CentreRight

There are two Sam Coates

There is a Sam Coates who works for The Times and there is a Sam(uel) Coates who works for CCHQ and has just overseen the launch of myConservatives.com.  I mention this because The Guardian has just got them confused.

There are two as this photo proves!

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sam Coates, Rishi Saha and Craig Elder for MyConservatives.com. I think it could be transformational as more and more of the product is rolled out in the months ahead. There will be teething problems but they can be very proud of what they have created.

Tim Montgomerie

Wrongful convictions based on DNA evidence - a pervasive and persistent issue

A disturbing piece over at Strange Justice in Australia today. It has been announced that a processing error at a New South Wales Health lab led to the wrongful conviction of a man for breaking and entering:

NSW Health discovered the error in its "cold links" system while conducting a review earlier this year. The system matches DNA evidence collected at a crime scene with people on the state DNA database. The review found NSW Health's DNA laboratory mistakenly linked a man to a break and enter because of human error.

The added emphasis is mine, as if it didn't scream out enough already.

The poor chap was convicted of the offence in early 2008 and has had it around his neck ever since, quite unjustly.  But convictions on this sort of basis are nevertheless very common because people think that DNA evidence is totally infallible.  What this actually means is that they are convinced that the science is accurate, without contemplating the fallibility of the technicians processing the samples, of those responsible for gathering and retaining them, etcetera.

You will of course be struck by the thought: well, what if they hadn't identified the error?

Many people, some of whom will be in prison having been convicted solely or largely due to DNA evidence, will have such thoughts.  That's why William Sessions, the FBI Director who oversaw the introduction of DNA evidence, has called for post-conviction DNA analysis as of right for those convicted using it.  Both in the USA and here, his calls have gone unanswered.

Sessions' article also contains a number of equally alarming examples of poor procedure with regard to DNA use.  They're quite shocking.  They're in accordance with a University of Texas study from 2002 that suggested false results occur in as many as one in every hundred DNA tests in the United States.  An old study, you might say - but then, there are plenty of people serving prison sentences from that time who think it pretty current.  And at least they're even alive to the existence of the issue in the USA.

It's a sort-of Big Brother Watch issue, I suppose.  Technology has its place in law enforcement, of course.  But along with being mindful of the imperative to find and convict the guilty, the perils of wrongful conviction as a result of tools we trust too much seem to have been forgotten.

Dying Matters - let's talk about it

If the next parliament runs its full course, about 3 million people will die in the United Kingdom. Millions more of us will be bereaved. That this is our future is the one thing that we all definitely have in common. Yet in general terms we are very bad at talking about it. Death and dying has often been described as the last taboo left standing in the West.

This has consequences. Making sure everybody has good end of life care hasn't been a major public and political priority, although that is now beginning to change. Services haven't been designed to enable people to get the care they want, when and where they need it. Most of us won't die where we want to (home in most cases); instead most of us die in hospital. Over half of the most serious complaints about acute hospitals concern end of life care.

The Dying Matters coalition has just been set up to raise public awareness about death, dying and bereavement and help us all become much better-informed and more confident about talking about and planning end of life care. Ultimately the aim is to change societal behaviour - talk needs to bear fruit. A good death should become the norm.

So this is really important. Do come to our fringe meeting at the Party conference. The panel includes;

• Nadine Dorries MP
• Anne Milton (Shadow Health Minister)
• Paul Woodward (Chief Executive, Sue Ryder Care)
• (me!)  Simon Chapman (National Council for Palliative Care)

Tuesday 7.30-9.00. Charter 2, Manchester Central (GMEX). Food & drink will be served. It would be great to see you there.

More details are here: Download Conservatives

Simon Richards: Putting freedom of speech - and fun - back on the conference agenda

By Simon Richards, Director of the Freedom Association

“Why is there so little opportunity for free and open discussion of the big issues at party conferences?”  That’s a question I’ve often heard asked and The Freedom Association has created The Freedom Zone to bring back unfettered debate to the conference scene.  ConservativeHome already provides a great forum for such discussion online – The Freedom Zone seeks to do the same on the Conference Fringe.

So, in the magnificent setting of The Bridgewater Hall, just across the road from the Party Conference itself, next week you’ll be able to hear over 50 speakers, join in discussion of everything from civil liberties to the case for leaving the EU; from climate change to the future of the BBC – and much else besides.  You’ll be able to participate in all the discussions and you’ll even be able to vote on the big issues.  What’s more, you won’t need a conference pass and admission is free.

As anyone who attended last year’s inaugural Freedom Zone will confirm, we’ve helped make attending conference enjoyable again.  This year, we’ll have an all-day bar, a giant widescreen TV for you to keep up with the main conference and a spacious and comfortable Blogging Zone with free wifi.  There’s a café-bar and even a gift shop, too.

