CentreRight

Evidence, Belief, Action

If I'm invited to give a talk at a scientific or statistical conference, and I don't have any new results or stuff to talk about (or that I'm able to talk about), I have a standby talk that I dust down and deliver, which is an unpublished monograph, really, and the outline of a book I'm supposed to be writing with two friends, only work keeps getting in the way. The talk is called 'Evidence and Belief', and I use it to set out a paradigm for research in those areas of science where the stuff we don't know still outweighs, massively, the stuff that we do.

My thesis is quite simple. Evidence for, and inference about, parameters which describe some sort of population 'thing' of interest (like the clinical effect of an addictive substance on a population of its users) is properly summarised through something we (statisticians) call a likelihood function. Then your prior belief (prior, that is, to seeing the evidence) about that parameter of interest is properly modulated, in the light of the data (the evidence), via application of the Bayes' theorem to that likelihood function. But neither evidence about a parameter, nor belief about it (or related hypotheses) are the same thing at all as a decision to act on the basis of that evidence. Bayesians (the name for people who think like I do) think that risk (of a bad outcome) exists only at the point of the decision to act; not at the time when inference about the parameter of interest is carried out. 

You can tell where this is going.

You might assume, given this faith I have in a demarcation between evidence, belief and action, that I'd support the government's peremptory sacking of Professor David Nutt. He was supposed to produce evidence, and to make inference about the relative dangers inherent in drinking to excess vs popping an E (showing my age there, and, before you ask, no, never). But he was certainly not responsible for making a decision to act. That decision should be made by the relevant minister alone.

But David Nutt wasn't sacked for forcing a private member's bill into parliament and attempting to change the law. He didn't even campaign for the replacement of Alan Johnson as Home Secretary with our own spokesman, Chris Grayling, who thinks, er, exactly the same thing as Alan Johnson, except that he adds that Alan Johnson should have sacked Professor Nutt even more quickly (before he reported his scientific investigations at all, presumably).

The BBC will dramatise the MP expenses campaign of transparency revolutionary, Heather Brooke

Freedom of Information campaigner Heather Brooke is to have her story dramatised by the BBC. A great and inspired choice.

The spotlight she has shone on Parliament is the beginning of a transparency revolution. That spotlight has already begun to shift to the BBC and local government.  The NHS and the quangocracy will be next. The state will look very different once all government contracts, salaries and expenditure have been exposed to the examination of a million taxpayers.

It will be interesting to see who the BBC gets to play Michael Martin...

Reheating old battles...Labour run out of ideas.

After nearly 13 years in Government Labour’s top strategists apparently believe that one of the most effective political attacks against the Conservatives at the next election will be to “use fox hunting as a key weapon”.

Their logic appears to be that by portraying David Cameron as the leader who will prioritise the repeal of the ban they can show that the Conservative Party has not changed, it is inclined to “look after its own”, as compared to the Labour Party who are focussed single-mindedly on dealing with the effects of our “global” recession.

Ludicrous!

What is ironic is that David Cameron has said that time will be made available to repeal the ban. I doubt it will be a key feature of the Party’s manifesto but in rural areas it is wholly necessary to restore what is part of the fabric of country life. When the time comes a short and quick piece of legislation will be required and the matter will be dealt with.... unlike the Labour Party who devoted well over 600 hours of parliamentary time over 7 years to the hunting law (class war) debate, considerably more than was used to discuss our forces’ engagement in Afghanistan which has already cost over 200 lives.

Sadly, once again the Labour Party are clutching at straws. I imagine most people in this country will be sick of Labour’s attempt to draw attention away from their substantive failures by stoking their core vote with the outdated and unbelievable “class warrior” sentiments. As an ardent supporter of hunting I hope hunting will be restored early in a Conservative Government but for Labour to argue that this will be a key priority is a bizarre claim. And to put it at the centre of a general election campaign strategy is laughable.

Stop listening to your Dad Mr Benn and focus on ridding our countryside of bureaucracy and regulations which make farmers’ lives far harder than they were when your lot started in 1997!

