CentreRight

Stuff’s gettin’ better – a little better every day

Let’s end the year on a cheerful note, by looking much further ahead.  Here are some things I’m optimistic about.  None of the below should be taken as a prediction – more as targets that we can reach if we want to.

I want to question the idea that we ought to interfere in the legal affairs of other nations because a British national is involved

By Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch.

Over the Christmas period, many civil liberties organisations have joined in the condemnation of China for executing Akmal Shaikh. The Government has, in the popular mode, "slammed" this decision and spoken tough words to the Chinese (although their attempts to suggest that the work of the officials of the Foreign Office in this case can be claimed as their own, or that those efforts represent all that could have been done politically in this case, won't really wash). I wanted to provide an alternative point of view from Big Brother Watch.

I want first of all to suggest that this ex post facto public condemnation from the Government should be contrasted with their decision in the case of the autistic hacker Gary McKinnon, not to block his extradition to the USA. If there is a difference in the cases, what is it?

Secondly, and perhaps more controversially, I want to question the idea that we ought to interfere in the legal affairs of other nations because a British national is involved. Both of these cases are poor test cases of that logic given the respective mental health issues of the defendants involved, but many people seem to think that British citizenship entitles you to different treatment when charged with serious criminal offences in other countries and I just don't see why that holds water. I even question why it should change things when the death penalty is applied to British citizens convicted of offences in other countries.

I oppose the death penalty. I would wish that all countries which currently practice it to stop doing so. But it is on the statute books of democratic countries with which we are allied (the USA, Japan) as well as China and other countries, often reflecting the popular will of those countries for serious crimes and, of course, invoked only after a trial, conviction and any relevant appeals process.

I accept of course that Akmal Shaikh may be a special case given the claims his family makes about his mental health, and the further apparent failure of the Chinese to investigate that point. But he was charged with and convicted of a serious crime in a country whose justice system we supposedly generally respect and attacking such judicial acts per se is without any basis but an emotional one.

I fear that making massive noises about such cases simply because a British person is involved undermines civil liberties campaigns and campaigners - because it's illogical.

The celebrity endorsements Labour was seeking in 1979 are revealed

Tim has already written this morning about the some fascinating Cabinet papers released today under the thirty-year rule pertaining to the first few months of the Thatcher premiership.

One of the more quirky documents to have been released today is from the tail end of the Callaghan Government. Prime ministerial adviser Bernard Donoughue penned a note to his boss suggesting that he appear on television with celebrities to improve his image.

As the BBC reports:

In the run-up to the election, Labour was far behind in the polls, so when formal campaigning began in April, the party was desperate to find anything that could boost Mr Callaghan's flagging image.

While celebrity campaign endorsements might be more commonly associated with the 21st century or politics across the Atlantic, Mr Donoughue thought the right "public figures" could be very useful.  

"Brian Clough and Marjorie Proops* are possibles. (Elton John is said to be Labour, but has a complicated image)", the briefing document says.

And in a sign that it is no new phenomenon for personality to be deemed more important than policy, Donoughue's memo also tells Callaghan:

"I still think your wife, children and grandchildren can win us more votes than most of the paragraphs in the manifesto." 

* For the sake of younger readers, Proops was for many years the Daily Mirror agony aunt

The rise and fall of the British Empire (and other Empires)

It gets most interesting after about two minutes:

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Ryan Streeter.

Britain in 2010

'Tis the season to be making inaccurate forecasts.  Here are mine.

The middle class converts who want to bomb us

By Paul Goodman MP.

The story of Alhaji Umaru Abdulmutallab, and his wicked bomb plot, looks to be a reminder of a vital truth - namely, that Al Qaeda's operatives in the west are not Frantz Fanon's "wretched of the earth": poor Muslims born into their religion and radicalised by Afghanistan or Iraq.

Abdulmuttalab appears to be the son of a wealthy banker and former Minister.  He was certainly ensconsed in a nice-looking flat in London's west end.  The banker was so concerned about his son's activities that he reported him to the authorities.

Let's consider some other cases.

• Richard Reid, who also tried to blow up an airplane, was a convert to Islam radicalised before the Iraq war.
• Dhiren Barot, one of AQ's main operatives in Britain pre-Iraq, was also the son of a banker, and a convert from Hinduism.
• Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, believed to have murdered the American journalist Daniel Pearl, was privately educated at Forest School, Walthamstow.
• Omar Khan Sharif, one of two British instigators of the terror attack on Mike Place in Israel, studied maths at King's College, London.
• Mohammed Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 atrocity gang, was a teacher radicalised (again pre-Iraq).
• Jermaine Lindsey, another member of the cell, was a convert.
• Brian Young, one of the 2005 liquid explosives airplane plotters, was a convert.
• Nicky Reilly, who tried to blow up a restaurant in Exeter, was a convert.

