Chatham House Rules OK !

Hush, hush ! Whisper who dares. A political party is having a real debate about a life and death issue. I am, of course, referring to the Liberal Democrats who are discussing the future of Trident. Of course, we don't really want anyone to know, which may explain why all previous publicity about the Spring Conference in Harrogate talks about the major debate on Crime and one or two other matters. Oh and yes, there's also a debate on Trident. It does get a mention in the small print.

In an attempt to raise both the level and volume of debate, I have published some articles. In one of these, I quoted some of the very thin arguments advanced by members of the party's Federal Policy Committee. So far, so good. But I committed the unforgivable sin of identifying the mouths from which such wisdom gushed. If you don't know, the Chatham House Rule permits the repetition of what is spoken but forbids the identification of the speaker. If you don't know, and I didn't, this rule applies to that committee. It is perfectably understandable why anyone uttering such mindswill* as I heard at the committee would not want it repeated. What I cannot understand is the degree of indignation not to say bile, not to stay baseless slander which has bubbled, transpired and seeped from the committee.

The Chatham House Rule is a good rule and when I know it applies (e.g. at Chatham House) I respect it. I am sorry that I broke a rule which I didn't know applied. But I am much, much sorrier that there are still people in the Liberal Democrats who think that Britain still needs to waste a fortune threatening the rest of the world with weapons of mass destruction.

*"Mindswill : an unintentional neologism coined by misprint and describing arguments of no value.

Snuggery snugged

Remember snuggery - the bureaucratic brandishing of health-and-safety to banish all risk. Well here's a healthy dose of schadenfreude. A professional snugger has been snugged.

Edward Hutcheson, a health and safety expert, has been banned from driving after he was caught shaving as he overtook a line of rush hour traffic at 70mph on the A9 near Auchterarder. He was seen leaning forward to look in his rear view mirror as he used an electric shaver. He had two excuses. (1) He was late for a first aid course. (2) He had been leaning across the car at an awkward angle so he could see past a dozen mannequins he had stored in the back of his car. But Perth Sheriff Court is cut from harder granite and they banned him for six months and fined him £300. As Fife Robertson would undoubtedly have said, the people of Auchterarder will sleep safe in their beds tonight.

Normal service will be resumed...

I have had some messages complaining that I'm not blogging enough. No, really. I have two excuses, no three, no... Amongst my excuses are: tax return, gout and trying to persuade the Liberal Democrats to make up their minds about Trident. Blair says we need it (presumably to continue with our role as Deputy Dawg to Marshall Bush), Cameron says he agrees (just to show that he's also a tough guy and doesn't just go around on a bike hugging hoodies) and Ming and the Liberal Democrats respond with a resounding, "Er...wait and see". I say decide NOW not to replace Trident. Despite the fact that it is very difficult to find speakers who actually want to defend Trident, it is turning out to be very hard work to push the party off the fence. A few short arguments follow in the next post. If you want more, go to : http://www.nonewtrident.org.uk/

Trident: Seven arguments and a comment or two

The ethical argument

"What is this ethical argument that everyone talks about ?"
Michael Moore, LD Foreign Affairs Spokesman

No ethical basis exists for the use of nuclear weapons which would kill millions of innocent civilians. The ethical argument for keeping nukes is the belief that their existence deters others from using theirs. This argument depends upon a radical contradiction: we would never use nukes but our enemies must believe that we might.

The environmental argument

“Protection of our environment is a cause which should be close to every Liberal Democrat heart. Urgent action on climate change is about the human rights of future generations; it is about their right to live in a habitable planet. We must not fail them.” Ming Campbell, 16/06/06

The use of nukes would have disastrous and persistent consequences for the environment, well beyond the lifetimes of the antagonists and over a wider area than their own part of the planet. By the way, nukes are not the answer to climate change or its consequences.(This may seem self-evident but the Liberal Democrat background paper includes the following statement as part of the argument for not deciding about Trident yet: "We can be fairly certain that climate change will have serious consequences, possibly leading to greater potential for conflict, as expanding populations have to manage with shrinking fertile territory.")

The non-proliferation argument
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a bargain between Nuclear-Weapon States (NWS), who promise to negotiate in good faith to get rid of nukes, and Non-Nuclear Weapon States, who promise in return not to develop them. Hans Blix and Kofi Annan have warned that NWS, like the UK and USA, are not keeping their side of the bargain. If safe countries like the UK keep nukes, what can we say to unsafe ones, like Iran, who want them ? It’s time to end the hypocritical stance “Do as I say, not as I do”.