Speaker Bercow attacks the "evil of the BNP"

Today Commons Speaker John Bercow has upset traditionalists by presiding over a sitting of the UK Youth Parliament in the Commons chamber itself. It is the first time in history that anyone other than elected MPs have been permitted to take their seats on the green benches.

At the event, he also made an unprecedentedly robust attack on a political party for a Speaker, in reference to the British National Party. This is what he had to say:

"I'm under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to be impartial as between the forces of democracy on the one hand and the forces of evil on the other... I do feel very, very, very strongly as someone from a Jewish background that the evil of the BNP is that its whole politics is based upon and driven by hate. That is a poison which we could well do without."

Very strong stuff indeed.

Jonathan Isaby

Is the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty legal?

It is astonishing to think that the ratification of the Lisbon treaty has been rammed through 27 national parliaments, including in the UK, with very serious questions over legality. That is not my opinion. That is the view of the UK Parliament’s own European Scrutiny Committee.

I had already written briefly before how the European Scrutiny Committee questioned David Miliband over the legality of the Irish guarantees on 2nd July.

The Committee then sent him a straightforward letter on 21st July over specific legal claims, asking him to answer several questions on the legal validity of the Irish guarantees in relation to the Lisbon Treaty. View this page and this one. 

Miliband then sent an awful and apologetic letter on 13th October, which failed to address any of the issues seriously (notice it was issued after the Irish referendum and almost 3 months late).

I now see that the Chairman (Labour) and the rest of the Committee are still astonished by his reply and have sent another letter on 21st October to continue their questions over legality. View this page and this one .
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The EU Emissions Trading Scheme cost British consumers £3 billion in 2008

Most Britons will never have heard of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.  But it is costing them a fortune.  Our new study estimates that the bill in 2008 was £3 billion, equivalent to around £117 per family.  Across the EU the cost was around €93 billion between January 2005, when the scheme was introduced, and the end of 2008.  When the ETS is added to other climate change policies such as the Renewables Obligation, they amount to 14 per cent of the average household electricity bill.

That burden has fallen disproportionately on the poor and elderly.  They spend a far larger proportion of their income on electricity, often twice as much as those who are on a higher income or younger.  That means that there are serious social consequences as the poor face greater hardship thanks to government climate change policies.

Another group who suffer are manufacturing industries.  Energy is a significant part of the cost base of a range of firms.  While attempts are made to help them in various ways, that is a poor substitute for not having their competitiveness undermined in the first place.

The ETS is therefore not just expensive, but also undermining key policy objectives: We're imposing a significant burden on people with low incomes, thereby increasing welfare dependency.  And, we're hurting industry which will only make us more dependent on the City and increase regional inequality.

For all that, it is pretty ineffective at cutting emissions.  Prominent environmentalists and energy companies have called for a floor on the price, as it keeps collapsing.  That would bring into question the whole point of the trading scheme.  The volatility of the price both makes it that bit harder for families and businesses to manage their budgets and weakens the incentive to invest in cutting emissions.

The scheme should be abolished.  Making sure developed and developing countries are rich, free and democratic enough to deal with whatever nature throws at them and investing in technology, so we have better options than the uneconomic alternatives to fossil fuels available now, is a better way forward.

101 Great Philosophers

As everyone is urgently posting their Christmas presents in the hope they arrive in time may I suggest for those in need of inspiration a book by my friend Madsen Pirie? It is entitled 101 Great Philosophers and is only just over 200 pages so can be read in a day. Afterwards youneed have no fear of finding yourself embarrassed at intellectual dinner parties. No longer need you worry if instructed to pick up Oliver Letwin from the station to attend your constituency annual dinner as to what to discuss on the car journey to the hotel.

Do any living philosophers feature?  Only one: Noam Chomsky, the US left-wing writer and linguistic philosopher. There was speculation during the book's preparation that by the time it emerged, even he might have "joined the great majority."  "But he's still alive," Pirie points out, with perhaps just a tinge of regret in his voice. The first to be included is Thales who lived from 624-527 BC. There is a bit of a gap between Saint Augustine of Hippo (AD354-430) and St Anselm (1033-1109). Did half a millennium really pass without anyone having any interesting ideas?