New this year is the Westminster Village Fête, with dozens of interactive stands from some of the best organisations on the centre-right, such as the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Conservative Way Forward.  As well as book signings by John Redwood and others, you can give us your views on the EU, stop our EU Gravy Train Set – or even guess the weight of the porky pies our politicians have been telling us.

Can you afford to miss two days like this? Visit The Freedom Zone blog for details.

RE: Encourage marriage by reducing the cost of weddings

There seems to have been a lot of confusion surrounding my post advocating a Cameron government's investigating measures to reduce the cost of weddings.  Perhaps the following will help.

"Suicide woman allowed to die because doctors feared saving her would be assault"

That's the headline of the lead front-page story in today's Telegraph.  And that's the key problem - the people that do want to kill themselves that we can no longer prevent because to frustrate a settled will to suicide is to violate a putative human right - not, as many prefer to argue, those that do not want to kill themselves being pressured into doing so.

Manchester is preparing for Conservative Party Conference

I was amused to see in this morning's papers that Manchester City Council has apparently spent £8,000 producing a book of sex tips for the over-50s.

Looking at the timing, is there a possibility that the Council has embarked on this project on the basis of twin stereotypes:

1) the assumed average age of delegates to the Conservative Party Conference next week, and

2) the running joke about what delegates get up to after a few too many free fringe meeting glasses of wine?

Of course, whatever the Council's motives this is an absurd use of taxpayers' money. For that matter, it will undoubtedly go to waste. As Anne Widdecombe says in The Sun today,

"If someone hasn't learnt how to have sex by the time they have reached 50 then a booklet is certainly not going to help."

Quite.

Daniel Kawczynski MP: More must be done to help British businesses export their goods into foreign markets

By Daniel Kawczynski MP

Our country's historic wealth came from our ability to export goods around the world. Today many British businesses are deeply concerned about the levels of commercial assistance from British Embassies. All too often Commercial attachés are inexperienced with little or no high level commercial pedigree. Many do not have adequate resources to support the numbers of British businesses looking for their help. They have too few high-ranking business contacts and in some cases lack motivation to help British businesses cut through local red tape.

I am currently writing a report which I intend to present to David Cameron and William Hague on the situation. We are taking evidence from high-ranking British Chief Executives and Export Directors about their experiences of trying to get assistance, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

The report will show just how small our total exports are to some key strategic countries and demonstrate the lost opportunities. It will then go on to recommend what needs to be done to change the situation so that Embassies around the world are matching their French and German counterparts resource for resource and helping British businesses to export on comparable levels to France and Germany.

With the right staff in British Embassies and the right resources our country could easily be exporting tens of billions of pounds more than we currently are, gaining  the hard currency which will be vital to our country in these difficult times. Increasing the calibre and size of Commercial attaché support will cost the State a tiny fraction of what we will get back from additional export revenues. I hope that my report will also be able to demonstrate the need to recruit highly experienced retired businessmen who have successfully exported to assist us in this task.

If any reader has their own evidence of trying to get assistance from an Embassy to help them export I would be grateful if they could email me with their experiences.

Keeping extremism out of the classroom

Over at NothingBritish.com, James Bethell is deeply unimpressed by Ed Balls' attempts to ban BNP teachers from the classroom:

"We think that Ball’s intemperate rhetoric at a party political function dangerously helps the BNP rally its own recruits with a narrative about an over-mighty state only too happy to prosecute racists, “so long as their white”. Ed Balls is out-of-date and undemocratic to imply by association that everyone connected with the BNP is a racist. That group includes 947,000 voters, many of whom come from Labour’s heartland."

James believes that there are probably enough existing powers to deal with the problem:

"Teachers must respect the honour of their profession, and the authorities must not be complacent. That is why the teaching profession is already protected by a number of restrictions, including a requirement for schools to have equal opportunity policies, a duty to promote racial equality, a statutory duty to promote community cohesion, a duty on governing bodies, head teachers and local authorities to forbid the teaching of partisan political activities and disciplinary powers of the GTCE. Where problems have arisen, theses are implemented with vigour. For example, Adam Walker, a BNP activist, is currently faces a General Teaching Council tribunal  for allegedly using a school computer for inappropriate reasons. Despite Balls’s cynical implication, there is no new evidence that there is a BNP problem in our class-rooms."

The Conservatives share a determination to keep the BNP's ideology out of the classroom but also want other extremist indoctrination restricted too.  Hizb ut Tahrir, for example.  Britain's membership of the ECHR restricts the ability to act decisively and James Bethell is probably right to say that strict enforcement of existing guidelines may be ther best way of protecting schoolchildren.