds

By 2006, I had become convinced that, politically speaking, the country had gone wrong under New Labour. Seriously wrong. The obvious people to put it right, of course, were Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, and I had watched the 2005 Conservative leadership election with some interest. I had not been impressed with the Conservative Party for years, but I felt that under the right leader, they might become worthy of support, and David Davis looked promising. Alas, David Cameron was elected. I was a bit puzzled. I didn’t know why people had voted for him, since I couldn’t figure out what he actually stood for. And to be honest, I’m still struggling.

So I looked elsewhere. Having become a convinced eurosceptic a few years earlier, I started looking at UKIP a little more closely. Over the years, I had generally been sympathetic to UKIP; what they said generally seemed to be OK, but I also heard dark hints that there was something wrong with them.

In the course of my reading (on the internet), I discovered reference to the Five Freedoms that they sought:

1. Freedom from the European Union
2. Freedom from crime
3. Freedom from overcrowding
4. Freedom from bureaucratic politicians (including our own)
5. Freedom from political correctness

This looked very promising. I already knew that they stood for Freedom from the EU. I was getting increasingly convinced that politicians were a menace, and that our lot were passing too many laws, so freedom from bureaucratic politicians sounded good, too. But the one that really excited me was freedom from political correctness. Some people might laugh at political correctness, or regard it as an annoyance. I was convinced that the current vogue for political correctness posed a real danger to basic freedoms, particularly freedom of speech.

The other two were a little less convincing. All political parties tell us that they support freedom from crime, so that hardly needed to be said. And as for freedom from overcrowding, the mind boggles. That could mean a lot of things. In fact, it was a reference to immigration. And let’s just say that if you come from Darkest Peru, and have arrived in Britain as a stowaway, it sounds rather unfriendly.

So, even though I never seriously considered joining, I started taking more interest in UKIP. And the significance of this? Well, UKIP was beginning to brand itself as a libertarian party, and I started hearing the 'l word' being used in positive ways. In other words, UKIP was merely a stepping stone, but it was a stepping stone that was taking me in the direction of libertarianism.

My journey to Libertarianism: 7

2010-01-06T09:29:00.003Z

(In which a young bear gentleman from darkest Peru realises that he is not the only one who is giving the politicians a very hard stare.)

By 2005, I was feeling distinctly negative about the state of the nation. But I seemed to rather alone. There were, of course plenty of people who were unhappy, but the things that were upsetting them were not quite the same as the things that were upsetting me. I found it distinctly frustrating when I read of public opinion surveys which asked questions like “Which of the following is the issue that most concerns you?” And one was offered a choice of unemployment, inflation, the Iraq war, the threat of terrorism, education, immigration, or environmental issues / global warming. Because none of those matters was at the heart of my discontent. Clearly I was an unusual case.

And then in June 2005, I chanced to hear a programme on BBC Radio 4. It was presented by Simon Jenkins, the first of a series of three, entitled “Mad as Hell.” I would encourage you to listen to all three, or at least read the transcripts.

In the introduction, he said

“I've a file on my shelf labelled simply 'mad as hell'. . . . To give you some flavour of the file, it currently has letters protesting the new swimming pools order which requires every pool, including private ones, to be surrounded by a locked railing, a metre high. I kid you not. Another is from a grocer protesting at the need for all his staff to wear a different pair of rubber gloves for each loaf of bread sold, as if they were delivering babies. Another is from a vicar told his medieval church floor is sloping at more than the regulation angle and must be concreted over.”

My ears pricked up. I could identify with this. He then went on to speak about William Cobbett.

“Cobbett's most abiding hatred was of government, especially Tory government. This was small wonder since Tories were in power for the 30 years of his maturity. They twice drove him to exile and jailed him for sedition. Government, to him, was a pestilence. It curbed liberty and ruined the economy with paper money. When the House of Commons went up in flames in 1834, he cheered and listed all the rotten statutes it had passed.”

This sounded good to me, though in my case it would have been
“especially New Labour government.” And Mr. Jenkins seemed to see my point: “Whenever I go on a rural ride - or even an urban one - I wonder how apoplectic today's government would render Cobbett. His Britain was liberty hall in comparison.”

And he went on

“Some listeners may remember back in 1979 - a full quarter of a century ago - we voted, or some of us did, for Margaret Thatcher. Her programme at that election was to 'roll back the frontier of the state'. She proposed less government, less meddling interference, less red tape. She promised it. People voted for it. Yet the state today is just as big as it was in 1979, indeed by some measures bigger. And its intrusiveness - its bureaucracy and regulatory zeal - is greater beyond compare.”

And there was this wonderful gem:

“I once interviewed Thatcher shortly before her fall in 1990. I asked about the paradox of her yearning for more control and the Tory tradition of laissez faire. She exploded. Never call me laissez faire, she said, dreadful French word. "There are always things to be done!" she shouted. "There is always more to do!" ”

And there were more fascinating nuggets. This is from the second programme in the series:

“At the recent election the Tory leader, Michael Howard, pledged priority to cleaner hospitals, school discipline, more police on the beat and lower local taxes. A German friend of mine was amazed. ‘What've they got to do with him?’ he asked.”

And this, on ‘target culture’:

“We know the result of such targetry. It distorts medical priorities. It encourages academic verbosity. It has police cars crashing by measuring only 999 response times. Why should any public servant do otherwise than what government wants, when that is what government pays for? . . . Targets are the reduction to absurdity of the centralist state. . . . Targets make the bureaucrat king because they leave no room either for inspirational leadership or for local choice. They are one-size fits all government. Parliament does not oversee them. They simply emerge from someone's head. I once asked who fixed targets, such as that cannabis use be halved in five years or truancy reduced by 20 per cent. The answer was that "someone" unknown just made them up. Throughout history central power has meant arbitrary power. The target is government by whimsy.”

