“One in three teenage girls has suffered sexual abuse from a boyfriend and one in four has experienced violence in a relationship, according to an in-depth study published today”

reports The Guardian.

The research was undertaken on behalf of the NSPCC at the Centre for Family Policy and Child Welfare, University of Bristol.  The Centre describes itself as “one of the leading national and international research centres on child welfare and child safety issues.”

The survey of 1,353 teenage girls and boys from across the United Kingdom found that nearly ninety per cent of these teenagers aged 13 to 17 had been in an intimate relationship. A quarter of the girls claimed to have suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends. Ninety-one teenagers were questioned at length and of these, one in six of the girls claimed that they had been pressured into having sex and one in sixteen claimed to have been raped.

A previous report from Bristol University published in late August 2009 concerning domestic violence declared amongst other things that,

“men abuse more than women do but women are three times more likely to be arrested” (my emphasis).

Having been involved in a professional capacity at the sharp end of domestic violence for a sufficient number of years, it was my experience that the overwhelming majority of individuals arrested were male.

It makes you ponder how representative of the general population were the samples relied upon for this latest research.  If sample data is not sound then neither is the conclusion drawn from that data; or as a computer bod would say, garbage in, garbage out.

“It is frankly a scandal that any kind of taxpayer-funded person should be conveyed about London in a taxpayer-funded car, adding to congestion and pollution, and insulating them from the vital need to upgrade the Tube and build Crossrail. It is time for the incoming government to end this outrage, axe the ministerial cars, and if necessary equip ministers with a lovely red ministerial bicycle with EIIR on the saddle.  Or else we will know that nothing has changed.”

Boris Johnson

“Almost exactly a year ago The Guardian carried an interview Alistair Darling in which he warned that the economic cataclysm which was just starting to engulf us would be “arguably the worst in 60 years”. How we jeered, how the accusations of gaffe and blunder were hurled at the poor fellow.  We learned that Gordon Brown was infuriated by the Chancellor’s candour - Mr Brown being a politician who has never done candour - and the air was thick with speculation that Darling’s days were numbered. But of course he was right, bang on the money”

avers David Hughes in The Daily Telegraph today.

That is not how I remember it.  I recall that HM Government was playing down how serious an economic mess it had caused, and the Chancellor’s gaffe was to have let the cat out of the bag, rather than to have told us something that neither the Government nor we then knew.  Whilst Darling was right in his assessment of the state of the economy, so was everyone else who predicted that we were in danger of suffering potentially the most serious recession in fifty years, if not a century.

I have noticed how this story of Alistair Darling being an all-seeing prophet concerning the economy has gained ground during the course of the mainstream media’s silly season. Even if the Chancellor had been uniquely prescient as is now (falsely) claimed, he does not deserve any credit in the light of his almost immediate “clarifying” of what he had told The Guardian as reported in the The Daily Telegraph the following day, 31st August 2008.

Not long after assuming power in 1997, the Labour Government changed the method of calculating unemployment such that a significant proportion of unemployed people were hidden from the official figures (designating a large number of individuals as long term sick rather than unemployed, being one device).  By this means, the Labour Government was always able to compare favourably their jobless figures with those of the proceeding Conservative administrations.

Today the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that the number of households with no one over the age of sixteen years old working has increased by two hundred and forty thousand over the past year to a total of 3.3 million. Furthermore, the ONS recorded that the number of working-age people in workless households rose to 4.8 million in the year to June 2009.

Put like that, it doesn’t look good, does it?

“The reality is people are bored with it.  Even at Channel 4 the vibe among staff is that if you like Big Brother you're not cool.”

Big Brother “to be scrapped”

“The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act upon one’s whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexities of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved.  And when such a narrowly conceived freedom is made the touchstone of public policy, a dissolution of society is bound to follow.  No culture that makes publicly sanctioned self-indulgence its highest good can long survive: a radical egotism is bound to ensue, in which any limitations upon personal behaviour are experienced as infringements of basic rights. Distinctions between the important and the trivial, between the freedom to criticize received ideas and the freedom to take LSD, are precisely the standards that keep societies from barbarism.”

