Tory Finances

I think the news that the Tories are managing to raise far more money than normal and are in a fine financial position is even better news than the obvious election advantage it gives over a financially moribund Labour party. It is good news because of what it signals about Cameron's approach to leading the Conservative Party.

A new Conservative leader looking at the fortunes of his predecessors might well come to the conclusion that the best course of action is to spend money now as, in all likelihood, the crunch will come under some future leader. When the crunch comes do whatever is necessary to keep the party afloat but nothing more. By contrast, Cameron has the Tories in excellent financial shape. This, like the lengthy policy reviews, makes the charge that Cameron is interested only in short term poll ratings rather than the long term health of the party ring hollow. It is reassuring.

Less importantly, the difference between the financial health of the Labour and Conservative parties is supposed to tell us that Brown can't call a snap election. I doubt he would anyway. Snap elections are a gambling man's game and Brown is far too cautious; that's the lesson of the pre-budget report.

We need to track this boy down and give him his luckiest boy in America medal right away...

"McMINNVILLE, Tenn. — A former teacher serving an eight-year prison sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old student agreed Wednesday to serve two more years for sending him nude photos of herself."

Globe and Mail.Com

This story really earned its own South Park episode.

Sanctimonious Hippy Garbage Strikes Again

Sue Blackmore is terribly proud. She's given up flying. In fact, she's so proud that she has used a Guardian Unlimited piece to tell us all about how enlightened she is.

"How could someone be that selfless and brave? I knew I couldn't. I spend my life flying around the world giving lectures and going to conferences. It's my job. It's fun, it's prestigious, it's exciting. Anyway, one person's actions are a drop in the ocean to the scale of the problem of climate change, aren't they?

Yet two years on I find I have made that same decision myself. As of the start of 2007 I will make only the trips I've already booked (the US this month and Basel next) and after that I won't be flying for work any more."

How can she be so selfless and brave? How can someone write those two paragraphs without cringing at their own self-satisfaction and retreating from the keyboard?

I think its interesting that she's going to stop "flying for work". So she'll still be joining the EasyJet crowd to Ibiza but conferences in the States are off limits. Hardly puritan self-denial is it?

"This decision, that I once thought impossible, really made itself. I was sitting one day in a huge 747 when, before my lunch, served in a disposable plastic tray, the steward brought me gin in a disposable bottle, tonic in a throwaway can, a plastic cup to drink it out of and, for good measure, a spare plastic cup in which to put the little plastic stirring stick.

I realised that it's not just the fuel the plane uses but the whole crazy, wasteful enterprise of travelling the world."

Firstly, disposable drinks containers on planes probably aren't wasteful. Imagine a plane carrying a full load of non-disposable cutlery, cups etc. The extra weight and space used would add far more to the pollution footprint of the flight.

Secondly, if you don't want a stirrer, cup for stirrer or cup just tell the flight staff. I'm sure they can adjust their service and just give you the can. That kind of step is a little too practical, though, isn't it? Not quite the lifestyle statement you get with giving up flying.

Thirdly, between that Guardian article and her website I count at least four shades of hairdye going into her statement of hippy identity. She hasn't got rid of the purer examples of waste in her life.

Finally, a large part of her career has been parapsychology. Can she acknowledge that, while her "work" trips might be a waste of time and airfuel, other business travel is quite worthwhile?

"There's not only the plastic, the bottled water, and the ludicrous practice of duty-free alcohol, but the luxury hotels I'm lucky enough to be put in, with all those unnecessarily frequently washed sheets and bright white towels."

I've stayed in quite a few decent business hotels recently and they have all been quite clear about the rules: to avoid this kind of waste leave the towels on the floor if you want them washed and on the rack if you don't. Evidently she was too blinded by Guardianista rage to be able to notice such simple measures.

"We all know that, for most journeys, flying puts far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than would driving somewhere or going there by train."

That's mostly because we're travelling a lot further. Flying is often, per mile, pretty efficient increasingly as high oil prices create a powerful incentive for airlines to increase efficiency. As such, this isn't waste but a price we pay for seeing new countries and new people.

It is telling that she gives no thought, in her article, to the benefit side of the cost/benefit calculation of flying. First, many flights are a chance for people to experience different cultures and peoples. The Guardian has become the paper of the modern little Englander mentality unwilling to see the value of people getting out in the world. Sure, some flights don't achieve this objective but the pure party trip to a hot country to get drunk is a caricature. Most will, at least to some extent, come home with a better understanding of how things are outside Britain and will be better people for it.