And then there was Mr. Jenkins’ comment on the BBC's Today
programme:

“It is often accused of left-wing bias. I have never agreed with that. But then its bias is far more powerful, towards interventionism as opposed to devolution. It may anti-the government but it is fiercely pro-government. And in this it is no different from most of the media, indeed most of Britain's political community. Day after day its interviewers intone the same mantra. ‘What are you doing, secretary of state, about the crime rate, hospital waiting list, traffic jams, trains, schools, litter, hooligans? Something must be done. Come on minister, what are you doing?’

In response I have never heard a minister dare to say that anything is none of his business. He dare not say it's the business of the private sector or local government or some quango chairman. The major premise of political debate is that more must always be spent and be done. When a dog bites a child, the Home Office must look into dog licences. When salmonella is found in an egg, all eggs are suspect. If a man falls into a pond, all ponds must be fenced.”

Simon Jenkins did not argue in the programmes for libertarianism. The word ‘libertarian’ was actually used in the first programme, though only in passing. (He argued for localism - which does happen to be a component of most libertarian thought.) But he had encouraged me to believe that often it is better if the state chooses to do nothing about certain problems - because the government’s cure often turns out to be worse than the disease. Like Cobbett, I was coming to believe that government was the problem.

(Part 6 of my journey is here, and if you click on the label below, you'll find previous parts as well.)

The attack on thrift

2009-12-29T13:27:00.003Z

Last Wednesday, when I was in my local newsagent, I noticed a copy of the the Times, with a big headline on the front cover about thrifty families being blamed for prolonging the recession. This struck me as preposterous, and clearly I’m not the only one, for Samizdata has described this as the dumb headline of the day.

But what struck me was the implication that this was virtually a moral issue. Thrift has become a vice; spending money on things that you don’t need has become a virtue.

And that is surely the way a lot of politicians see it. The temporary cut in the VAT rate was designed to encourage spending on luxuries. The car scrappage scheme was surely intended to encourage people who were not planning to buy new cars to go out and buy one anyway. And of course, the government has shown that it regards thrift as a bad thing, because its reaction to the economic slowdown was not just to encourage citizens to go out and spend - but also to increase borrowing so that it could itself spend more.

I think that this is economically dubious. But I think that it is morally dubious as well.

And the government shall be

2009-12-23T17:30:00.004Z

upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

May all readers of this blog experience the goodness of God this Christmas.

(And my apologies to anyone who believes that the above greeting constitutes bullying.)

Know thyself: a guide for the perplexed

2009-12-21T17:38:00.002Z

Wondering which party to vote for? Help is at hand with the Hunch UK Political Parties quiz.

In its favour:

1) It's short. (In fact, it is as short as the so-called "World's Smallest Political Quiz.")

2. It doesn't just seek to place you on a political spectrum or tell you your ideology. There are already a lot of political tests which do that. Rather, it aims to be a voter guide - to help you discover which party's policies most closely match your views. I cannot recall seeing such a test for British politics before - though several appeared on the internet in 2007 and 2008 to help Americans decide which candidate for the presidency they were closest to.)

3. It gives people a choice of several answers, asking them which is closest to their position, rather than simply asking "Do you agree or disagree with this statement?" I find that when the latter approach is taken, there are sometimes several reasons why someone might disagree with a statement; hence a statement of disagreement doesn't, in and of itself, actually tell anyone anything.

4. It actually includes the Libertarian Party among the parties listed!

5. It seems to work, because it decided that the Libertarian Party was the one for me.

Against it:

1. Several parties which are considerably larger than the Libertarian Party were not included.

2. It lacks sophistication. Not only is it brief, but some of the questions were odd, and the some of the scoring was even odder. (I'm sure that the erudite readers of this blog could design a considerably better test!)

By the way, I must confess that I am a sucker for these kinds of tests, and cannot resist almost taking every one that I encounter. The best of them, in my opinion, is the Political Spectrum Quiz. One of the basic problems of political ideology tests is that they generally use only two axes, which results in gross simplification. (Surely it is ridiculous to suggest that all political ideologies can effectively be reduced to just two axes.) The Political Spectrum Quiz effectively uses four axes.

A good example of the problem of using two axes is found in the Political Survey 2005. It asks good questions, but then chooses two very strange axes to plot the results on, so that the results are almost meaningless. However, they do implicitly acknowledge the difficulty of using only two axes.

The best known, Political Compass, is overrated. It's better than many, but a lot of the questions are odd, or poorly phrased. And it tells me that I am to the left of the 2008 Labour Party. Hmmmm. However, related to this, there is one thing I like about it. It describes Labour as a party of the right, and the BNP as a party of the left. That may be not actually be true, but at least it must annoy the Labour Party. :-)

Human rights culture and tyranny

2009-12-19T09:26:00.004Z

Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Charles Moore says that Britain's new supreme court "is effectively saying that a religion's way of defining its own membership, practised over 3,500 years, is illegal."

He continues "I would argue that the judgment goes wider still. It is part of a current idea of equality and of human rights which, in the name of freedom, is beginning to look like tyranny."

Well said, Mr Moore!

I believe that, in particular, he is profoundly right about two things. This is not simply about one judgement of one court. It is about our the whole of our current political culture. And it is looking like tyranny.

Indeed, always winter, and never Christmas.

Creative writing at the University of East Anglia

2009-12-17T15:07:00.004Z

(Hat tip to Bishop Hill)

Note those words: "Since it was founded in 1963, UEA has broken the mould in a number of areas, from creative writing to environmental sciences."

Is libertarianism compatible with Christianity?

2009-12-16T09:15:00.004Z

Not my question, but that of Mr. Stewart Cowan of Real Street, asked in a comment on a post on this blog.

It is a question that has been discussed a lot in other places, but why not have another discussion here? Blogs are for reinventing the wheel, are they not?

I. Stewart's question

Is libertarianism compatible with Christianity? We know that the truth will make us free and that behaving however we want will lead us into sin and enslave us.