No single factor explains recruitment to violent extremism. Experts offer many - foreign policy or affairs; generational tensions among third or fourth generation Britons of Pakistani origin; the failures of multiculturalism.

Who is this?

As this is published, I shall be at church celebrating the most profound moment in history (and one of the five most important so far - other candidates being the Creation, the Fall, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection).  What happened?  God became man.  What does that mean, and why did it matter?
Who is this Jesus, this "God the Son"?  In John 1 He is called called by the Greek term "logos", often translated "Word" (we shall consider another translation - and hence another meaning - shortly).  In Colossians 1 he is called the "image" of God.  In the Creed we say that Jesus is "eternally begotten of the Father" (i.e. of the Creator, the startpoint, the "I am" that simply is and had no beginning).
Through the past two thousand years, the Church has struggled to make sense of this.  The only positive account of this (i.e. an account that does not proceed by saying "it is not this way, and not that way" but, instead, says "it is something like this") that I am not aware of being condemned as heresy is the account offered by Melanchthon in Loci Communes (though I doubt it was original to Melanchthon).  Melanchthon describes the Son as "the image begotten by the deliberation of the Father", going on to say "He is called the Word because he is begotten by consideration.  He is called the image because the consideration is the image of the thing considered."
If this is a productive thought, then the Son is the Creator's self-conception, his self-awareness, and because God is perfect, His self-conception is a perfect image, sharing His essence.
But this is only the beginning.  For the term "Word" does not exhaust the meaning of the term "logos".  Logos was the term the philosopher Heraclitus used to describe that from which everything was made.  For Heraclitus the logos was the divine reason, the divine spark, the divine fire.  Everything in the world was in flux, undergoing change.  No thing, no material substance was constant.  Instead, what was invariant in the world was its principle of organisation.  We might be tempted to say that the logos were the laws of nature, but if those laws change (as perhaps they do) then Heraclitus' logos would be the principle according to which they change.
The Evangelist John says of his logos, his Word, clearly endorsing Heraclitus' position: "Through [the logos] all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made."
So, if we have it right, this logos, this Word is God's self-conception, the invariant principle in Creation, through which everything was made.  Clearly, we have before us a truly spectacular being.  But the most extraordinary thing is yet to come.  For John tells us "The [logos] became flesh and made his dwelling among us."
How amazing is that!  This spectacular being became human, living as one of us!  God's self-conception, that through which the entire universe was made, could become a man.
There was a purpose in the logos becoming a man, a great purpose, but let us focus on the wonder of the fact, rather the point, for a moment.  For it implies a quite extraordinary status for human beings.  Perhaps we knew this already - after all, in Genesis 1 we are taught that God made us in His own image.  But to recognise quite what this implies - that human beings are such that we can, in principle, encapsulate God's self-image, embody the organising principle of the Universe - is surely extraordinary.
In many ways, it is this part of the Christian story that most stretches one's credulity.  A world created to be good in essence, sin leading to death, people healed of infirmities, a man walking on water, people rising from the dead, sin conquered through an unjust death, salvation as a free gift for the faithful regardless of their wickedness, immortality - all these notions seem like they'd need pretty solid evidence to make one believe in them.  But, implausible as many of these ideas are, they are surely dwarfed in their bizarreness by the notion that the logos could become a man.
If that is right - if, if - then humanity is surely a remarkable thing.  And the sufferings and triumphs of humans take on a different status.  Certain secular thinkers believe that the key ethic in life concerns the promotion of pleasure and minimisation of pain, where pleasure and pain can be experienced by other creatures as well as humans.  Richard Dawkins considers a foetus to be human, but notes (which I suspect is true) that a foetus suffers less in an abortion than does a cow being slaughtered.  But a cow was not made in God's image, and the logos did not become a cow.
Perhaps, rather than focusing on how the Incarnation (the taking on of flesh) of the logos makes humans qualitatively superior to the other animals (for we are animals, created like the others), it might be more helpful to focus on how it should mould our thinking about humans in themselves.  When someone somewhere suffers or triumphs - regardless of how far she is from you, regardless of whether you have never seen her, regardless of whether she is related to you in some way or is in any sense useful to you - what suffers or triumphs is a being that could have been the logos made flesh.  Her suffering or triumph is, for that reason, one of the most important things in the entire universe - probably more important than obvious great events, such as hurricanes or asteroid strikes on Jupiter or supernovae or the swallowing of distant galaxies in black holes.  Knowing the Incarnation, we cannot continue to think tribally, to think that what really counts is the flourishing of ourselves and our families and friends.  Other humans cannot be things to use, obstacles we must overcome.  And no Christian society could insulate itself from the sufferings and triumphs of other societies, either.
The Incarnation thus tells us something remarkable about who we are, or at least who we could be.  If it really happened, it is not something humanity can ignore; it changes everything.