Second, conferences, whether academic, political or business, are important in enabling an international dialogue on important issues. The most likely outcome of more British people adopting Blackmore's decision to "choose conferences closer to home" is that more people will have to fly from foreign countries; no decrease in flying or emissions. If this movement is taken up worldwide it will mean people from different nations no longer talking, face to face, with each other. Do we really want people from different parts of the world talking to each other less?

This article was a fine example of what is wrong with the modern environmental movement.

Stumbling and Mumbling on the Undeserving Poor

Stumbling and Mumbling has stumbled across Celebrity Big Brother and is so alarmed by the insult to Darwin that is Jackiey Budden that he's calling for global redistribution. After all, none of us 'earned' being English so why do we deserve the wealth that comes with it? From reading his account she does sound a truly awful woman but that doesn't necessarily create a case for redistribution.

This is an application of the principle of moral luck which avoids the thorny question of free will. However, it still has to answer to the question of whether the proposed redistribution can be justified on efficiency grounds. International redistribution is sometimes effective but often desperately ineffective or actively counterproductive. Spending within our own borders is far easier to control and direct. Bauer's criticisms of the effects of foreign aid imply that there are limits on the extent to which our money can improve the lives of those in foreign countries. Would we be just as likely to waste our money encouraging Third World corruption as we would looking after people like Jackiey Budden?

We then return to the idea of the state as a social contract. For all Jackiey Budden's awfulness she is a party to that contract and is subject to the accompanying laws. If her awfulness manifests itself as something beyond the pale, something criminal, she can be punished. In return for setting people these basic standards we guarantee them a material standard of living. As such a contract cannot be enforced on those living abroad they may be less deserving despite being better people.

I think that the problem of Jackiey Budden is better solved via the idea floated by Dwight Lee on TCS Daily. Allow people to sell their citizenship and it seems close to certain that someone who is so underutilising the advantages of being British will wind up selling in a fit of shallowness. We could trade her for a more productive foreigner.

Sir John Fielding and Guantanamo

Gracchi offers a review of new work by Professor John Beattie on Sir John Fielding's contribution to the British justice system and the contemporary response to the challenge his changes posed to liberty.

"Its interesting as a last thought to reflect upon what this says about our current system- the Prime Minister and Head of the Metropolitan Police (chief police officer in the UK) continually tell us that we see new threats and need new ways to prosecute and police those threats. It may be that at the same time, just as in the eighteenth century, we as private citizens and therefore potential defendents need new rights to counter new prosecutions- perhaps in matters like data protection you can already see both trends taking place, government now holds a great deal more information about us and we now have rights to see that information."

I think that the emphasis on new rights here is important. Too often people are distinctly unimaginative in these debates and tend to resolve the question down to old rights versus new threats. The reality is often that the old liberties are no longer useful or appropriate in changing circumstances and this is the reason they are no longer protecting the vulnerable from overzealous attempts to confront new threats.

Guantanamo seems a prime example. A common refrain is that they should be afforded the protections of the Geneva Protocols. However, these protocols were never designed to be granted to anyone the military happened to pick up. A few of the conditions placed upon gaining Geneva protection:

• That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates.


• That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I).


• That of carrying arms openly


• That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Geneva protection is, therefore, the reward to staying within the social contract which is the rules of war. If it is granted to those who pay no heed to its laws then that social contract can be expected to break down.

Perhaps more convincingly for those who want to see extra protection for inmates there is little imperative to quickly try and release those captured on the field of battle. This is for fairly obvious practical reasons; do you think we could have assembled a case against many of the PoWs we held during WW2? The basic environment required for evidence gathering is not present. We also often do not have the right to try them merely for being the soldiers of our enemy or committing crimes in foreign countries.

Instead Prisoners of War are prosecuted or released at the end of the war (except in exchange situations but these are matters of diplomacy rather than law). However, this is clearly not going to be a humane solution in a War on Terror which is unlikely to end so neatly. Prisoner of War status could well be a recipe for indefinite detention for many of those captured.