To which I answered, in brief: "I agree with your second sentence. Libertarianism is about political freedom, not ultimate freedom. Politics cannot make anyone free, and operates in a completely different realm from the gospel - though politics can bring political freedom. So I'm not sure what the connection is between your first sentence and your second sentence.

If you can persuade me from Scripture that libertarianism is not compatible with Christianity, I shall be grateful. But my view is that it is more compatible with Christianity than any other form of politics in a sinful and fallen world."

II. Definitions of Libertarianism.

My definition: Libertarianism: the philosophy that holds that the ultimate political value is the freedom of the individual, and that the most effective way to uphold that freedom is to limit the scope of the state to those activities which directly defend that freedom.

Leg-Iron: Libertarianism . . . means fewer and simpler laws that are easy to understand and follow. . . . You are free to do whatever you want in Libertarianism as long as it hurts nobody else. Cause trouble and the proverbial ton of bricks comes into play.

Counting Cats: The basic principle is: "Thou shalt not initiate the use of violence." Everything else derives from that. Note, this is not pacifism; if someone initiates violence against you and yours, or your friends and allies and theirs, you are free to respond as you see fit. (And "violence" basically means "coercion", as I understand this definition.)

Bella Gerens: Libertarians believe you should be free from coercion – and that you must not coerce anyone else. Libertarians believe you should be free from interference – and that you must not interfere with anyone else. Libertarians believe you should be free from oppression – and that you must not oppress anyone else. Because these are to be universal freedoms: what you do not wish done to you, you must not do to anyone else.

There are many more, but those give one a basic idea. (A lot of libertarians speak about "self-ownership" being the basic principle of libertarianism, though I find that philosophically problematic, and don't accept it.)

III. So,what are the options?

1. No philosophy of government is compatible with Christianity. All fall short. And so, by implication, Christians should not be involved in politics or waste time discussing political matters.

2. Christians have a duty to "christianise" society, and should use political (among other) means to do so. This implies using force on unbelievers. This is what many would call the Constantinian or "Christendom" model. However, in my opinion, 2000 years of church history show that this has a nasty habit of turning, er, nasty - though there are plenty of people working on non-nasty variants. But these often end up being virtually indistinguishable from mainstream western political parties.

(I have dealt with both those options, to some extent, here.)

3. Libertarianism is not compatible with Christianity, but some other (basically secular) political philosophies are.

4. Libertarianism is compatible with Christianity. Indeed, it may be more compatible with Christianity than other political philosophies.

IV. A brief vindication of the thesis that libertarianism is compatible with Christianity.

1. The New Testament nowhere suggests that Christians have a duty to use the power of the sword to christianise society by political means.

2. What is the main thing that Christians are to seek from government?

I Timothy 2:1-2 "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way."

The main thing Christians are urged to pray for, when we pray for politicians, is that government will allow us to lead a peaceful and quiet life, and to let us get on with being Christians. This implies that the main thing that we are to look for from government is to basically leave us alone and protect us from those who would attack us. Which is basically the libertarianism position.

3. If we want to be allowed to lead a peaceful and quiet life, then we should want others to be allowed to lead a quiet life and do what they want to do. As a Christian, you cannot consistently ask the government to grant you the freedom to do what you want, if you, at the same time, want the government to deny others the freedom to do what they want (as long, of course, as it does not hurt someone else). Luke 6:31 "Do to others as you would have them do to you."

4. I have never seen anything in the Bible which suggests that libertarian principles are not compatible with Christianity.

If readers believe that I am wrong, then I invite them to point out my errors.

More on state control of education

2009-12-14T17:18:00.002Z

The Scottish Government is currently in the process of bringing in the modestly named Curriculum for Excellence.

The front line troops in Scottish education are, apparently, not totally convinced . . .

Children, the state, and social engineering

2009-12-10T19:57:00.005Z

(Or "Some thoughts on compulsory education")

Via Longrider, I see that the "think tank" Demos has produced a report entitled Service Nation, arguing that a scheme of civic national service would be a good idea. They come out saying that that they don't think that it should be compulsory for all citizens to undertake a a civic service scheme at a certain point in their lives. However they do say "A lifecycle approach to service learning should begin with school, with compulsory service learning as part of the national curriculum." And they also say "If it is to work, the service must be universal. . . . That’s why our proposals run from the age of seven to adulthood, rather than a scheme for young adults." And they talk about the huge public benefits.

Seems pretty harmless, doesn't it? Though of course we need to remember that every time something is added to the national curriculum, something else that the school is doing with children has to go. And that, in itself, is sufficient reason to assume that this is a bad idea, unless it can be shown otherwise.

But I have another problem with this. It is basically about that it is all about the state deciding how children are to be brought up. And this is something I am highly uneasy about because the state increasingly feels that it has the right to say how children are brought up and what they are taught.

Once upon a time, it wasn't like that, of course. But in Victorian times, those with good intentions felt that it was not good enough just to make education available to families. They felt the need to go further. And so compulsory education in England and Wales (for children aged 5 to 10) was introduced by the 1880 Elementary Education Act.

Scotland, however, was well ahead, since the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act had already made education compulsory for all children aged 5 to 13. But the 1872 Act is interesting for another reason. It decreed that the existing parish and burgh schools should be taken over by the state and managed by locally elected School Boards. The Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland handed over their schools without charge to the School Boards. (Interestingly enough, the Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church chose to not to.) In other words the 1872 act represents an important milestone in the growth of the power of the state. Not only did the state force parents to educate their children upon pain of punishment, but it also took control of most education in Scotland away from the voluntary / private sector.

In actual fact, the school boards that were set up by the 1872 Act were locally elected, so the element of state control was fairly limited. However, over the course of time, things changed. In 1918, these school boards were abolished and their powers were taken by local government, and this remains the case today.

There are two other ways in which the state can increase its control of education - and has done so. The most obvious is increasing interference in the classroom by central government - like the National Curriculum that was introduced by the Education Reform Act 1988, and the 5-14 curriculum in Scotland of the same era.

