Israelis make a bad position worse

These are dark times. Are we facing the decline and fall of the West? Even the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph have given up on our right to self-defence.

The barbarians are at the gate and the toga-wearing sybarites of the West are debating the precise meaning of the word "proportionality". What can such a word mean when a nation under siege defends itself against those who are sworn to the genocide of its people?

The primitive misogynists of Hezbollah have learned well how to manipulate the Western media. I sat in horror over the weekend watching Sky News' "reporting" which was no better than Hezbollah propaganda. I read incredulously on Guido Fawkes' blog that he had turned to Sky News from the BBC because Sky's reporting was "more balanced!" I can't see the BBC from Moscow, but can only assume they have taken to broadcasting extracts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Israelis have apologised for the civilian loss of life at Qana. They have made the fair point that they never target civilians, unlike Hezbollah. Their ambassador said "We mourn every Lebanese child killed, but Hezbollah celebrates the death of every Israeli child".

Yet the ignorant "reporters" asked over and over again - as if it were an incisive question - "How could you "see" the rockets and the terrorists and not "see" the women and children?" The Israelis suffer from all having served in the IDF. To experienced soldiers it is obvious that - with current technology - you can detect the explosion of a rocket or identify the source of enemy fire, without being able to see the faces of the men behind the weapons. Western reporters seem to see war as some kind of strategy game, where your opponent's moves are visible on a chessboard or on screen.

Hezbollah's fighters position their rocket launchers and hide their men in villages, contrary to the Geneva Convention. They are war criminals responsible for the civilian deaths they cause when Israel attacks those military positions. I would not be surprised if they held those women and children in a basement below a firing position in the hope of engineering their propaganda victory of this weekend. There is evidence that they positioned their fighters near UN troops in the hope of getting the "peacekeepers" killed for propaganda purposes.

To rational Westerners these ideas seem crackpot. Consider, however, that Islamic mothers send their sons to die as suicide bombers and praise them afterwards as "martyrs" (though no other religion so designates those who died killing others). To members of such a death cult, sacrificing women and children for propaganda gains is nothing.

Twenty percent of Israel's population is currently living in shelters under rocket attack from Hezbollah. Those attacks are unimpeded by Lebanon's army or the UN "peacekeepers." When Israeli spokesmen mention those attacks, the "reporters" pour scorn on the rockets being used by Hezbollah as if they were mere fireworks compared to the weapons at Israel's disposal. To hear Sky's "reporters" you would think a Katyusha delivered no more deadly effect than a water pistol.

It shames us all to admit it, but it is clear that no-one will defend Israel but Israel. Even the usually sound Condoleeza Rice is equivocating in the face of the orchestrated clamour of Muslims, Leftists and anti-Semites. Israel is part of the civilised West; the only democracy in a region ruled by barbarian tyrants with antediluvian ethics. The Israelis, battle-hardened as they are, may sometimes seem less gentle than us but they are our civilisational brothers and sisters. If we cannot choose correctly between them and the genocidal scum who threaten them, we are lost. I wish the IDF well in its just war and hope its political leadership will have the courage to continue until the job is done.

My daughters, who read this blog, complain that it is too "dark" and that I am too pessimistic. I wish I could find the Little Orphan Annie in me today. But in the face of such treachery, defeatism and weakness, I despair.

Telegraph | Opinion | Israelis make a bad position worse

Obituary: Ted Grant

Living in Eastern Europe for 15 years, I have met many older people who lived to understand that they had spent their lives on a lie or - to be polite - an illusion. There were no believing Communists in power, of course. The leaders were all Prescotts - joining the Party because it was a way for the talent-free to enjoy wealth and privilege. However, there were lots of little people who believed.

I spent a Sunday afternoon once chatting in my broken Polish with a man who rode a Soviet tank into Czechoslovakia to put down the "Prague Spring." It's hard to read between the lines in your fourth language, but I thought I sensed some regret behind his bluff soldierly explanation of his role. I didn't press him. Why should I? It was tough for him already.

The naieve Reaganite idea that they were all glad to be liberated is not right. The older people had adapted to their circumstances and it was too late for them to change. One theatre director in Warsaw explained it well to my wife. "I suppose it will be better for my children," he said, "..but I have lost a way of life I understood." Not to mention a budget unlinked to any need to please his audiences.

One learns to be sensitive to these old Communists. If they were true believers, how could they suddenly accept they wasted their lives on defective ideas? That they lived to the detriment of their fellow men? We only have one life. It's hard to accept that we blew it. I can even feel sorry for them.

For Ted Grant, however, I have no such sympathy. This man lived in the free world and set out to subvert it. He lived an infantile life of secret societies, hidden identities and splits. He was a traitor and would - in a well-ordered democracy - have been executed. He cynically abused the weaknesses of a democratic party filled with naieve believers in Socialism; people who - like my lost old people of the East - genuinely wanted "a better world" and were guilty of naught but foolishness.

Ted Grant was a bad man who lived a full life of fun and self-importance. At this moment, I could wish there were a God so that he could be condemned to Hell. Within weeks, he would have set up in opposition to the Devil and formed new factions of left-wing demons. He would therefore improve Hell as he never managed to improve this world.

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Obituary: Ted Grant

Committee opposes 'Tesco law' - Law - Times Online

Lawyers are not popular but, collectively, we are important. An independent legal profession is a hallmark of a free society. If lawyers are controlled by the Executive, then how are the rights of individuals to be defended against the State? If judges are dependent on the Executive - for example to determine their pay and pensions - then how is the independence of the judiciary to be maintained and defended? There are already those who fear that some judges have "sold out" to the New Labour Project for increased pensions.

No-one likes paying us, but when you are in trouble and find the awesome resources of a modern State ranged against you, you need an independent lawyer to defend you and an independent judge to acquit you if you are innocent.

New Labour's New Totalitarianism marches on with this project. It is opposed by the Law Society. It is opposed - as reported here - by a committee of MPs and peers. If you think that the independence of lawyers does not matter to you, you are wrong.

Committee opposes 'Tesco law' - Law - Times Online

Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder, by MP | the Daily Mail

It is surprising that this story is not given greater prominence. If Dr. Kelly was murdered, the question cui bono leads to some interesting suspects, to say the least. If the government is found to have ordered his death, one wonders if the ministers concerned will refuse to resign, saying they feel the need to sort out the problems they caused or that they still have something to contribute?

In a civilised sociey, no government could survive such a scandal. I doubt if any governing party involved in such a killing would ever see office again. But Britain is clearly no longer a civilised society, so maybe it will all turn out OK for Labour, whatever the truth of this MP's allegations.

Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder, by MP | the Daily Mail

Teenager was kept a prisoner for two years - Britain - Times Online

In what sense is a family "middle class", when it treats its daughters like this? It seems more like the behaviour of ignorant peasants to me.

Teenager was kept a prisoner for two years - Britain - Times Online

Despair as forced marriages stay legal - Britain - Times Online

I don't believe the statement in this article that "Suicide rates among young Asian women are more than three times the national average and about 12 women every year die as a result of so-called 'honour killings'." More than 20 years ago, a police sergeant in Nottingham told me that officers routinely accepted Pakistani families' "ludicrous" claims that their daughter had committed suicide, when they believed that she had been murdered in an "honour killing". They did so rather than face criticism from their superiors or adverse press coverage for "racism".

My guess is that all the "additional" suicides are murders.

Of course, accepting ludicrous stories from one community which would never be expected from another is real "racism", but that doesn't matter. As we know, racism in Britain is a one way thing.

Despair as forced marriages stay legal - Britain - Times Online

Prescott defiant over criticism

If John Prescott's motivation for being in politics was public service, he would quit. His acceptance of gifts from businessmen negotiating government contracts may not prove him to be corrupt, but it proves him to lack judgement. His reputation (such as it was) is damaged beyond retrieval and his ability to serve in government is diminished.

He knows that. He stays because, as his whole career shows, the "perks" are what it is all about for him. When he was a union rep., he groped the girls and lived at the union's expense. He has done the same in office. He is simply making his way in politics as a more lucrative alternative to any other life for which he is fitted.

Sadly, from his point of view, he has proved himself as unfit for this career as for any other.

BBC NEWS | UK | Prescott defiant over criticism

Street crime soars as more robbers use guns but burglaries decline - Britain - Times Online

John Reid lacks respect for his bosses, the British people. How dare he tell them that rising street crime is their fault, because they are carrying such valuable items as cellphones and iPods? Crime is the fault of the criminal, not the victim, whether the item stolen is a pocket handkerchief or a laptop. The duty of the Home Office and its goons (formerly known as our police force) is to deal with the criminals, not criticise the people they are supposed to protect.

Shut up, Reid, until you are able to report some progress. You are our servant, not our master.

Street crime soars as more robbers use guns %u2013 but burglaries decline - Britain - Times Online

Leading universities spurn students from poor families - Britain - Times Online

What a nonsensical headline! How would it be in the interests of Universities to "spurn" good students? Why would admissions tutors, drawn from an overwhelmingly left-wing pool of British academics, discriminate against the products of a state education system they all profess to believe in?

These statistics are a direct product of the continuing scandal of an education system which has been subverted.