Last Word (First Word)

One of the tenets of Christianity which I revere (while being incapable of joining in, as it were) is the very Christmas concept of the Word becoming flesh through the Incarnation. The idea that God became Jesus Christ in flesh is, of course, the central belief of Christians; but it might also tell us something about other words (for all our words must come from God, if we believe in Him). If God gave us language, there would be a sort of moral duty on the people who use words (that is, us).

Words anyway fascinate me. What are they? Hieroglyphs 'containing' a meaning, separate to the physical 'thing' of the word itself? Historically-squished phoneticisms, carrying the sounds used originally to denote that 'thing'? Well. I'm neither religious nor a linguist (definitely what I would urge my 16 year old self to study were I ever to write one of those letters) but on Christmas Eve I think there's something worth considering about words that might unite both Christians and their non-believing friends.

It is the idea that words are real things, with power, in the Universe (one of my central dogmas). Whether you derive your moral sense from the Divine, or whether (like me) you fumble together a way to live based on an urge to love, you are responsible for the selection of the words which you speak, or write; and you are responsible too for the impact they have on your audience. Not everyone will agree with my subordinate clause, there, because (and I understand this) if we are to have freedom of speech we must have freedom to cause offence. I don't suggest banning words. I simply suggest that words cannot be deployed without any recognition that they have the power to wound. If you do wound, you carry the responsiblity for the act.

Lord Mandelson is right

Now there’s a headline I bet you thought you’d never see attached to an article on ConservativeHome, let alone one by me. But I stick to it, and it’s nothing to do with seasonal goodwill or anything like that. The truth is, and it pains me to say it, but I ought to say it now before he reverts to normal service of being entirely wrong on everything, so here it is: Peter Mandelson has said something right. Call Reuters, call the Associated Press, call CNN – it’s a mini-miracle.

"Over the next spending review period, we will want some shift away from full-time three year [degree] places and towards a wider variety of provision," Lord Mandelson said, with two year courses on the cards. Three cheers for that.

When I applied for university I was part of the first year paying “top-up tuition fees” and was rather alone in my form – that’s an understatement, I was alone – in believing they were a good idea. Indeed I went beyond that and believed, indeed still do believe, that they should be increased to cover the full cost of the specific degree course at that specific institution. (With loans repayable upon a certain earning’s threshold, and maybe a few specific scholarships for deprived youngsters and sponsorships on a commercial basis, for instance by the NHS for doctors). Otherwise, non-graduates shouldn’t pick up the tab of graduates, the bin man should not subsidise the barrister.

The whole system of higher education seemed archaic to me, and the more you research the more archaic it appears. University places are decided not by student demand in the form of course applicants meeting entry requirements and the willingness of the institution to supply, but by the government Higher Educational Funding Council’s willingness to fund places (in one instance rejecting a bid from the oversubscribed LSE in favour of expanding an undersubscribed new university); with offers made among the qualified applicants at random, by quick interview, or by reading their largely fictional personal statements. Once accepted, students on cost intense degrees pay the same as those on a basic degree costing far less, with the government contribution and support the same regardless of the degree’s economic use to the student, let alone the country and long suffering taxpayer. Who thought up such madness?

But what struck me most was the time taken. Three years, three whole years! As Lord Mandelson now agrees, it can be done easily in two, maybe even just one.

Now some critics say students will lose out on the social aspects of being at university if degrees are shortened, but I really cannot fathom this argument out. Are the government in the business of subsidising the social lives of 18-21 year olds, at taxpayer expense? Of course not. And besides, the three year option will still be there: let individual students decide.

So that is why, for once, credit where credit is due, I can say that Lord Mandelson is right. It just goes to show that there’s a first time for everything (except voting Labour of course).

Daniel Kawczynski MP: My complaint to Ofcom about the edition of Channel 4's Dispatches, Inside Britain's Israel Lobby

Below is the text of a letter of complaint which I have today sent to Ofcom. It concerns the edition of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme, Inside Britain's Israel Lobby, which was screened last month.

Dear Sir,

I am writing in complaint regarding the journalistic and editorial standards of the recently screened Channel 4 documentary regarding the ‘Israel lobby’ in the UK.

This programme was clearly presented as an exposé to some sort of illicit, underhand or immoral influence by the ‘Israel lobby’ over the UK and international political leadership, but failed to demonstrate any evidence or facts of substance, relying instead on implication, association and prejudice.

Had the programme revealed inappropriate behaviour or activity, or information about activities contrary to the public good, it should have been applauded.  But in completely failing to do this, it was a disgraceful piece of supposed investigative reporting, out of place in an open democratic society and unworthy of the high standards we expect of British journalism.

The programme essentially argued that individuals and communities who are concerned for the welfare of the state of Israel, and specifically Jews, were using money to subvert and wield inappropriate influence over our political leaders to steer British and international policy.

