CentreRight

Streamlining the police force

By Agneta Cederstrom, Intern, Reform

The inevitable spending cuts facing the public services have caused a wide-ranging debate, from the timing of the cuts, to ring-fencing certain departments, to preserving the “frontline”. Speaking at a Reform lunch seminar yesterday on the topic of saving money in the police service, Julie Spence, Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, wondered what preserving the frontline really means. She questioned the arbitrary nature of applying the frontline boundary at uniformed police, emphasising that back-office operations are themselves necessary to deliver “frontline services”.

This said there are a lot of efficiency measures which can be made in regards to information technology, financing, and human resources. By looking at the end-to-end process, one could remove duplication in such areas as call-handling or helicopter use, and minimise time wasted by police officers at the courts waiting to be called as a witness. There is scope to improve and rationalise within and across different parts of the criminal justice system, based on collaboration and information sharing.

Because criminal activity occurs across different geographical areas and levels of severity, there is no universal solution. The police have applied a “laminate model” which is based upon a tiered approach to law enforcement. This suggests that certain decisions be taken at a national level, whilst others such as procurement of vehicles and uniforms are made locally. In practice, however (and as Reform’s research has shown), this balance is not always right, with duplication between forces and inefficiencies created by a lack of consistency across the country. It was agreed, for example, that it makes sense for IT systems to be developed at a national level rather than separately by each of the 43 forces.

In the 1970s, Britain and our way of life was threatened more than we are today - but our predecessors did not sacrifice our freedoms and liberties

I have been challenged on my assertion, made on behalf of Big Brother Watch on several occasions, that we did not change our way of life in the 1970s even though British society faced greater threats then than we do today. My critics have sought to suggest that the IRA then were not the threat that Al Qaeda is now.

In response, I point out that in 1972 alone, the IRA killed 100 British soldiers and wounded 500 more. In the same year, they caused 1,300 explosions. 500 British soldiers died during the Troubles.

Including murders committed by other paramilitary groups but excluding paramilitary fatalities, 1,798 people were killed in Northern Ireland-related terror attacks during the 1970s.

Furthermore, a number of other terrorist groups were active during that time and inflicted many casualties - whilst not impacting directly on the UK, they certainly represented a threat to British people abroad (particularly if you were on a plane they hijacked, a common 1970s event), and they impacted on the international security situation generally: inter alia, The Baader-Meinhof Gang / Red Army Faction; The Red Brigade; The PFLP; Carlos the Jackal. Of course, feel free to add others I've missed in the comments.

On the other hand, the objective harm posed by Al Qaeda and co to the United Kingdom today is much lower. Whilst they are repugnant and their acts vile, whilst the harm done to their victims is tragic, we should not lose perspective when dealing with the vital question of proportionality when considering something as drastic as curtailing freedom. When people seek to justify the enormous invasions of our privacy and fundamental diminutions of our liberty with the assertion of what they think is truism and cliché about the "grave danger" we face today, you must confront them and make it clear that you do not accept their premise. We are less threatened today than we were in the 1970s

Hat tip: Frank / EH

Terrorism risk posed by tankers off the East Anglian coast

Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and more specifically since the London 7/7 attacks in 2005, the UK has been slowly coming to terms with being a major terrorist target. However, whilst ‘climate change’ is a theme being taken up across virtually all government departments, the same is not yet true of counter terrorism. Yet the threat of terrorism potentially affects almost every sphere of government. Major international sporting events now have specific terrorist threats against them. For example, the Hockey World Cup and Commonwealth Games both due to take place in India in March and October respectively have each received very specific threats from an affiliate of al-Qaeda. In short, we cannot assume that anything will be immune from the threat of Islamist terrorism. It is therefore somewhat odd to say the least that the government have not made preventing terrorism a cross departmental responsibility in the way that they have made tackling 'climate change'.

One illustration of the present government’s lack of joined up thinking on preventing terrorism is the large number of oil tankers that for the last year have been anchoring off the East Anglian coast as a result of a series of government decisions or more recently lack of decisions about them.

