The Sun at its best

People can be sniffy about the Sun. The combination of Page 3 and a heavy dose of celebrity news make lazy dismissals of its contribution easy. However, those who write it off should think again for a couple of reasons.

First, The Sun is unequalled in its ability to convey sometimes complex ideas in very few words and language that anyone can understand. I've had first hand evidence of this since I've started writing reports for national media attention. The Sun's ability to get to the heart of the matter quickly and effectively is deeply impressive. This makes the paper absolutely invaluable as it is a very efficient way of ensuring that people with a limited amount of time for politics, who fit it in between Page 3 and Big Brother, can remain far better informed than they would if the Sun weren't around.

Second, their editorials often brilliant. Sometimes the balance goes wrong as it clearly did at times during the paedophile hysteria. However, more often than not they'll get it right as in this editorial about the murder of Rhys Jones:

"BRITAIN is in mourning today.

For the appalling murder of Rhys Jones. For the society we have created and for the new depth to which it has sunk.

That little boy’s killing is a defining moment for our country, perhaps even more so than those of poor Damilola Taylor and James Bulger.

For if there is one shred of hope from it, it is that it may force us to consider how we have gone so badly wrong and how we can put things right.

It is time for the Government and the judiciary to radically rethink the derisory sentences handed down to young criminals. It is time for police to go back on the beat and for the Home Office to sanction a huge increase in their numbers.

Most crucially, it is time for blighted communities to rise up against the gangs that terrorise them. Not through vigilantism but through group action, a new spirit of co-operation with police and a zero-tolerance approach to crime.

In every home it is time for parents to look at how they are raising their children, the values they instil in them, the freedoms they allow them."

It's worth reading the piece in its entirety.

Shooting in Letchworth Garden City

I've been following the updates on this story through the day, the last update was just a minute ago:

"August 23, 2007FURTHER ARRESTS FOLLOWING INCIDENT IN LETCHWORTH
By Corporate Communication Dept

POLICE can now confirm there have been a total of six arrests in connection with a shooting incident which happened at Boscombe Court, Letchworth Garden City at 11.40am today.

Five men, four who are in their 20’s and one who is in his mid 30’s, have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. A woman in her 30’s has also been arrested in connection with the incident.

Two men remain in hospital at this time.

Although police are seeking witnesses and information about the incident, officers are confident at this stage that there is no-one outstanding in relation to what is an isolated dispute.

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Kitching said: “This is obviously a very serious situation but we are confident that we know who was involved and what caused the incident.

“This is an isolated dispute but we are very mindful how residents in Letchworth Garden City will be feeling at this time and want to reassure them at this stage.”

Anyone with information should call Hertfordshire Constabulary on 0845 3300 222. Alternatively call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. You do not have to give your name and you could be entitled to a cash reward."

Letchworth is the town I grew up in and where my family still live.

The town has a population of 33,600. Its main claim to fame is as the world’s first Garden City (it was built shortly before the First World War and has lots of green spaces and all the houses have gardens). It is largely a commuter town (to London, Cambridge or Stevenage) with a disproportionate number of young families. It has the UK's only population of black squirrels. Here is a picture:



I know this blog has some US readers and it would be quite understandable for them to think this isn't quite as big a deal as I'm making it out to be. So, to make things clear: Gun crime is an entirely different animal in the UK.

Gun control is so tight (our sport shooting teams have trouble practicing) that gun crime in an area tends to suggest a massive law and order breakdown. We know that is happening in some areas of London and the Midlands and Northern cities but for it to be starting to spread, even tentatively, to peaceful Home Counties Towns is truly alarming.

I could be wrong. This could just be a freak incident with a shooting by a group of crazies but the fact six people, rather than a lone gunman, have been arrested certainly suggests it is a gang issue. If gun crime has spread to Letchworth David Cameron's description of ‘anarchy in the UK’ is in no way hyperbole.

Update: This is sounding more and more gruesome. While the victims are apparently only wounded they were shot in the face.

Again, while this could turn out to be a freak incident I do think it is significant if the law and order breakdown is spreading to places like Letchworth. It suggests that the problem is not just a breakdown in certain communities but a genuine national crisis.

Public opinion and the environment

Last Thursday Blair Gibbs posted the following graph to the TPA blog, taken from a DEFRA poll conducted every five years:

It shows that the number of people who rate the environment as an issue that they think the Government should be dealing with is actually in decline. This suggests that, while people will say they'd like to deal with climate change if asked directly, it is not a priority and not really on their minds. This suggests that they will not be willing to pay the kind of price Monbiot et. al. want them to.