The other is to place limits on the two alternatives to state education: private schools and home education. For financial and practical reasons, these two alternatives are not actually open to most parents. Nonetheless, politicians are often uneasy about them. Germany bans home-schooling, and the Badman proposals make it likely that home education in Britain is going to become more difficult. And as for private schools, as recently as 1983, the Labour Party’s manifesto promised their virtual destruction:

Private schools are a major obstacle to a free and fair education system, able to serve the needs of the whole community. . . .We shall . . . withdraw charitable status from private schools and all their other public subsidies and tax privileges. We will also charge VAT on the fees paid to such schools; phase out fee charging; and integrate private schools within the local authority sector where necessary.

My contention is that both the compulsion of parents and increasing control of education by the state are wrong. The latter is a threat to freedom, the former is a breach of basic freedoms. Yes, increasing control of education by the state does lead to greater consistency between schools. And yes, compulsory education undoubtedly increases literacy rates. And yes, most parents have no problem with compulsory education and state control of education. But there are nonconformists. And they have a right to be respected.

And so let me finish this post by crossing the Atlantic to Ohio, and going back in history to 1922 with a tale of nonconformity. My source is A History of the Amish by Steven Nolt.

In 1921, the state of Ohio passed the Bing Act, requiring compulsory school attendance up to the age of 18. This was considered by the legislators to be a major social and educational advance, but the Amish community in Ohio wasn’t at all enthusiastic. The Amish believed that formal education should be basic, and in harmony the church and home, and that what was being taught to older children in state schools was not helpful for their children. When some Amish children did not turn up for classes, or refused to read some of the objectionable content in high school texts, the state stepped in. In January 1922, officials arrested five Amish fathers on charges of neglecting their children’s welfare. Most of the men’s school age children became wards of court. The authorities sent them to an orphanage and would not allow them to wear their Amish clothes.

Says it all really. “You are not bringing up your children in accordance of our newly passed law. Therefore you are not good parents, and we can take your children away from you, and take away their religious identity.” Isn't it funny the way that passing laws makes government officials behave in irrational ways?

Amanda Knox, climate change, and the human mind

2009-12-07T09:44:00.004Z

Amidst all the publicity concerning the trial of Amanda Knox, the thing that interests me is the fact that Miss Knox's family and friends are convinced that she is innocent, while the parents of Meredith Kercher feel that the guilty verdict was correct.

You are not surprised, are you? Confronted by pretty much the same evidence, people not only come to different conclusions, but you can pretty much guess which people are going to come to which conclusions.

So it is with Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), or "climate change."

Take my parents. The circles they move in are largely church circles - and in particular, church circles where people have an interest in Africa and in development projects. They are interested in the environment and 'green issues'. They rely for news almost entirely on the output of the BBC. You know what they think, don't you? But I'll tell you anyway. Despite (or because of?) the fact that neither of them have a background in science, they regard disbelief in AGW as about astonishing as believing that the earth is flat.

Libertarians are a different breed. As I wander around the wilderness of the blogosphere, dropping in on blogs - generally libertarian in outlook - I rarely encounter any true believers in AGW. It seems that almost every libertarian in the world is a climate change sceptic. I can't think of a single libertarian true believer in AGW.

I cannot believe that this is a coincidence. Nor can I believe that all these libertarians have pored objectively over the evidence and come to one conclusion, and every green has pored over the evidence and come to the opposite conclusion. Is this not puzzling?

I think that the Heresiarch, over at Heresy Corner, has pretty much got the answer:

Scepticism about the science of global warming is informed by scepticism about the means being proposed to tackle it: regulations, targets, interventions, the shadow of global governance, top-down control. Free-marketeers naturally hate the artificial mechanisms that are beloved of meddling politicians.

Or, to put it another way, freedom lovers can see that if everybody accepts AGW, then we are going to get a huge number of intrusive laws, so they hate AGW's acceptance among the political classes. Greens can see that if everybody accepts AGW, we will get a huge number of laws that force everybody to be green, so they love it when the political classes accept AGW . And so both freedom lovers and greens form their conclusions about the truth of AGW accordingly.

And so I conclude that men's brains are truly slaves of their passions.

The Equality Bill

2009-12-05T10:43:00.005Z

(I've just posted this as a comment on Cranmer, but for those of you who don't read Cranmer, I thought I'd post it here as well.)

I believe that the Equality Bill being proposed by Her Majesty's Government is wrong.

In fact, I am less than enthusiastic about Mr. David Drew's amendment, which was voted down this week, because it doesn't go far enough. It only seeks to make certain limited exceptions to the principle of non-discrimination. In fact, I believe that non-discrimination legislation should only apply to government, and that all non-governmental organisations should be free to employ whoever they want. Anti-discrimination legislation is an attack on freedom of association.

That said, I'm not sure that this dire Equality Bill needs to be such a big problem for religious organisations.

As Cranmer says, "churches are by definition primarily concerned with theological enlightenment and spiritual development."

If a church believes that homosexual activity is wrong, its main concern should not be whether a job applicant is homosexual or heterosexual, or whether the applicant is celibate or non-celibate. Its main concern should be with whether a prospective applicant believes and publicly affirms and teaches that homosexual activity is wrong. And my understanding is that even if the Equality Bill is passed, they will still be able to ask about such matters in job interviews.

Edit: I have also written on the subject of anti-discrimination law here.

Badman: Government responds to Home Education petition

2009-12-03T12:58:00.003Z

Home educators, and others of us who have misgivings about the proposals in the Badman report (see here), petitioned the government to express our concern. The government has now responded, and has indicated that it is not going to give an inch by saying "The recommendations set out by Badman are proportionate and reasonable." Of course, it says "We will take into account the responses to the consultation and any report arising from the Select Committee Inquiry into the review of home education when deciding how to proceed," but it looks like it intends to implement most of the proposals in the Badman report.