Equally, domestic law cannot apply to those at Guantanamo because, although they are not Prisoners of War, the same restrictions on the ability to gather evidence and prosecute a trial are present. Many of these people, under the standard of domestic law, should not be held but it is utterly unrealistic to hold a state fighting a war and dealing with foreign enemies to the same standard it is expected to afford its own citizens. This is neither true to the historical norm nor conducive to the slightest military efficacy.

What is clearly needed is some new liberties which we grant to those who do not deserve the honour of the status of Prisoners of War but do deserve some basic human dignity. The failure of the Bush administration, as I have noted before, is that it has made no attempt at creating new liberties but has, instead, ignored the problem. Those who condemn the Bush administration for its record on foreign prisoners should not pretend that its failure has been to defend existing liberties but that it has not done the work of an enlightened government in defining new ones.

You think you're not a Little Englander and then...

...you come across a tool to plot the countries you've visited via Marginal Revolution and realise just how insular you are.

It was while I was in Vancouver for Worlds that I realised that it was the first time I'd seen the Pacific (my trip to Russia was to Lake Baikal and my trip to China to Beijing); it's a big ocean to miss in twenty three years. But look, I still haven't even made it below the equator. I might as well write "Here be Dragons" on Latin America and Africa. How pathetic!



Create your own Visited Countries Map

I think things will improve as I get older but at the moment even my European coverage is looking a bit shaky. How dissapointing.

A really bad reason to vote Labour

Dave 'Red Dave' Cole is enthused by Alistair Darling's promise to better enforce the minimum wage. Three things to note:

Firstly, here's Greg Mankiw with a quick round up of the strong evidence showing that the minimum wage depresses employment. Dave's response to this will be simple: "But unemployment is low". This rather misses the point that the minimum wage will do its worst in times of economic misfortune and among a vulnerable minority of the unskilled (witness the Banlieue's in France) and that its effect can, in the short term, be masked by wider changes in our economic fortunes (i.e. the beautiful economy the Tories left Labour). Both theory and practice suggest that the outcome of setting or increasing a minimum wage is to force people to live unemployed, supported by the state, instead of getting on the ladder and providing some share of their own income.

Secondly, I think that the Labour party, which takes crowds of unpaid interns to do what would, in other circumstances, be described as "work", might want to take a look at its own policies before starting a crackdown.

Finally, to respond directly to Dave's point that we can avoid "the days under the Tories when it was perfectly acceptable for people to have to work for a pound an hour". This is akin to someone from Saudi Arabia saying that adultery is perfectly acceptable in the West. It isn't but we don't ban everything that isn't perfectly acceptable if the result of a ban will be illiberal and/or counterproductive. Under the Tories few people would have worked for under a pound an hour because they could usually make more through claiming benefits. Equally, there isn't an unlimited supply of people willing to work for a pound an hour and, therefore, the idea that the minimum wage is the only thing keeping people's wages above one pound an hour is absurd; even unskilled labour is competed for by employers to a certain extent.

In the end, the minimum wage should be a mechanism to ensure greater returns to low paid work because we want these people to be better off. We can either do this by making their labour artificially expensive, the minimum wage, which punishes those employers who employ the unskilled and therefore hurts employment of those we most want to be keeping in work, or we can spread the cost more widely through a negative income tax of some kind.

Where are all the young Conservatives coming from?

There is a very interesting post over on ConservativeHome's CF Diary (for some reason the thing isn't credited so I have no idea who writes it; identify yourself if you read this) about an increasing conservatism among the young. It cites a recent survey for the Scouts Association and an older one for Bliss Magazine and the Social Attitudes survey of 2004 both of which highlighted what appears to be conservative attitudes. I would add this 2003 LSE study, for that year's Social Attitude's study, which found young people less willing to pay for increased taxes to secure higher spending.

Despite having now left university I am still, at 23, comfortably in the Conservative Future age range and, as such, feel entitled to comment on what might be driving an increased conservatism among younger people.

1) A Decline in the Social Stigma attached to Conservatism

I think that the social stigma attached to being an evil, heartless, Tory is more important to young people. Without careers and the like to hang their social status on young people are generally more careful about anything which might endanger their hard won social standing. There would seem to be a few factors working to undermine the social stigma around conservatism.

Firstly, any ideology which is very electorally successful, as the social democrats are at the moment, will necessarily be the party of a lot of voters and these voters will often be those that young people think little of; to look at the Scouts Association survey that would be the likes of Pete Doherty and other assorted trendies of the sort that backed Blair in 97. Related to this is that the socialists can no longer sustain the idealism of opposition and have had to do unpopular things, such as the Iraq war, and now are forced to argue at the realist level of conservatives.