Theodore Dalrymple

“There are some brave folk who suggest that Britain will experience a sharp V-shaped recovery and the economy will grow buoyantly next year. But this is not credible. This recession is unique in terms of its combination of difficulties. In addition to the prospect of sharp tax increases and/or tough public spending constraints, the continuing impairment of the banking system and the restrictions on bank lending will, at the very minimum, act as a drag on recovery.”

Ruth Lea

Following developments this week, once again there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the purportedly low conviction rates for rape.  Now it is the turn of Janice Turner to wring her hands in despair and lament the denial of justice to rape victims.

The fundamental point frequently glossed over is that in many trials the entirety of the evidence does not assist the jury in reaching a verdict of guilty. It is this inability or refusal to confront the crux of the issue that prevents progress being made whereby the truly guilty can be convicted and punished appropriately.  In a significant number of cases, too often the prosecution case simple recites facts that would apply to any “courtship” taking place daily, up and down the country but where in the case before the Court, some four-fifths of the way through the ritual that would in almost every other case have led to consensual sexual intercourse, something went awry.  It is not a simple problem of it being one person’s word against another’s.  I have met women who have been raped in a social or “dating” situation.  Having known each woman for some time, I had no doubt in accepting as true what they had told me, but how is a jury to make such a determination of veracity, having met the victim only once upon the occasion of her giving evidence from the witness box? Is it so surprising that jurors err on the side of caution, particularly given the burden of proof borne by the Crown?

The “something must be done” campaigners have rarely had the benefit of sitting through numerous trials where having listened to the Crown’s evidence, it has become impossible to dismiss the thought that “something doesn’t add up here”. You have to be involved in a trial and listen dispassionately to the evidence before you can understand how a doubt about a defendant’s guilt can creep into a juror’s mind.  In those cases where the mating ritual has proceeded to that final stage, the reason for it coming to an abrupt halt must be plausible.   Perhaps fearing the loss of the Court’s sympathy (or more importantly that of the Police) in some such cases for instance, victims omit evidence that explains their behaviour and makes the Crown’s case truly complete.

In reality, a low rape conviction rate is little to do with juries having prejudices about how a woman should or should not behave.  Juries are not packed with individuals who were born before sex was invented in 1963.  Most have “been there, done that” and any curio from a bygone age would be put right, quickly. Tinkering by way of “re-educating” juries must just as surely lead to miscarriages of justice as would rigging the rules of evidence.

Whilst some inaccuracies in films are understandable, for example there were two bridges at Arnhem but just a road bridge in A Bridge Too Far and others are pure Robin Hood style fiction from start to finish (such as Braveheart, The Patriot and Gallipoli) it is always disturbing when falsehoods are unnecessary to the plot, such as Lord Burghley’s (formerly Sir William Cecil) political demise in Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film Elizabeth.  Why do cinema and TV film script writers do it?  What purpose does it serve?

Hollywood’s distortion of the truth

Under the headline,

“Almost 400 dentists earn more than £300,000 a year, NHS figures reveal”,

explains The Times,

“Almost 400 dentists working in England and Wales earn more than £300,000 a year, according to the latest pay and expenses figures.

 

Data released by the NHS Information Centre showed that 6 per cent of the 19,000 dentists earned a taxable income of more than £200,000 last year. Of these 1,172 dentists, 392 were in the top bracket of at least £300,000.”

The Times report continues,

“In England average salaries were calculated at £126,527, once average expenses of £218,843 for building hire, staff and other running costs were deducted. Dentists without a contract with the local primary care trust or health board earned £66,259 on average.”

 According to the NHS Information Centre in its report Dental Earnings and Expenses, England and Wales, 2007/08 published on 4^th August 2009 and referred to by The Times,

“As is to be expected, [the tables] show that average gross earnings, expenses and taxable income increased [as dentists] increased the average time per week they devoted to dentistry.”

and

“For all self-employed primary care dentists, taxable income for those dentists who worked an average of more than 45 hours per week was £147,283, compared to £69,330 for those who worked an average of less than 35 hours.”

The really useful information disclosed by this NHS report shows that depending upon the number of hours worked, the average dentist’s taxable income varied between £69,330 and £147,283.  These figures are not excessive given the professional qualifications that have to be secured by an individual in order to practise as a dentist and the number of hours worked by those earning the highest income.