As with all ‘reporting’ of this type, the media has a responsibility to be clear, unbiased and to act in ways that do not feed hatred. Unfortunately, in failing to meet these obligations, the programme appears not to have been made with good intentions.

What to buy for the right winger who loves to gripe?

I wouldn't normally plug a book on CentreRight, but I'm going to make an exception for two reasons. First, the book in question is an unusually good one that I think Centre Righters will enjoy, and second, we are only a few days away from Christmas, so I thought it might come in handy as inspiration to those still hunting for gifts. For those organised souls who have got their Christmas shopping done already - please forgive me!

It's a difficult question: what to buy for the grumpy right winger who loves to gripe? Feel good film? Nope - soppy nonsense. Gadget? Not a patch on Meccano, why don't schools teach engineering properly like they used to... Sponsor an obscure species somewhere? Cue muttering about hippies. No, you need a gift that will go with the grain and channel the fury, rather than encouraging it to spill out over the Christmas dinner table.

The answer lies in a book all about how politicians, companies, advertisers, quangos, "experts" and broadcasters lie to us, every day and in a remarkable range of ways: Complete and Utter Zebu by Simon Rose and Steve Caplin.

The title derives from a classic example of the deceit that the book skewers so well. A Zebu is a bovine South American mammal, whose meat was found being widely sold as "British Beef" in pubs and supermarkets. Zebu, then, is shorthand for trickery, lies and BS.

As the book's blurb describes it:

We are subjected to a daily barrage of deception so pervasive that we barely notice it any more. Although the big lies still make the headlines, it's the small, everyday half-truths that really drive many of us to distraction.

'Ice cream' with no cream, 'chocolate flavour' with no chocolate, 'customer service' with no service. You have won a prize . . . Your call is important to us . . .

Lies, lies and more damned lies. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

And there is no area that escapes their ire - from EU food regulations to estate agents' dubious patter, from polimen's bluster to politicians' nimble language. As well as having successfuly researched a remarkable range of examples, some of which you will have heard of but others will certainly be new to you, the authors treat the topic with just the right mixture of humour and genuine, spitting outrage.

Angry presents for angry people are a difficult thing to get right. As an example of how not to do it, a not-very-political friend of mine once bought me a Michael Moore book because of a very mistaken idea of my views. The result? In the spirit of Christmas, I tried to read it, leaving me with soaring blood pressure, a new dent in my wall and an unfinished book. Complete and Utter Zebu, though, is bang on target. It confirmed my fury at the amount of Zebu sloshing around, informed it with new evidence and left me laughing out loud.

You can buy it here - or if you'd like to read more, they run an excellent blog here, highlighting more examples of Zebu.

Christian values distorted beyond all measure

Month after month, I see first hand countless shoplifters as they face Justice in the Magistrates Court. As our bench contemplates the best course of sentencing by reference to the sentencing guidelines there is no mention under mitigating factors of " severe poverty" as one we should consider.

However, I always wonder about the life history that has led the convicted individual to go into a large store to steal, often for money for drugs, alcohol or food. Never does my compassion and sadness lead me to conclude that their crime is justified. Therefore, news of the Yorkshire vicar's conclusion that to shoplift, in moderation from a large store is permissible leaves me mystified.“My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,” 

I can see how, in areas of deprivation, with a very poor congregation set amidst a culture which prizes so much consumer wealth that a vicar could be moved, momentarily, to dream up radical redistributive measures. But I cannot grasp how anyone could then justify it from the Bible and then preach it from the pulpit. Rev Tim Jones, epitomizes the spirit of the age. By a sentimental assessment of a human state he has drawn the wrong conclusion and then sought to back it up with a muddle-headed application of Biblical teaching."Thou shalt not steal "is pretty unambiguous to me.

The headlines from this sermon epitomize the state of our society. Everything is relative, no absolutes exist anymore. Of course one feels compassion for the poor and needy, especially at Christmas time when we are aware of our blessings. However, a quick fix of a few extra stolen items of food will not put right the problem nor will it bring lasting relief to the poor thieves who will face justice whilst Rev Tim Jones enjoys his turkey in the Rectory.

Poverty is what drives me to engage in politics and policy making. Working towards a society that cares better for the poor and needy and addresses the deeper causes of that poverty is our first responsibility. However, if we lose the basic moral frameworks and blur the line between right and wrong we won't solve the problem - we will end  up with a society where anything goes... if it feels good - why not do it... if you want it...have it ... and why wait!

So I am sorry Rev Jones - I thoroughly disagree with your conclusions though I share the compassion for the poor. A soft heart is good - but a fuzzy head is dangerous for society, for the taxpayer and for the poor shoplifter who you have now set up for a spell inside.

