Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesSix lessons from the student riots
Posted on December 10, 2010In the aftermath of the tuition fees vote, what are the lessons we can learn now that the blood has been mopped up, the flares have sputtered out and the Ayes and Noes have been counted?
1) It was indeed a stupid idea to leave the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree in place during a pyromaniac riot. As I warned yesterday, the poor old tree did get set on fire.
2) Police communication still leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. The reputation of the police has been shielded somewhat by the appalling behaviour of the rioters they are fighting against. Their failure to communicate why they employ particular tactics, such as cavalry charges or pulling individuals from the crowd, is a serious problem that stirs up future trouble. While the first student riot began peacefully and kicked off later, apparently yesterday’s march saw protesters attacking the police from the get-go – they need to try to defuse that tension, not fuel it through further confusion.
3) The rioters themselves don’t really know what their movement is. I don’t buy this NUS line that the troublemakers are all Socialist Worker infiltrators. The entire SWP membership could fit into a camper van with room to spare, while the rioters yesterday filled Parliament square to the brim. Plenty of those interviewed at the protests have indeed been students or at college. However, the mob is a confused one.
Some claim to be anarchists, but are campaigning for more state power. Others claim to be socialists, but spend their time destroying public property. Others are just “Gap Yah” kids who are doing what everyone else is doing because it’s fun (though take it from me, being kettled is mostly boring). They have a broad anti-cuts dogma, but there is little to no coherence so far.
4) The Government has failed to communicate its key messages. The amount of misinformation and misunderstanding about the fees proposals is massive. Even protesters interviewed in the kettle yesterday were largely unaware of the fact that no-one will pay anything back until they earn £21,000 a year, for example. The battle to discuss these as graduate fees rather than student fees was lost early on, too.
The launch of the Facts on Fees site on Wednesday showed that Ministers belatedly realised and acknowledged all this, but by then it was far too late. For many political campaigns the battle is fought in terms of perceptions with language as the weapon – just having a good policy is not enough to win.
5) Violence gets you noticed but it doesn’t get you listened to. The riots have certainly made headlines, and there are plenty of good-looking photos from each event, but ultimately MPs still voted in favour of the plans.
I feel sorry for those students who did the right thing and actually argued with their brains rather than their fists. Those debating with MPs in central lobby were contaminated by the knuckleheads out attacking the Cenotaph on Whitehall through no fault of their own. In fact, I know that some MPs shifted from No to abstention or from abstention to Yes because they actively did not want to be seen to be giving in to thugs. At minimum violence is irrelevant, and at most it is totally discrediting to their case.
6) This is war. These riots have set a precedent – we can expect more and more protests to turn out this way in future. The half-baked ideology of “No cuts to anything” that many of those in attendance were espousing gives an incredibly wide range of topics to fight on, and they clearly have acquired a taste for violence and arson. I wish that wasn’t the case, although strategically it would be stupid not to acknowledge that it’s quite helpful to have the Left building themselves such an unpleasant reputation. There will be more blood and fire in the next few years of spending cuts – but the worse the deficit deniers behave, the stronger and more dedicated to pushing ahead the Government must become.
How Harriet Harman gave birth to Frankie Boyle
Posted on November 04, 2010Last night I went to see Frankie Boyle at the Hammersmith Apollo. Depending on your tastes it was everything you might hope for, or everything you’d never want to hear – offensive, contrarian, shock-a-minute stuff. In short, hilarious.
It got me thinking about exactly what has spawned the recent boom in stand-up megastars. Most of those who have become hugely successful – Boyle, Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard, Al Murray – are distinguished by being as offensive as they are clever.
They plumb every controversial issue you could imagine, giving audiences a double hit of clever humour combined with an “I can’t believe he said that” shock factor.
Why has this happened? So far as I can see, it’s a classic case of supply and demand.
I don’t mean there’s a demand for actual racism or sexism – happily that has largely died out in the last couple of decades. However, there is a demand for freedom of speech and thought, and there will always be demand for comedy.
The prurience of politically correct tyranny, first in cultural discourse and now even in our criminal law, restricted the supply of free speech by threatening disgrace and conviction on anyone who dared say something un-PC. At the same time as they restricted supply, they managed to encourage demand by bringing out the natural British urge to give bossy authority a poke in the eye at any opportunity.
Those PC crusaders who forced through changes in the law and drummed people out of jobs have shot themselves in the foot by going too far. They have become so puritanical that they have provoked a popular backlash, like Cromwell’s attempt to ban Christmas celebrations. Neither comedians like Frankie Boyle nor their audiences are racist or sexist, but there is now a cachet, a frisson about someone saying what is supposedly unsayable.
I’m sure that – had she been there – Harriet Harman would have walked out of last night’s gig within about 17 seconds. How it must gall her that as a result of her work, someone like Frankie Boyle makes millions from saying to eager audiences all of things that she wants banned.