The military/strategic argument
Trident cannot be used for war-fighting. Nukes have not kept UK and its territories free from attack nor has lack of nukes exposed others to attack. Many senior soldiers and diplomats now oppose Trident. One retired general summarised Trident as: “useless, expensive and dangerous”. The defence of the UK actually requires more and better equipped infantry and air and naval transport. Trident is a bad use of scarce resources.

The independence argument
Trident is dependent on US co-operation; the US provides us with nuclear weapon designs and the missiles are stored and serviced in the US. This dependence influences UK governments to follow US foreign policy to the detriment of our country’s true interests and our relationships with the rest of Europe and the Middle East.

The insurance argument
Britain is more secure from direct threat from foreign states than at any time in history. If Trident is insurance against unantici­pated threats to national survival, we are paying a high premium against a highly unlikely risk. That the future is always uncertain can be used to justify the development of any weapons system (nuclear, biological or chemical or anything else) by any country.

The financial argument
New submarines would cost £20bn (capital), £75bn (capital and running costs). Instead, we should use the money to strengthen our overstretched forces and equip them properly. Taking a wider look at our country’s security we could spend more fighting against famine, disease, poverty and environmental disaster.

http://www.nonewtrident.org.uk/

Nonsense on stilts: Devout vs Out

Finally it’s happened – an actual debate in the cabinet. Just when I was certain that the British Cabinet had finally joined what Bagehot was pleased to call “the dignified part of the constitution” , they sit down and have a full-scale argument. What was the issue that provoked genuine debate and a short return to the habits of democracy amongst our lords and masters, ladies and mistresses ? Was it perhaps Trident ? Was it the National Health Service ? No, of course not. This unexpected resurgence of rhetoric and reason was reserved for that vital issue of our times: “Should Roman Catholic Adoption Agencies be forced to provide services to gay couples ?”

Sorry, did I say “rhetoric and reason” ? Just rhetoric and at the heart of it, the rigmarole of rights, the rights of gay people not to suffer discrimination and the rights of religious people to have their beliefs respected. Jeremy Bentham held that all talk of rights is nonsense, but that talk of natural rights was nonsense upon stilts. I will not go so far, but I agree with him about natural rights. Rights do not come from nature or God or DNA. Rights are created by man, sitting in assemblies and congresses, conventions and courts. They are legal matters and nothing is less natural than the law. When we add the word “human” to rights, we are only asserting that we think that all human beings should have the legal protection that some of us enjoy.

No declaration or statute that I am aware of gives any human being the right to adopt a child, nor should it. Adopting a child is a privilege, not a right. The child has rights under British law, which parents and anyone acting in loco parentis must respect. To protect those rights, it is sensible to legislate for minimum standards in the conduct of adoption agencies. It is not sensible to regard the activity of adoption agencies as a consumer service like catering or interior decorating, to be regulated in the same way. If we must use the commercial metaphor, the agency’s client is the child not the parent.

On the other side of the argument, why should we treat religious beliefs as in any way superior to other beliefs ? If I as an atheist think that bringing up children to believe in supernatural entities without evidence of their existence (and indeed in the face of the evidence of pain in the world) is wrong and if I decide to set up an adoption agency which will not help religious parents, should I be stopped ? The beliefs of some Christians that lead them to oppose gay parenting are of no greater significance than my non-religious beliefs.

By escalating differences of opinion about parenting and sexual orientation into a conflict of rights, we are only making matters worse. As long as adoption agencies protect children, they should be free to apply their beliefs (religious or not) in selecting parents. So why has the Blair government got its knickers in such a twist ? Money. Money and Law. Apparently the Roman Catholic Agencies receive state funding. The deep-seated authoritarianism that lurks only just below the surface of New Labour has erupted again. The state pays so the state will decide the rules. Not completely unreasonable, but why as always reach for the statute book ? If the government feels the need, as it undoubtedly does, to micro-manage all public expenditure including grants to adoption agencies, they can attach compliance conditions to the grants. Is this different from changing the law ? Yes. It respects the vital difference between public and private, vital to any Liberal that is. Change the law and you change how every agency, private or public, can operate. Change compliance conditions on state grants and you leave private agencies without state funding free to have a different approach.