I can't quite believe that a 'Conservative' created Francis Urquhart

For readers too young to remember, Francis Urquhart was the star of a trilogy of political dramas that appeared on BBC Television ten or so years ago. Urquhart was a fictional Tory politician who murdered, bribed and schemed his way to three General Election victories. He was played brilliantly by the late Ian Richardson. It is perhaps not surprising that the BBC dramatised this captivating drama (which I recommend as good telly) but more surprising that a Conservative should have written the books behind the series. Author Michael Dobbs was once Chief of Staff at Conservative Central Office and observed enough to make the Urquhart character a very real caricature of too many right-wingers. It would have been more appropriate if Urquhart had been created by a Lefty. Few fictional characters have done more to reinforce the idea of Conservatives as flint-faced, sexually promiscuous and all round nasty.

Three typical Urquhart scenes are posted below...

Where angels fear to tread

I'd much rather write about Christmas (or even the EM Forster novel, come to think of it) than climate change, but something has been troubling me and I thought I'd share my concerns.

I'm worried that 'debate' about climate change has become pointless. Rapid polarisation has turned discussion about the quality of evidence, and the impact of that evidence on one's views about potential AGW, into a football match. Leftwing bloggers write sneering twitter comments about rightwing bloggers' inability to 'get' 'the science'; rightwing bloggers respond with what might be thought of as the written equivalent of 'I'm not listening, nah nah nah, it's cold this week so there can't be any warming at all'. Intelligent people attempt to move the discussion onto terms of economic consequences of specific actions; but I fear they are going to be disappointed.

I'm interested in why this has happened, and what it might tell us about the role of science in politics; science in general, and in particular what I think of as 'inference' but which is usually called 'the evidence'. In fact I could take my pick of issues on which to base this article. From David Nutt and the role of pharmacology in determining drugs policy, to Liam Donaldson and the role of epidemiology in determining alcohol advice to families, it's been a depressing year for people who cling to the irrational hope that there could be a role for rationalism in politics. I doubt this will surprise you, but I blame everyone involved, a bit.

A few months ago I got fed up feeling like a complete ignoramus about climate research. I'm not a physicist but I am a statistician, and I spent two years on a postdoc grant working in an atmospheric physics unit which modelled the spatio-temporal dispersion of atmospheric pollutants, and so I thought there must be some of the literature which I could read, critically, and come to a slightly more informed opinion. So I started reading about the 'hockey stick', a graph which appeared in the 2001 UN IPCC report, which powerfully showed a sharp increase in temperatures around the time of industrialisation in the northern hemisphere. The most famous version of this graph is due to a 1998 publication by three climate change scientists, Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes ('MPH'). You can read their paper here.

Sufficient vs excessive force

I watch too many movies.  One form I quite like is the thriller.  Here is a fairly common scene in a thriller.  Bad guy has woman and daughter tied up in their house, whilst pursuing the next phase of his nefarious plan.  Woman gets free; bashes bad guy on head with blunt statue conveniently on mantelpiece next to him; then whilst he is stunned, she frees her daughter and starts to flee.  But before they have made good their escape, the bad guy has recovered and pursues them with murderous intent.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I see this sort of oft-repeated movie scene, I want to yell at the screen to condemn the woman for a fool.  Because once she has committed to the path of violence in defence against a violent assailant, if she has the advantage she must take him out of the game.  If she bashes him on the head and knocks him out, then she ought to bash him again, and then bash his legs 'til they are broken and he cannot chase her, and bash his arms 'til he represents no physical threat at all.  Once violence has been resorted to, its exercise must be decisive - otherwise the woman invites her own death.  The fact that he is down, momentarily, does not make her breaking of his legs any less self defence.

The Guardian should praise Philip Davies' quango scrutiny, not smear him for it

Today's attack piece in the Guardian against Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, is many things. It is certainly a lazy attempt to smear a decent man as a racist. It is potentially a worrying bit of political campaigning by supposedly impartial public servants (of which more later). Most concerningly, it is an attack on the very idea of parliamentary scrutiny of quangos.

Mr Davies' crime was to write 19 letters over 21 months to Trevor Phillips of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, querying the EHRC's work and requesting clarification of what the MP saw as inconsistencies in the implementation of politically correct rules and laws.

The EHRC is one of Britain's most prominent and controversial quangos. It acts as an educator, a political campaign and a prosecutor in one of the most contentious areas of public policy - equalities and political correctness. It spends millions of pounds of taxpayers' money and is charged with regulating the behaviour of millions of people.

It is not just legitimate for an MP to be scrutinising such a body - it should be a requirement of anyone sitting in Parliament! Philip Davies was doing his duty and his job in querying the Commission's work, and the real scandal is that so few of his colleagues follow his lead.

We have 1,152 quangos in Britain, and barely any of them ever have to account to elected representatives of the people about the work they do in our name and with our money.