However, the numbers citing the environment as a priority could be misleadingly high. Those rating the "environment" as an important issue quite likely do not mean the environment in the Gaia, global warming, sense. This AEI poll (PDF) shows that in the US global warming is only the 8th most important environmental issue to most Americans. Opinion may be different in the UK but a similar issue, "the environment" doesn't mean "global warming" to most people, probably exists.

While I'm on the subject of the DEFRA poll, this graph is depressing:

It concerns the number of people who have heard of and are willing to buy 'environmentally-friendly' products. Given that Fair Trade implies subsidising people producing over-produced crops it is inherently wasteful and even if it has some kind of dubious environmental provision that is highly unlikely to outweigh the environmental cost of unnecessary food production. That DEFRA lumps fair trade in as an environmentally-friendly product suggests it has a rather wooly understanding of these things.

"Free Lite!"

London's street newspaper distributors frustrate me. From sellers of the Evening Standard, the oldest London newspaper distributed through street vendors, you are lucky to get a "Standard!" or a "West End Final!" It's unimaginative, uninformative and dull.

The London Paper and the London Lite are even worse. "Free Lite!" is a particularly despiriting example. It doesn't communicate anything at all. I'm pretty certain that every person in London knew, within days of the free papers launching, that they are free. It is noise for the sake of noise.

Why don't they say anything interesting? I'm pretty certain that a lot of people are like me. They buy the Standard or take a free paper when they see an interesting story on the cover. If they shouted out what the headline story is they might spark people's curiosity and get a customer. It would also make the whole process so much more interesting and characterful.

Nathalie Rothschild escapes Climate Camp

As an antidote to most of the media's fawning love-in with the protesters, good old-fashioned Express hippy-rage aside, Nathalie Rothschild's account of her visit to the Climate Camp is superb. I was going to cut some sections out but the whole article is so worth reading I won't. Go read it.

The difference between honour killing and a conservative view of family

Gracchi discusses the position of women:

"At one end of that extreme lies the emerging problem in the UK of honour killings, at the other more benign end you have a character like Dennis Prager who informed his readers in 2003 that women going to see male strippers were betraying their true nature,

"It has told them that equality means acting the same as men. That is how you have the utterly false spectacle of women acting thrilled to have anonymous men strip and rub themselves on them."

Mr Prager ought to remember that women are quite capable of working out their sexuality without his help and that furthermore their sexuality will vary."

Prager is clearly generalising to some extent but I think his claim seems at least somewhat plausible. There is good reason, in evolutionary biology terms, to expect that a woman's sexuality will function somewhat differently to that of a man. After all, in a primitive situation anonymous sex would have worked well for a man (who could have created a child without putting in the effort to bring it up) but exceptionally poorly for a woman (who would face bearing a child without support).

The argument that Prager is patronising women is plausible if you just read the section of the text Gracchi has quoted. However, the evidence Prager uses to back up his argument is the testimony, from calls to his radio show, of young women. He asked women to work out their own sexuality just as Gracchi recommends.

Finally, Prager's conclusion doesn't seem at all demeaning to women. I think that it casts them in a rather good light. As more emotionally intelligent compared to men who are too often at the mercy of their hormones.

"Mr Prager's real concern though in stating this difference is his idea that women are the basis and buttress of the family unit- and consequently can't behave in the way that he perceives them behaving- in that sense like the honour killer he sees the world as one where women are men's property, in mourning what he calls the "death of femininity" what Mr Prager mourns is the period in which a woman's sex life was a way of signifying the virtue of the community in which she lived in."

This is the part of Gracchi's post that really troubles me.

Firstly, Gracchi has entirely assumed Prager's 'real concern'. There is no mention of family values in Prager's piece.

Secondly, the view that women are a basis and buttress of the family unit does not imply the view that they are somebody's property. I think I'd see women as a basis and buttress of the family unit. I'd say the same for men and, indeed, for children. That does not imply that any member of the family is the property of any other. This is just an attempt to fit the square peg of the family relationship into the round hole of the Left's power narrative.

Finally, the idea that Prager is mourning "the period in which a woman's sex life was a way of signifying the virtue of the community in which she lived in." is entirely unsubstantiated. The difference between Prager and the honour killer would be obvious to any less hyperbolic treatment of Prager's piece as his discussion is based upon the question "what kind of relationship with men is most fulfilling, both emotionally and sexually, for women?" The honour killer would see that question as almost entirely irrelevant.