And wouldn’t it be nice if this oh-so-self-righteous cabal of ministers, who parade their concern for gay would-be fathers and mothers, would do something for actual divorced fathers who get to see their children once a fortnight if they are lucky and sometimes not at all ?

Snuggery 2: light a small candle

Oh dear ! The Rev, Snuggs would be proud of this one. Children will not be allowed to hold candles at Christingle services, because there might be accidents. Of course, we can't allow for the possibility that like the generations before them they might learn that fire is a good servant but a bad master. That would involve two things we must never do - learn by experience and pass on the wisdom of the past. Snuff it out, says Snuggs.

Malo periculosam libertatem quam tranquilem servitutidinem

Dog Latin, quoted by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in a footnote to The Social Contract as the motto of the Margrave of Posnania (whoever he was). I prefer a dangerous liberty to a tranquil slavery - should be the motto of the Manifesto Club http://www.manifestoclub.com/ . These people have come together to sound the gong for liberty. I have just read their manifesto and it's excellent. They say they have no political affiliation but their manifesto reads like pure Liberalism, unlike shamefully the various and voluminous vacillations of the Liberal Democrats.

We regret any inconvenience caused

The Chief Constable of Gloucestershire is clearly a fan of the Quandary Phase of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Arthur Dent treks miles to see God's final message to his creation, which turns out to be - you guessed it - "We regret any inconvenience caused." Marvin the paranoid android wasn't impressed. Nor was I when the Glos Top Cop responded thus to the House of Lords decision that holding 120 anti-Iraq war protestors on coaches near RAF Fairford breached their right to protest peacefully (Please note unsplit infinitive).

You may remember that the police turned the coaches around and sent them back to London. The protestors were not allowed to disembark even to relieve themselves.

The Chief Constable gave a non-apology apology, saying that his officers acted in good faith, on intelligence received - perhaps they expected the protestors to become violent in 45 minutes !
He also pointed out that other courts (i.e. High Court, Court of Appeal) had reached the opposite conclusion to the Lords. I suppose next time a Gloucestershire bobby is in trouble with the Chief Constable, he can argue that he acted in good faith and his sergeant and his inspector agreed with him.

Liberals need fathers: a plea for shared parenting

An open letter to the Liberal Democrat spokesman on Work and Pensions
on the government's white paper on child support

I still believe that the fundamental flaw in the current system, which the proposed reforms do little or nothing to address, is the complete absence of any idea of shared parenting.

The usual pattern for a newly divorced father is that he loses his property and his daily contact with his children. He is then told that he will be allowed to see them once a fortnight, unless his ex-wife blocks contact in which case he faces a long, expensive and usually futile chase through the courts. Then comes the coup de grace. Nothing that he spends on his children in future will count as child support. All that will count is the money which he pays directly to his ex-wife or via the CSA (or its successor). There will of course be no check on how the ex-wife spends the money. If when he gets to see his children they turn up inadequately clothed or underfed, any money he spends to clothe or feed them will not count, unless they spend at least 100 nights a year with him (unlikely given standard contact arrangements). If he pays himself for a school trip or books or anything, it will not count. Please excuse the gender-specific language but it describes the vast majority of cases.

The frequently quoted figures of fathers owing child support do not only refer to the feckless and irresponsible but also to all those fathers whose support for their children does not count. In my own case, my limited income forces me to choose between actual support for my children and the payment of notional and disputed arrears of assessed child support. The CSA acknowledges my choice but pursues me for money which I believe I should not have to pay. At present I can challenge their assessments, their mysterious and opaque calculations and their undisclosed errors. The measures proposed in the White Paper would allow the new agency to determine the level of assessment and to enforce it without any recourse to the courts. The new agency may be able to remove passports and driving licences or impose curfews (enforceable by tagging ?) . Will these powers also not require a court hearing ? These sanctions exceed those applied to minor criminals, who at least have the luxury of a trial. All these sanctions can be easily applied to fathers who remain in contact with their children. It will be much harder to apply them to fathers who have abandoned all such contact, of whom we can expect there will therefore be many more.

I appreciate that you and most MPs will be primarily concerned with enforcement. I maintain than effective compliance depends upon fair and reasonable assessment. The party, under the guidance of Annette Brookes, has already rejected the principle of shared parenting in residence and contact arrangements (both in parliament and at conference). If we only focus on enforcement of child support paid to the mother, we will confirm that Liberal Democrats see the role of fathers only as providing money, without any guarantee that it is spent on the children. Please give consideration to a model which gives fathers a full share in the care of their children, including spending money directly on them.