Secondly, David Cameron is clearly doing good work in making the party sound less miserly and grouchy. Although the process of young people becoming more positive about conservatism was clearly ongoing before he took over it seems almost certain he has enabled it to progress more easily with the changes he has made and is making to the Conservative Party. It seems reasonable to expect that young people are generally less certain of their ideological bearings (apart from a small minority who are politically active) and, as such, addressing a broader range of issues than the traditional conservative battlegrounds has to be helpful in making the party seem more relevant.

Thirdly, as conservatism is admitting defeat on "think of the children" social issues it becomes more palatable to young people. Young people don't necessarily disagree with socially conservative attitudes on these things, witness their relatively pro-life position on abortion on demand, but they tend to regard those who push social conservatism as either patronising or vaguely crazed; they expect these views to be personal and largely private. They then worry that if they are openly conservative they will be regarded as equally patronising or crazed. A similar trend is at work in the wider electorate but it is more pronounced among young people.

2) Social Democracy is No Longer a New and Ideological Movement

Those born in the post war generation grew up in an era with a popular memory of when the debate had been Conservative-Liberal and the socialist challenge from Labour was still something new and exciting. There was a genuine ex ante hope that it might be possible to, through the beneficent actions of an enlightened state, create a society shorn of inequality, misery and with a much higher standard of living for all. This didn't work out.

First, the revolutionary movement associated with socialism descended into atrocity and madness. Second, the Social Democratic states failed to guarantee the material wellbeing and security they had promised. The conservative backlash, Reagan in the States and Thatcher here, proved more successful in reversing national declines than even its supporters can have hoped. While the Thatcher/Reagan successes could be disputed by the socialists, and still are, socialists were reduced to arguing about records and empirics rather than emotively contrasting hope with fearful decline.

While those who were young when the socialist movement was still full of promise still see the socialist cause as essentially youthful and hopeful it now has to fight a rather more even fight with conservatism among the contemporary young who will not give it the benefit of the doubt.

3) The expanding Conservative Movement gives Conservatives more to Do while Young

Left wing young people have always had plenty to do politically. They will start protesting from a young age; if their parents are left wing then almost from birth. Right wingers have relatively few ways to express their conservatism. Conservative Future and its predecessors have primarily been social circles, except at election time, and probably not a circle that will often appeal outside the ambitious. Right wing protests are rare and usually comparatively poorly attended.

This made the sacrifice of facing the social stigma of being a conservative appear rather pointless for many who might have been tempted by conservatism. It has started to be eroded by the new media, such as blogs, which allow young conservatives to participate on their own terms in adult political dialogue and an increased ease in combining conservatism with publicly caring about other issues such as humanitarian crises and the environment.

4) Exposure to Britain's New Underclass

Ann Widdecombe, in a quote near the end of the Telegraph article, questions the results of the survey for the Scout's Association on the grounds that she has seen "increasing disaffection among young people who are growing up without aspirations". Of course, the Scouts survey, which looked at majority attitudes, and Ann Widdecombe's experience are not contradictory and hint at a reality of a majority of fairly well rounded young people and a minority with very serious problems.

Now, while an adult will be segregated away from the underclass of the materially and socially deprived, both at work and at play, comprehensive schooling means that young Middle England meets them everyday. This contact makes it more obvious that something is going wrong beyond a lack of economic wealth and opportunity. Troubled children at my school were growing up with the same access to education as I was and with all of the opportunity afforded by living in rich Hertfordshire. This makes it more obvious that the kinds of causes conservative analyses like Iain Duncan Smith's report discuss, family breakdown and the other such issues, are the more numerically important causes of social deprivation.


What it is important to note is that all of these changes are incomplete, most young people are still broadly left wing, and some can be reversed. The rise of the Young Tory is neither complete nor certain. However, there is good reason to hope that the party and movement can continue to gain in support across the age range. Particularly if conservatives can continue to address the social causes of deprivation, give young people plenty of opportunities to get involved and avoid hectoring social conservatism. Also, particularly if the social democrats continue to sound so nostalgic for a fifties golden age which really existed only in their imagination and certainly has no hold on the memory of the young.