Pirie is President of the Adam Smith Institute so we know which team he is on. Naturally his team get plenty of entries (Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, John Stuart Mill, Frederic Bastiat, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, David Hume.) But the bad guys are there too - Karl Marx for instance. Pirie manages to provide a remarkably lucid and concise explanation of all their big ideas. he also includes anecdotes about them.

One party, two think tanks and (several) housing policies

Lawrence Kay is a Research Fellow in Policy Exchange's Economics Unit.

On Monday Tim Montgomerie argued that the Centre for Social Justice is leading the housing policy debate. The CSJ is making a stellar contribution, but what matters is policy. It is not sufficient to just highlight the problems. What we need is a plan for both how to build more houses and release the aspirations of people in council housing so that they, like people in private housing, can pick the best place for themselves to live.

This year, Policy Exchange showed how this could happen via our Right to Move proposal. It takes its inspiration from the Right to Buy policy of the 1980s and argues that, if people in council housing were allowed to tell their council to sell the property they are in and buy an equivalent one elsewhere, many of them would choose to live in places where they are closer to their families or the work that suits them. In short, the wishes of people in council housing would determine where the state funds housing. At the moment the social planners of the 1960s still hold the whip hand. Their dreams of concrete utopias have trapped thousands of people. The consequences have been tragic for many years. Thankfully, the Conservatives adopted our Right to Move proposal earlier this year.

Britain also has a major problem in private housing: there are not enough houses for us to live in, so both prices and the misery of living on top of other people in shared accommodation are high. Supply could be increased by doing something counter-intuitive: letting communities have more say in the housing developments taking place where they live. For too long central planners in local councils have told people ‘we are going to build 10,000 houses in your village’ but then not given the people already living there the necessary improvements in transport and amenities. Trust in development has thus broken down. NIMBYism rules as a result. As shown by the communities-based approach in Germany, this need not be the case. There, people welcome more housing because they know that it means they can spend the financial inducements for it on building things like sports’ centres and roads, as Policy Exchange showed in this report. The Conservatives have long lauded this approach. Grant Shapps reiterated his commitment to it today.

RE: Vote Blair for President!

I guess it's no surprise that few of you agreed with my previous post.  But virtually all of your objections, and virtually all other objections in the press and amongst the political classes, are beside the point.

Some of you say that Blair should not be "rewarded" for reneging on his promise of a referendum on the constitution by becoming President.  But important political jobs aren't rewards for being a good chap.  We were outmanoeuvred on the constitution, as on pretty much everything else during Blair's administration.  We lost.  He won.  Get over it.  The solution to that isn't to complain if he becomes President.  It's to renegotiate.

Hague warns that we will have an extended period of conflict with the European Union if Blair becomes President.  What?  Are we not intending to have an extended period of conflict anyway?  I thought our policy was "not to let matters rest there".  The last thing we want is to see things temporarily neutered or quietened down, such that it becomes more difficult for Cameron's administration to do what it must.  If we don't want the UK to fall under the influence of Tony Blair the solution isn't to complain.  It's to renegotiate.

Others complain that if the EU President is a significant person, then the position will seem important, political focus will switch to Brussels, and further sovereignty will be lost.  I could not disagree more.  The route to losing sovereignty here would be to permit the EU to ease us in to the idea of an EU President by having a few characters we'd barely notice, gradually ratcheting up the role, so that by the time someone really significant did take over the role, everything would be so established that it would be impossible to do anything about it.  No.  If we're to do this, let's do it straight.  The EU is to be a state with a foreign minister, a supreme court, a currency, a civil service, a defence policy, a common legal space, and a President.  If we're to have a President, we want a strong President.  There's nothing in it for Eurosceptics to attempt to delay or attempt to pretend it's something else.  That's the concept.  That's what the Member States of the European Union have signed up to.  The solution is not to try to cover that up, as if somehow by making the person in charge dull or weak enough then the fact of the European State will go away.  The solution is to renegotiate.

Vote Blair for President!

Having repeatedly called for renegotiation of our position within the EU, I don't think my Euroscepticism should be in any doubt.  But we should not confuse believing that the world should be different with failing to make the best of the world as it is.  And the way the world is is going to include a President of the EU.  And, that being so, it simply must be in the UK's interests and, indeed, in the interests of the country called "Europe", that our President be Blair.  It seems to me to be plain silly to be spiteful, and, in the name of some ill-judged personal revenge against Blair, oppose his candidature.