Only in the crazed world of British education is it wrong to select pupils for a level of education suited to their abilities. I suffered from this nonsense as a pupil. I tried, day after day, to learn while bored and angry classmates disrupted lessons they couldn't handle. I felt sorry for them, up to a point. They couldn't cope and I could understand their frustration. But, by God, I wished them elsewhere. Nor did I appreciate being stoned from passing school buses by "less academically able" (i.e. stupid) class mates who resented "swots". All the peer pressure at my comprehensive school was to make trouble and "spurn" education.

Mrs Paine - a teacher - suffered in attempting to work within this bizarre system. Many of our schools are now anarchic hell-holes. The least savoury pupils set the tone; destroying the educational chances of their peers. The turnover of teachers is appalling. Few last long in a profession which has been reduced to riot control interspersed with occasional political indoctrination.

I am furious with the Labour Party for this vindictive nonsense. That ****wits like Prescott should have been allowed to avenge his personal educational failure by trashing the prospects of millions is disgusting.

I am even more furious with Dave Cameron, who does not have Prescott's excuse of manifest stupidity. He has dropped even his Party's last token support of grammar schools - the most powerful agents of social mobility in Britain's history.

Anyone who cares about the education of ordinary children should be fighting to restore selective education. Equality of opportunity was at its greatest when grammar schools and secondary moderns were the norm.

Leading universities spurn students from poor families - Britain - Times Online

Socialism and Corruption

President Putin landed a political blow on Tony Blair during the G8 Conference in St Petersburg. Questioned by the British press about criticisms of his government and asked if he would discuss them with the Prime Minister, he said "There are also other questions. Questions, let's say, about the fight against corruption. We'd be interested in hearing your experience, including how it applies to Lord Levy."

I don't blog about Russian politics. I am a guest in Moscow and it's not my place. Forgive me, however, if I enjoy the President's wit on the subject of British politics.

Growing up in the Labour rotten boroughs of the North, I am unsurprised by the ethical shabbiness of New Labour. I never believed for a second Blair's 1997 pledge to be "whiter than white" and was quietly confident that he would live to regret it. John Prescott's taste for the high life at public expense was no surprise to me, growing up as I did in the same area, surrounded by lots of such people.

A relative was approached to run for the council in the last elections. A lifelong Labour supporter she listened to the pitch from the Party's representatives with interest. She was promised the ability to claim "expenses", whether or not she bothered to turn up; free repairs and upgrades to her home carried out by council workers and numerous other "perks" all - as the Labour man said - for "next to no work". She sent him away in disgust, but someone took the offer.

I have blogged before about how a Labour local authority abused its powers to strip my family of a business permit, not because of any breach of its terms, but because it wanted to buy the land and thought it could get it cheaper.

I grew up in an area where, for twenty years, Labour councils ran their childrens homes so badly that they were largely staffed by predatory paedophiles who rented the children out for sex as well as abusing them themselves. New Labour appointed as "Minister for Children" a woman who had presided over another such scandal when leader of Islington Council.

This is not because British socialists are particularly bad. During the great 20th Century experiment with Socialism it was the common experience of people living under Socialist governments (more than half of humanity at one point) that their rulers lived like mediaeval kings; sometimes even exercising the droit de seigneur. John Prescott seems to have believed he had some modern version of that right in relation to his own staff.

Socialism is not about fairness. In practice it has always been a system under which wealth, privilege and power are allocated according to political rather than economic criteria. Socialists, caught out, always condemn the "abuse" and say that it was not "true Socialism" but time and time again that is the practical result of the system. It is always embraced by men, be they Josef Stalin or John Prescott, who have no talent or ability to earn wealth, but who have the low cunning to win power.

After the clear and abject failure of the 20th Century Socialist Experiment, only Britain still clings to the wreckage of a comprehensively discredited ideology. Why?

Reports reveal threats to NHS patients' safety

This article - in the journal of record of British Socialism - unsurprisingly lacks any analysis or critique, save for the routine implication that yet more money should be spent to make the National Health Service work. It is more evidence of the disaster that is socialised medicine. It illustrates perfectly how official "caring" is not quite the same thing as giving a damn.

The NHS is worse than a mere failure. It does positive harm, to its patients and to the ethics of the people who work in it. I don't suppose any NHS employees signed up for the opportunity to commit rape or manslaughter. It's hard to be sure of course, given - for example - that the People's Republic of Britain has a history of public childrens' homes largely staffed by predatory paedophiles.

The NHS is not an aberration. It does not matter how much money a rich nation spends to try to make socialised medicine work, it will degenerate into a shambles. During the great 20th Century Experiment, with more than half of humanity living under various flavours of Socialism, the evidence was clear. When people are reduced to providers or consumers of public services, their common relationship with the soulless State begins to destroy their human relationship with each other.

Why does Britain persist with this nonsense, when the rest of the world has seen it for what it is?

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | Reports reveal threats to NHS patients' safety

Police summonsed over Menezes shooting - Law - Times Online

An innocent man is shot dead by what the British press would describe (if it happened in any other country) as "a police death squad." After long months of consideration by the authorities, the management of the police force is summonsed for an offence under the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974.

Someone, somewhere is taking the piss.

Police summonsed over Menezes shooting - Law - Times Online

'They are using this law to cover their mistakes' - Britain - Times Online

Patricia da Silva Armani, a relative of Jean Charles de Menezes, said - commenting on the Crown Prosecution Service decision not to take any action agains the police officers who killed him - "The authorities here . . . don't have any shame. I feel sickened by that."

I feel sickened by it too. So should we all. This story is a disgrace to our nation.


'They are using this law to cover their mistakes' - Britain - Times Online

Souped-up ASBOs to tackle kings of organised crime gangs - Britain - Times Online

This is another signature "initiative" from this most pointless of governments. Everything that "gangsters" do is already illegal. If caught and convicted, there are laws enough to keep them in jail for as long as the government's sentencing guidelines allow.

We are not suffering from a shortage of laws. On the contrary, we have thousands too many. We are suffering from a failure of enforcement. This government makes new laws not to solve problems, but to suggest that every problem we have is due to defects in the law and not to the failure of the law enforcement agencies for which it is responsible.

What a shame Britain's academics are mostly left-wing. If a Conservative government were indulging in such legislatory masturbation, there would be studies galore to demonstrate its futility. I am prepared to gamble GBP500 with the first professor of criminology to take the bet that, if he embarks on a study of the hundreds of new crimes created by this government, they will prove to have had no measurable impact on the targeted behaviours. Many of them have not even been used; i.e. no prosecutions have been brought.

This government has passed more Criminal Justice Acts than in all our previous history. Each new such Act is now no more than a confession of the failure of the others.

How much better would it be to declare a legislative "freeze" to allow our police forces to catch up with their workload? How much better would it be to relieve trained police officers of the bureaucratic burdens imposed by the Home Office, designed to turn them into collectors of statistics rather than feelers of wicked collars? How much better would it be for the Home Office to help police forces recover the relationship they used to have with the public? There's a worthy task with which degraded spin doctors could redeem themselves.

The only policing that works (accepting that no policing works perfectly) is "policing by consent." The public used willingly to cooperate with policemen they saw as their protectors and servants. Now they see them as tax-collectors, bullies and agents of Class War.

I have made a couple of citizen's arrests in my time. I would not make one now, because I fear the police would be more interested in a soft target like me than any hard case I might bring them. I would end up being charged with assault, while the villain would walk.

In today's Britain, even the respectable middle class fear contact with a police force widely perceived to be politicised. If the 80% of the time of a front-line police officer that PC David Copperfield over at the Policeman's Blog estimates is wasted could be reduced to civilised levels, police officers could spend enough time with the public to win back their trust. On his blog recently, PC Copperfield said "Somebody told me the other day that if no member of the public ever called Newtown police ever again, our internal procedures would keep us so busy we wouldn'’t notice for another six months." I believe it.

Nothing in this government's record suggests that it gives a damn about the standing of any force in our society but the Labour Party. Now that its policies are failing even to promote that, perhaps Ministers on the way out might look to their legacy and try to do some actual good, instead of focussing entirely on pointless spin?


Souped-up ASBOs to tackle kings of organised crime gangs - Britain - Times Online

A sad day for believers in liberal values - Britain - Times Online

Every day in Britain at present is a sad day for those with liberal values. I am sorry for my blogging colleague Doctor John Crippen because if these proposals go forward (and when does this Government ever pause for mature reflection?) he will no longer be a member of a learned profession.

Doctors should walk out of the health service en masse rather than submit to this ignominy. Only a group of skilled people who regulate the conduct of their own members is truly a profession. For all others, the word is a mere courtesy title for skilled workers.

I would argue that the most important and most dignified of all professions in any civilised country is - or should be - that of teacher. In Japan, there is no higher honour than to be known by that name, sensei. Since the teaching profession was "nationalised" in the 1940's, however, it has become no more than a corps of, mainly, state employees acting mindlessly under central direction and subject to the erratic (and often politically-motivated) discipline of its major employer, the State.

There is - appallingly - no prestige in being a teacher in Britain today, although many teachers of my acquaintance are better educated, more cultured, more intelligent and more thoroughly professional in their outlook than some in my own profession. With the demise of the GMC's disciplinary role, there will soon be no more prestige in being a doctor.

Those who submitted to the NHS because - as Nye Bevan put it - he "stuffed their mouths with gold" betrayed their successors. Dr Harold Shipman could never have murdered so many if he did not operate in a sloppy State bureaucracy. From the deepest pit of hell reserved for dead Socialists, Nye Bevan must be laughing that it was the evil Doctor Shipman who finally allowed Bevan's Socialist successors to complete his work of reducing free professionals to minions.