Human rights are fundamentally illiberal

I have never believed in human rights.  As a preacher once said: the only human right is to die, as the wages for your sin.  To have a right there must be a right-establishing authority (e.g. Parliament), right-arbitrating authorities (e.g. judges) and right-enforcing authorities (e.g. police, courts).  There are thus legal rights; for those sharing a religion, there are moral rights.  But, since there is no right-establishing authority for all humanity, no right-arbitrating judges for all humanity, and no pan-human police, there can be no human rights.

Freedom of speech at SOAS

For those who are yet to see it, footage from a recent event entitled 'The Case for Sanctions and Boycott' (against Israel) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) makes for a pretty astonishing watch.

At the Q & A of the event, a Jewish member of the audience attempts to highlight the fact that one of the speakers, Bongani Masuku, was found guilty by the South African Human Rights commission of making comments of an 'extreme nature that advocate and imply that the Jewish and Israeli community are to be despised, scorned, ridiculed and thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation'.

Keeping Burma on the agenda

I know I am relentless in bringing Burma to your attention, but I believe I owe it to the people of Burma to continue to do all I can to raise awareness about their plight. I am therefore taking the liberty of posting here my latest article, "Where Impunity Reigns", published in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. I would also like to draw your attention to a recent debate I spoke in at Intelligence Squared. The motion was "It's Time to Lift Sanctions against Burma". At the beginning, before the speeches, a slight majority of the audience voted in favour of the motion. By the end, my two colleagues and I speaking against motion had defeated it by a majority of 37 votes.  

Big Brother is Watching

Big Brother Watch has today released our first researched report, into the number of CCTV cameras operated by councils in the UK (generated by Freedom of Information requests we submitted to every council in the country).

The result we’ve discovered – council-run CCTV has trebled in the last ten years.  That’s working off a high base, too – a decade ago, people were already alarmed by the extent to which we were being watched, and the network has trebled since then.

I care about this because CCTV cameras are not good in and of themselves. To be worth paying for, they have to help to prevent or help to detect crime.  If they don't do either, then they are worse than useless - people feel a false sense of security because of them, policing techniques are becoming increasingly reliant on them, and they cost a lot.

Cameras are often turned off or not working, as recently happened in an unpleasant beating in Somerset. This is much worse than them simply not being there, as law enforcement becomes dependent on an unreliable resource.

When the cameras aren’t turned off and are actually working, often the footage is “scrubbed” before any investigation retrieves it.  When the cameras are working, switched on, pointing in the right direction and the footage is actually retrieved, the quality of footage is often such that it doesn’t satisfy the standard required for productive use in court.

Research indicates that crime is not driven down by the presence of CCTV as confirmed by London’s Metropolitan Police report this year, which stated that one crime per year was solved per thousand cameras.  And of course, CCTV seeks to solve crimes after the fact – a policeman on the street is much more likely to deter it before it happens.

A fair playing field needed for UK hauliers

Recently published statistics show the extent to which non UK registered lorries have been taking over our roads in the last ten years. The number of trips to and from Britain by non UK lorries has more than doubled in the last ten years to 1,672,000 in 2008. The figures also show that the number of UK haulage vehicles fell from 72,000 to 48,000. And, sadly, the number of traffic offences by drivers of non UK registered lorries has gone from 29,000 offences by non UK registered lorries in 1997 to 125,000 in 2008. These numbers include traffic violations from accidents to unsafe vehicles.

 

Much concern has been raised by UK hauliers about the future of their industry. These figures demonstrate that there is substance to their concerns. UK hauliers say they have to pay fuel tax, road tax as well as tolls while travelling overseas. Meanwhile they point to how non UK registered lorries are often able to fill up overseas and use the UK's roads for free.

 

There is nothing wrong with free markets and open competition. Yet competition must be fair and take place on a level playing field.  Ideas have been advanced for lorry road tolls, BritDiscs, fuel duty rebates and pollution congestion charges. Haulage is an important part of our transport economy - whichever method is chosen needs to level things up.

Coherent Joylessness

Some time ago I wrote a particularly ill-received piece here, called 'Incoherent Conservatives'. I wanted to raise the issue that coherence, a word with a precise meaning in the logic of induction (which I like) is often used in everyday English with an implicit positive intent (which I dislike; or at least, which I don't find sufficient to nudge me into liking the object of the sentence). You know: His views on the environment are totally coherent with his worldview. Sentences like that are meant, by the writer, to make the reader respond: And this is of itself good.

Most of the time I expect what I post here to disappear into the ether; sometimes I hope that you'll like what I say. I was mildly surprised by the strength of the objections to that post back in April, though I take some comfort from finding that Bertrand Russell agreed with me. It still seems to me that to prioritise a totally coherent programme for government would deliver an outcome both witless and eventually cruel. Start with the axioms of your ideology: and stop there too. Derive policies which cohere with your axioms and ignore the human response to those policies if they fail, because even to acknowledge a failure would require an admission that in our imperfect, pluralist world it is sometimes kinder to lack coherence than it is to stick to the framework you originally selected for decision-making. Anyway don't let's go back there. 