Stern Warning to go Vegetarian (but first eat the dog)

By Roger Helmer MEP.

Lord Stern, the pin-up economist of the climate hysteria movement, and author of of the Stern Report on the costs of global warming, has delivered himself of a new gem.  He predicts that "eating meat could become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving".

Livestock farming has come under fire in recent years from environmental campaigners because methane from cattle and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases.  They seem to have forgotten that when humans first reached North America the plains were black with buffalo, and the savannahs of Africa with Wildebeest.  This is called life, and the earth has been quite good at sustaining it for many hundreds of millions of years.  They have also forgotten (if they ever knew) that compared to geological history, today's atmosphere is impoverished in terms of CO2, levels of which have been up to ten times higher than today's.  And in those CO2-rich days, did we observe a "tipping-point", with "run-away global warming"?  We did not.  In fact we had the greatest ice-age in geological history.

Iain Martin launches 'FT Watch'

Over at his new Wall Street Journal perch, Iain Martin has launched an 'FT Watch'.

Iain is concerned that the FT is giving the Conservatives unfair treatment.

Iain has produced two instalments so far: The first looked at "a pretty thin story" re “huge nervousness” among business about a possible change to the planning regime under the Tories. "Huge nervousness" indeed! The second concerns the FT's story about a "backlash" against George Osborne on City bonuses. Iain concludes: "If you are going to say that “the City” is attacking the Tories and then fail to include a single quote from a senior figure in the City who could be said to speak for it, you’re inviting ridicule."

Iain can of course be dismissed as working for the Wall Street Journal - a big rival of the FT - but he may be on to something. We must never forget that the 'pink one' has backed Labour at the last FOUR General Elections, including Neil Kinnock in 1992. Dan Hannan has blogged on how the FT is Britain's most Europhile newspaper.

And look at it today: Egging up a letter attacking George Osborne... from Alastair Campbell!

SW Norfolk's referral is a disgrace

Let's not mince words about this. The SW Norfolk executive have disgraced themselves. The decision to refer Liz Truss's selection, which she won clearly on the first ballot, back to a meeting of the full association is scandalous.

If what a person has been doing in their private life is legal, that is an end of it. Liz's past and present relationships are none of the association's business. I answered "yes, there is" at every selection to the question about anything in your past that would embarass us -because I had been a member of the Labour party. I would not have dreamed of discussing my personal life in answer to that question.

This is rank sexism. The neanderthal idea that your love life has a bearing on your ability to do a job. I hoped decisions like this were part of our party's past. This sort of thing is what has, in the past, forced gay candidates to lie about their sexuality. It does not matter whether the affair was public knowledge or not (it was). It is a matter for the parties involved and no-one else.

SW Norfolk's Executive have damaged the reputation of our national party. They have damaged all the work that David Cameron and many other forward-thinking associations round the country have done to show how we have changed, selecting candidates from a broad base, women as well as men. Of course one must not judge the whole association by the small number of people on its Executive. The full meeting may well be more sensible.

If not, CCHQ must act. We cannot have the ugly spectacle of a female candidate for a safe seat deselected because of her private life, doing nothing illegal and something that is entirely her business. As a commenter on the S&C thread said, Liz was not seeking ordination to the priesthood. She wanted to be an MP and she was chosen on the first ballot to do just that.

Going forwards, selection rules that already forbid questions about marital status and childcare must be tightened to specifically exclude matters of relationships and sexuality. These are not the 1950s. Object to AWS? Think there is no sexism left in our party? The treatment of Liz Truss, up to now, proves otherwise.

First impressions of the MPs' expenses proposals

Crikey - it feels like the height of the MPs' expenses scandal all over again. Back when the Telegraph was publishing new revelations every day, the working week became a bit distorted at the TPA - work would finish at the normal time and then kick off again after the 10 o'clock news, responding to the latest shockers.