The key line in the government's response is "Most home educators do an excellent job but we can’t afford to let any child slip through the net – in terms of their education, or safety." In other words, the government believes that it is responsible for every single child, and that it is potentially capable of ensuring that every child in the country is kept safe and given a good education.

Hmmm. There are at least four problems with that statement that jump out at me immiediately.

1) No one seriously thinks that the state is actually able to keep every child in the country safe.

2) Even to keep every child in the country safe from his or her parents would require incredible intrusion into family life.

3) Note that politicians believe that it is for them to define what constitutes a good education.

4) If you speak to a lot of parents in this country, you will discover that several of them have real doubts as to whether their local state schools actually do provide a good education. Some also have concerns about how safe their children might be in their local school.

The general impression I get is one of incredible hubris on the part of the government. They really do believe that they can solve all the world's problems.

[Note that whatever action the government takes will not apply to Scotland. However, Scotland's rules concerning home education are actually slightly tighter at the moment than those of England and Wales - in that in Scotland, parents already require local authority permission to withdraw their children from school, and there is a recommendation that home educating families be visited once a year by the authorities. (For more on the prospects for home educators in Scotland, see here.)]

Of foxes, chickens, direct democracy, and Swiss minarets

2009-12-01T08:39:00.001Z

I suppose that when one considers that we live in a country where the sale of 100 watt incandescent light bulbs is banned, the ban on building minarets in Switzerland does not seem quite so bizarre.

The fascinating thing about this decision is that (unlike the light bulb ban), it was taken not by politicians, but by the ordinary people, voting in a referendum. I must confess that I admire the Swiss system of allowing citizens to over-ride the will of the politicians by making decisions in referenda. I think we should have more direct democracy in Britain. But should we allow a vote like this?

Let’s look at the issues concerned. There are two sets of rights. One is the right of people to build minarets. The other is the right of people not to have to look at minarets. Now I am willing to submit that in picture postcard alpine villages, with their baroque church towers, a minaret would look somewhat out of place. But this vote is not merely about banning minarets in some scenic areas, it is about banning them everywhere in the country. And, to be honest, minarets are not horrible looking. Many are quite aesthetically pleasing. I can see no argument that people have a right not to look at a minaret. And if the Swiss are worried about being woken by a call to prayer at some unearthly hour in the morning, I would suggest that alternative legislation could be used.

Or perhaps they believe that Islam is not a good thing, and they wish to stop its spread. Well, I too believe that Islam is not a good thing. As a Christian, I take the view that any religious system that teaches that Jesus Christ was merely a prophet, and not the eternal, incarnate Son of God, is a bad thing. That does not mean, of course that I want to ban it or believe that the law should be used to inhibit its spread. But even if I did, I can’t see how banning the building of minarets would help. In short, it is pointless and petty and will probably do nothing to stop the spread of Islam in Switzerland.

So this all comes down to the right of Muslims in Switzerland to build their mosques the way that they want to build them, since minarets do no harm to anyone. Which means that Swiss law permits referenda which are designed to take away some of the freedoms - religious freedoms, in this case - of some of its citizens. One is reminded of the saying: “Democracy is two foxes and a chicken deciding what to have for dinner.”

And as for the argument that you won’t see any church towers in Saudi Arabia, this must be the worst argument of all in favour of the Swiss decision. Whatever happened to “Do to others as you would have them do to you”? (Luke 6:31) I trust that all serious followers of Jesus Christ in Switzerland voted against this ridiculous ban.

Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism

2009-11-30T12:52:00.003Z

Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. (Genesis 11:9)

I like clarity. I like to know what people are talking about, and what they mean when they use a word. Therefore I like definitions. Some might say that I am obsessive about them. But I have observed that the language of all the earth is confused, and even speakers of English have a difficult time understanding each other. And I don’t just refer to the confusion between those in the USA and those in the UK. Hence my efforts to define libertarianism.

The question that is exercising me at the moment is the relationship between libertarianism and classical liberalism. (This is because of a comment left on the last post by Mr. Phil Walker: “I'm not really libertarian, although I would define myself as classically liberal so I'm something of a political cousin.”) And since I find that pictures are often worth several hundred words, I found this picture useful.

What you will notice is that minarchist libertarianism is not marked on it. So clearly it is time to play “spot the ball”. (Do people still play it?) My guess is that minarchism is roughly where the words “Classical liberals” appear. Or possibly just above it, but below the line. After all, we minarchists differ from anarcho-capitalists in that we believe in do not believe in the elimination of the state, we merely believe in minimising it. (I am assuming that the horizontal line in the diagram is the dividing line between those who believe in eliminating the state and those who don’t.) But why doesn’t minarchism appear in the picture? Is it because the man who drew the diagram (Jesús Huerta de Soto) believed that minarchism was basically the same as classical liberalism?

So, is there a difference between minarchism and classical liberalism? And if so, what is it?

Raimondo Cubeddu of the Department of Political Science of the University of Pisa says

It is often difficult to distinguish between 'libertarianism' and 'classical liberalism'. Those two labels are used almost interchangeably by those we may call libertarians of a 'minarchist' persuasion—scholars who, following Locke and Nozick, believe a state is needed in order to achieve effective protection of property rights.

However Walter Block (an anarcho-capitalist) says “Adam Smith should be seen as a moderate free enterpriser who appreciated markets but made many, many exceptions. He allowed government all over the place.” (For example, Adam Smith supported public roads, canals and bridges. However, he favoured that these goods should be paid proportionally to their consumption - e.g., putting a toll).

And Alan Ryan, professor of Political Science at Princeton University, argues that the claim from

...contemporary libertarians...that they are classical liberals...is not wholly true. There is at least one strain of libertarian thought represented by Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia that advocates the decriminalisation of 'victimless crimes' such as prostitution, drug-taking and unorthodox sexual activities. There is nothing of that in John Locke or Adam Smith.