Celebrity Madness

Credit where credit is due. This article from CommentisFree is genuinely amusing with this excerpt scarily plausible:

"If George Clooney called a globally televised press conference, then plucked out two of his eyelashes and announced he would donate them free of charge to the first viewer to turn round and murder their entire family, thousands would perish. Read that again. It is a fact."

I don't actually think people are getting more stupid. The past contains the Children's Crusade, massed apocalypse cults and eunuchs all of which I think are probably almost as idiotic as Heat.

The change that has come with rising incomes is a rapid decline in the extent to which working class imaginations spend most of their time and energy focussed upon bread and butter issues which require a certain common sense. Rising leisure time and jobs which are not as physically exhausting free the common man to indulge his inner idiot. Instead of moments of idiocy being a vocation for minorities like eunuchs or parents indulging their children's crusading fervour they can be undertaken by all in their spare time.

Also, I think feminism, socialism and the other liberation movements have induced something of an internal relativism which means that only at the extremes of reality TV can we call someone as stupid as a spade as stupid as a spade. Jordan isn't a smart enterpriser; she's ironically somewhat similar to a eunuch in that she has mutilated herself for pecuniary gain. Little Britain isn't clever and witty; it's an unimaginative caricature of Python. The Harry Potter series are children's books and adults reading them are lazy. Elitism is the instinct that allows us to make these simple but important judgements and the gratuitously anti-elitist movements of the twentieth century are responsible for making us guilty about expressing them.

If my wings should fail me...

It may sound morose but I have a pretty good idea of how I'd like my own funeral to play out. This clip illustrates it pretty perfectly.



Of course, I don't need a sword or the other old English paraphenalia and lighting the boat on fire with flaming arrows may require specialists who are hard to come by but the general idea of being put on a boat which is then lit on fire and floated out to sea is very appealing. The Cornish coast is probably the best for this purpose thanks to its ruggedness.

Before this film came out my old plan was to be burned on a pyre with coins on my eyes as the various heroes are in Troy but the clip above seems far more classy and doesn't leave the issue of ashes.

Unfortunately, it appears that burning people in the open air after they are dead is illegal. Hopefully the Sikhs and Hindus will manage to get this ban removed and make my plan possible. If not perhaps I'll be okay anyway what with my burning not taking place on land.

Finally, a quick review of the film. It is very well directed with an excellent soundtrack and some epic vistas to keep the rather simple story interesting. It is quite different to the old mythical and Wagnerian Tristan and Isolde tales but that works quite well. The major weakness is that the lead spends too much time wearing his sulky face and, therefore, struggles to overcome the challenge of portraying love almost at first sight. I think the population of young British actors may have contained someone more suitable, with a more expressive face in particular.

There's always a bigger fish...

...which deserves an ASBO.

Mr. Eugenides is adding to his sphere of influence. It used to be that he was the 'go-to guy' for Comment is Free bashing. Now he informs us of the Scottish Parliament's increasingly dismal output.

The latest is a ban on live bait for anglers. Now, a ban on angling is, if utterly illiberal and rather philosophically questionable, at least somewhat defensible in terms of preventing animal suffering which is not strictly necessary. However, clearly the act of placing hooks in fishes isn't what is being targetted here. Rather, the problem is setting a fish up to be eaten by another fish. However, in terms of sheer numbers it seems pretty certain that far more fish are made prey independently by carnivorous fish than are made prey by human intervention; this is an entirely natural process.

The usual separation of natural animal carnivores and unnecessary human eating can't really be made here as we are not the ones doing the eating but are merely facilitating a fish eating another. The only "unnatural" event is when the pike is removed from the water following its meal but this is little different to other forms of angling.

Surely the answer, if you have a problem with fish lower down the food chain being eaten by fish further up the food chain is some kind of mass pike detoothing programme?

I want a Yurt

Having one of these would be so cool. I was first exposed to a Yurt when in Siberia near Buryatia. They're a distinctly cosy style of abode and well suited to Khan-like pretention. Sadly I expect they're mostly bought by hippies but I think they'd be ideal for someone looking for an affordable and unique social environment. Run it like a nineteenth century salon; steady drink, food and conversation over the best part of a day.

I'm Back

As should be obvious from the flurry of posts I'm back in the UK and Sinclair's Musings is back in action.