So it has been tonight, with the leaking of parts of Sir Christopher Kelly's forthcoming proposals on reforming MPs' expenses. The difference is that instead of being faced with a new bit of bad news, as we so often were in those giddy duck house days, this is mostly good news for taxpayers.

At this point, I should note that this is only a partial leak of Kelly's report so far as I can see. It only covers some of the expenses issues he was investigating, and there is as yet no mention of the administrative and procedural matters such as transparency which are so crucial.

That said, what we have heard is pretty good, and mostly in line with what we at the TaxPayers' Alliance were recommending.

Family Members: Kelly rightly proposes that MPs should not be allowed to employ family members. Even if an MPs' spouse or child is an untrammeled genius, this practice is so drenched in suspicion that it is unacceptable.

Second homes: Kelly is apparently banning mortgages outright, and thus banning the prospect of MPs making a capital gain on their second home. This is welcome and long overdue, though his suggestion of renting houses is a more open ended and thus expensive option than our preferred plan of housing Members in the Olympic Village.

Stern and the challenge of preventing climate change

Lord Stern (of Stern Report fame) caused a bit of excitement this morning with an interview for the Times written up with the headline: "Climate Chief Lord Stern: Give up meat to save the planet".  On the Today programme he clarified his position, saying that the Times headline was "unfortunate".  Why?  Had the Times misquoted him?  We all know how it happens - a political figure says something that, in context, is perfectly sensible, but then the journalist places it into a different context in which it appears extreme and ridiculous.  So was that what had happened with poor Lord Stern this morning - obviously he wasn't advocating anything as extreme (indeed, lunatic) as suggesting that we all give up meat?

Err...well...actually, what he thought was "unfortunate" about the Times article was the implication that we could save the planet by anything as limited as merely all becoming vegetarian.  Instead, he said, changing our food consumption was just "one of the elements" and in fact we needed "across the board" changes - "electricity, transport, heating and food".

I see... We can't hope to prevent climate change by such petty and limited actions as merely giving up meat.  We need to think really radically, to have really significant changes to our lifestyles.

Well, whilst we're thinking radically, and thinking about how to radically change our approach, how about this one: How about if we don't give up eating meat; don't give up travelling; don't enormously cut back our use of energy?  Then, if the climate changes, we deal with it at the time?

The future cost to Britain of Labour's flirtation with shari'a finance

Understanding Shari’a Finance: The Muslim Challenge to Western Economics by Patrick Sookhdeo (McClean,VA: Isaac Publishing,2008). This is a further volume in Dr Patrick Sookhdeo’s excellent series of books on Islamism specifically written to inform non specialists, particularly those involved in the development of political policy.    

Reading this book I could not help but be reminded of the words of the Abul A’la Mawdudi (1903-79), the leading Islamist writer in the Indian sub continent:

The truth is that Islam is a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals...Islam wishes to do away with all states and governments which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of this ideology and programme…regardless of the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic state. Islam requires the earth - not just a portion, but the entire planet. (Chapter 1 Jihad in Islam – translated by Khurshid Ahmed, published by UK Islamic Mission 1997).

Mawdudi went on say that:

As soon as the Ummah of Islam (i.e. Muslim community) seizes state power, it will outlaw all forms of business transacted on the basis of usury or interest; it will not permit gambling; it will curb all forms of business and financial dealings which contravene Islamic law. (Chapter 4 Jihad in Islam).

Patrick Sookhdeo’s book Understanding Shari’a Finance: The Muslim Challenge to Western Economics begins by quoting Timur Kuran, a Muslim scholar and Professor of Economics and Political Science at Duke University, who states that Shari’a finance is an ‘invented tradition’ that does not go back to Muhammad’s day. In this book Dr Sookhdeo demonstrates how shari’a finance has in fact been specifically developed in recent years by radical Islamists as means of bringing increasing areas of society, in both Muslim majority and Western countries, under Islamist control.

Petition President Klaus to stand firm

Many ConHome readers may have seen me and my colleagues from the TPA gathering signatures at the Conservative Party Conference for our giant postcard (picutred, right) to President Vaclav Klaus urging him to stand firm on the Lisbon Treaty. Now you can join those who have already sent President Klaus their messages of support by signing our online petition here.