This fleet of tankers numbering 30-40 at any given time and including some of the world’s largest supertankers has in the last 12 months become one of the highest concentrations of oil tankers in the western world (research by the Daily Mail last year showed that even UK oil ports normally have only 4-6 tankers anchored offshore - see map). The issue only came to light last summer when Suffolk Coastal MP John Gummer asked the government why so many tankers were anchoring off the North Suffolk coast in his constituency. It subsequently transpired that the government had, without any local consultation, secretly made an agreement with oil companies that this would be the one place in UK waters where ship to ship oil transfers would be allowed offshore. This has led to it becoming the international location for tankers from accross the world to transfer Russian oil to supertankers that are too large to enter the Baltic. In response, Mr Gummer very rightly raised serious concerns - the Suffolk coast happens to be an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) as well as being home to internationally important nature sites and is heavily dependent on tourism, all of which were potentially threatened by any oil spillage. There has followed a series of government ministers saying that they were moving ‘quickly’ to ban the practice. These included Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, who 'hoped' it might be banned before Christmas 2009 and Deputy Minister for the East of England Bob Blizzard MP, off whose Waveney constituency some of the tankers are anchored. Mr Blizzard recently announced that legislation would be laid before parliament ‘as early as May’, which for anyone with the slightest knowledge of the electoral process means ‘not in the lifetime of this parliament’. This week the government finally started a six week ‘consultation’ on  banning these offshore oil transfers…before it drafts a statutory order which on current timescales is unlikely to come into force until 1st October…

Syed Kamall MEP: You make industry more uncompetitive by subsidising it

From Syed Kamall MEP

Good to see in today's FT that Oxera's research for the European Commission supports what many of us have known for years: you actually make industry more uncompetitive by subsidising or protecting it.

A future Conservative government must never be one that picks winners, bails out famous brands, nationalises failing industries, etc. We are the party of free competition or we are nothing.

New TPA video on DEFRA Climate Change Propaganda

We've got a new research note out this morning on the DEFRA Climate Challenge Fund.  They spent £8.6 million funding projects aimed at "raising awareness" or "attitude modification" about climate change.  Some of the projects were as mad as a box of frogs.  There are details in the research note but we've also produced a video highlighting some of the videos and computer games produced with Climate Challenge Fund grants:

This is the first video produced in-house by Andy Whitehurst, who has just joined the TPA.  We're hoping that regular, snappy web videos like this can really help engage people with our research findings and the TPA campaign.  They'll be a great complement to the bigger productions we've commissioned in the past, which you can see on our YouTube channel.

Discretionary tax law is now a fact in the UK

Over the last ten years there has been a marked tendency to make tax law discretionary.  New tax rules are left intentionally vague to allow the tax man to tax no matter what.

Tax evasion is illegal.  But tax avoidance (or tax planning as it is called in civilised circles) has now become suspicious to the point of being put on an equal footing with the illegal and the shady.  As Mark Serwotka's Public Services Union puts it:

“The main political parties should make it a New Year’s resolution to focus on over £130 billion worth of uncollected, evaded and avoided taxes to close the public deficit”.

Is it not normal that when you close a deal you look up what the law is and then try to minimise the tax you will owe?  Why pay 20% if legally only 10% is due? It seems like good housekeeping to me.  In fact most people do it in one form or another; they may for example make a will.  Yet it is precisely this tax planning which is targeted, and vague discretionary tax rules are the means to achieve the clamp down.

The chief executive of a small financial institution recently told me that he has been trying to find out for months whether or not any bonuses he pays his staff will be subject to the bonus tax. The rules are completely unclear.

During Labour’s tenure, there have been three particularly worrying developments in tax policy.

The Falkland Islands, Oil and International Law

In light of the news today that the Argentinean government has responded to British plans to drill for oil off the Falklands Islands coast by introducing new controls on shipping passing through its territorial waters, I thought it might be worth examining the "legal" implications of their actions.

I refer you to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - a charter ratified by the governments of Britain and Argentina.

Articles 17, 18, 24 and 26 begin:

"Ships of all States, whether coastal or land-locked, enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea. Passage means navigation through the territorial sea for the purpose of: (a) traversing that sea without entering internal waters or calling at a roadstead or port facility outside internal waters; or (b) proceeding to or from internal waters or a call at such roadstead or port facility. The coastal State shall not hamper the innocent passage of foreign ships through the territorial sea. In particular, in the application of this Convention or of any laws or regulations adopted in conformity with this Convention, the coastal State shall not:(a) impose requirements on foreign ships which have the practical effect of denying or impairing the right of innocent passage; or (b) discriminate in form or in fact against the ships of any State or against ships carrying cargoes to, from or on behalf of any State. No charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage through the territorial sea [other than as] payment for specific services rendered to the ship"

Article 76 of the Treaty defines the scope of any particular landmass' continental shelf:

"The continental shelf of a coastal State comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance"

It is worth noting, at this juncture, that the point of the Falkand Islands closest to Argentina lies some 300 miles (480 kilometres) from its coastline.