Mingismo - a neologism

Watching Blair and Cameron at the dispatch box yesterday, the word machismo came to mind. What then to describe Ming Campbell's fence-sitting, a word to describe sounding firm whilst not actually dealing with the substantial arguments on either side of the argument, you know, running with the fox and hunting with the hounds, that sort of thing.

Ah yes ! Mingismo

If this is New Liberalism, give me the old kind any day.

Run out or stumped ? Trident and Ashes

What a dreadful week !

On Monday, Tony Blair announces that he wants to spend £20m (Do I hear 30 ? Do I hear 35 ?) and Ming Campbell comes up with the Liberal Democrat Housemaid's Baby (more later). On Tuesday England throws away a test match.

The arguments about Trident are not as complex as they appear. For once I agree with Tony Blair - in the end it comes down to political judgement - in his speech on Monday. Killing millions of innocent civilians is wrong. Poisoning the environment for generations is wrong. Using nuclear weapons is wrong. Saying that you will keep but never use them but the enemy must believe you might is either a lie or not a deterrent; it's a balmy contradiction. Saying Trident is independent when it depends upon American technology and goodwill and cannot be maintained for more than 18 months without their co-operation is a lie. Saying we need it to protect ourselves from the unknown and the unlikely whilst keeping our armed forces overstretched and under-equipped is like insuring your house for very high premiums against a tsunami in Chard, whilst not locking the door or repairing the fence (which I need to do).

Ming's response was rightly jeered in the Commons as sitting on the fence. I prefer the old Punch cartoon of the housemaid who is going to be sacked for having a baby and says, "But it's a very small baby !" It's right that there's no need to make a decision yet but postponing it until 2014 won't change the arguments. The future will still be uncertain and the use of nuclear weapons will still be wrong.

And England will still have lost the Ashes.

Men ( and women ) of straw

What is it about the National Union of Students that it turns out such awful presidents ? Consider: Jack Straw, Charles Clarke, David Aaronavich, Sue Slipman, Lorna Fitzgibbons (spellings are all provisional) or perhaps you'd rather not.

We all have our cross to bear, or even bare

As a lifelong convinced and devout atheist, I will defend to the death the right of people whom Richard Dawkins calls deluded, i.e. believers, to wear what they like in private and at work, if it doesn't stop them from doing their jobs. I imagine, for example, that a Sikh's headgear makes it difficult to head a ball in football or to model new hairstyles or to wear a fighter-pilot's helmet, but otherwise I can see no problem. Certainly British Airways are making utter fools of themselves by demanding that a stewardess does not wear a cross or at least bare a cross (they say it's all right if you can't see it !)

Liberalism has its roots in freedom of religious belief and worship. Like many Liberals I would prefer a separation of church and state, but the French who don't understand liberalism, have taken separation to mean that children cannot wear religious symbols at school. This idea has surprisingly only occurred to them since large numbers of Muslim children started attending French state schools. Before that, the Ministere de l'Education hadn't notice dthat crosses were religious symbols.

Jack Straw's offence is worse, far worse. He objects to Muslim women wearing the Hijab when they come to his surgery. He said it made him uncomfortable. Liberal MP Jo Swinson's response was spot on. She said it was her job to make her constituents comfortable when they bring their problems to her.

Meanwhile I defy any dirigist, Blairite or Gaullist, attempt to prevent me wearing my holey dressing-gown during my devotions between 10.00 and 11.15 am on Sunday morning.

I'm glad you asked me that question

I have just heard Labour MP Derek Wyatt on Radio 4's PM. Asked if politicians should be concerned that one man (Rupert Murdoch or anyone) could control Sky, ITV and ITN as well as several British newspapers, Wyatt replied, "That's a hard question". Well here's a harder one. Why has that species of invertebrates known as the Parliamentary Labour Party supported a government so totally in thrall to Murdoch and failed to legislate to prevent concentration of media ownership ? Wyatt also argued that it was perfectly reasonable for Blair and Brown to see Murdoch whenever he granted them an audience. He defended the Murdoch press, saying that it was neutral. His definition of neutrality was that the Murdoch press did not criticise Brown or Blair. This is some new meaning of the word neutral I had not come across before.

What, no gruntles ?

I had always imagined that gruntles were something that no gentleman should be without, possibly an obscure component of mediaeval armour like the bit covering the elbows or perhaps something to put on your escutcheon.