The messages coming from Prague Castle have been mixed in recent weeks, from outright refusal to sign Lisbon to more pessimistic comments, but the game is not over yet. There are undoubtedly many threats being flung at President Klaus by EU leaders, and many incentives being dangled in front of him so it is still crucial that we lend him our support in his brave campaign.

Do sign the petition, and send it on to your friends and family.

Republican Hara-Kiri

Unless you're a political anorak (mea culpa), it's likely you will have missed the special election (by-election) battle currently raging in New York's 23rd Congressional District (NY-23).  The special election has been brough about by the resignation of Republican Congressman John McHugh to take up an appointment as Obama's Secretary of the Army.  

This is, however, no parochial contest about local issues.  The upstate New York congressional district - which stretches along the state’s western boundary with Vermont and borders Canada to the north - has become a microcosm of the ideological struggle raging for the soul of the Republican Party.  As has become all too common in the Republican Party over the past few years, this ideological struggle sadly revolves almost entirely around social issues. 

Moderate Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava is facing an increasingly serious and well-funded third-party challenge from the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffman which appears likely to hand victory to Democrat centrist Bill Owens.

“Dodgy” bacon was heroin

I think this is a new candidate for best government press release title ever.

Message to the Carter Rucks of this world

We recently discussed the worst extremes of Britain's injunction culture here on CentreRight.  Over at Big Brother Watch, a brave freelance journo, Willard Foxton, has put his head over the parapet to claim that

Britain's libel laws are killing investigative journalism

And his story certainly seems to support that proposition.

We were all right to say that the super-injunction was an absurdity, and perhaps we've seen the end of it now - the point of this piece is that, day to day, the plain old normal injunction (and even the threat of it) is choking things just the same.

Rebuilding the Enterprise Economy

The Financial Times is for three things: big public spending, big Europe and big unaccountable elites. The FT's editorial today is a classic, if disappointing, example of the genre. Too often in FT-World, the powerful, distant elites of Brussels and the UK public and private sectors seem to be the fount of all wisdom, to be rewarded to excess simply for being there. Democracy to them seems to be a sort of evil necessity that has to be put up with from time to time. In their World, we would have joined the Euro long ago, seen a new rise in the corporatism that so failed our land in the 1970s and continued to allow the richest to fill their boots with massive, unjustified bonuses.

 

No-one seems to have told the FT that things have have moved on. We now need to look to our national future. It's a real shame that the FT is so stuck in the past and so completely out of touch with modern Britain. Get outside Whitehall or the City of London and go to the doorsteps of places like Dover and Deal and people are incoherent with rage. Unlike the FT, they are patriots with a powerful sense of nation. They feel the excess of the bankers and the Labour Government have seriously harmed Britain.

 

Rather than wanting to see things carry on as they are, they invariably ask "will the Conservatives be strong enough to do what needs to be done" on the public finances. I look them in the eye and say we must be or we will have higher unemployment for longer and risk a lost generation of our young people. This is why for us it's not just about the Age of Austerity - it's about the return to growth, the rebuilding of the Enterprise Economy and the stronger Britain we could build together. It's about bringing success back to these shores, with more jobs and money.

You are no longer trusted to run your own credit card

The Government plans to have legal compulsions to enforce higher minimum payments on credit cards.

Doubleplusgood! Another tentacle of Big Brother slithers into our lives.

Individuals are responsible for the debt they take on.  This involves an element of self-initiated risk, but we are not free individuals without that.

If America wants a strong EU, America has got it wrong

How depressing is this article in the New York Times, which in very few words sums up how a huge number of Washington’s policy makers and particularly the Obama administration view Great Britain and her future – as a friend “[to be] ceded to American interests coldly assessed” as “on issues from Afghanistan to climate change, Obama wants Europe to step forward…a strong European Union with an effective British presence.” Wishful thinking perhaps from their view, slightly insulting from ours, and highly improbable from the point of view of realism.