A sad day for believers in liberal values - Britain - Times Online

No officers will face charges over Menezes killing - Britain - Times Online

This is an inexplicable decision by the Crown Prosecution Service. I do not even accuse them of succumbing to political pressure, as it is inexplicable politically as well as legally.

If there are insufficient grounds to prosecute the officers who shot Jean Charles de Menezes, the CPS should say why. I have no doubt that you or I, were we to have shot him under the mistaken belief that he was a suicide bomber, would face prosecution. A jury would decide if our mistaken belief gave rise to a defence (self-defence?) which would mean we were not guilty of murder.

There could be no question of a manslaughter charge here. There was clear intent to kill. The two components of murder are the actus reus - the action of killing and the mens rea - the intent to kill. Both were clearly present on the facts as reported. Murder was committed unless the accused has one of the valid defences, e.g. provocation, self-defence or insanity.

If there had been evidence that Jean Charles were a suicide bomber about to detonate himself on a tube train, then I have no doubt that a jury would see the shooting as an act of self-defence on behalf of themselves and the whole community. They would be heroes. But they or their fellow-officers trailed him for a long time; watched him on and off of a bus (no concern about the passengers there?) and must have seen that he was lightly clad with nowhere to conceal a bomb belt.

They have a case to answer. Anyone else would have to answer it. Much though we may have sympathy for the needs of police officers making "split second decisions in the face of danger", there is no reason to keep this from a jury, still less to conceal the identities of the killers.

The family and their supporters have retained a leading QC and I expect him to advise them to commence a private prosecution. "Murder will out" as Chaucer remarked. I think I have made it clear why the CPS decision is legally wrong. If they were (and I do not allege this of my learned friends as it would be quite improper) succumbing to political pressure from the whore of Downing Street, that would be a political misjudgment too.

If the officers had been promptly brought before a jury, I think 12 good men and true would have had sympathy with their plight. No-one would think the officers were sadists looking for casual opportunities to kill. The jurors would understand (having felt it) the atmosphere of fear bordering on paranoia in London after the 7/7 bombings. The jury would have leaned over backwards to find a way to acquit.

A jury in a private prosecution, having the facts presented to them by the barrister for a grieving family denied the opportunity of justice by a State complicit in the alleged crime, may well be less sympathetic. With the passage of time, jurors will be less emotional, and more inclined to consider - for example - the standard to which the police and Crown Prosecution Service expect householders in fear of a burglar in their home to be held when using force. Why should trained officers whose only function is to use force in a crisis be held to a lower standard than that?

The men who put seven bullets in the head of an unresisting, innocent man held down by another police officer were not making split second decisions. They could see in front of them a man who was clearly unarmed. The best explanation that can be contrived on the known facts is that they were acting on orders which, in the excitement of the moment, they failed to question. Their blood was up and an innocent died.

If there is something the CPS knows that we don't, it should publish it - now. And we should know the names of the officers that - by its decision - the CPS is saying are innocent. Justice must be done, and seen to be done. The policemen concerned are citizens, living under the same rules as the rest of us, not henchmen of the State to be shielded from the light.

No officers will face charges over Menezes killing - Britain - Times Online

'BNP members must not work as teachers,' union warns | the Daily Mail

I am cool with this, libertarian that I am, provided that communists and other totalitarians (e.g. New Labourites) are also excluded.

'BNP members must not work as teachers,' union warns | the Daily Mail

Comment is free | The Levy scandal is an accidental by-product of Blair's negligence

Polly Toynbee's article is barely worth the irritation engendered by reading it. There are no new insights to be gained into the psychological state of one of Britain's two best arguments for the restoration of the 11+

But the comments are fascinating. To watch Guardianistas in full denial is most entertaining. I love the phrase "...a law that no one even knew existed..." in mitigation of Lord Levy's alleged offence. How many of the many hundreds of new crimes created by Parliament under New Labour can the average Brit name? In my experience (I always ask the Brits I meet in Moscow to name some) they only know one - "hunting with hounds".

So if you break one of the others, don't worry. You are only breaking "a law that no one even knew existed".

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The Levy scandal is an accidental by-product of Blair's negligence

Another proud moment for socialised medicine | Samizdata.net

Only Big Government could simultaneously deliver a shortage of a drug in a State hospital, combined with an irrepressible abundance of the same drug, sold illegally on the streets outside.

Another proud moment for socialised medicine | Samizdata.net

Independent Online Edition > Health Medical

I think it is despicable of Professor Fitzgerald to trash the reputations of dead men by "diagnosing" them with conditions which "explain" beliefs they held which were contrary to his own.

I met Sir Keith Joseph. He was intelligent, articulate and perfectly rational. I was part of a group of students at an NUS conference who defended him when a bunch of leftists tried to push him off a balcony. Presumably as they were full of (highly theoretical) sympathy for their fellow men, Professor Fitzgerald would say that they were normal, whereas Sir Keith - who waved away our concerns for his safety with an airy "Don't be silly, this is England" - was, aparently suffering from "a mental condition".

I did think at the time that Sir Keith under-rated the danger from the student Trots in question. Professor Fitzgerald would no doubt argue he couldn't, as a "aspie" read their feral facial expressions and body language correctly. What tosh!

Yes, he was a serious man. He wanted to talk to intelligent people about serious things. I suppose he may not have been much for aimless "chat" over time-wasting coffee, although he chatted amiably enough to naieve young students interested in his ideas.

He may have been more than averagely direct. Why not? Must everyone be the same? Sir Keith was intense, because he was trying, by the raw force of his intellectual efforts, to rescue a nation on the brink of collapse. The nation was in that position because of the stupidity of lots of "humane" people who liked to chat over coffee about how to take money from decent hard-working people and squander it.

In a society where "4x4" now has a secondary meaning of a woman who has four children by four fathers to maximise her rights to benefits and prospects of gaining child support, one wonders if one really has to suffer from Asperger's Syndrome to agree with the speech that put a lid on Sir Keith's political career. One can question his political judgement on that occasion without having to question his mental condition.

Is everyone with a different political view to Professor Fitzgerald suffering from a mental condition? What a shame the Soviet Union collapsed. They had need of psychiatrists like him.

Independent Online Edition > Health Medical

The fog lifts over RBS's inaction on NatWest Three

I have not blogged about the "Natwest Three" because I have been waiting for the clamour of anti-Americanism to abate. I am not angry with the American authorities for using a British law which entitles them to extradite suspects. Why shouldn't they? I am angry with our incompetent Government for enacting a law to give effect to a treaty which had not been ratified by both countries and was therefore not yet in force.

The simple fact is that we should never allow our citizens to be extradited in circumstances where the country to which they are to be sent would not extradite its citizens to us.

New Labour has played fast and loose with our liberties in many ways. This is just another of them. I don't know if the "Natwest Three" are guilty. I do know that New Labour is guilty of monumental ineptitude and of brutal indifference to the liberty of British citizens. I have every confidence in the American judicial system's ability to determine the NatWest Three's guilt or innocence. I don't understand why my fellow citizens could not determine - at the polls - the political guilt of the Labour Party.

Telegraph | Money | The fog lifts over RBS's inaction on NatWest Three

BBC NEWS | Health | Managers blamed for NHS deficits

In as sense, the NHS managers are right. It is "all too easy" to blame them for the NHS SNAFU's.

The NHS is intrinsically inefficient; a massive "producer cooperative" where there are no career consequences for inefficiency. If a manager in a private company were to overrun his budgets by anything like the amounts which are common in the NHS, his career would be over - and not just with that company.

NHS hospitals should be privatised. The government should confine itself to regulating the health insurance industry so as to ensure that policies are not written to exclude pre-existing conditions etc. (averaging costs across all policies), enforcing a compulsory health insurance scheme and then writing cheques to insurers for those who are unable to pay for their own health insurance.

Hospitals which are in danger of going bankrupt if their budgets are not met would soon find proper people to manage them. They would also ensure a sensible ratio of managers to fee-earning staff (doctors and nurses).

BBC NEWS | Health | Managers blamed for NHS deficits

UK Indymedia - SOCPA - serious police assault once again outside downing street

How far London has come since the "Summer of Love". SOCPA is amongst the most badly-named of all New Labour's deceptively-titled legislation. Our police are now political enforcers, not protectors of law-abiding citizens. Any police officer with a conscience should resign, rather than be part of the apparatus of the New Labour police state.

UK Indymedia - SOCPA - serious police assault once again outside downing street

Cameron defends youth crime speech

Even when Dave Cameron is right, he's wrong. His political judgement in leaving himself open to the "hug a hoodie" sneer from the NuLabour/Daily Mail authoritarians was weak. Of course hoodies are irrelevant. Virtually all young people wear them. I attended my elder daughter's final speech day at her highly respectable school on Saturday, and the school and its various houses had had "Leavers 2006" hoodies made. The young ladies you may see wearing them this Summer are no threat to anyone.

To condemn hoodies because some violent youths use them to conceal their features from CCTV during crimes is as absurd as to condemn ladies' tights for their regular involvement in bank robberies.

Cameron is right to encourage us not to demonise all youth because of the conduct of a few. To do so is to promote bad behaviour. To show more respect to people who behave well would stimulate more respect for others. Our arrogant and abusive police officers could usefully heed that advice. Cameron is right to suggest we should scale down the use of the ludicrous ASBO, which has made a laughing stock of the law.