I’ll be buying tickets again, and I hope you will too – when you’re rolling in the aisles, revel in the feeling that Harriet is out there, somewhere, supping on the bitter broth of failure.
Prof David Nutt – losing friends, fast
Posted on November 01, 2010When Prof David Nutt took his stand against the previous Government over the fair, scientific assessment of harm caused by different drugs he was demonised and lionised in equal measure.
On the demonising side were the usual holier-than-thou puritans who condemned him for pointing out that the risks involved in taking ecstasy are little different statistically from those involved in horse-riding. The National Drug Prevention Alliance even accused him of being on a “personal crusade” to legalise drugs.
On the lionising side were those of the libertarian view that the current prohibition approach to drugs simply doesn’t work – that in the war on drugs, drugs are clearly winning. To them, he was providing a breath of fresh, enlightened air into the prohibition debate.
It now appears that both sides were wrong about Prof Nutt’s aims and worldview.
His new Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs has released a report in the Lancet assessing drugs based on the harm to users and the harm to wider society. They conclude that “alcohol is more harmful than heroin”, and argue that this justifies the current nanny state attacks on the consumption of booze.
I’m not going to dispute his methodology, because the reason he (rightly) argued with the old Government was that they tried to put blind assumption over scientific fact. Let’s assume the weighting he has given to numerous social factors is true – I leave it to those who are cleverer than me to test that.
What I am going to argue is that this marks Prof Nutt out as a bitter disappointment to those who praised him at the time of his resignation. Far from being a radical reformer making the sensible case for a change in our prohibitive and punitive approach to banned substances, he seems to actually be a rather prurient figure prescribing more of the same – and extending it to alcohol.
Instead of saying “many drugs are less damaging than alcohol”, his message is “alcohol is even more damaging than evil drugs”. The conclusion appears to be “hammer drinkers like we hammer druggies”.
This is unwise in terms of public policy, but also in terms of politics. Not only does he propose the extension rather than reduction of a failed policy, but having annoyed his fellow puritans last year he is now alienating the libertarians who spoke up for him at the time. Put simply, he is also losing friends – fast.
NB For an excellent dissection of Prof Nutt’s nuts views on booze see the Filthy Smoker’s post over at the Devil’s Knife.
The least we can do for Sgt Matthew Telford
Posted on September 07, 2010
This is Sgt Matthew Telford, of the Grenadier Guards. A soldier in the British Army since 1991, he eventually gave his life for his country in November 2009 when he was murdered along with four of his comrades by a rogue Afghan Police officer.
The fulsome praise for Sgt Telford from others who worked with him are a testament to his ability and loyalty to his country and his family.
When he and his comrades were killed, then Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said:
“They were men of courage who died building security in Afghanistan and protecting people in the UK from terrorism. My deepest sympathies and condolences lie with their grieving families, friends, and all those who served alongside them, who will feel the pain of loss most intensely. They are in all our thoughts.”
The Government’s sympathies and thoughts may have been with Sgt Telford’s bereaved wife and sons, but that seems to be where the goodwill ended.
Under the current rules for Army pensions, his family are only entitled to a Corporal’s pension because he had served less than 12 months as a Sergeant. He stepped up to the plate to do that job when his country asked him to, but when it claimed his life his country dodged its responsibilities and downgraded him to a Corporal again.
I understand why this rule is in place – it prevents people getting a promotion then leaving the Army straight afterwards, or being given a deliberate promotion just before retirement in order to cash in. However, surely it could be waived for those who are killed on active service?
Sgt Matthew Telford gave 18 years’ service to his nation, and eventually gave everything he had in that service. Surely giving his wife and sons the pension commensurate to his rank is the very least the nation could do in return?
Richard Dawkins: an embarrassment to atheists
Posted on August 24, 2010I was brought up in a Christian household. Baptised a Methodist and confirmed an Anglican, I ended up as head chorister at Newcastle Cathedral.
It was a good upbringing – and my love of church music lingers on. But I’m now an atheist. The church didn’t do anything to offend me, or turn me away, I simply feel that the facts as they are available to me do not justify the existence of a God or the concept of a creator.
When Richard Dawkins records his deliberately contrarian, snarling TV trailers, he probably feels all fuzzy inside knowing that he’s offended some religious people. What he doesn’t seem to factor in is how much he drives me as an atheist, and many others like me, round the bend.
Once a respectable scientist producing interesting and informative books about evolution, somewhere along the way Dawkins seems to have decided that seeing as the original Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, he may as well don the loincloth himself.
His chosen role in the public eye is as a self-appointed leader of atheists – the supreme irony of portraying oneself as the Pope of non-religion would be hilarious if it wasn’t clearly so earnest and conceited.
Every time he speaks out in public it is not to communicate the logic of his position so much as to deride and provoke others. Take his latest Channel 4 trailer, for example – it is ridiculous to suggest that religion is the source of all evil, the only thing which “makes good people do bad things”.