Undoubtedly some people will be outraged that a very small percentage of dentists earn so much money, but the NHS report is hardly evidence of an overpaid profession.

“A comparison of the incomes of public figures between half a century ago and now is instructive. In 1958 the salaries of the prime minister, the lord chief justice and the director general of the BBC were easy to remember as they were all the same, £10,000 a year. Last year the prime minister was paid £189,994, the lord chief justice £236,300 – and the director general £816,000 (plus bonuses).

There are now at least 47 BBC executives paid more than the prime minister. Everyone who works in the media has heard the stories about people retiring early from the BBC with personal pension pots of anything between £4m and £8m, and the their expenses must have impressed even MPs adept at claiming for champagne flutes or "flipping" residences.”

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Much has been made of the BBC practising ageism by dispatching older females from its programmes, only to replace them with “younger models”.  Notwithstanding the glaring clues, the point overlooked is that the BBC’s core objective is to ditch its audience.  In the main, particularly on a Saturday night, the BBC’s light entertainment audience is largely middle aged or older, with conservative tastes.

As reports  The Daily Mail,

 “BBC insiders have revealed that Strictly Come Dancing is undergoing an overhaul before the next series, to give it a ‘sexier’ feel and attract a younger audience” (my italics).

What more needs to be said?

“A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity”

reported The Times on 23rd July 2009.

 The exhibition, Made in God’s Image, at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, is part of the Sh(out) project, which we are told, aims to celebrate and raise awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.  The work Untitled 2009, by the Rev Jane Clarke of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Church that celebrates “racial, cultural, linguistic, sexual, gender and theological diversity”, urged the public to “write themselves in” to the Bible if they felt excluded.  Perhaps predictably considering the target audience of the exhibition, some of the comments written into the Bible were not entirely thought provoking or uplifting.

Rev Clarke made it plain that she regretted the insults that had appeared.  This has not prevented Mark O’Neill, the Director of Art and Museums at Culture and Sport Glasgow, lambasting critics of the Bible exhibit as being motivated by an opposition to homosexuality and “[trying] to divert attention from the issue that the artwork aims to highlight: how religion marginalises homosexuals.”  Adds Mr O’Neill,

“If they want to condemn homosexuals, that’s up to them but using the Gallery of Modern Art as a vehicle for that condemnation, I don’t think is legitimate.”

Or perhaps Christians just don’t like their holy book being so deliberately and provocatively defaced no matter who is the perpetrator, Mr O’Neill.

 The Sunday Times

“The government has promised it will ensure the hacker facing extradition to the US would serve any prison sentence in the UK amid a deepening row over whether it has legal power to stop the transfer”

reports The Times.

How can the Government ensure anything of the sort?  All it can ask of the Americans is “pretty please”.  This is nothing more than a ploy by Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman to avoid acute political embarrassment of the Government’s own making. This sleight of hand should be seen for what it is, not only an attempt to avoid the heat but, given that Mr McKinnon's matter might not be resolved one way or the other until well into next year, also to ensure that any fall-out occurs on someone else’s watch – the Conservative Government’s.

“One of the characteristics of those most determined on assisted suicides is that they are powerful personalities used to exercising total control — the polar opposite of those who would be the most likely victims of their campaign, were it to succeed. Purdy is quite typical, described in The Guardian as “a self-confessed adrenaline junkie who had revelled in travelling the world diving from planes, conquering mountains, trekking through jungles and exploring the depths of the oceans”.

You can see why such a personality cannot bear to contemplate the complete loss of control that her condition might impose. Debbie Purdy is, in so many ways, an admirable woman. Yet when I saw her declare last Thursday, “I feel like I have my life back”, my stomach heaved. It is a sick society that regards assisted suicide as an affirmation of life.”

Dominic Lawson

Notwithstanding Daniel Hannan’s ruthlessly effective debunking of the “progressive” media’s recent attempts to smear Michal Kaminski, the Polish head of the new Eurosceptic Conservative and Reformist (ECR) bloc in the current European Parliament, The Daily Telegraph is seeking to breath life into the proverbial flogged dead horse.