Thousands of young people leave our schools every year ready, able and willing to play a constructive part in society. They, not the hoodied yob, are the norm. Our problem as a society is that we have allowed the yobs to set the agenda, firstly in schools where the inability to expel trouble makers has freed them from all restraint.

What kind of preparation for civilised society is an education in an environment where everyone in authority is open to ridicule and abuse, and where all punishments are vain - because they are simply ignored? My wife and I were educated in a comprehensive. My wife taught in several of them before giving up teaching as a bad job. We know of what we speak. If we could not have afforded private education, we would not have had children, precisely because the State Schools are so vile.

When yobs emerge from the jungle of state education, where they have ruled by fear and behaved exactly as they pleased, they expect to continue in the same way. They then meet a police force which, when it happens to be on the streets, has no interest in confronting their behaviours. In its discourteous attitude to others, the police force more closely resembles the yobs than the "decent" people. Police officers, rapidly becoming a politicised tribe apart, reinforce the uncivil nature of our "civil society".

If the police do take them on, the courts and the probation service will then continue to coddle them as their schools accustomed them to expect. However bad their behaviour, they can expect the Nanny State to protect them and support them, financially and otherwise. All the media take their tone from them, providing entertainment and information "dumbed down" to their Neantherdal level.

Cameron is right that the hoody has nothing to do with it. He is right that demonising our youth is no way to deal with our real demons. But namby-pamby Guardian liberalism is no way to deal with them either.

if he would like some policy suggestions, how about these? Give head teachers 100% discretion on the matter of expulsion, so that they can be as ruthless in disposing of trouble makers as the private schools. Take the view that taxpayer-funded State education is a privilege not an entitlement. If a child and his parents are not interested in taking advantage of that privilege, then that child will always disrupt the education of others. To protect their privileges, throw him out.

By all means provide facilities for such yobs, but let them be outside the normal system. If our expelled yob misbehaves there, then let the head have the right to throw him out again; this time onto the streets. Eventually, he will be picked up by the forces of law and order. Let them be unequivocally mandated to deal with him (and his neglectful parents) as they deserve.

Libertarians are not anarchists. We believe in as few laws as possible, thoroughly enforced. Being soft on any criminals, and young criminals in particular, is to be hard on everyone else. To hell with them - or to as close a facsimile of hell as a civilised society can tolerate.

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Cameron defends youth crime speech

Londonist: Opinion: Freedom Of Speech Does Not Extend To Criticising The Police

The police officers involved in this story should ask themselves why they joined the force. Did they want to protect and serve the public, or did they want to be part of the apparatus of a police state?

Londonist: Opinion: Freedom Of Speech Does Not Extend To Criticising The Police

The times have changed for British Blogs

I am pleased for Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale whose contribution to the sum of human knowledge about the odious Prescott is being widely acknowledged. I am also worried. Prescott's friends are urging him, it has been reported, to sue them and have their sites closed down.

Britain's libel laws have a chilling effect on public debate. People long knew that Robert Maxwell was a criminal, for example. As a new young partner, I introduced one of his companies to my old law firm as a client. I was rewarded with an immediate visit from the Senior Partner to praise my efforts and good intentions but to tell me never to accept such an instruction again. "Don't quote me," I was told, "but he's an utter crook". This was years before his watery end.

Maxwell was an enthusiastic litigator, bringing libel actions at the slightest provocation, putting his accusers to the proof and gleefully perjuring himself in his own "defence". He managed to silence almost all public criticism. Lord Archer also perjured himself in a libel action, forcing a newspaper to retract a true story and pay him damages. It was for that perjury that he eventually went to jail.

If the wealthy supporters of Labour choose to fund actions against bloggers, it will not matter if they wrote the truth or not. It will only matter if they can prove it. The best defence to defamation is "justification" - i.e. that the statement complained of was true. Against politicians there is a more useful defence, that the statement (if not true) was "fair comment on a matter of public interest". Much as I hope they will long continue, I am not sure that some of the more exuberant and entertaining blogs would be considered by juries to be making "fair comment". Whatever the rights and wrongs, many bloggers would be hard pressed to meet the costs of defending such actions, for which no legal aid is available.

I fear the glory days of British political blogging may be over. I doubt if even Prescott is daft enough to sue on an allegation which he has failed to deny, despite being given ample opportunity. However, when Guido's readership passed that of Private Eye, he became the sort of target that the Eye has long been.

Only the authentically poor can afford to say what they please. Those with assets and families to support must be careful.

4thJuly

Who can argue with Johnny Cash? H/T An Englishman's Castle.

4thJuly

Happy Fourth of July

We invented the English language and the Common Law. We will always be proud to have bred Shakespeare, though - like the language he shaped - we now share him with the world. However, we should acknowledge the American Declaration of Independence as one of the best pieces of prose in Shakespeare's language. "We hold these truths to be self evident...", it began, and a nation's history began with it.

The American Constitution too is a fine piece of work. Americans are fortunate that it was drafted at the peak of classical liberalism. It is not as beautiful as the Declaration of Independence, but it is elegant nonetheless. It contains in a few words (by lawyers' standards) beginning "We, the people..." so much more than any modern attempt at a framework for a nation's laws and government.

My chosen "nom de blog" is a clue that I am fond of the United States of America. Politically, I acknowledge it openly as the greatest of Man's works to date. I am proud that the best of English political philosophy found a home somewhere. I just wish it had been England.

The Founding Fathers did a great job and their successors have not yet screwed it up so much that they could fail to look them in the eye. Tom Paine began his life an Englishman and ended it an American. One reason I chose his name is that I still hope to repeat that feat one day, if circumstances permit.

Americans - unlike the English - are openly proud of their country. So should they be. No nation is perfect and they make mistakes like all humans, but the USA - as much as any nation on Earth - has contributed more to humanity than it has taken. The Europeans and Brits who make snide remarks about America are the same sorry minority of self-loathing liberals who have little good to say of their own countries. Americans should therefore not take it personally.

To all my American friends, present and future, I say "Happy Fourth of July". And may God bless America.

Serious Study: Immaturity Levels Rising

I wonder if the welfare state may have something to do with this story. After all, it allows a citizen to live in child-like dependence on "Nanny", just as he once depended on mother.

I fear that the burgeoning state in Britain is infantilising large numbers of citizens; institutionalising them so that real adult independence strikes them as a "survivalist" nightmare; something far too scary for ordinary people to contemplate.

Whenever I hear a politician say that "the first duty of government is the protection of the citizen", I fear the protector more than the person I am to be protected from. This is natural enough, since usually that person is me.

Life is not safe. There are evil men in every generation. The government can never make us safe, but it can make us unfree in the attempt.

Discovery Channel :: News - Human :: Serious Study: Immaturity Levels Rising

Detained Iraqis 'were planning terrorist attacks' - Britain - Times Online

If these accusations are true, then they should be substantiated and the men convicted and jailed. If they cannot be substantiated - i.e. they are based on the same reliable "intelligence" that brought us imaginary WMD in Iraq, an imaginary bomb belt on Jean Charles de Menezes and imaginary chemical weapons in Forest Gate - then the government should shut up.

The men are innocent until proven guilty and the ministers making these serious allegations are abusing their public position.

To attack the judiciary in this way for enforcing the law is very dangerous. Our judges are not perfect, but they are currently the last line of defence we have against the burgeoning British police state.

Detained Iraqis 'were planning terrorist attacks' - Britain - Times Online

Is Megan's Law a vigilantes' charter? - Law - Times Online

The answer to the question in the headline is - of course - in the text of the story.

This is a difficult issue for a libertarian. I don't believe the State has the right - generally - to conceal information from the public. It exists to serve the public and whatever its servants know, they know on the public's behalf. However, the State also has a duty to protect the privacy of private individuals. You would not want your tax return published online as "public information", would you?

Here, I think the press is focussing on the wrong issue. The question is not "would you want to know if a sex offender was living near your children?". Knowledge is power and the obvious answer is "yes". There is also an argument that the "Megan's Law" approach is only achieving, in a modern mobile society, what used to occur naturally when people lived in more stable communities. The local paedophiles were known and children were warned against them by families and neighbours. Their proclivities were to some extent controlled by the knowledge that the community was watching them and, yes, might take matters into its own hands if children were harmed. Why should this not happen now?

A more difficult question is whether, having paid his debt to society by doing jail time, someone who committed an offence should still be regarded as an "offender". If a convicted, time-served, paedophile is so dangerous that his neighbours need to know his history, then he should not have been released. If he is safe enough to be released, then his privacy can safely be respected so as to maximise his chances of rehabilitation.

The real issue is the correct sentencing and/or treatment of paedophiles, which is itself a difficult issue.

We are all (or most of us outside Opus Dei, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Nigerian Anglicans) reconciled to the idea that a homosexual is no more "to blame" for his sexual orientation than a heterosexual. He is what he is and must be able to live his life on the same terms as anyone else - i.e. free to live as he chooses, provided his choices do no harm to others.

A paedophile has no more choice in his sexual orientation than a homosexual. The problem is that living his sexual life as he chooses cannot be done without harm, as he desires children too young to make sexual choices. In a sense though, criminal punishment is as absurd for him as it always was for homosexuals. [I can already hear my more conventionally right-wing readers going ballistic at this point].