I'll trade you my "British" for a "Russian" and Five Million Dollars

Arnold Kling highlights an absolutely fascinating article over at TCS Daily about the idea of selling citizenship.

Dwight Lee writes,

The suggested policy is straightforward. Simply give Americans the right to sell their citizenships to non-Americans, with the sellers having to leave the country and the buyers allowed to move in with all the rights and opportunities of any other U.S. citizen.

Lee suggests that the very poor would be the ones who sell their citizenship rights. However, this may not be the case. The people who would sell citizenship rights would be people who get the least value for those rights at the margin. This might be someone who is getting ready to marry someone from another country or to retire to another country.

UPDATE: "PGL" recasts Lee's argument in tariff-vs.-quota terms.

Putting price tags on human beings [might] sound objectionable to some, but some economists find the restrictions of the mobility of people even more objectionable.

I'd add a more conservative argument in the idea's favour: New entrants put a higher value on citizenship so it seems plausible this will lead to a more patriotic, loyal populace. As the earning potential attached to a citizenship is determined by shortages of skills this is a market solution to creating a points like system to ensure the immigration of those with needed skills.

Despite all this I'm still deeply troubled by the idea of making citizenship an alienable right. I'm not sure why the idea troubles me though which is what makes it so fascinating.

EU-Serf on Reforming the EU

The Serf has written a reply to the post I wrote a while back defending the EU. Apparently despite the "beguiling" nature of my argument that the EU can be reformed he is unconvinced. I'm not sure his arguments add up:

"Whether we like it or not, the EU’s founders deliberately set up a political project, of which financial and economic issues were just a part of the overall whole. Those working at the heart of the project are driven by this vision. Take it away and the very reason for the EU’s existence ceases to exist. As it is political aspects that most Brits dislike (hence the constant lies from our politicians about it being all about economics) we are faced with an immovable object. Why should the other side ever give up their reason to start the club in the first place?"

The European Union certainly had political objectives at its inception although those objectives will have varied from founder to founder but this is no reason to abandon hope for a reformed union.

Some of those political objectives were quite laudable e.g. the ending of wars between the European powers, the achievement of this was more a result of nuclear weaponry but that is neither here nor there, and there seems no reason why an attachment to a political role for the EU must necessarily be an attachment to a negative role. The EU may need a political raison d'etre but there is little reason this cannot be an essentially liberal one of free movement and trade and standards legislation to make this feasible rather than an attempt to do something like control foreign policy.

"The sight of Conservative MEPs going native is a particularly painful one for Eurosceptic Conservatives. However, with vast amounts of our cash available to buy the loyalties of those involved in the whole project, the prospects for MEPs not going native are poor. As this group is in the best position to keep us informed, this is a serious impediment to reform."

There is the danger in all politics of becoming too attached to the trappings of office to risk change which might endanger your position. However, first note that this is likely to be thanks to idealism, the EU is an MEPs ability to change the world which makes it problematic for them as ambitious people who want to change the world to denigrate it, as material rewards. This attachment will make MEPs resistant to calls to slash and burn the EU but that is simply a reason to make the case for EU reform as a case for hope rather than punitive action of the Better Off Out variety.

"Our new allies to the East are subject to a similar monetary pressure. Using our hard earned cash, the EU is bribing them to stay on side. After all what Polish politician would really wish to put billions of Euros of free cash at risk. The fact that like all free money, this cash is not really that beneficial to the recipient, is not a factor that would sway a politician who has the chance to spend it."

This makes them attached to specific policies such as development aid but these are hardly the worst of the EU (they have largely been written out of the CAP). Those Eastern European states which are currently succeeding through liberal economic policies, such as Estonia, do have a powerful interest in resisting any encroachment on the independence which allows such policies. This is likely to make it significantly easier to oppose the most harmful EU policy proposals such as tax harmonisation as well as more general infringements on the freedoms available to individual nations; Eastern Europeans understand that they are doing well out of their policy differences with France/Germany.

"Whilst allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler was a pragmatic necessity, the aftermath was half a century of tyranny across half of Europe. So whilst we can vote, campaign and generally work together with other sceptics, those found in much of Europe are actually protectionists. Their vision for the EU is in many cases even worse than the current reality. They would in many cases reject our vision for a free trading EU more fiercely than they do the current setup."