Given that the Conservatives have contributed to the formation of an effective Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament, one might have thought that the rabidly Europhobic Telegraph would have been ecstatic but patently not, given sympathetic reports it has published concerning the European Union appreciative, former Conservative MEP, Mr McMillan-Scott’s criticism of the much maligned Mr Kaminski.

The Telegraph's thin veneer of columnists and commentators of moderate conservative persuasion  is insufficient to hide the fact that it has long since given up any pretence of being a newspaper which broadly supports the Conservative Party. For too long, too often the slant of reporting is indistinguishable from that of the BBC or The Guardian.  I have never subscribed to the Telegraph, ironically because in the past I had considered it to be “too Tory”.  Thus I am now denied the considerable delight of cancelling any subscription.

“Organic food is no healthier and provides no significant nutritional benefit compared with conventionally produced food, according to a new, independent study funded by the Food Standards Agency”

reports The Guardian.

I’m sorry, but I thought the whole point of organically grown food was that it was environmentally friendlier, not “healthier”.

“But in truth, [the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Chairman, Trevor Phillips’] failings are not the issue. The EHRC is falling apart because many of the people who run it are not concerned about equality at all, but rather with gaining preferential treatment for their own specific set of clients.”

David Green

Says Martin Kettle (with my emphasis),

“Reports that Labour is braced for defeat in Ian Gibson's old seat are entirely accurate. So braced, in fact, that officials have begun floating the absurd idea that anything less that a 10,000 Tory majority – something the Tories did not even manage in 1987 – would be a setback for Cameron.  Some setback.”

Well, let us sit back and see how the Toryphobics try to spin the Norwich North result.

“Indulge me in some historical determinism. We, the peasants, are failing to rise up and embrace the need to change. We will not choose to give up modern life, with all its polluting seductions. Our intransigent refusal to choose green will be met by a new militancy from those who believe we must be saved from ourselves...”

Antonia Senior

As reported by The Times this morning,

“The economy shrank much more than expected in the second quarter to record a record annual decline, official figures show…..The economy has now shrunk by 5.7 per cent since the recession began in April last year, bigger than the downturn in the 1990s and in the early 1980s.”

Economy shrinks at record annual rate in Q2

During a recent dialogue concerning whether the United Kingdom should adopt a pluralistic legal system, Sheikh Faiz Siddiqi, founder of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal said,

“in a jurisdiction where rights are afforded to many mistresses and there is recognition of same-sex marriages, the idea of polygamy should not be so alien or distant.”

He is right, isn’t he?

Challenging debates remain on Islam and English law

“The state needs responsible, educated and above all free individuals to function properly, but that won't happen until the left ditches its reflex respect for the state and stops thinking simply in terms of power, edict and obedience.”

Henry Porter

The Times reports today that,

“[Jay Hunt, BBC One’s Controller] confirmed that Bruce Forsyth, [Strictly Come Dancing’s] octogenarian host, would be returning to the show, albeit after agreeing to take an unspecified pay cut as part of the corporation’s drive to slim presenters’ fees.”

“....after agreeing to take an unspecified pay cut.” Good.  The BBC has taken on board public disquiet over the payment of highly inflated presenters’ salaries funded by the annual licence fee.  So can we expect all the other presenters’ salaries and fees being renegotiated downwards soon, then?

Nothing will stop Labour and its Media claque from continuing to seek the scalp of the Conservative Party's director of communications Andy Coulson, in an endeavour to inflict damage upon David Cameron.  The story will be kept rolling (or perhaps more aptly, limping) for a while yet, but it is nevertheless a severe blow to Labour that the Metropolitan Police have confirmed that there is not any need to reopen their investigation into claims of illegal ‘phone-tapping at the News of the World because no new evidence had come to light since the case was first investigated four years ago (my emphasis).  The Police emphasised in particular that no evidence was found that former deputy prime minister John Prescott's ‘phone was tapped.

A lot of hot air will be expended during the course of the next week or so by partisans seeking to cause the Conservatives the maximum amount of embarrassment, but in the meantime, those of us possessed of a critical facility will await the evidence.

Police rule out fresh investigation into News of the World phone-tapping claims

Another case of “Give a dog a bad name and hang him”

So, Labour politicians and their helpers in the Media think that as Andy Coulson had been a bad boy in the past, David Cameron should now dismiss him in the light of The Guardian’s latest “revelations”.