Oh go on then, let's. Liam Donaldson is too big a gift to the party for incoherence to ignore. Here he is again, demanding that parents refrain from letting their children drink a glass of wine at Christmas, or indeed anytime. Dr Donaldson is nothing if not consistent, since at the start of this year he was making the same demand, using the full might of his establishment-medical authority to inveigh against parents who dare to poison their children with a glass of wine at dinner.

Help the poor, the elderly, manufacturing industries and commuters; reform climate change policy

Today the TaxPayers' Alliance is releasing a new report (PDF) on green taxes and regulations, Ending the Green Rip-Off: Reforming climate change policy to reduce the burden on families.  The report sets out the huge and excessive burden that green taxes impose on families and business across the UK, it also provides local estimates which show how different areas are affected.

When the TPA has released reports on this subject before we've had a great debate on Centre Right.  You can find the different posts about the last edition, released in August 2008, by working backwards from this post.  It showed the potential of the blogosphere to enable a real "back and forth" debate instead of just a report and then a response with no follow up, which is often all that is possible in the mainstream media.

The key message that Conservatives should take from this report, particularly Greg Clark MP who wrote for the Platform yesterday, is that there is a huge opportunity waiting if they reform climate policy.  Of course, it is easy to read too much into what the polls are saying right now, but it does look like they will have to work hard to avoid a hung parliament.  If they win in the Spring, then the Conservatives will be looking to win a second term after imposing considerable fiscal restraint.  They need something to sweeten that bitter pill, a way of giving voters a significant material reason to vote for them despite having no money to spend.

Book Review - Zoya Phan's 'Little Daughter'

Many readers will remember Zoya Phan, a Karen refugee from Burma, whose moving address at the 2006 Conservative Party Conference brought delegates to their feet with tears in their eyes. The following year, she was invited back to speak at the Party Conference.

If you are looking for something to read this Christmas break, and want a break from British domestic politics before the General Election campaign, I would recommend Zoya's book, Little Daughter: A Memoir of Survival in Burma and the West. Launched earlier this year in the House of Commons at an event hosted by Stephen Crabb MP and addressed by the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, Zoya's book is a moving and poignant personal story of struggle which cannot fail to challenge and inspire.

While much of the early part of the book provides an innocent and charming account of life growing up in the jungles of eastern Burma, there are inevitably many grim moments in the book. Zoya recounts how at the age of six she and her brother and sister were playing by the river, when "our happy games suddenly turned very dark". As they splashed about innocently in the water, suddenly they were confronted with a bloated, floating corpse. "All of a sudden we were screaming in horror," she recalls. The man had been killed by the Burma Army and dumped in the river, left to decompose.

As she grew older, Zoya encountered the horrors of war more regularly. The bodies of wounded or dead Karen resistance soldiers were often brought to Manerplaw, the Karen headquarters where she grew up. "I remember looking into one of those hammocks," she writes. "I saw a face bloodied, swollen and pockmarked with shrapnel, the gentle brown eyes all but gummed shut with congealed blood. But worst of all was the young man's hands that ended in stumps wrapped in bloody rags."

Zoya's father, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, was a senior leader in the Karen resistance, and ended up as General Secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU). When she grew up he was often away for weeks at a time, involved in political activities and, on one occasion, kidnapped and imprisoned. "My father was kept in the pitch black of the dungeon as his captors took away his fellow KNU leaders and executed them," she describes. "At one point they had put a gun to his head and acted as if they were going to kill him."

The most dramatic moment in Zoya's childhood came when Manerplaw, where she had grown up, was attacked by the regime's troops. Her description is charmingly down-to-earth. "The first time the aircraft came to drop their bombs on us I was in the loo," she recalls. Her family were forced to flee into the jungle, and walk for days without adequate food, shelter or medicine to reach the safety of the Thai border. Describing her emotions at the time, she is refreshingly honest. "I found myself unable to cry. I was crying inside, but I felt as if I should be strong. So I kept the trauma bottled up inside me," she writes. In the jungle, the family were constantly on the run. Her mother knew that they must always keen their bags packed - "and be ready to move at a moment's notice".

That was not to be Zoya's only experience of running from bullets. Two years later, they were attacked again:

"People were running in every direction shouting and screaming. Animals were bellowing or screaming in panic. Children were screaming and crying, the crackle of the gunfire rose above the uproar, and then there would come the crack-BOOM of the mortar bombs landing, as if every glass window in the world had been shattered at once .... The dust got so bad it was almost like night. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see, my legs were aching with running, my lungs burning, my whole body shaking with fear. I just knew I had to keep going or I'd be killed."