This is entirely the wrong way around. The difference between British and continental euro-sceptics highlights the difficulty attempts at further integration will face. Every measure will be too liberal to pass muster with French sceptics and too controlling for the British or Eastern Europeans. It was this conundrum which made buying off the intransigent impossible in the case of the Constitution. The logical conclusion is that integration has become a far more tenuous project with expansion increasing the amount of diversity to be papered over.

"The many people who work for the EU, from the commissioners down (and don’t forget that we have far too many commissioners) need to constantly justify their positions. This involves inevitably the production of more rules and regulations."

Bear in mind that this bias is present in any professional political body but that it produces a bias towards activity rather than necessarily more regulation. Peter Riddell noted this in the book Honest Opportunism when describing the rise of professional politicians in the UK and US. A need to justify a salary requires activity but this can be deregulating activity (as under Thatcher) instead of regulating activity.

"When the French and the Dutch made rude noises at their betters over the EU constitution, we enemies of Brussels got a little thrill at the thought of the juggernaut coming to a halt. The reality has been however that as much as Mr Blair likes to pretend that the treaty is dead, much of it is being introduced piece meal."

This is an overstatement. Most of the material which was in the constitution hasn't been introduced, some integrationists are proposing that it should be but they have yet to get their way, and there isn't a constitution which is, itself, important.

"Viewed from the prism of free market oriented Anglo Saxon philosophy, the EU is little short of ridiculous. Rules have to be made which describe in detail every little thing that we are allowed to buy, every transaction is subject to the permission of our rulers. The metric martyrs were a tragic example of rules overrides common sense."

This is the most misconceived part of the Serf's analysis. After the Second World War the Japanese could not impose tariffs but did stop imports via non-tariff barriers; it was quite conceivable that many industries would respond in the same manner to the end of protectionism within Europe. It is this that European standardisation is designed to prevent. If the EU has sometimes been overly draconian this is a response to how insidious these barriers can often be rather than anything more conspiratorial.

After all Serf's arguments for hopelessness I remain stubbornly wedded to the view, fairly unfashionable among Conservative bloggers, that for all the legitimate criticisms of the EU on policies like the CAP leaving now would be a bad idea.

Christians and Eugenics

A very interesting post from a friend of Alykhan's, Razib over at Gene Expression, about how improbable it is that modern eugenics will not be used if the state does not get involved, some possible effects of eugenics on policy and the effects of a plausible rejection of eugenics by the religious.

"4) A bizarre thought, if homosexuality is predominantly biological, and if we could predict and "correct" (or abort) this likelihood at the fetal stage I have little doubt that the majority of parents would opt to prevent their child being homosexual. That being said, a minority would not, and I am willing to bet that a hard core of "naturalists," generally conservative and motivated by deep religious beliefs, would avoid these screens on principle. Not only do I suspect that Down Syndrome children in the future will be born predominantly to religious and social conservatives, but I suspect that a disproportionate number of homosexuals might!"

The Main Final

In the main UBC Worlds final the motion was something along the lines of "This house believes that economic growth is the solution to environmental problems". This is an absolutely brilliant motion inviting a bold first prop willing to make the Lawson case against curbs on climate change.

Unfortunately the actual first prop didn't quite get the point of the motion and ran creating a carbon trading scheme. In response the opposition proposed a flat rate emissions tax. As these two responses to climate change are too similar to really have a debate over their differences it degenerated into an utter mess.

What a shame. Hopefully people won't worry too much about this motion having been set at Worlds and will use it again as it is an interesting and important topic for debate.

Kudos to whichever member of the adjudication panel thought up the motion as it is an excellent one. Congratulations to the winners and all the finalists but it is such a shame we couldn't end the tournament on a high note in terms of debating quality.

Master Debater

This evening we were awarded the title of winners of the Masters competition of the UBC Worlds University Debating Championships (British Parliamentary debating is done in two person teams). This required winning the two preliminary rounds and then a final where we were defending the motion "This house would introduce a 35 hour maximum working week".

We were the second proposition team and extended by arguing Layard's case that the importance to happiness of relative income creates a significant externality to working longer hours by pressuring others to follow suit. The debate was not as good as it could have been because we were all kept to a five minute time limit (seven is more common for finals) but still the standard was pretty high.

In the Worlds Masters competition it is traditional to name your team after your country of origin. In an attempt to upset the Canadians we chose to debate as Quebec. Ironically, the joke was somewhat undermined by them all finding it vaguely amusing. Still, probably Quebec's first international debate victory.