Gracchi is drawing continuities that don't exist. There is no similarity between the entirely caring, decent and respectful perspective of most social conservatives and the sick, twisted worldview of the honour killer.

Stop aggregating Britain

This article by Fraser Nelson for the Business is a brilliant elaboration of a theme this blog has noted before. It is increasingly impossible to understand trends in Britain in terms of aggregate movements.

I know regional divides are not unique to the UK. However, few countries have divides quite as stark as Britain's. Few countries have such a huge divide between the Hong Kong capitalism of the City and other such areas, that exists thanks to things like the non-domiciled rules, and the quasi-Communist North. As I mentioned in the earlier blog there is some indication that we have the greatest regional income inequality in Europe. Nelson's article establishes that there is a similar inequality in terms of numbers on benefits.

Looking at aggregate statistics in income, unemployment and statism for the UK is almost entirely a superficial exercise. There is no significant central tendency. When we compare our record on productivity, income or unemployment (to name just three economic statistics - the same is true for others like life expectancy) to that of other countries we are comparing an entirely hypothetical Britain. The reality will often be that, for example on income, the South is just about the richest region in Europe and the poorer regions are just about the poorest.

I'm not sure our notoriously centralised politics can deal with this. We are used to having national debates (although whenever someone calls for a "national debate" I die a little inside) and those tend to be based upon aggregate statistics. It will take a fundamental shift in our national consciousness to understand that for many policy questions (such as "has the minimum wage seriously depressed unemployment?") no useful answer can be given for the United Kingdom as a whole. If we can't make that shift we're going to keep missing the point on a whole spectrum of issues.

American political organisation in 1972

This is fascinating:



I'm pretty sure that with over three decades of rapidly expanding computing power and declining cost the British parties now have a rather more sophisticated operation than the Republicans in 1972. Still, this video clip hints at how grand the organisational effort behind American elections is and I don't think either British party has the broad-based financing that the Republicans were clearly working on even back then.

Video via RealClearPolitics.

Getting "answers"

Today I forced my first response from a Minister (and in the Metro too but that isn't online).

Not only that; the response is also clearly wrong.

"I learned the names of your cities, what more do you want!"

An Obama campaign video for Iowa:



Less than inspiring.

Video via RealClearPolitics.

Aspirational Rochdale

Tim Aker posts on the TaxPayers' Alliance blog:

"If anyone needs convincing that Regional Development Agencies are a waste of time, space and money, one should look at the Rochdale Development Agency. The Times reports this morning that the Rochdale Development Agency has been advertising Rochdale by using pictures of Manchester.

Yes. They advertised Rochdale by showing pictures of a completely different area fifteen miles away. Why? The development agency said it was to “reflect the aspirations of Rochdale’s citizens”."

I think its probably quite an accurate reflection of the aspirations of Rochdale's citizens. To leave.

The new logo

Maybe I'm just being childish but has anyone else noticed a rather unfortunate consequence of the new variant of the oak tree logo?

It looks like Cameron is smoking something intense.

Mine Your Own Business

I've just finished watching the documentary film "Mine Your Own Business". It is made by the former Financial Times correspondent to Romania and Bulgaria and examines environmentalist campaigns against mining projects.

It restates a common complaint against environmentalists: that those who claim to be defending local interests have a deep arrogance in telling those locals what their interests are. However, it also illustrates how innacurate the picture presented to the world by the green campaigners often is.

He shows how the inhabitants of a Romanian village that is going to have a mining project built do not prefer horse and cart to cars and were not forced from their homes but gratefully sold; how the village is not a pristine environment risking destruction at the hands of greedy foreigners but an already damaged environment that needs investment to avoid becoming a wasteland and that claims that the villagers can do equally well out of tourism or farming are deeply spurious. It shows how the best friends of environmentalists fighting a mining project in Latin America are landowners worried that the new project will offer their workers an escape from poverty wages. In short, it shows that the claims of foreign environmentalists are often entirely disconnected from reality.

It is highly credible to me thanks to my own experience of this kind of thing in a different setting. When I was a fair bit younger, 17 I think, I went to Lake Baikal in Siberia on a programme with an organisation called Earthwatch. Essentially, it attached me as a helper to an expedition monitoring pollutants in the lake, one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the world.