A paedophile who cannot contain his sexual urges is in need of treatment. The closure of secure psychiatric hospitals under the guise of "care in the community" has in practice filled our jails with men and women who would previously have been their inmates. I suspect that many paedophiles fall into the same category. How much more humane would it be for a paedophile with uncontrollable urges to be "sectioned" or to admit himself for treatment, than to leave him to cope alone, to the endangerment of the children around him.

I also question whether the current witch-hunt about "child pornography" is entirely constructive. Of course anything which involves harming children in the making of it should be a crime. But Japanese style manga cartoons, or realistic CGI imagery - however disgusting it might seem to non-paedophiles - should probably be available to help them deal with their sexuality in a way that does not harm children.

This is a subject it would be much easier not to write about. Anything one does write can be misinterpreted. I am not sure, however, that the tone of the present debate is likely to lead to our children being safer. Surely that - not the expression of our revulsion - is the real issue?

Is Megan's Law a vigilantes' charter? - Law - Times Online

BBC NEWS | UK | Judge quashes anti-terror orders

How sad that we need European law to protect us against detention without trial.

BBC NEWS | UK | Judge quashes anti-terror orders

Comments on: The Metropolitan Police

This links to an exchange of comments at "Opinionated Voice", on a post where the blogger, a young Muslim named Jamal, asked the reasonable question

"Why is it that when the Metropolitan Police receives dodgy evidence an immense operation is launched and a suspect gets shot, but when correct evidence is received it gets ignored?"

Comments on: The Metropolitan Police

The Observer | UK News | Fears over faults in NHS patient records system

No surprise here. Was there ever a Government IT project that EITHER came in under budget OR worked, still less both?

In France, patients keep their own records in a folder and take them to the doctor or hospital when they visit. How hard is that? People care about their own health more than any doctor (and if they don't, well that's their problem). No I.T. costs. No "clinical risk" from computer errors - and no risk of confidential records being made available against the wishes of patients.

The only argument against is that it would provide no opportunities for corrupt patronage.

The Observer | UK News | Fears over faults in NHS patient records system

Time to slaughter the sacred cow?

My "smash the goldfish bowls" experiment has not been a success. The only "hostile" bloggers seriously to engage were Matt over at "The Dirty Leftie", and Jamal at “Opinionated Voice”. I thank them for their cooperation. I direct my contempt at the cowardly leftist bloggers who simply deleted my critical comments; restoring their blogs to ideological sterility. May they continue to swim alone in their little goldfish bowl blogs. Come the Revolution, they already know how to censor.

One always learns something from even the most naieve experiments. Matt made a simply stunning statement in response to one of my comments on his blog. I didn't respond at the time, because I was staggered and needed time to think about it. In response to one of my critiques - and as a throw-away aside to his main argument - he said: -

"you seem to be the first person I have met who is criticising the NHS and the rescue of the coal, steel and gas industries which .... were loss making private companies; companies which were almost essential for this country’s prosperity, but only salvagable through national subsidies."

Let me leave nationalisation for another day. I was shocked that Matt had “never met” anyone who criticised the NHS. Perhaps that is because its opponents are afraid to speak? So mighty a sacred cow has it become.

When Labour wins an election, Britain’s Conservatives quietly hope that it will reform the NHS, as perhaps only it could. Blair seemed the best hope of that, but has failed ignominiously. If not the Labour Party’s voters, then its membership either believe in it, know no better, or fear worse. Yet the NHS (I think of it as the NDS, or "National Death Service") is an unmitigated disaster.

My firm employs lots of East European lawyers. We bring them to London from time to time for secondments or training. One of them, a Pole, was unfortunate enough to need medical care during his stay. He was shocked. He could not believe that facilities in what he considered a rich country, were no better than they had been in the Communist Poland of his youth.

Another colleague, a Brit working in Moscow, was turned away from her local NHS hospital during her holiday at home last Christmas. She was seen by what Dr Crippen over at NHS Blog Doctor wittily calls a “nurse quacktitioner”, who turned her away with painkillers. Lots of painkillers. I advised her to return to Moscow and visit the medical centre we use here. She was promptly hospitalised, given life-saving treatment for a congested lung and air-ambulanced home to recuperate. The NHS had almost claimed another victim.

A female relative was admitted to hospital after a mild heart attack. She discharged herself in fear of her life after being put on a mixed “barracks” ward with a mad tramp who exposed himself constantly in a bed only a couple of feet away. He was so filthy and so belligerent that she preferred (fortunately that proved not to be the outcome) “...to die in her own bed...”

Another relative, a nurse for decades, recently worked her last day on an NHS ward. She had become afraid of the situations she was frequently exposed to, such as being the sole person in charge of a large barracks ward full of acutely-ill patients. Despite doubling the NHS budget, New Labour has presided over (she tells me) a decline in actual medical workers. All the money has gone on “jobs for the Red boys” so that now there is one hopeless, Labour-voting, administrator per bed. What they do all day is a mystery to the medical and nursing staff.

There are too few nurses, and the shortage has been compounded by "training" many of them as “quacktitioners” to cover up the shortage of qualified doctors. Of the nurses left to nurse, many (she says) speak English so poorly that they don’t understand their patients - with predictable consequences. Sitting through the night as the sole nurse in charge of people she knew she couldn’t help in the event of the serious trouble that could be expected at any moment, she decided she could not live with the risks. When a patient died of this systematic and deliberate neglect, she would have felt (albeit unreasonably) responsible. She felt she might not be able to live with herself thereafter, so she quit.

Another family member was in hospital after a heart attack. I witnessed an exchange with his consultant. He was walking by and when my the patient called to him, he didn’t come over; he just stopped dead in the middle of the barracks ward. At the top of his voice, he answered questions with ill-disguised impatience, with the whole ward listening. There was no privacy; no respect. The patient was just another piece of meat to this apparatchik. This is of course the precise conduct any follower of Adam Smith would predict from a member of a monopoly producer cooperative - or a c**t. Being the former almost inevitably turns you into the latter.

Yet another family member was admitted to the local NHS pain-station for an operation last year. His mobility is limited and he is in constant pain. He is self-employed and therefore works with gritted teeth, but if he were an employee he would no doubt be “on the sick.” The operation would allow him to work without pain and he had been waiting - as must be expected in any system based on rationing - for some time. The surgeon opened him up, decided the problem was not as bad as he thought and discharged him untreated. The prognosis? Fifteen years of pain, mitigated by painkillers, before the knee was “bad enough” to be worth treating under NHS guidelines. When he presents again in 15 years (his career over) he will be told he’s too old to be a priority and left in pain, untreated, until death.

I could go on. You may think I already have. All these stories are recent and from my own direct experience. The fact is that, in the pantheon of Socialist achievement, the NHS is less akin to the Soviet Space programme, and more akin to the Gulag Archipelago. It is probably the only healthcare system in history to be so squalid and badly run as to generate its own new diseases. It is a chain of filthy islands of humiliation, pain and neglect. It should be replaced with a system where the State owns no hospitals and employs no doctors or nurses, but merely pays all or part of the premium (for those who can’t afford it) under a compulsory insurance scheme provided by competing private companies.

The NHS is not a national treasure, but a national humiliation. If it is a sacred cow, then it is time that it was slaughtered.

There you go, Matt. Now you have heard it criticised.

Blair says 'decent majority' must have justice - Law - Times Online

Like so much of what this meretricious politician says, this sounds fine - perhaps even reasonable. "Balance" is a good thing, so a "rebalancing' must be positive, right? We are in the 21st Century, so anything from previous centuries must be old-fashioned, right? Old-fashioned things like "innocent until proven guilty", for example?

"Criminals" don't deserve our sympathy, but an accused person in court is not a criminal; he or she is a suspected criminal. It's not the same thing at all. We all have the choice as to whether to commit crimes. We don't have the choice as to whether we are suspected of them. The accused in the dock could be any of us, at any time.

I only spent a short time as a criminal defence lawyer, but it was long enough even for a naieve young man to detect that policemen and prosecutors are human and therefore fallible. Many accused people should never have been in court in the first place, so flimsy was the case against them. If people are acquitted for lack of evidence, it's not the courts that are at fault. Perhaps it is the way that the bulk of police time is spent providing the government with statistics, rather than gathering evidence? Perhaps the Government might like to consider getting the army of Home Office fuckwits bureaucrats off the backs of police constables?

I blogged about the Stagg case yesterday. That hapless loser was the victim of a witch-hunt. The dismissal of his case was presented as just the sort of "injustice" that Blair was speaking about today. But he was innocent. And it took a brave judge, fearlessly independent, to protect him from the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the tabloid editors and the rest of the brainless mob baying for his innocent blood.

Whatever happened to the wisdom and kindness of "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?

Blair says 'decent majority' must have justice - Law - Times Online

Telegraph | Opinion | Colin Stagg shows why trial by judge, not by media, is right

This story perfectly illustrates our problems in modern Britain. A situation like ours today does not develop overnight. The stiff upper lip, the "sang froid", the calm and rational approach to life has died. We could see that at the time of Princess Diana's funeral. The ignorant sentimentality of the mob has taken over everywhere. Tony Blair's fake emotional choking when speaking of the dead Princess was masterful, if despicable, politics. The whole nation now seems to live on the Oprah Winfrey show, in a state of permanent emotion and irrationality.