Quite a few people were recording our final and I'm trying to get a copy so I can prove, to my mother in particular, that all the various trips where I've claimed to be debating have actually been spent doing something productive. If I can track down the video and it isn't too embarassing then I'll post it on YouTube and add it here.

Power and Foreign Legions

The motion for the last preliminary round of this tournament was "This House Would Grant Citizenship in Exchange for Military Service". It is a fine motion which, unfortunately, didn't get quite the examination it deserved in the room I was judging although I've heard it got thought about in more detail in other debates. It came up a little while ago on National Review's Corner but I don't remember anyone saying much interesting on the subject.

Thinking about it before and after the debate it occurred to me that mechanisms to enlist and ensure the loyalty of foreigners have been devised by many of history's great powers. The Romans recruited legions from the provinces. Britain had the collosal Indian Army, including the Gurkhas which are still a part of the army today. France had its foreign legion which was used in numerous imperial deployments. The Persian army was composed almost entirely of troops summoned from its various provinces.

By contrast, while the Americans can rely upon allies, such as Britain, to help them fight certain wars the lack of a formal mechanism implies that this support is always to some extent conditional on the war and that country's domestic politics at the time, witness Vietnam. Also, somewhat paradoxically, an ally is less likely to deploy independently as they can only be asked as friends to contribute to a shared engagement rather than ordered to engage and fix a problem themselves. The independent missions of Britain and Australia recently have generally been peacekeeping actions on a limited scale such as Sierra Leone or regional crises in Australia's sphere. America asks its allies to come to war with it but does not use them as it would its own armies.

This would seem important as it means that any foreign intervention necessitates putting Americans in harms way. As such, American interventions are far more costly to Americans than the mean British intervention was to Britons or Roman intervention to Romans. This combines with greater popular democracy to make foreign wars more politically significant. While the British limited, propertied electorate can't be credibly accussed of not sending their own children to the military they were not the rank and file. This cost would seem to combine with Niall Ferguson's other explanations such as the American anti-imperial national myth to explain just why America's foreign interventions tend to be so limited compared to those of earlier empires.

An informal empire such as America's cannot set up and long control foreign armies in the way Britain did but offering citizenship to buy the loyalty of foreigners would seem to offer another option. One option would be to recruit into standard US Army units but an American Foreign Legion, to provide flexibility and avoid hurting the élan of the main army, might be more appropriate with citizenship after a long period, say ten or more years, so that anyone only interested in serving a minimum military term then entering the US would be unable to do so.

I'm not sure if the US can reconcile itself to such an idea but it might make maintaining Pax Americana significantly more practicable.

Worlds 2007 So Far...

Happy New Year!

Just after midnight the break (those who have got through to the knockout stages) was announced. This is only my second Worlds but from the picture I've built up of old trends this looks like a return to a tradition of a massive English presence in the later stages; particularly Oxbridge, of course, but other schools such as Manchester, Kings, Durham and Middle Temple also made it through. Australia also did as well as they always do.

Last year was a massively strong year for the US, loads of teams and breaking first, and Canada, all the University of Toronto teams breaking and winning the tournament, but this year they had a far more muted result. The Irish got a few teams through but not as many as it appeared they might earlier in the tournament.

Judging at various IVs this year I've often been a little sceptical about the strength of the British circuit: Yale A's success at Oxford seemed to suggest, like Hart House's at Cambridge last year, that British teams were struggling to cut it against international opposition. However, it appears that these concerns were unfounded and last year may, indeed, have been something of a blip.

Colm's analysis supports the suggestions above; a huge number of English teams and a collapse in Canadian and American success.

None of LSE's three teams made it which was dissapointing but LSE A (Travis and Patrick) came pretty close. Also, myself and Ali didn't break as judges but I'm struggling to feel too put out. If I'd been offered, at the start of the tournament, a choice between getting to the Master's final and judging a break round or two I know I'd have chosen speaking in a heartbeat.

I've enjoyed judging Worlds. In particular, I found chairing some of the mid and lower range rooms felt genuinely worthwhile instead of the chore it tends to be in British competitions as international teams often genuinely listen to your advice rather than sitting and fuming at you. The idea of offering my services to LSE as a judge again next year and heading to Thailand is seeming more and more attractive.