Wikipedia says

While minarchists oppose all government intervention except for defense and dispute resolution, classical liberals make more exceptions and allow state intervention and provision of extraneous public goods such as public transportation and utilities. Therefore, we can claim that minarchism is not the same as classical liberalism because while classical liberals support additional macroeconomic intervention, minarchists only see preventing aggression as the role of the state.

But it also says

However, arguments over the similarities are made difficult by the large number of factions in both classical liberalism and libertarianism. For example, minarchist libertarians are not necessarily in favour of complete economic deregulation in the first place and often support tax-funded provision of a select few public goods.

Conclusions?

1) It seems to me that there is clear blue water between anarcho-capitalism and minarchist libertarianism. It also seems to me that minarchist libertarianism is actually much closer to classical liberalism, than to anarcho-capitalism. Minarchism and classical liberalism are so close, that they almost run into each other. But they are not quite the same. The basic difference is that classical liberalism allows state macroeconomic intervention and does not believe in the decriminalisation of 'victimless crimes.'

2) It seems slightly curious that minarchism and anarcho-capitalism are often lumped together as libertarianism, when classical liberalism is excluded, considering that minarchism actually is much closer to classical liberalism - so close that some treat them as synonymous.

3) It also seems to me that the manifesto of the LPUK is actually somewhere between classical liberalism and minarchist libertarianism. It does allow macroeconomic intervention, albeit somewhat reluctantly. The result is that a lot of anarcho-capitalists will join the party enthusiastically, and then become rather disillusioned.

The Manhattan Declaration

2009-11-27T16:39:00.003Z

I have just read the Manhattan Declaration. This document has been much discussed by Christian bloggers in America. In this country, Cranmer has written about it, but has not really commented. Some people that I respect have signed it, others have declined.

As a Christian, I agree with pretty much everything in it. I certainly have no problem with the concluding paragraph:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

I completely agree. And yet I can't get enthusiastic about the document as a whole. I find myself wondering what the point of it is. Is it a call for Christians to stand firm when ordered by Caesar to do what is wrong? Or is it a call for politicians to change direction and legislate in a more Christian manner? And what will it achieve? And I find it disconcerting that the three issues that the Declaration highlights - respect for life, respect for marriage, and religious freedom - are really three separate issues, and that the only connection between them is that they are under attack in modern America.

And so I find myself basically agreeing with Professor John Stackhouse:

. . the document seems philosophically and politically incoherent. It argues for religious liberty for Christians to dissent from views they don’t like (and this point, alas, needs increasing emphasis in America as well as here in Canada). But it also argues that these particular Christian views of abortion, euthanasia, marriage, and more should be enshrined in American law. It says nothing about the liberty of those who would dissent from those views except to assert that because these Christian views are right, they should be the law of the land. What, then, happened to religious liberty on these important matters? The document doesn’t say.

I’m conservatively prolife and have traditional Christian views of marriage also. But just because I think those views are right doesn’t entail that I believe they should be law. Deciding what ought to be law in a pluralistic, democratic society that welcomes immigrants from, and seeks to influence helpfully, countries all over the world, requires careful political theory. Indeed, it requires fundamental and detailed consideration of a variety of related subjects, including the nature and intentions of divine providence over nations, what God expects of human beings individually and corporately short of the return of Christ, what is politically feasible in a given situation, and more. There is none of that sort of thinking evident in this declaration . . ."

And that about sums up my unease with the Declaration. Philosophical and political coherence is important.

Too many knee jerk reactions

2009-11-26T09:59:00.002Z

According to the Telegraph, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary has said that

“Policing has “lost its way” amid the “noise and clutter” of government targets, initiatives and new laws.”

Mr Denis O’Connor has, apparently

“accused ministers, local authorities and police chiefs of “too many knee jerk reactions” to the problems of law and order.”

Well said, sir. I hope that you are listened to. But it’s not just the problems of law and order. In the world of government, there are too many knee jerk reactions to just about everything. Too many initiatives. Too many initiatives. And definitely too many new laws.

Legislation is, to borrow a phrase from the Book of Common Prayer, “is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly.”

I think ‘wantonly’ is the perfect word to sum up the way our government has been going about the business of legislation.

Is the wind power bubble about to burst?

2009-11-20T23:23:00.005Z

I have no expertise in energy. But I have been reading one or two things about it recently which interest me.

Take this quote from Professor Ian Fells, from an article in the Express: “For a long time I have thought that the wind power bubble would burst. I think that’s starting to happen. Ed Miliband tells people that to oppose wind farms is morally indefensible, but as more people start to realise the reality of what wind power actually offers, that will change.” Professor Fells has written before about his reservations about the government's enthusiasm for wind, but he now seems to think that the tide may be turning in his direction.

However, the interesting thing is the apparent reason for Professor Fells' statement. A National Grid document is quoted as saying that wind power could cost “£300 – £800 per mega watt hour (MWH) compared to conventional generation at £23 per MWH”. (The Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “A more realistic comparison of conventional and wind power would be £23 MWH compared to £30 or £80 MWH.*” So even they admit that wind power is not cheap.)

Yes, wind power is expensive. But because the government likes it, it is heavily subsidised. Professor Fells again: "Last year subsidies paid out on wind and landfill gas was £1 billion. By 2020 that figure will be £30 billion." One of the ways that wind power is subsidised is through Renewables Obligation legislation which forces energy companies to buy a certain amount of their energy from "renewable" sources. This means that suppliers of wind energy can sell their expensive product with no difficulty, and make a good profit.

In other words, the government has rigged the market in favour of wind energy, and lots of people, particularly (but not just) land owners, can get very good money at the tax-payer's expense by jumping on the wind bandwagon. I say 'not just' because the government can potentially use tax-payers' money to bribe communities, local authorities, and businesses (to mention just a few) to get wind turbines erected all over the place.

Which might just be fair enough if the science behind wind energy was right. But if Professor Fells is right, then the government is simply taking our money at gunpoint to wreck the British countryside by sticking massive concrete and iron structures all over it, which will probably be obsolete in a generation.