In such an atmosphere, Government and police abase themselves at the feet of the tabloid journalists who write to the heart, not the head, and justice goes to hell.

Colin Stagg's life was ruined, but so have been the lives of many others - innocent men and women suspected of terrorism for example. Arrested under ludicrous new laws enacted to appease tabloid editors in a spirit of "something must be done" or "there ougther be a law against it, guv", they have for the most part been released without charge. Released only after being held far too long without justification, into a community so emotional (and so ignorant of the basic principles of a liberal society) as to believe that "there is no smoke without fire"

It's ironic that Stagg was a Wiccan. We are living in an age of witch hunts.

Telegraph | Opinion | Colin Stagg shows why trial by judge, not by media, is right

English MPs call for Scottish MPs vote exclusion | the Daily Mail

Clearly the Witanagemot Club is beginning to have an effect...

English MPs call for Scottish MPs vote exclusion | the Daily Mail

Discriminate for Muslims, police urged

In the present dangerous situation for our country, I cannot think of anything more calculated to worsen our position than Trevor Phillips' proposal for yet more "positive discrimination". He has called for "debate". Please let him have it.

How many more of these ex-university politicians, still living the closed, unreal life of the student union, will inflict chaos on us? Jack Straw, Charles Clarke, Tony Blair and now Trevor Phillips all experienced their defining moments in the fake world of student politics.

Clarke is a contemporary of mine and I saw him in action, hair and beard modelled on Marx, chairing National Union of Students conferences as the leader of a "Broad Left" alliance of assorted Communists and other Lefties. That was the time when their key policy was "no platform for fascists and racists" - a fundamentally anti-free speech idea, designed to split the well-meaning from their liberal values.

Phillips is cut from the same cloth. He has no grasp of the thinking of ordinary people going about their business. Like the others, he has no substantial experience of the real world. He has gone almost directly from the unreal corridors of "play power" in the student union to the equally aloof corridors of real power.

The approach of such people - constantly seeking to tinker in order to manipulate thought, not actions - has generated genuine, active racial hatred (and hatred of gays) where there was none. People who might have made an off-colour remark or two, but would never have done any harm, are now genuinely, even passionately resentful of the privileges being granted to favoured minorities seen as clients of the Left.

We all now know that the lives of heterosexual men are worth - in sentencing terms - about half as much as the life of a homosexual man. Should Phillips have his way, if the sons of non-Muslims wish to join the police they may expect to be discriminated against on entry, constantly accused of racism and held back for promotion by comparison with Muslim colleagues.

Fighting largely imaginary fire with real fire will burn the people who do it. Resentment is rising in Britain. If people from less-favoured communities are subject to mistaken police raids, or even shot seven times in the head on the Tube, the government does not give a damn. If a Muslim or a gay experiences such a misfortune, we can expect riots on the streets, exhortations to bloody violence and an Establishment leaping to attention to twist the fabric of our society to suit a favoured minority.

I despise the so-called "Far Right". They are, as Norman Tebbitt recently explained, not "right wing" at all. They are vile Statists, just as determined to concentrate political power at the centre and interfere in individuals' lives as the left. They are just as determined to control "the means of production" and direct it politically. Their ideology is odiously based on favouring some racial groups over others, just as that of the Left is on favouring particular social groups over others. They are all enemies of freedom and equally to be despised.

The excesses of the socialists are now in danger of driving ordinary people into the arms of the fascists. Mr. Phillips should come down from his ebony tower and meet with the ordinary people of Britain before he drives them towards his most extreme enemies.

Discriminate for Muslims, police urged - Britain - Times Online

US 'issued alert' on 7/7 bomber in 2003

Can the heads of Britain's intelligence services fail to resign, if this story proves to be true?

US 'issued alert' on 7/7 bomber in 2003 - Britain - Times Online

Mentos & Diet Coke; who knew?

Opinionated Voice - Another Political Goldfish Bowl

Have a look. Very interesting stuff about the treatment of Muslims - most of it entirely unmoderated by exposure to other points of view. Head over there and chip in.

Opinionated Voice

The Housing (Empty Dwelling Management Orders) (Prescribed Exceptions and Requirements) (England) Order 2006

Lots of bloggers are writing indignantly about this Order. What is it exactly, and what does it actually say? The links in the heading and below go to the official text, but I will try to talk you through it.

It is already law. It came into force on 6th April 2006. It is a "statutory instrument" which is a form of "delegated legislation." Delegated legislation is made by a Minister without Parliamentary debate or positive approval, under specific powers in an Act of Parliament. Sometimes Acts which give ministers such power are called "primary legislation" or "enabling acts" and such delegated legislation is called "secondary legislation".

In my opinion, there is far too much secondary legislation. I think it is irresponsible of our MPs to entrust so much power and discretion to ministers. It is one more way in which they are failing in their duties to us. They are failing to scrutinise new laws adequately and allowing the Executive to get away with too much.

Ministers adore secondary legislation. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, for example, would be the enabling Act to end all enabling Acts. Ministers would have general widespread powers to make secondary legislation, without the need for a specific enabling Act. Adolf Hitler pushed through just such a law in his first months in power.

This secondary legislation, however, is quite inoffensive. It only sets out the "prescribed exceptions" to the power to make Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMO's) and the "prescribed requirements" to be complied with by a local authority asking a tribunal to make an EDMO. The indignation now being expressed should properly have been heard when The Housing Act 2004 was passed. It is an index of the mediocrity of HM Opposition and the British Press that there was no uproar then.

Once you accept the horror of the EDMO concept, Ruth Kelly's exemptions look OK on the face of them. As you would expect, they cover all the Labour Party's client groups (e.g. people absent "for the purpose of receiving personal care by reason of old age, disablement, illness, past or present alcohol or drug dependence or past or present mental disorder"). However, there are a lot of people who could be at risk. Those who have not got around to selling a house they have inherited, for example. That's the one the press has picked up on. Another group could be expatriates or servicemen abroad who have bought a house to return to, but did not live there before they left.

Fortunately, my wife has established her permanent residence in our UK home, although she spends a lot of time with me in Russia as a visitor. If she had not done that, or if (God forbid) she were to die, my home and principal investment would be at risk as our present house in the UK is not the one we lived in before we left to work abroad.

The prescribed requirements are again (if you accept the pernicious principle of the Act) sensible. The local authority must produce evidence of "reasonable efforts" to inform the owner of the possible EDMO, and of all their attempts to persuade him to arrange for his property to be occupied "...as required by the Act..." (damn their impertinence!).

All this shows that the current fuss over the Order is two years too late. All the bad stuff is in the Act. Follow the link to that and have a crack at reading sections 133 to 138 if you are interested (and don't forget to read Schedule 7, as I did - when first writing this post - until corrected by a comment from the man behind the idea of the EDMO).

The wording of section 138 on compensation for third parties is particularly interesting. It says a tribunal "may" order compensation to anyone whose property rights have been affected, but the principles of such compensation are not defined and it is entirely in the tribunal's discretion. I am not at all sure that adjoining owners will be compensated or that, if they are, the compensation will reflect their real loss. I would have to do more research on the composition of the relevant tribunal to take a firmer view on that (and this blogging thing is only a hobby done in snatched moments of a busy life, you know).

Whether or not you have a defence or a claim for compensation, you will be put to a lot of trouble and cost if your local Labour busybodies (dear God, please assure me no Tories or Liberals would do something so disgusting) decide to try to seize your house. The more such laws are passed, the greater the "chilling" effect on free expression. More and more people are too much at the State's mercy in many such arbitrary ways, for them to oppose the Government with the vigour that its status as the nastiest of the modern era deserves.

Local authorities can already expropriate ("compulsorily purchase") property for public purposes. I see no reason why they shouldn't do this in the case of "abandoned" housing in order to use it for social housing. If they did so, however, they would have to go through a complicated process and pay compensation for the full value of the property. An EDMO is a power not forcibly to buy at market value (which is bad enough) but to take and use your property for a period, against your will. Your capital is tied up, deployed for government use. They will account to you for net income, but their duty of care to maximise that it far from clear and they can deduct costs (including administrative costs) which as inefficient public authorities will be high (and may even be loaded unfairly). Besides, if you decided (for whatever reason) that you didn't want income [see examples in comments], who is the local authority to second guess you?

Consider also the plight of the neighbours. For whatever reason, they will have social housing tenants inserted amongst them. My wife and I considered buying a modest apartment in London a while back, to which we would have retired. Almost every apartment in the building was empty, having been bought as a London "pied a terre" by various wealthy foreigners. Were the local authority to seize all the empty apartments and turn them into social housing (a) our lives would have become intolerable, (b) the value of our home would have plummeted and (c) our chances of selling out would have been nil. Maybe or maybe not the tribunal would accept their defence that they were second homes. Maybe or maybe not they or their representatives would be on hand to respond to notices.

Compare and contrast to a compulsory purchase solution, whereby at least we would have been out on the market with the full value of our home looking for somewhere else. The power to make EDMO's is wrong in principle and capable of abuse in discriminatory ways. When Tony Blair's home was vacant because he couldn't find a tenant, he was reasonably sure that his mate Prescott (whose pile of garbage all this is) would not use his powers against him. I am not sure than any opponent of the government, or of a Labour authority, can feel so safe.