I hate, hate, hate the fact that this pompous, unpleasant, hectoring bully attaches his name ubiquitously to the belief that I happen to hold. Sometimes, it’s almost enough to make me want to change back to believing in God – half to escape association with him, and half just to spite him.
Whilst wrapping himself in the banner of reason and humanity, he’s become a frothing-at-the-mouth, bigoted zealot who is an embarrassment to his cause. He has more in common with the medieval people who flayed themselves and burned innocent people at the stake in the name of Christ than he does with the vast majority of casual, polite atheists in modern Britain.
Is there a worse posterboy for any movement in Britain than Richard Dawkins?
India is the future, not Europe
Posted on August 02, 2010The size and seniority of the British Government delegation sent to India shows that Westminster is at last waking up to the thing that everyone else knows – India is the great economic hope for the 21st Century.
With a rapidly expanding economy, a vast population and a well-functioning, liberal democracy, it is essential that we tap into India’s growing wealth.
The focus on the Old World, so typified by the British political class’ obsession with European integration, is worse than irrelevant, it is becoming dangerous. By bricking ourselves up in a protectionist Fortress Europe, we send the insulting signal that we don’t want to buy Indian goods, and we don’t want them to buy our products.
It’s quite encouraging that the Coalition are making the right noises – with David Cameron calling for trade barriers to be dropped and even Vince Cable saying:
There is no future for Britain looking inward and backward, or being trapped in a Eurocentric world. Our country must be open for global business.
This is a welcome change in rhetoric, particularly to hear a Liberal Democrat acknowledge the foolishness of trying to be little-Europeaners when Europe is falling behind the rest of the world. But when will it be matched by a change in action?
Britain has given up control of her own trade policy. Even though David Cameron and Vince Cable, the PM and Business Secretary, recognise that our future must lie in free trade with India, the decision is out of their hands.
Instead of being able to simply go ahead and drop our trade barriers to India – bilaterally or even unilaterally – they have to sit on their hands and wait for the EU to strike a deal that allows the corrosive regime of protectionism and subsidies in all sorts of industries to continue.
We have waited through four years of moribund EU-India negotiations – how much longer must we wait to do what we could easily simply do tomorrow if we controlled our own trade policy?
The argument for “pooling” sovereignty in the EU is supposedly that it gives us more clout – and Vince Cable amongst others has peddled the myth that we would be ignored if we negotiated alone. But Britain, not the EU, is ideally placed to deal with India; we share so many cultural, liguistic and even legal ties with them that we should be natural partners.
Frankly, it is shameful that while we wait on negotiators who never have to answer to the people for the harm their delays do to our economic prospects, other, smaller and more nimble economies like Canada have already taken advantage of those same links to get their share of the Indian dream.
If we aren’t careful we will find ourselves in a stagnant economic backwater where instead of musing on the possibility of free trade with India, we will be begging them to sign on any terms.
David Cameron and Vince Cable are right – it is time for free trade with India, and the abandonment of the “eurocentric” obsession. But that is all talk unless they actually do something about it.
Inflation ruins lives
Posted on July 21, 2010Liberal Conspiracy can be the home of some pretty stupid ideas, but today they have surpassed themselves.
They start innocuously, with a fairly interesting observation that the Coalition’s shift away from index-linked National Savings certificates could be part of a tactic to inflate away Britain’s debt.
If the Government were to be plotting that, of course, it would be an absolute scandal.
But not in the land of Liberal Conspiracy, oh no. For them “this would be a good idea”.
What? Why? For two reasons, apparently:
“Because the UK’s debt is mostly long term , with an average maturity of 14 years, a little surprise inflation won’t lead to a significant rise in the cost of financing the debt. We can reduce our debt burden without risking increasing by much how much we pay for our debt.”
Erm, only if you think the money markets are utterly, utterly stupid. Once bitten, twice shy as the saying goes. The debts that have already been locked in may be reduced by inflation, but the loss of good faith would bring its own premium. Inflating away debt is cheating lenders out of their profits – and they would punish us for it.
“The other good side to a rise in inflation is that it makes holding money less attractive and investing more attractive, which is exactly what our economy currently needs to boost demand, growth and jobs.”
So the best way to “boost demand” is to force people into panic buying so as to convert their life savings into whatever they can get hold of before they become worthless? This is the bully state writ large, and would lay waste to millions of lives.
Liberal Conspiracy love to think of themselves as the caring conscience of the world. Their favourite taunts against free marketeers and libertarians is that we are “uncaring” or “inhumane”.
Yet here they are, proposing that Britain should should deliberately pursue a policy that would take an axe to the life savings of millions of people.
Every person who had saved a bit of cash for a holiday; everyone who had fixed sum pensions, or annuities; any school kid whose parents had set money aside each year so they could afford to go to university. All of them would be punished for having been responsible, for planning for the future and for standing on their own two feet. Inflation ruins lives, and it would ruin Britain.