This is the power of the Leviathan state, which the Archbishop of Canterbury is so enthusiastic about - pursuing long term social goals to avoid "the ecological crises that menace us", and using taxation as a "sophisticated tool" to build a habitat which may turn out to include hundreds of square miles of destroyed countryside.

*When they have a name like "The Department of Energy and Climate Change" one really has to be sceptical of their utterances and figures. I mean, it really is a case of "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?"

Libertarianism: a definition

2009-11-20T08:59:00.001Z

I’ve been musing, over the past few months, about what exactly I mean by libertarianism, and trying to come up with a concise definition. I have now, at last, come up with a first draft. Please feel free to question, comment, or critique.

Libertarianism: the philosophy that holds that the ultimate political value is the freedom of the individual, and that the most effective way to uphold that freedom is to limit the scope of the state to those activities which directly defend that freedom.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's enthusiasm for taxes

2009-11-18T13:00:00.006Z

I saw the headline in the Telegraph: “Archbishop of Canterbury claims higher taxes would be good for society.” I thought “Good grief.” But instead of studying the article in the Telegraph, I decided to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, and headed over to the Archbishop’s website to read the full text of his speech to the TUC Economics Conference. (Probably a good move since the Archbishop did not actually, as far as I could see, say anything in praise of higher taxes, per se.)

I must confess that I was rather surprised to find that the Archbishop had been invited to address the TUC Economics Conference. And I was rather surprised to read his speech. He was talking about economics and society. This man is a professor of theology. We have plenty of economists and social scientists. Why was he speaking about their subject of expertise, not his own? Admittedly there was a bit of theology in his address, but not much.

To be honest, much of what he said was pretty much what one has come to expect from the mainstream churches in Britain. There was a lot about green issues: he is concerned about ‘sustainability’ and ‘environmental irresponsibility’ and the danger of ‘depleting the resources of the planet.’ There was a lot about questioning whether unchecked growth was a good thing. There was also a lot about family and community and the danger of ‘individualism’, by which he apparently means lack of understanding and sympathy for others. A lot of this is somewhat vague. Most of it I don’t have a big problem with. And I completely agree with him on the subject of protectionism - which he is opposed to.

The controversial bit was as follows:

'This will mean', [Tim Jackson] writes (p.142), 'revisiting the concepts of profitability and productivity and putting them to better service in pursuit of long-term social goals'.

The pursuit of long-term social goals concerns me. It suggests social engineering and centralised planning. And whose goals are to be pursued, anyway? I doubt that we are all agreed about those goals. Tim Jackson and the Archbishop may be agreed, but my gut feeling is that they are not infallible. Perhaps we need to revisit the concept of pursuing long-term social goals?

Along with this – a point flagged both by Jackson and by Zac Goldsmith in yet another provocative new essay, 'The Constant Economy: How to Create a Stable Society' – we have to ask about 'green taxes' (including 'green' tax breaks) that will check environmental irresponsibility and build up resources to address the ecological crises that menace us. The Contraction and Convergence proposals are among the best-known and most structurally simple of these, and it would be a major step to hear some endorsement of them from a body such as this.

The words “It would be a major step to hear some endorsement of them” are the key words. In other words, The Archbishop is backing the Contraction and Convergence proposals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Not much surprise there - not that I agree with him. Note that the Archbishop supports ‘green taxes’ not because he wants higher taxes - but because he is concerned about environmental responsibility.

It is of course connected with other proposals about currency exchange taxation – the 'Tobin tax' idea: the point is that we should be thinking about taxation neither as an unreasonable burden on enterprise nor as a simple mechanism of redistribution but as a potentially sophisticated tool for long-term 'economy' – housekeeping. Taxation builds a habitat – already, quite properly, through state welfare provision, but potentially in other less familiar ways.

The words to notice here are “potentially sophisticated tool.” What he means, I think, is “We are all in favour of using taxes to redistribute wealth, and hence to give us the welfare state, [No we’re not. Ed.] but we can also use them to manipulate people’s behaviour so that they do things that create a good ‘habitat’".

And 'habitat' was the Archbishop’s big theme in this speech. That is why he could write “It is of course connected with other proposals about currency exchange taxation”. How? What’s the connection? The Tobin Tax and the C&C proposals are both about how governments can use their powers to “create a habitat that we can actually live in,” “a home that we can reasonably expect will be an asset for the next generation,” to use the Archbishop’s phrases. In other words, just as an individual or family can envisage, plan, and create a home to live in, so ‘society’ (by which the Archbishop apparently means “the state” or even “the states of the world working together”) can plan and create a world to live in.

The vision is, to say the least, paternalistic; many would say authoritarian. It seems to me to be utopian: at best unrealistic and unachievable, at worst a step on the road to a Brave New World Society of total control by benevolent (or not so benevolent - let’s remember human nature!) dictators.

The curious thing is that the Archbishop didn’t attempt to base any of this on biblical or theological principles. Curious, but probably not at all surprising.

I will say this, however, in defence of the Archbishop. He was asked to speak at the TUC's Economics Conference. What was he supposed to say? (I'll bet Mr. Walker has an answer to that one, but I certainly don't!)

Hitler and Winterval

2009-11-17T09:52:00.004Z

Wow! That Adolf Hitler really was ahead of his time!

In recent years, local councils across Britain (most recently in Dundee) have been seeking to drop the word "Christmas" without doing away with all the December decorations. "Christmas Lights" now become "Winter Lights", and the, er, festive season has even been renamed Winterval.

Now it transpires that Hitler got there first. The Nazis rewrote Christmas carols to remove the religious references and replace them with images of snowy fields. Apparently Heinrich Himmler led the way in de-Christing Christmas, and the plan was to remove the emotional ties of the Church and merge Christmas into a Julfest, a celebration of winter and light which drew on pagan traditions. Very up to date.