If Britain were to experience a housing market crash on the scale of that at the end of the Eighties' boom (and I don't see why it shouldn't) a lot of people might have to relocate for work but be unable to sell their homes because of "negative equity". Six month delays in such circumstances are quite likely. The only way a mortgage company can protect itself in such circumstances (for it is also screwed if an EDMO is imposed on a property subject to its mortgage) is to go into possession - i.e. enforce the mortgage. Even if an owner has a temporary relocation package which allows him to service his debt on a vacant house, the building society or bank may be forced to seize the property to avoid the risk of an EDMO. It will be more difficult for British expatriates to buy houses to which to retire, because their mortgage lenders will (if well advised) be concerned about EDMO risk.

As a matter of principle, I object to government using other people's property in this (or any other way). If there is a genuine social need to be met in housing, government and local authorities have many ways to meet that need. It is typically nasty and dictatorial of New Labour to try to interfere in the use of peoples' private property in this way. What is mine, is mine. If I choose to use it, not use it, or burn it down, that should be bugger all to do with the State.

The Opposition cannot be blamed for having failed to prevent this law from being passed. Under our Constitution, the winner takes all. But they are highly to blame for having failed even to make it a matter of public debate then, and for continuing to ignore it now.

Unfortunately, Dapper Dave is busy "triangulating" non-traditional Tory supporters, such as the homeless and Labour councillors. To defend the sacred rights of Englishmen to their private property is just too Old Tory for him.

The Housing (Empty Dwelling Management Orders) (Prescribed Exceptions and Requirements) (England) Order 2006

Burning our money: £45bn On Underperformance

Wat Tyler's "Burning our Money" is one of the very best British blogs. I have never understood why the British media don't do "what the government does with your money" slots, as routinely happens in the US. Wat fills that gap.

Today, he demonstrates statistically what a balls-up comprehensive education has been. As a victim, I can only say "hear, hear". No nation is so rich in talent as to squander it on the scale Britain does.

Burning our money: £45bn On Underperformance

More from the goldfish bowls

The experiment continues. This from the civilised (if occasionally rather touchy) debate at the Dirty Leftie's blog.

"I apologise unreservedly if I seemed condescending. I am trying to stimulate debate. I really do appreciate your politeness in not deleting comments (as most Left-wing bloggers do) and I did not intend to abuse it. I would sincerely like to get Britain’s political bloggers out of their goldfish bowls and into a real debate.

Yes, I have heard of Market Socialism - my turn to be condescended to, I guess. I work in it. I live and work in Russia, but most of my deals are structured offshore financial transactions under English Law.

I have observed in 25 years as a business lawyer the level of detailed regulation which is required to suppress market-driven conduct of which Socialists do not approve. I have observed that the best brains in any Market Socialist economy are ranged on the one side in the Finance and Economics Ministries and on the other side in the upper echelons of the accountancy and legal professions. People who could otherwise be genuinely creative spend their lives engaged in sterile, unproductive - albeit fun- combat.

It’s a great game. If you are a tax lawyer, the government gives you a whole new playset every year. It’s more fun than Sudoku, and it pays. But it creates no wealth - whether for individuals or for society. All of us, whether Socialists or Capitalists, need wealth to be produced. Surely we only differ as to how and for whom?

Year on year, the volume of regulation rises. Year on year, the means of circumventing the regulations become more elaborate and expensive. This diversion of talent is one of the reasons I would almost prefer the honesty of a command economy to this approach. A command economy is at least theoretically capable of rational regulation in the best interests of all (although history shows it always degenerates into Prescottism - by which I mean the allocation of wealth and privilege on a political not an economic basis).

“Democratic Socialism” inevitably creates an unholy muddle of regulations, precisely because of the need to sell them to an electorate. To maintain itself in office while increasing regulation to “stifle” the market, a Democratic Socialist government needs to promote hostility to and mistrust of business.

That is the problem. Private business creates the wealth for the Social Democratic programme, but the negative propaganda required to keep Social Democrats in power militates against more citizens becoming business-people. It actually encourages more and more talent into the regulatory agencies of the State. Perhaps the brightest pupil recently to leave my childrens’ school now works alongside Gordon Brown. She had talent, creativity and energy. But she will never produce anything of value, economic or social. What a waste. But what a very logical choice for her and an encouraging one for you. She is a bright young woman who anticipates decades of Socialist market-stifling. It’s obviously more fun to be stifler than stiflee! Replicate that decision a few thousand times and you have a future in which the best talent is unproductive.

It may be a contentious statement, but I would argue quite seriously that Chinese Communism provides -at present - a more business-friendly environment than British Democratic Socialism. [Before you throw the iPod sweatshops in my face (and I have to throw the Morecambe Bay cocklers in yours) please understand that I don’t approve of either system.]

I accept that you do not seek “to impose this system”, but this system is experienced in practice as a series of impositions. Of course, business people suck up to Social Democrat governments in the hope of mitigating their horrors or perverting their powers for gain, but it would be a very foolish person (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown?) who actually believed the flattery.

The only positive benefit a Socialist government can bring a business is by creating “barriers to entry” which restrict competition and therefore shaft the consumer. We should expect the business environment in Britain to become closer and closer to that of France, as big business and government increasingly live in each other’s pockets exchanging corrupt advantages to the detriment of the ordinary citizen.

Democratic Socialism as opposed to Communism (the only difference, as Marx saw it, was the route by which the objective was reached) depends on a majority of the population agreeing forcibly to modify the behaviours of a minority; the very minority which has the skill, enthusiasm and appetite for risk to create wealth.

Much regulation misunderstands the nature of the relevant business. For example, lawyers, most of whom spend most of their professional energy helping businesses to comply with laws, are required now to “shop” clients whom they suspect may have broken some. In consequence, clients are now careful to edit information provided to their lawyers. This prevents the lawyers from advising correctly on compliance. Therefore more business people are criminalised. Another example of the law of unintended consequences, one of only two universal laws.

I really would be interested in your replies to my earlier questions about how to make markets work under Socialism. They were not facetious. I am really interested to know how you would get me out of bed in the morning if I was paid as much to stay there. “Standing up or lying down, it’s six zloties an hour” was a proverb in Socialist Poland, as was “If you don’t steal from the State, you steal from your family.”

Go for it. Maybe you will convert me. I was an active Communist in my youth (hard though I find it now to imagine what was going through my mind), so I have an established vulnerability."

Because equality is obviously Disgusting

Because equality is obviously Disgusting

The "smash the goldfish bowls" experiment continues. I have found some polite Leftists who don't delete non-Leftie comments. Why not wander over and join the debate. It's really quite interesting.

Because equality is obviously Disgusting

Forest Gate family breaks silence over terror raid - Britain - Times Online

How, precisely, does the conduct of the police during this raid differ from that of a Gestapo or a KGB?

Since reading this account, I have been asking myself how I should have behaved, if the police broke into my home in this way. I would previously have been inclined - if I heard someone break in - to investigate. That is what these two young men did - only for one of them to be shot without warning in circumstances where he could easily have died.

Should we then lie still in our beds if we hear such a disturbance, for fear that it may be Ian Blair's brave boys on an erroneous mission? What exactly does the Blair Police State require of us?

Forest Gate family breaks silence over terror raid - Britain - Times Online

Yard told MI5 of terror tip doubt

Cases such as these are at the heart of the debate over the balance between "anti-terrorist powers" and civil liberties. Ignore for the moment the ludicrous whingeing of Muslim groups. Are police "targeting Muslims" in looking for terrorists? Oddly enough, since Islamic terror is the current threat, they are not looking for it amongst Buddhists. During the IRA's long campaign on the British mainland, they were not looking for terrorists among French expats in Britain either.

Each time there is such a raid, we should ask if the new powers were (a) used and (b) necessary. Certainly no new powers were necessary to raid and search this house if the police had reasonable cause to suspect that there was evidence of an offence. A search warrant would be readily granted. Reading between the lines it seems that MI5 signals intelligence (monitored phone calls or emails) may have been the reason to suspect the gentlemen in question. A judge could assess that intelligence in deciding whether to issue a warrant. No problem there.

The suspects were detained for longer than would previously been permitted, using new "anti-terrorist" powers. Without those powers, the police would have had to go back to a court to have the detention period extended and would have had to give reasons. It seems a reasonable safeguard that they should have to do so. When the suspects sue, they will have suffered greater losses and will no doubt win higher damages. I can't see (as it must have been obvious in a few hours that the intelligence behind the raid was clearly defective) that the new powers have achieved anything except greater losses to the taxpayer. The powers were used, but unnecessary.

The new anti-terror laws were irrelevant to the use of firearms in this incident. The police will not have (and should not have) any additional defences against criminal or civil cases brought by the man who was shot. Whether they are to blame or not remains to be seen, but the new laws will make no difference.

Questions should be asked about police tactics. In the confusion of a massive operation (250 officers for one terraced house?!), some kind of foul-up was likely. If the current legal and political situation had any influence at all, it was to create a febrile, almost hysterical, atmosphere in which injury or death was more likely.

All of this supports the theory that Tony Blair's anti-terrorism legislation was passed entirely for political effect. He wanted to be seen to "do something" but what he has done has either made no difference, or has had a negative effect.