Article 77, points one and four address the rights of Britain to drill for oil more closely:

"The coastal State exercises over the continental shelf sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring it and exploiting its natural resources... The natural resources referred to in this Part consist of the mineral and other non-living resources of the seabed and subsoil together with living organisms belonging to sedentary species, that is to say, organisms which, at the harvestable stage, either are immobile on or under the seabed or are unable to move except in constant physical contact with the seabed or the subsoil"

Article 81 continues:

"The coastal State shall have the exclusive right to authorize and regulate drilling on the continental shelf for all purposes"

It's an open and shut case: in continuing to deploy bellicose and intimidatory tactics in the pursuit of their irredentist claim on British sovereign territory in the South Atlantic, Argentian is plainly in violation of their obligations under international law. <="shelf:<">

Nigel Evans MP: It is utter tosh for Labour to suggest that electoral reform is the answer to the questions raised by the MPs' expenses scandal

By Nigel Evans MP

Jack Straw’s recent comments on why he wants PR have left me somewhat stunned.

I’ve been the MP for the Ribble Valley (next door to his Blackburn constituency) for 18 years and not once have I heard Jack Straw flying the flag for proportional representation. He tells us his conversion has been brought about because of the expenses scandal. What utter tosh.

He argues unrest with the expenses scandal means we need electoral reform which will miraculously stop abuses of a squalid expenses system.

If there is something wrong with the expenses system then radical reform of that system is necessary, but this has nothing to do with how we vote. (It might influence the way that we vote or indeed if we vote at all.)

Should Andrew Lansley take money from the private healthcare industry?

Care UK is a leading independent provider of health and social care.  Working in close partnership with local authorities, PCTs and SHAs, the company draws on over 25 years of experience to provide tailor-made service solutions, including residential, community, specialist, primary and secondary care.

Care UK

GPs are educated consumers of secondary health care. We know who the best specialists are and, unlike the general public, we are not influenced by glossy brochures and other specious advertising techniques used by a certain sort of doctor, or a certain sort of medical organisation. PCTs in the north of England have take out a seven year contract for the provision of medical services with a private company called Care UK. Less than a third of the capacity of that contract has been taken up. I will not speculate as to why local GPs choose not to use this service, but it is their right to choose. Or it used to be. Now the PCTs are trying to force GPs to refer their patients to Care UK rather than to NHS hospitals. Today we learn that the wife of the chairman of Care UK has donated £21,000 to the private office of Mr Andrew Lansley, the shadow health spokesman.

I wonder why she made this donation? I wonder why it was accepted?

Brennan gets it wrong at NYU

John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser and top counterterrorism aide to President Obama, has come under increasing fire recently over the government's handling of Umar Abdulmutallab. Republican critics have complained that the Detroit bomber was read his Miranda rights too quickly, meaning vital intelligence could not be extracted from him, and called for him to be treated as an enemy combatant and therefore subejct to military tribunal. Both Brennan and the White House said Republicans were 'playing politics', with Brennan claiming that 'unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda' (as opposed to the founded fear-mongering that Brennan would presumably approve of).

Brennan's counterterrorism talk at New York University law school last weekend was an attempt to  further rebuff his critics. Instead, he managed to get several things quite spectacularly wrong. I am far more concerned about US national security at the end of this speech than at the beginning of it.

Schools for less?

By Dale Bassett, Senior Researcher, Reform

There is much ongoing discussion about whether and how to cut public spending, especially in universities (as the subject of cuts) and the NHS (as the subject of ringfencing). But no-one is talking about the second most expensive public service – schools. The Government has pledged to protect the schools budget; the Conservatives have not but are vague on specifics. A Reform lunch seminar today discussing how to save money in the schools system showed that there is a lot of scope to reduce costs.

Two things became immediately clear from the discussion – national funding arrangements will make it very difficult to uniformly trim schools’ budgets, and the amount of central direction and bureaucracy have played a major role in increasing the cost of schools in recent years.

John McIntosh, the former head of the London Oratory School, observed that the arbitrary nature of the funding system makes it difficult to impose a uniform percentage budget cut on every school. Huge variations in per-pupil funding (due to central prioritisation, various add-ons for pupils and schools and differences between local authorities) mean that a budget cut of 10 per cent would devastate some schools but barely impact at all on the curriculum of others. The current system, geared to reward failure, would mean that the best schools were the worst hit.