Of course, local councils in modern Britain would claim that their motivation is completely different from that of the Nazis, and they are only trying to be sensitive to religious and ethnic groups who are uncomfortable with Christian imagery. However, since Muslim, Hindu and Sikh leaders have repeatedly said that they are not offended by Christmas, it has been difficult to work out who exactly was being offended.

It now appears that the group that our councils were so eager not to offend were white, european, blonde haired, blue eyed, Aryans.

Do we undervalue adults?

2009-11-09T22:15:00.002Z

I'm busy these days, and so blogging is extremely light.

However, I came across an interesting article in the Spiked Review of Books about Frank Furedi's new book, Wasted: Why Education isn't Educating.

Professor Furedi is an interesting gentleman. He was, for example, a co-founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party. More recently, he has attacked the scientific consensus on global warming. And he will have annoyed a lot of people with his critique of that most dubious of big charities, the NSPCC.

But if he is right, and we do undervalue adults in our society, surely the reason is that we have been so afraid of undervaluing children that we have felt it necessary to make adjustments in order to make sure that children are listened to. And while that sounds reasonable in practice, the inevitable result is that adults will become less valued. I suspect that it cannot be otherwise.

It is the same with every group in society that we suspect may be undervalued. Every legislative attempt to give them a more valued place in society inevitably will impinge on some other group.

I suspect that if Professor Furedi's view that adults are undervalued catches on, we will see a lot of government initiatives to ensure that adults are properly valued. The proper response, however, would be to dump all the initiatives we have had in the past 30 years to make sure that children were properly valued.

Halloween: A Christian view

2009-10-31T15:19:00.004Z

(Note - this is not the Christian view - it is a Christian view. Some Christians will disagree with me. Strongly.)

There is something about dressing up and make believe that seems to worry rather a lot of people. When I was a youngster, some friends of our family didn’t allow their sons to play with toy guns. They clearly believed that playing at homicide was shocking and improper. The fact that it was only playing didn’t seem to make any difference to them. Shooting people was wrong, and hence even to play at shooting people was wrong.

The same thing came out when Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi when going to a fancy dress party. Except this time, it wasn’t just my parents’ rather serious friends - it was pretty much the whole of the British political establishment. Nazis were evil, and the fact that Prince Harry was merely going to a fancy dress party made no difference to these people.

I reflected on Halloween at the time. When I was young, I had a devil mask. “Surely”, I thought to myself, “the devil is more evil than any Nazi. Therefore, wearing a devil mask must, in the minds of all these serious people who are condemning Prince Harry, be a deeply shocking thing to do.”

Fortunately, most people don’t take that viewpoint. Alas, many Christians do, including many of my friends. They regard Halloween as, at best, unhealthy, and at worst, diabolical. I see that the Vatican seems to agree with them.

The concern seems to be exactly the same as the thinking of those who disapprove of toy guns and of Prince Harry’s swastika armband. "If you let children play with guns, then they may be tempted to take homicide lightly." "If people start dressing up as Nazis, then National Socialism may gain respectability." "If you allow children to dress up as witches and ghouls, then you are sending a message that occult activity is acceptable."

In my view, this is complete and utter nonsense. Children can tell the difference between make-believe and reality. Playing at being a cowboy did not leave me with any desire to heard cattle, ride a horse, wear a gun, hang around the saloon, or exterminate native Americans. Nor does dressing up as Guy Fawkes and wondering around Westminster incite people to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Nor does dressing up as Nazis contribute to the rehabilitation of National Socialism. Nor did people wearing George W. Bush masks influence large numbers of people to vote Republican in last year's American presidential election. And nor does dressing up in a scary costume encourage Satanism.

There are plenty of more important things for Christians to be concerned about. There is a real risk here of straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

None so blind

2009-10-31T09:03:00.002Z

“Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not.” (Jeremiah 5:21)

Three stories in today’s Telegraph. Spot what they have in common.

1. Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the highest ranking British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, told the Ministry of Defence, in an email sent less than a month before his death, that troops would be killed because there were not enough helicopters. “The leaked email is at odds with Gordon Brown's claims that helicopter shortages have not caused the deaths of troops fighting the Taliban.”

The government was repeatedly told by top officers that there was a serious shortage of army helicopters in Afghanistan. It didn’t want to hear. It didn’t want to know.

2. Mr. Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has sacked his chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, after he criticised the reclassification of cannabis and said alcohol and cigarettes were more dangerous than ecstasy. Professor Nutt’s comment? "I think most scientists will see this as a further example of the Luddite attitude of this government, and possible future governments, towards science."

A top scientist has spoken about what the scientific evidence seems to be saying. Mr. Johnson didn’t want to hear. He didn’t want to know.

3. Poland’s Chief Rabbi, Michael Schudrich, is reported as saying of Mr. Michael Kaminski of the Polish Law and Justice Party, '''I cannot check a person's heart, but what I have heard from Mr Kaminski publicly and privately, I certainly see him as a man that today - today - is against anti-Semitism. Mr Kaminski as a teenager did join an organisation known as NOP which is, unfortunately, openly anti-Semitic and neo-nazi. He also quit that organisation as a teenager. Since that time he has become a strong ally of the State of Israel and on other occasions has condemned anti-Semitism. So what we have here is a complicated person and we need to be able, in order to understand him, to understand him in a fuller context, not taking one thing that he said, but taking a look at what he said over the past 20 years. . . . No one here in Poland would consider the Law and Justice Party as a fringe right party.' Mr. David Milliband, who has characterised Mr. Kaminiski’s party as an anti-Semitic fringe right party is not about to apologise.

The Chief Rabbi of Poland has basically said that Mr. Milliband was wrong. But Mr. Milliband didn’t want to hear what the Chief Rabbi of Poland said. He didn’t want to know.

Experts - army officers, scientists, chief Rabbis - are sometimes wrong, of course. But these three stories together suggest something about our current government. It doesn't want to hear. It doesn't want to know.

It's not just the current government, though. It's a common disease of politicians, and a common disease of the human race.

Let the reader understand and beware.