While we were out there they showed us a Greenpeace film. It upset the woman who hosted us. It showed the lake dying, poisoned. However, the man leading our expedition, an amazing sixty year old who had smoked for decades but still outpaced a group of us many of whom were half his age, gave a different account. He had spent decades studying the lake and told us in a matter of fact tone that what was presented on the film was entirely untrue. While Lake Baikal is a lake one would expect to become polluted as most of Mongolia's industry discharges into a river that feeds it things have not turned out that way; it is incredibly clean. It is much purer than even bottled water in the West and I quickly got used to filling my water bottle straight from the lake. Some kind of natural filter operates to keep the lake so clean.

Our scientist was attempting to work out how that filter operated, and whether it would continue to function. Greenpeace were ignoring reality and communicating a fiction to the outside world. That other environmental activists will do the same in other situations seems entirely credible to me. Mine Your Own Business shows the consequences: communities needlessly denied the chance of a more comfortable and hopeful life.

The Hidden Costs of the Olympics: £4 billion in construction inflation

I have a new TaxPayers' Alliance report out today looking at the implications of the Olympics for construction inflation. As I said:

“Increasing the cost of construction in London and the South East is not only hazardous to the health of the British economy but also imperils the objective of getting enough new homes built to make things easier for first-time buyers. The bigger the bill for the Olympics becomes, the more damaging this knock-on hidden cost will be.”

This has led to my first front-page quote, in today's Metro. Good times.

Giuliani talking to Charlie Rose

This interview is superb. Very impressive showing by Giuliani.



It also shows how the long, non-confrontational interview style that 18DoughtyStreet (which I was on again yesterday evening, the episode of Vox Politix on council tax) is going for can work and become far more informative than the combative Paxman style, although Paxman's approach clearly has its uses. What both methods of interview require is a superbly informed and prepared interviewer. Charlie Rose is clearly a master of the art.

William Dalrymple's suspect economic history

William Dalrymple's article for the Telegraph is full of historical detail which makes it a pleasure to read. However, his analysis of the big picture appears weak to me.

A few criticisms:

1. His main example of abuse under the Raj is sensational evidence given by the prosecution of a man later found innocent. A rather suspect source to say the least. The acquital suggests the evidence might well not have been accurate and even if the events did occur there is no way we can really get to the bottom of whether they can be generalised from.
2. He talks of "the destruction of Indian political, cultural and artistic self-confidence". The question has to be, whose? The Mughal dynasty certainly took a heavy blow but they were foreign conquerors like the British. Imperialist dominance of India did not begin with the Raj. Did the broad mass of Indians suffer such a blow to their confidence?
3. The shift in the share of global GDP produced in India and Britain is ascribed to Indian economic failure rather than, as would be more realistic, to the colossal relative success of Britain as the first industrial nation.
4. India's relative decline is understood entirely in political terms of imperialism or exploitation. However, a classic paper by Parthasarathi showed how Britain was unable to compete with Indian cotton production before the Industrial Revolution. Industrialisation transformed Britain's competitive position in a vital industry. India's decline can therefore be seen, at least partially, as a matter of changes in economic conditions rather than as some kind of political crime.

All that makes this a dissapointing piece. Dalrymple does attest to the force of the debate over Britain's impact on India and clearly has a lot of knowledge but is not prepared to do that debate justice.

Why not walk it?

Over the last few weeks I've been enjoying these posters from Transport for London, displayed on bus stops around London:

They just beg for someone to answer the "Why not walk it?" tagline with "You might as well given the state of the Tube."

The whole campaign sounds like an admission of defeat given that they're the ones who are supposed to be providing public transport in our fine city. The campaign has also been revealed, this Saturday in the Times, to be hilariously wrong in the impression it gives of the 'green' benefits of walking. Apparently walking uses more CO2 than driving thanks to the amount of carbon dioxide and, crucially, methane emitted during food production.

Suffer and Survive - Gas Attacks, Miners' Canaries, Spacesuits and the Bends: The Extreme Life of Dr J. S. Haldane by Martin Goodman

Cross-posted from Westminster Wisdom

This book is hitting the shops now but, courtesy of being the author's nephew, I've been reading an advanced copy over the last couple of weeks.

It is a very enjoyable read. Martin's writing is assured and unpretentious but very vivid when necessary. He has researched thoroughly enough that he has the detail to really bring the characters to life.

The era, late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, is a fascinating one and not written about enough. Suffer and Survive, like George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England, gives us a glimpse of the world before the First World War. A world making the transition, in fits and starts, from that of the Industrial Revolution to one we might more easily recognise today.