While this was going on, Zoya began to ask questions:

 "Why did the United Nations and the international community allow this to happen? And where especially were the British? We had been their allies. We had fought and died beside them in the Second World War. Why had they abandoned us? I dreamed that they would come and rescue us. But they never did."

Zoya then spent several years in the refugee camps across the border in Thailand. There she learned some English and gained some basic schooling - enough to win a scholarship to study in Bangkok. Part of her studies was business administration - but adjusting to this, and to city life, from where she had come from was a challenge:

“It was so alien to me. I didn’t understand many of the most basic concepts. I had no idea about the practices of international business. As to the relative benefits of Kimberly Clark’s logo versus that of Toyota or Tesco – I was completely lost. What was a logo? What was a superstore? Who were Tesco, Toyota and the rest?”

From this point on, her life took an extraordinary turn. She did an internship at Telecomasia, and was offered the chance of a corporate career. However, several factors convinced her to take a different course. First, her mother was seriously ill, and she returned to the border to visit her. She then decided to make a visit inside Karen State, to try to help her people and particularly to "get into those areas that the media and human rights workers were seldom able to visit.". She went with her father's blessing, and his hammock and mosquito net. On that visit, she met people who were terrified of imminent attack, suffering from cholera, chronic diarrhoea and malaria, and who had no opportunities for health care or education at all. “They were so poor and destitute that even the clothes they stood up in were in shred,” she recalls. “They had nothing; nothing. No pots and pans; no blankets; previous little to eat.” It was this situation, she explains, that began to turn her away from “a soft, moneyed and easy future” and back to her people and their struggle. Some of those she met turned to her and said: "Please do something about the suffering here. Go and tell the world."

Her mother died in 2004, and Zoya accepted a place at the University of East Anglia to study for a Master’s in Development and Politics. Ten months after starting her course, she attended a demonstration in London, where someone handed her what she describes as "a funnel-shaped device" which was "very heavy". She was told: "It's a megaphone. Press that button and speak into this end and everyone will be able to hear you - even the people inside the embassy." She did, and her activist's life was born. “All my life I had been a victim,” she writes, “but today I had felt what it was like to fight back.” Within a few weeks she was doing interviews on the BBC, leading protests outside the Burmese Embassy and 10 Downing Street, and addressing audiences around the country. She has shared a platform with William Hague several times, spoken to Gordon Brown personally on the phone, met the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street and shaken hands with David Cameron.

 

On 14 February, 2008 Zoya's family - which had already endured so much - was struck by further tragedy. Her father was assassinated by agents of the regime. I had been with him three days previously, and had sat with him on the very veranda where he was shot dead. Zoya had been aware of the plots, and is herself on a hit-list now, but no amount of awareness could have prepared her for the shock. "My father was killed because the Burmese regime feared him," Zoya writes.

 

I had just landed in Kuala Lumpur, on my way to visit Burmese refugees there, when I received news of Padoh Mahn Sha's assassination. I had known him well, always visited him when I went to the Thailand-Burma border, and his children, including Zoya, are friends of mine.  Eerily, it was almost exactly a year later that, landing in Kuala Lumpur again, I finished reading Zoya's book. It draws to an end with the account of her father's death - and with typical defiant courage:

"They killed my father because they wanted to kill what he stood for. I was determined not to let that happen ... And whilst they may have killed my father, they could never kill my father's dream. That the Karen, and all the people of Burma, will be free."

And it closes with this challenge, which is one for us all to consider this Christmas:

 

"Maybe you will feel sorry for me after what I have been through in my life. Don't. I am one of the lucky ones. I am lucky I am still alive. I am lucky I haven't been raped. I am lucky that I am not still in a refugee camp that is like a prison camp, with no work, no freedom .... And I am lucky to be able to work to help my people. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, I want you to feel angry, and I want you to do something about it."

 

One of the ways you can do something about it is to support organisations working on Burma, either The Phan Foundation 

 which Zoya and her brothers and sister established in their parents' memory, or The Burma Campaign UK,  where Zoya works as International Co-ordinator, or my organisation, Christian Solidarity Worldwide.Have a look also at the Change for Burma campaign.  

 

If you think John Bercow or Quentin Davies has been on a political journey, you haven't met Sinn Fein's Billy Leonard...

This really does fall under the category of "got to be seen to be believed".

Under the rules of the Northern Ireland Assembly, there are never any by-elections: if someone dies or resigns, their party is simply able to appoint someone new in their place.

And with East Londonderry Sinn Fein MLA Francie Brolly about to retire, his replacement is a man whose background is about as incompatible with being a member of the political wing of the Provisional IRA as you can get. 

As this report in the Belfast News Letter explains, Billy Leonard is a one-time Protestant-churchgoing RUC Reservist who was a member of the Orange Order.

And next month he'll be taking his place alongside Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness at Stormont. Quite a political journey...