Imagine then my disappointment on looking up disgruntled in my Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (The photographically reduced one which needs a magnifying glass).

Disgruntle:
v trans To put into sulky dissatisfaction or ill-humour: to chagrin, disgust. (from DIS + GRUNTLE)
Gruntle:
sb 1. The snout of a pig, or other animal 2. A little grunt
v 1. To utter a little or a low grunt 2. To grumble, murmur, complain

Of course disgruntled may mean having had your snout or your little grunt removed, but I suspect it's a false negative meaning induced to grunt, grumble, murmur or complain.

All in all, I prefer my imagined derivation.

A little learning

If you haven't already, go out now and buy Conn and Hal Iggulden's "The Dangerous Book for Boys". It's like a selection of the best articles from all the Eagle Annuals, with the occasional contemporary comment. It contains all the information that the national curriculum denies to our children: The Laws of Cricket, Grammar, Knots, how to build a treehouse or make a bow and arrow or hunt and cook a rabbit, Morse Code, other codes and ciphers, secret ink, history including Thermopylae, Hastings,Waterloo, Balaclava, Nelson, Scott, coin tricks, dog tricks, astronomy, marbles, common British trees, to name but a few. Eat your heart out Margaret Hodge and the rest of Blairite blather, bullshit, balderdash and bollocks !

Two quotations from the book:

Girls:
You may already have noticed that girls are quite different from you... as a general rule, girls do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do.

The British Empire:
[The idea of liberty] ... remains the most distinctive feature of the Empire... I do not mean to claim that all British Imperialists were liberals: some were very far from it. But what is striking about the history of the Empire is that whenever the British were behaving despotically , there was almost always a liberal critique of that behaviour from within British society". Macaulay and Mill, you are not forgotten.

You can keep a good fascist down

As I watched a DVD of Goodnight Sweetheart, in which Gary Sparrow time-travels between the 1980s and the Second World War, the credits rolled passed and the name of the costume-designer caught my eye - Diana Moseley ! Surely, they hadn't asked Oswald Mosley's widow and Mitford sister Diana to design the costumes. Looking back on the series, I could recall no-one dressed in a black shirt. In any case she spent most of the war interned, so her knowledge of current fashions would have been limited. Nevertheless, I looked forward to posting "You can't keep a good fascist down" until I checked. If unlike me and Dr.Watson who merely see, you have followed Sherlock Holmes' practice and observed, you will already have spotted that the British fascist couple had no "e" in the middle unlike costume designer Moseley, who as far as I know has no fascist tendencies.

Snuggery 1: Huggery

I owe the term snuggery to my old friend Jonathan Calder. Some time ago he drew attention to the activities and excuses of the Rev Snuggs who cut down a tree in the churchyard because (a) elderly parishioners might trip over the roots, (b) children might climb and fall out of it and (c) paedophiles might hide in it. This post is snuggery 1 because I fear there will be more.

The latest candidate for a snuggery award is headmaster John Saunders of Warneford School, Highworth, Wiltshire who told his pupils they were not allowed to kiss, hold hands or hug. Does this come under health and safety or moral education ? Does it cover purely sexual behaviour or does it include comfort and compassion, congratulation and condolence ? At my son's college there are rules for pupils up to 18 and others for 18 plus. My son is 17 and was annoyed (but not at all inhibited) by the rule that no sexual activity is permitted anywhere on the premises for under-18s. We checked the rules for 18 plus and found no such restriction.

Ancient Greek lavatories

Oh dear ! The psychologists flushed with enthusiasm have , at their convenience, added to the immense chain of modern phobias. They have invented a new one, a fear of entering public toilets and of course it needs a new word. With devastating originality they have coined (for not spending a penny) the name toiletophobia. Clearly they have taken the advice I once saw in the lavatory at Brussels airport to "eschew obfuscation". It's also the wrong term since the poor cross-legged toiletophobes do not fear lavatories in general but only public ones. Perhaps cottage-o-phobia would answer.

It occurred to me that there should be an appropriate ancient Greek stem to attach to phobia. Modern Greeks, not having the benefit of the advice of Nancy Mitford, use a form of the French toilette. Online ancient Greek dictionaries are no help, usually being based on the New Testament. Neither there nor in Homer is there mention of anything which translates as toilet or lavatory. If there is, the lexicographers are shy and do not mention it. I would be grateful if any chance blog reader can supply the ancient Greek for lavatory or better still public lavatory if the Attic world ever saw such a thing.

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