Haldane's story is well worth telling. He was born to one of the oldest Scottish aristocratic families. The Haldanes already had quite a history of public service - the book's title is inspired by their motto "Suffer". J.S. Haldane extended that tradition. His exploration of how the human body interacts with its environment advanced science and also saved thousands upon thousands of lives.

Just taking his more famous creations Haldane was responsible for canaries in mines, gas masks and diving tables. However, he paid quite the price for incredible discoveries, subjecting his own body to poison gas and extreme conditions including alarmingly regular carbon monoxide poisoning in order to understand the effects of environmental conditions on the human body. Indeed, at times this book can get a little lost in descriptions of the physical peril faced by Haldane and his various research partners before being snapped back to its narrative.

Like many great popular science books this gives an idea of how incredible the scientific process itself has been. It provides a remarkable case-study of the lengths to which people have gone to increase the sum of human knowledge. Hopefully it might cause us all to be a little more appreciative of the legacy suffering survivors down the ages have left us.

CiFWatcher

DK has created a home for responses to Comment is Free. CiFWatcher.

It is just getting started but should be well worth keeping an eye on. Comment is Free is central to the mainstream Left's presence in the blogosphere. That makes fisking or otherwise rebutting Comment is Free articles a fine task for any right-wing blogger. If you'd like to contribute e-mail DK.

Charlie Bell - If this is the future of the Left...

Cross-posted from CiF Watcher

Charlie Bell's "I'm young but I care" article for Comment is Free is quite the demonstration of why 'grown-up' politicians shouldn't take the voice of 'the youth' too seriously:

"A common response, by one of my friends, to any questions that could possibly touch on the area of politics is: "I don't care - I'm not really interested in politics." But who can blame him? Not a week seems to go by without yet another depressing statistic about today's youth in this country. Not only do we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, but the Institute for Public Policy Research has just released a report that brands British teenagers the worst behaved in Europe. With gun crime, drug taking and binge drinking never far away from the headlines, we must be an appalling generation."

That's a complete non sequitur. There is no reason to expect that depressing statistics make people less likely to engage with politics. If things are going alright already why try to make a difference? By contrast, serious problems like those identified by the IPPR suggest that getting involved is worthwhile.

"And even those who claim to be in touch with the youth miss the point. The famous "hug-a-hoodie" idea (unfairly attributed to the Conservatives) highlights this - just because people wear a hoodie and hang around with their friends doesn't mean the next thing they'll be doing is smashing up a cafe or binge drinking. You don't see police community support officers marching up to Costa or Starbucks and breaking up a group of middle-aged women simply because they are all wearing jeans. It sounds ridiculous, but the only reason needed to stop young people who are innocently walking the streets is an item of clothing. And that makes us the terrible generation?"

This is staggeringly ignorant:

• Middle-aged women wearing jeans don't terrorise the law-abiding, particularly senior citizens, into staying at home after dark.
• The 'hoodie' isn't just one more item of clothing. It has a particular function in hiding the wearer's face that aids criminality, petty or serious. That is why it is associated with criminality and rightly causes suspicion.
• Just because not all those wearing hoodies are trouble does not mean suspicion is ill-founded.

"We are the IT-literate generation, the generation that will (seemingly to the horror of the media) eventually take over as this country's leaders. Maybe those who constantly talk of saving the world for "our children and grandchildren" should wake up and realise that's us. We are the future, and we need to be included. Every time someone young comes up with a new idea, they are beaten down for being inexperienced. Take David Cameron, for example. It's taboo to talk about elderly statesmen being too old for the job, for fear of being ageist, but the moment a young politician or commentator opens his mouth to speak, they are criticised for being too young to have any worthwhile ideas."

'Charlie' is clearly too young to remember the last election. Michael Howard faced frequent criticism for being too old. He is also clearly too poorly informed to have noticed the masses of criticism Menzies Campbell has faced for his age. Eric Forth's shouting "declare your interest" during an early question Campbell was trying to ask the Prime Minister on pensions was a particular high point. By contrast, David Cameron used his relative youth as a selling point in the Conservative leadership election.

"The answer is simple - young people feel strongly about things that will affect them. Climate change is going to flood my house, not that of my grandmother."

Actually even under Stern's "alarmist and incompetent" (PDF) analysis, it isn't myself and Charlie's generation that will pay the price for climate change. As Nordhaus noted the majority of the harms Stern identifies come after 2800. With decent flood defences and if he avoids living in an eco-town on a flood plain he should be fine.

If this is the future of the Left politics is about to get fun if infuriating.