The Observer | UK News | Yard told MI5 of terror tip doubt

BBC NEWS | Politics | Cameron outlines new 'equality'

Equality is not, of course, always a bad thing. It is important that everyone has equal rights in law, for example. It is right that different ethnic groups, different age groups and that men and women have equal rights. It is a good thing to promote more equal opportunities in education (e.g. by giving poor children access to scholarships and by having sensible selective education which allows the talented poor to rise). But equality is not good in itself.

Every footballer should not have an equal right to play for Liverpool FC or for England (although I would personally be quite happy for Scotland's football squad to be selected at random on the principle that every Scot should have an equal opportunity to play). It would be entirely unjust for the less-talented, less experienced and/or less hard-working members of my team at work to be paid the same as the more talented, experienced or industrious. If I had to run my business on Socialist principles, I would quit - immediately.

Mr Cameron is really pushing the boundaries in his exercise to break the traditional Tory image. I don't have a problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with him associating the party with the idea of equality. It is a fact that a free market not only (by efficient use of capital) tends to produce higher average incomes, it also tends to produce a narrower range of lifestyle disparity than a centrally-planned economy. The notional income of a Communist apparatchik may have been officially the same (ignoring the secret envelopes of cash), but his access to a whole range of privileges and luxuries ensured that he was part of a very-well served elite. That elite enjoyed power over fellow citizens (consider Beria and the "flower game") that money could never buy.

To bring it closer to home, John Prescott enjoys - as a political prize - a lifestyle his talents could never have earned him in the real world. The Prescott vision is not of greater equality, but of inequality organised upon lines that allow him to win.

I am disappointed though that Mr Cameron mentions redistributive taxation approvingly. It is right that those who earn more should pay more towards public services. It is also inevitable that social services and benefits favour the poor, so that there is an element of redistribution. But to make the act of redistribution a goal - a "good" in itself - is dangerous.

David Cameron is pleasing the press, raising his approval ratings and making Labour very nervous. He is also keeping Conservatives on the edge of their seats, as they wait to see what policies result from the broad matrix of principles he is slowly outlining.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Cameron outlines new 'equality'

Political bubbles

There have been fewer entries on my blog in the past week, but I have been writing just as much. I noticed that there is a lot of political preaching in the blogosphere, but very little political debate. On Left-wing blogs, there are left-wingers reinforcing each others' views. On right-wing blogs, there are right-wingers reinforcing each others' views. The way blogging works seems to promote this. Bloggers link to the blogs they like; blogs which broadly agree with their own views. A graph showing the links between the political blogs would produce fascinating patterns. The effect is that I can write things which must be deeply provocative to bloggers of the authoritarian Left, but almost all comments are broadly supportive.

We are all preaching to the choir, when we would presumably like (and have much more fun) converting the heathen!

This should not have surprised me. Guardian readers live in a closed world. They read articles that reinforce the left-wing views that brought them there in the first place. They are an intolerant bunch and write stroppy letters to the editor should he dare to "give a platform" to those whose views are not the current party line. The right wing press reinforces the views of its readers too, though - control of speech and thought being regarded on the right as a bad thing - it is slightly more likely to "give a platform" to people who may cause their readers to choke on their corn flakes.

Despite advancing years and hard lessons in life, I am still enough of an idealist to believe that things can be better. But I can't see how they can get better without engagement between those of different political persuasions. I would like to see the blogosphere become a real forum for debate - to smash the goldfish bowls in which each blogger swims, more or less impressively. So, holding my nose firmly, I have begun to make a conscious effort to visit the blogs of the political left and to comment, critically but politely, on posts with which I disagree.

I will report on the experiment. So far I have only noticed one thing. Leftists delete comments they disagree with. Control of word and thought is required, if society is to be ordered other than by the invisible (and politically-neutral) hand of the market. Whether they acknowledge this - even to themselves - or not, their actions demonstrate clearly that they understand it instinctively!

....to be continued.

Telegraph | News | London bombings 'wouldn't have happened without Iraq war'

I wonder if, in the history of chivalry, anyone was ever less worthy of the gentle name of "knight" than the odious, mealy-mouthed, weasel-worded Iqbal Sacranie? To say that the 7/7 bombings were "consequences" of the Alliance invasion of Iraq is, if not an exculpation, at least a mitigation of the murderers' acts. The invasion may or may not have been a well-judged part in the war on Islamic terror, but it provides no excuses for the 7/7 bombers - or any other terrorists.

He is free to speak as he pleases, but I am free to say that whoever recommended this man for a knighthood let his nation down.

Telegraph | News | London bombings 'wouldn't have happened without Iraq war'

Can Britain be saved?

Mrs Paine is firmly of the opinion that Britain is a lost cause. She and I are old enough to remember the Labour Governments of the 1970's and the chaos they created. We are old enough to recall the humiliation of the IMF sending in the bailiff's men and ordering Labour to stop spending. We recall the hyper-inflation that wiped out our grandparents' savings (and our parents' debts).

We thanked our stars when Margaret Thatcher came along. She applied "good housekeeping" principles to the national economy, to extraordinary effect. At the time, the most extraordinary thing was to realise that generations of politicians had thought it ran on different principles (or - more likely - had not cared that it did not).

For a while, it seemed the nation had woken up from the 1940's fantasy that had seen two generations impoverish their descendants by creating a welfare state which doled out unfunded "benefits".

Yet for all the pain she put us through to restore economic sanity, we have reverted to pre-Thatcher type. The State consumes about the same proportion of resources as in 1978 and employs about the same percentage of our people. To the extent things are different, they are worse. At least some 1970's State employees produced something of value (steel, electricity, cars etc.) albeit very inefficiently. The present lot are mostly about as useful as fleas on a dog. And whoever heard of fleas so bloated and numerous that they weigh more than the dog itself?

It seems that we only went along with Thatcher because we had no choice. Deep in our hearts we still long (for all the evidence of the 20th Century's bloody experiment with Socialism) for a Socialist fairyland where we can spend what others self-sacrificingly earn.

Now, as then, every academic, every commentator, everybody the media might ever listen to, is a Socialist true-believer. To be right wing, as then, is so far out of fashion that even the Conservative leadership has to focus on "social issues". Just as Margaret herself spoke of the "social market economy" rather than the honest-to-Adam-Smith "market economy", so David Cameron speaks of "quality of life" (as if any such thing were in any Government's gift).

All this leads Mrs Paine to think that we are lost. We have learned nothing. We are economically illiterate and naive in the extreme. I refuse to give in to such pessimism. What was done once can be done again. We must learn from Margaret's errors to make sure that - this time - the rules of the game are changed permanently.

Margaret's main mistake was to believe in our institutions. At the helm of our dilapidated ship of state she was such a marvelous sailor that the old vessel answered her every command. But the seas were changing and a new vessel was needed. This she neglected entirely. She had a marvelous opportunity for root and branch constitutional reform. She missed it, and New Labour has corruptly warped our constitution to his own political ends.

A new Conservative Government has a huge task ahead of it. Fundamental reform is needed. We need a democratic upper house of Parliament, with full power to review and improve legislation. Our education system needs radical change, so as to be refocused on developing our brightest and best. Our benefits culture needs to be smashed and the underclass exposed to the realities of life. A massive prison-building programme is required in preparation for the most enormous crackdown on fraudsters - including all those millions "on the sick" indefinitely.

This will cost money. Maybe the Shadow Chancellor is right not to promise immediate tax cuts. But once the members of the criminal underclass have been given a stern lesson that the nation does not exist for their benefit, huge savings should begin to feed through.

It's a huge challenge, but no more difficult than the tasks Margaret Thatcher faced. If the Conservatives fail, then Mrs Paine is right and all sane men should abandon these islands.

Cohabitation rights

This "Q&A" item is a perfect example of the low standard of reporting at the BBC. It is written as if the proposed new "rights" would arise by magic and be of benefit to everyone. Logically, financial benefits have to be funded by someone. Logic is not the BBC's strong point. I suspect it is tested for at job interviews and that candidates exhibiting it are promptly eliminated.

This is also a perfect example of the difference between "rights" and "liberties". When someone enjoys a liberty, properly understood, it costs nothing significant to anyone else. My freedom to play my music loudly may inconvenience a neighbour, but only if it constitutes such a nuisance as to cause him real loss should the law intervene. "The freedom of your fist ends at my nose" is a traditional measure of libertarian boundaries. Applied to public smoking, for example, the test would require someone claiming to suffer from passive smoking to prove his loss. The outcome would be very different, given current science, from the "rights" to be smoke-free given by recent legislation. Rights usually cost either the money or the liberties of others (or both).

The proposed "right" of a cohabitor to "claim a share of property" for example, involves real loss to the person whose property is claimed. In awarding such "rights" the government will enable some individuals forcibly to extort the wealth of others. The comparison with marriage is illogical. Marriage is a contract. When you strip away the romantic trimmings, it is mainly to do with property. No-one going through the elaborate ceremony of marriage could fail to understand that they are exposing themselves to profound legal risks. These days, if they are so starry-eyed as not to understand, there are many embittered divorcees around to explain to them.

Letting someone live with you has no such legal connotations and none can be logically inferred.

If people want the legal consequences of marriage, let them marry. If they are not religious or don't wish to waste money, there are civil ceremonies which can be performed in as low a key as anyone could desire. If they have ideological objections to that then let them contract privately to share property, if that is their intention.

The Government has no business interfering in people's lives to reallocate wealth in ways neither intended nor desired.

BBC NEWS | UK | Q&A: Cohabitation rights