It is also apparent that while there are savings to made within any given school on, say, administration and procurement, this doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. The real problem is not “within” schools themselves; it is the national system that creates the excess costs that are borne by schools. The Every Child Matters agenda, national pay and conditions agreements and the Ofsted inspection regime all impose costs on schools and necessitate the creation of bureaucracies and management layers to respond to government initiatives.

One comprehensive school manager said that his school employs four full-time staff solely to prepare and analyse the data demanded by Ofsted. National agreements on “planning, preparation and assessment” time, class sizes and cover arrangements have resulted in a substantial increase in the staff-to-pupil ratio. A typical classroom in almost every primary school now contains two adults – the teacher and a teaching assistant. Meanwhile local authority control of funding and procurement makes it difficult for schools to achieve value for money in their purchasing of goods and services.

What is clear is that the wrong approach would be cutting 10 per cent off each school’s budget. Instead 10 per cent (or however much) should be cut off the total schools budget and national funding reform (John McIntosh proposed a national per-pupil amount) should be introduced alongside to ensure that some schools aren’t disproportionately hit. The result would be fairer and more efficient schools for all.

Comparing the Vancouver Games with the forthcoming London Olympics is a depressing exercise

I've written in the past on CR about our inability to mount grand projects. The forthcoming London Olympics, alas, is shaping up to be a case in point. As the Times warned last week, the Government is likely to raid its dwindling Olympic contingency fund yet again to cover up to a further £160 million in "unforeseen costs".

Anyone reading this who runs a business will be green with envy at the idea of being able to run a project and breezily declare one had not foreseen costs like that, and get the taxpayer to underwrite it; on the other hand, all of us who are paying for this behemoth might fairly be rather put out by it.

I have previously expressed concerns elsewhere about the spiralling budget and organisation of the London Games, so I will confine myself here to one simple point - a comparison with the Vancouver Winter Olympics currently taking place.

Some useful facts about the Vancouver Games were provided this weekend in the Financial Times. It's clear that Vancouver suffered a number of problems:

(1) the economic boom pushed up labour and material costs, and then of course

(2) the global recession hit.

(3) The city lost its triple A credit rating last year as the Games were being organised; 

(4) The IOC was unable to sign up two out of 11 budgeted global sponsors, and a number of local sponsors also pulled out.

So they had a plethora of excuses for problems, perhaps even worse than London has. But still, all of the Vancouver sporting venues were built on time and on budget. Does anyone seriously think that the same will be true of the London Games?

How was this achieved? Well, the organisers offset lower revenues by trimming spending. Some workers were sacked; glossy colour publications made way for black-and-white versions.

What a sensible idea. In light of the difficulties in fundraising and managing budgets, I wonder - what cuts are being made in the preparations for the London Olympics?

The fantasy of inner-circle-wisdom is exploded by the Greek bankruptcy

In the CityAM editorial today ("The EU has been hiding its debt for years"), the ever-brilliant Allister Heath points out that the EU has long turned a blind eye to the accounting tricks of its members so that the criteria of the Euro-zone could be ‘met’: “It was once well-known that Greece, Italy and other countries had used dodgy tricks to embellish their public finances prior to the launch of Economic and Monetary Union to meet the entry requirements”. His key point is about institutional amnesia: ”Yet now everybody is pretending to be surprised or even shocked”. I say ‘blind eye’ and ‘accounting tricks’ but what this really amounted to was condoning fraud for a higher good; and ‘amnesia’ is a nice way of saying ‘lying’. That Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan helped (respectively) Greece and Italy push debt off their balance sheets led to a row with, says Heath, “the European establishment cracking down on anybody who dared talk about this”.

Of course this all supports the transparency agenda, the call for see-through government. People inside a system usually end up believing it works best when the smarter and wiser insiders are left alone to take care of things, undisturbed by the prying eyes of outsiders who are considered unequipped to judge. This fantasy of ‘inner circle wisdom’ explodes when a part of the Euro-zone goes bankrupt. Openness would have prevented it. It would have forced populations to confront their problems while they were still fixable. If you can’t know, you can’t act responsibly. 

Secrecy creates stupidity. The deliberate obscurantism of the EU means problems don’t get fixed.  The system then multiplies small practical problems into systemic collapse. Because we cannot see, we cannot engage. Because we cannot engage, we cannot change things. Because we cannot change things, we are left with only two options: learn to love it dumbly, or leave it. By its culture of distance, the commission creates an impossible condition even for those who might otherwise support some ideal of union.

