The very air we breathe is statist

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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.