I can see the American’s view, to a point. How convenient for them if all of those troublesome “Europeans” (an insulting term in my opinion, we wouldn’t dream of calling a Canadian an American) and their once war torn continent became one, and where that one was just like Britain – supportive, in agreement, happily second fiddle, Robin to their Batman – rather than a plurality of “Lilliputian European state[s]” with different views, different leaders and different languages. It would be as if Britain had subsumed its neighbours and the new entity remained unchanged; it might even be run by Tony Blair! Of course this point of view makes as much sense as gambling your entire worth at roulette on red number 27 – it’s a hugely unlikely gamble – but wishful thinking usually is. But if America does wish for a strong EU, it should remember the old saying of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

What the Europhiles forget is that in this strong EU they hope to shape there are many others also hoping to shape it very differently. “Britain must take a lead in developing a strong European foreign policy if it is to retain its influence around the world,” according to David Miliband, "To be frightened of European foreign policy is blinkered, fatalistic and wrong. Britain should embrace it, shape it and lead European foreign policy." But what are the odds of Britain remotely shaping it, let alone leading it? In all probability Britain’s voice – so often divergent from our Continental relatives – would be lost in the noise of 26 others. Maybe it is self-confidence verging on arrogance and delusion that fills some leaders with the belief that they can convince the World to their view, that they have some mystic power of persuasion, but they can’t and they don’t. In short the Europhiles may get their strong Europe, but no one knows what Europe it will be, and the odds of it being an Atlanticist, free-trading sidekick are very remote.

If America wants a strong EU, America has got it wrong.

Alphabet soup government

Today at the TaxPayers' Alliance we've released a new report on the range and scale of the semi-autonomous bodies (SAPBs) that do so much of the work of government these days.  The 1,152 national SAPBs (the term "quango" is responsible for a lot of the confusion that surrounds this issue) employ over half a million staff and spend more than £90 billion.

There are a series of problems with so much of government being conducted through these organisations:

• Accountability. Too often, SAPBs are used to avoid Ministers being held to account for the performance of public services.  The SATs fiasco, and the Government's attempt to avoid its share of responsibility for that failure, is a classic example of this problem.

• Once SAPBs are established they are incredibly difficult to kill off, even if they aren't performing, and their cost and scale tends to grow.  Regional Development Agencies are a good example of this, as we set out in our earlier report The Case for Abolishing Regional Development Agencies (PDF).

• A lot of the taxpayer funded politics in our recent report (PDF) on Taxpayer Funded Lobbying and Political Campaigning was supported by SAPBs.

• There have been ongoing concerns at the amount of cronyism in the SAPB sector. Forthcoming TPA research will be exploring this problem in much more depth.

• Too many SAPBs replicate the work of other SAPBs, local government or the central government departments.

The Conservatives need to be a lot more ambitious about cutting back SAPBs.  In our recent work with the IoD and today's report we've suggested some dead wood which could be used to start a decent sized bonfire.

Will 2010 be the internet election?

This video is well worth watching to get a sense of the impact the information age will have on election campaigning.

Mendip Media, the people behind the video, also build websites. An example is Mark Garnier's brilliant website for his campaign to win back Wyre Forest.

I'd be really interested to know where readers think this is all going. This is my take . . . Many people think the next election will be the first true internet election. While I find internet campaiging fascinating and six months is a long time in the information age, I'm not convinced. My sense is that web campaigning has not yet caught fire in the same way as it did in the US Presidential election. Traffic levels are good, but not yet transformative. Somehow the tipping point has not quite been reached.

Most likely is that in local campaigns and nationally, the broadcast and print media, lots of leaflets and getting out and about at fetes and community events will matter far more. A shoe leather election more than an internet election. But still . . . watch out for being done over on YouTube and be prepared for the election of 2014 / 2015 being a full blown information age election.

So it is coming down the line. The most likely scenario for now is that the internet will be important for finding and marshalling helpers, supporters and fellow travellers. And to engage effectively with younger people in our communities. This is the experience that I have had with using social media in Dover & Deal. Sam Coates' brilliant work on myconservatives may well surprise in how effective it will make campaigning on the ground. And engaging with potential supporters in the sort of conversation you can have with Web 2.0 and social media like Facebook and Twitter is an essential to turn "I might help" into "I am engaged and will help to make the difference." That seems a key difference between the old shop window web page and the newer two way conversation you can have.