See-through government is the foundation of prosperity, freedom and justice. We should be radical and passionate about it. It’s time for a Freedom of Data Act, in the UK and the EU.

The BBC persists in sloppy labelling of BNP as "right-wing"

It supports nationalisation, higher taxation and protectionism but the BBC persists in calling the BNP "right-wing";

I complained to the BBC about this before but without real success.

The European Conservatives and Reformists Group: 'May Contain Nuts'?

Dr Tim Bale, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sussex has just released a new paper entitled ''May Contain Nuts'? The Reality behind the Rhetoric Surrounding the British Conservatives’ New Group in the European Parliament'. 

 

Broadly speaking, Dr Bale's piece is a fair one which does a good job of dismissing many of the radical falsehoods about the party's new partners which have been spread by the British political left in recent months.  Similarly, his overall conclusion is a sound one; that the group is comprised of moderate and mainstream parties who share the Conservative Party's commitment to deregulation, Atlanticism and constructive reform of the European Union.

I do, however, take issue with a few of the points contained in the document which I'll address in turn. 

 

I quote from Dr Bale's article:

"Much of the criticism originates from the suspicion that the refusal of other centre-right parties in Europe to countenance leaving the EPP has forced the Conservatives into an alliance with partners with whom they have—or at least should have—little in common"

This is a highly questionable assertion, the validity of which is largely predicated on how you personally view the political positions of the EPP's members.  The description of the EPP as being the European Parliament's "centre right" grouping is largely one which has been cultivated by British MEPs favourable to the continuation of the party's membership of the alliance and our opponents on the political left.  The EPP describes itself as the “political centre of Europe” and strongly emphasizes the importance of the “social market economy” in policy making. 

 

Nigel Evans MP: The BBC needs to get into the real world and become more streamlined, efficient and accountable

By Nigel Evans MP, who was until recently a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee

There is nothing like waking up to the Today programme to listen to John Humphrys berating some Government Minister for flagrant spending, or Jim Naughtie sticking the boot in on excessive banking pay and bonuses. It sort of makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.

The one area that they constantly overlook is their own pay. The BBC creams over £3,500,000,000 from telly watchers in licence fees. We have no choice to pay. If you have a receiver you must pay the tax. Currently it is £142.50, and rising.

The BBC is a national institution and makes some terribly good programmes (7 Ages of Britain for example). Its news coverage is second to none with its news web page the default page for many surfers.

I don’t come to bury the BBC, but I do want to see radical changes which will make it more accountable, and less predatory.

The Director General earns £816,000 whilst his deputy rakes in £513,000. The Director of BBC Vision bagged £536,000 whilst 382 staff raked in more than £100,000. (A quarter of them were on more than £160,000 and 58 managed to snaffle more than the PM).

Is this really how to choose a Prime Minister?

Losing a child young is a terrible thing, and I am sorry that Gordon Brown and David Cameron have both had to go through that.  But do we really want to choose our government on the basis of which party leader we feel more sorry for?

The BNP may have surrendered to the legal need to abandon its 'whites only' membership policy but BNP members were hostile to the change

James Bethell of NothingBritish.com.

Nick Griffin delights in the flattering comparison, but today's abolition of the BNP's infamous white-only membership restriction was no "Clause 4 moment".

Although he has energetically implemented the presentational modernisation of the BNP ("suits not boots"), he is deeply entrenched in the old ideology. Straight-up ethno-pluralism with a national socialist twist. Rather than leading today's constitutional change, he was dragged reluctantly to the moment, using every dog-ate-my-homework excuse to avoid the EHRC's case to the courts. Nor did he carry his party. His spin-doctors will say it was passed virtually unanimously on the day, but only 100 of the BNP's 14,000 members could be bothered to attend the hastily-organised EGM in a remote East End pub (far from the party's heartland in Yorkshire and the NE). Comment on the BNP's network of blogs has remained hostile, despite a blizzard of begging emails and YouTube presentations from the Leader.

I am alert to the danger that the BNP could become a mainstream popular nationalist party, manipulating the considerable anger and frustration amongst Britain's working classes into success at the ballot box. Certainly there are millions who have bona fide grievances:

• Economic pessimism - jobs that have gone off-shore or to hungrier, better-skilled immigrants, and there remains no hope for something better.
• Cultural dispossession - communities transformed by new-comers; a national climate that stigmatises patriotism and Britain historic achievements.
• Political isolation - politicians that find their issues (immigration, Europe, Islamist terror and law-'n'-order) too toxic to handle and instead focus on swing voters in the heartland of England.     

But Griffin does not seem like a man with the political imagination to create a party capable of scoring a significant electoral breakthrough: 

• The finances of the party remain shambolic, instigating an on-going inquiry by the Electoral Commission.
• There remains minimal support amongst professionals and intellectuals - a key feature of Continental nationalists like France's Front National and Italy's Forza Nuova.
• Negligible impact in the European Parliament, re-inforcing his post-QT reputation as a bottler. 
• A flimsy political manifesto - most of the party's policies are ludicrous and would cost voters on average around £5,000 per head per annum to implement.

The party is flat-lining in the polls - the Guardian suggested down from 4.8% in June 2009 to 1%. Google Trends suggests internet inquiries are back down to pre-QT levels. The puff has gone out of the BNP.

Look After Our NHS, or the Flat Earth Society

By Nick Seddon, Deputy Director of Reform

The Flat Earth Society took a bit of a hit when satellite images taken from outer space showed the earth as a sphere rather than flat, but they weren’t fazed. The Englishman Samuel Shenton, who ran the modern organisation in 1956, remarked: "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye." There’s nothing new to the belief that the earth is flat, of course. Indeed, it was almost universally held until as late as 4BC. Then the likes of Aristotle started to provide evidence of a spherical earth, and by the Renaissance it was widespread knowledge throughout Europe that the Earth was a sphere, especially thanks to the likes of Galileo. The best headlines of the cult Flat Earth News during the '70s and early '80s included "Galileo Was a Liar" and “World IS Flat, and That's That". Sadly, although there are some websites for this seriously retro club, the society seems to have been disbanded in the early years of this century. It’s probably around this time that some of its members started to join the top ranks of the British Medical Association.

If you want to laugh, you should turn on your computer, turn up the volume, make a cup of tea and watch this animated cartoon, Look After Our NHS. That’s right, the venerable British Medical Association, once one of the most vehement opponents of the NHS – they called Bevan a “medical Fuehrer” and said that nationalising hospitals represented “the greatest seizure of property since Henry VIII confiscated the monasteries” – is launching one of the most comical campaigns ever. Viscerally and ideologically against markets, they argue that the NHS’s financial challenges will be overcome by “abandoning this market in healthcare”. Let’s not worry too much about the fact that there isn’t a market in healthcare – it’s the policy direction, but implementation through central diktat rather than real competition has short circuited the system. Let’s not worry too much about whose NHS it is either – it’s for the patients to decide who looks after them, and they don’t seem to mind whether they’re treated privately or publicly so long as it’s high quality and dignified.

No, let’s just take a moment to think about markets. We’ve become used to lifestyles and possessions that a previous generation couldn’t have conceived of and ordinary people have become accustomed to choice, variety and responsiveness to their demands. Just think about how markets, aligned with scientific and technology, have changed our world for the better. In the 1980s, cars used to break down. People used to moan about it all the time. And British Leyland did nothing about it. And then along came some healthy international competition from the Far East, with some six sigma advances. When did your car last break down? Indeed, think about any sector you care to that has undergone a revolution. Think about telephony – do you remember how expensive it used to be to make international calls? – before fibre optic cables. Think about food production and distribution.

What's fair, and what isn't

So, let's see.  If you're Irish, and you suffer a terrible, unprecedented recession and you end up with a serious deficit problem, your public sector workers have huge pay cuts, your taxes rise, and you accept this and tough it out in a good-humoured manner.

If you're German, and you suffer a bad structural competitiveness problem as a consequence of an unprecedented political event (the absorption of East Germany) and problems managing the government's pensions commitments, you endure a decade of economic stagnation and a high pension age.  But you tough it out with solid discipline and hard work.

But if you're Greece, and you have been consistently ill-disciplined, lied and defrauded your way into the euro, failed to abide by even the most basic of accounting norms, regularly failed to implement European rules and regulations properly, even to the extent that your courts are not regarded by the top European Courts as properly constituted judicial authorities, run up huge debts that you can't service, and at the height of your problems elected a government that promised to raise spending even more, then because you make a fuss and have strikes and vaguely threaten revolution, you're supposed to be given tens of billions of euros instead of cutting back??

And for being sceptical about doing this, at a time when their economic recovery has stalled, the Germans are seen as the bad guys!?

No bail out for Greece: Sign the petition

Gobsmacking. Jawdropping. Farcical. Obscene. The idea that British taxpayers should be made to bail out Greece and the Euro are all these and more.

Greece currently faces a fiscal crisis brought by decades of bad spending decisions, and the failure of its political class to stand up to the country's militant union movement.

The resulting issues for the Eurozone are similarly self-inflicted. By binding such a disparate range of economies into one currency and interest rate, the scale of a Greece-style crisis was deepened and its impact was extended far across the Continent.

Given that the last people to blame for either of these problems are British taxpayers, it is staggering that the British Government is still refusing to rule out handing our money over to bail out the Greeks.

If, like me, you believe we have more than enough economic and fiscal problems at home without dishing out yet more taxpayers' money to Athens, please sign the petition against the bail out here.

For that matter please send the link on to friends, family and colleagues. We must not let taxpayers be ripped off yet again.

How to squander £30m

Which do you suppose is the greater scandal:

a) MPs having collectively to pay back about £1m of claims over about a five year period virtually all of which was claimed as allowances in accordance with advice provided by those hired to advise them on such claims, and, since very widespread, by definition in accord with the norms of behaviour within the institution concerned.

b) £30m being spent over a five year period on an 80-staff system to monitor and advise upon MP allowance claims in the future.  Spend £30m to save £1m.  Great deal.

No prizes for guessing which I think is the real scandal.  And no prizes for guessing whether as many column inches will be devoted to the latter as were devoted to the former.

What does Robert Peston want to do to the economy that he's frightened to tell us about?

BBC business editor Robert Peston was in my university city of York last night to explain the global economic crisis to over 1,000 people who gathered at York Minster to hear him deliver his Ebor lecture.

During questions at the end of the lecture, I am told that one of the audience asked him the following:

"If you were the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, what would be your first, your very first, practical action?"

Alas his reply was less than illuminating:

"If I answer that, I'll be fired by the BBC."

More on Islamist funding of UK universities

The University of Durham last year entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian government’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. The cosy arrangement saw the two promise to publish joint books, hold joint conferences, undertake joint research and exchange students and members of staff. In return, the Iranian government paid Durham £10,000. Worth the price of aligning yourself with probably the most obnoxious government in the world?

Increasingly, it appears not. As part of this memorandum of understanding, a seminar on ‘The Relationship between Culture and Politics in Post-Islamic-Revolution Iran’ was held last month at the university – a seminar which coincided with the execution of Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, arrested after last June’s Iranian ‘election’. Students protested at the awfulness of their university’s actions, and two academics withdrew from the event. Dr Colin Turner, co-director of Durham's Centre for Iranian Studies, was left with an event which he admitted was ‘monopolised by pro-regime speakers’. In the audience were Durham’s mayor and the university’s vice-chancellor.

Responding to the pro-democracy protests, Dr Turner gave us an early front-runner for stupidest comment of the year:

‘These same people who denigrate us have absolutely no problem in accepting scholarships from the British government – which has turned the slaughter of innocent teenagers in Iraq and Afghanistan into an art form. Before they accuse us of receiving what they term 'blood money' from our Iranian funders, maybe they should look a little more closely at the source of their own funding.’

The Telegraph's Con Coughlin is a disgrace

In his piece published on the Telegraph Blog today, When the next bomb goes off in London, blame the judges, Con Coughlin has, to my mind, produced the most crass and unpleasant piece of demagoguery hosted by the modern broadsheet press (though you should feel free to make your own nominations in the comments).

The Court of Appeal today held today that details of what our own security services knew about a foreign power torturing a British citizen should not be kept secret, a decision Big Brother Watch welcomes. Writing about the decision, Coughlin begins,

Why don’t our judges just come clean and sign up with the Taliban?

And it goes downhill from there.

Every time they are asked to choose between the defence of the realm, or upholding the rights of some Islamic militant who claims his human rights have been violated, the judges invariably find in favour of the latter. 

Sometimes, Con, innocent people find themselves in courts. Or perhaps this is a concept entirely alien to your point-and-condemn worldview. What sort of society do you think we're defending? I want us to defend a society in which we believe in innocence until proven guilty, freedom of speech, even for those with whom we disagree, and, perhaps controversially to your mind, not torturing people. What do you want?

Whether it is holding suspected terrorists so that thorough investigations of their activities can be carried out,

In the form used in the UK, "holding" is sometimes lengthy imprisonment without trial and sometimes (viz control orders) without even the prospect of trial.

or pandering to civil rights campaigners such as the odious Clive Stafford-Smith, the judical establishment never misses an opportunity to undermine the government’s efforts to protect us from harm.

Perhaps it’s because me lerned friends are too grand to travel by public transport, but the only reason I can think of to explain their egregious behaviour is that they somehow feel immune from the threat posed by Islamist terror groups.

Ignoring the lerned typo, I point out that judges are hardly immune from terror threats. The IRA bombed the Old Bailey.

Even when the security services have raised the current terror threat level to “severe”, the judges are more interested in bending over backwards to accommodate deeply unsympathetic characters like Binyam Mohamed than paying proper attention to the nation’s security needs.

Should the law change because our security agencies shift the scareometer from "black" to "black special"? I don't think so. During the time of the IRA, which objectively posed a much greater threat to us (and often tragically delivered on that threat) we did not allow our way of life to be changed. When we did - from removing bins on Oxford Street to Diplock courts - the changes were far smaller and more robustly debated than presently, as we change things in the face of a smaller threat, perhaps because we lived in a society more intellectually committed to the values of liberty and freedom than today. When we did make those less significant changes in the face of the Republican terrorist threat, it was wrong. Consider that in comparison with the enormous changes wrongly wrought post-9/11, largely unchallenged by our legal system, and then look at the crass odium poured on the heads of our judges here by someone who presumably wants no fetters at all on what the security services can do. This isn't a debate about a man's right to benefits or protection from deportation or freedom from phone tapping, for pity's sakes - it's about not being complicit in torture.

That is what we're concerned with here. The judgment concluded that Binyam Mohamed had been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities" - that is to say, a British citizen was tortured, by our allies. Is that something we should not know?

Mohamed's treatment was first discussed in a High Court judgment last year, which was redacted after an appeal by David Miliband. That judgment concluded: “We regret to have to conclude that the reports provided to the SyS [Security Service] made clear to anyone reading them that BM [Binyam Mohamed] was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment. The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972 [in the UN convention on torture]."

Poor Binyam claims he was tortured after he was caught “back-packing” in Afghanistan. Of course no one in the judiciary pays the slightest bit of notice when Binyam insists that he had travelled to Afghanistan simply to help out with some charity work, rather than, as our intelligence and security services suspect, to assist the Taliban and al-Qaeda with their plots to blow up the West. They are only interested that, once he had been safely removed from the battlefield, his human rights might somehow have been violated.

For these purposes, I don't care if he was serving with the Taliban. That service against our country would mean many things, including rendering him a legitimate target for warfare in the theatre of war, but it does not render him a legitimate target for torture, because nobody is. There are certain things that no civilised state should do, no matter how severe the provocation. Torture is one of them. It is the lot of free societies to fight with one hand tied behind our backs against the thugs who oppose our values. These are the values which make us different from them and giving them up grants them victory even as you torture them. For this reason, if we caught him we shouldn't even torture someone like Osama Bin Laden, let alone someone released without charge after several years of imprisonment.

The document that has now been released by the Foreign Office relates that Binyam was subjected to sleep deprivation, rather than the more lurid claims his lawyers have made about him having his testicles slashed with razors.  Poor diddums. When I travel to Afghanistan with the Army we live on three hours sleep a night, but no one complains about sleep deprivation. We just get on with it.

I wonder if anyone reading this can see a distinction between these two things? The former is a form of aggressive interrogation wrongly imposed over time on someone imprisoned who ought to receive humane treatment. The latter is a brave sacrifice made by heroes who volunteer to serve, in the course of their duty. At least, it is when the soldiers do it. For his part, Couglin's eliding of his journalistic role with that of soldiers reads as if he needs professional help. 

But there is a serious point to today’s disgraceful ruling by the High Court. Our national security depends heavily on our intelligence-sharing cooperation with the U.S., and it is thanks to the intel provided by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies that we have managed to avoid a repeat of the July 7 bombings. But if the Americans, alarmed at the willingness of our judges to humiliate them in public, decide to scale down the level of cooperation, our national security will undoubtedly be placed in jeopardy.

It is not "humiliating" anyone to say that torture is wrong. But in any case the decision was not, in fact, made because the court had a commitment to liberty, freedom of information and free speech - would that it it had been; rather, as Coughlin's own newspaper appreciates, the court reached the conclusion that the information should not be kept secret in the UK because it had already been published in the USA. Didn't he even inform himself of the barest facts of the case before pouring his chest-beating bile from his festering bucket into his PC?

Coughlin ends,

Certainly, if another al-Qaeda bomb goes off in London, the judges will be as much to blame as Osama bin Laden.

Which I think is probably the most stupid sentence I've seen in print, including the internet. And that's a winner emerging from a pretty big field.