First let us remind ourselves that Mr Coulson was a bad boy in the sense that as Editor of  the News of the World, he accepted that the buck stopped with him concerning the criminal conduct of one of his journalists even though he knew nothing of that journalist's errant activities. Second, the events leading to Mr Coulson's principled resignation as editor took place long before he was appointed as the director of communications for the Conservatives.  More importantly, and forgive me for asking, but where is the evidence of Mr Coulson’s wrongdoing in relation this current story?

At least this episode will assist the Conservatives to determine who are their real friends in the Media.

Andy Coulson trusted member of Cameron’s inner circle – Terry Kirby

The concept of bull fighting makes me feel very uncomfortable, but everyone to his own.  Giles Coren’s article in The Times this morning did amuse me however, particularly this passage,

 “You who are so quick to anthropomorphise the bull and weepily to share its pain, try reversing the process. Imagine not that the bull is a man, but that you are the bull. Imagine that you are given the choice between living to, say, 35 years of age, mostly in a shed, in massive single-sex groups, feeding on silage (prison is a fair comparison) and then queuing with your mates to die at the hand of a shaven-headed thug with a bolt gun . . .

 

Or then again, imagine living free in thousands of acres of land, eating whatever you want, shagging who you like, and then, when you are perhaps 70, being asked to fight to the death against a Spaniard in pink tights.”

In 2007, during the commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade following the campaign led by Tory MP William Wilberforce, a curious statistic was quietly and casually repeated.  This statistic comprised the claim that until the abolition of the trade by the United Kingdom in 1807, British slave traders had transported as many as fifty million Africans into slavery.  Complete, definitive records as to how many individuals were kidnapped and sold into slavery no longer exist (if they ever did) thus the “fifty million” figure does not have any basis in fact and it is hard to resist the conclusion that it was simply plucked from the air.

It is interesting to note that according to the fifth census conducted in the United States in 1830, twenty-three years after the abolition of the British slave trade, the total black population amounted to 2,328,626 individuals, of whom 2,009,050 were described as slaves and 319,576 as being free.  The census recorded that the total population of the United States was 12,858,670.  The population of the United States had grown rapidly, given that in 1800 records indicate a total population of 5,308,483 of whom 893,602 were slaves.  In 1790 the figures were 3,929,326 and 697,681, respectively.

It is a fair assumption that by 1807 a significant proportion of the population of African descent had been born in the United States and had not been transported.  For instance without the trade, the slave population nearly doubled between 1810 and 1830 (1,191,362 individuals increasing to 2,009,050).  Against this, it must be borne in mind that Africans were being abducted on a relatively large scale over the course of a century. Furthermore, though the main destination was the American colonies, many Africans were delivered to estates in the West Indies, albeit on a much smaller scale. Also, many prisoners perished during the journey to their new “home” or very shortly thereafter.

Taking all factors into account, fifty million is still an implausibly high figure which can only have been an extrapolation from various other estimates and loose guesswork of the likely numbers of individuals transported at the very height of the slave trade.  It is immaterial whether the figure for abductions was five million or even five hundred thousand.  It was an ugly trade, but funny figures do not make it uglier.

“British law, which, while it has its flaws, is more developed and grounded in reality and fairness”

Zeinab Huq

I’ll give a religious court (of any persuasion) a miss, if you don’t mind

It has been said before but clearly it needs saying again, that whilst Tony Blair was endeavouring to prevent a fifth consecutive Conservative victory in 1997 and bring to an end eighteen years of Conservative government, the Conservatives are seeking to thwart a fourth consecutive Labour success.  To compare David Cameron’s challenge to Labour after only thirteen years (by May 2010) is not comparing like for like, as Labour’s media partisans well appreciate.

No matter how many opinion polls and indeed actual election results show the Conservatives with a handsome lead over their political opponents, New Labour's commentators and their acolytes in the Media continue to assert that David Cameron has not sealed the deal with the electorate.  Whilst it is true that the only result that matters is that of the General Election, unless something spectacularly unforeseen happens the next administration of this country will be of a Conservative persuasion.

Given the lead that the Conservatives have consistently maintained over Labour, the only crumb of comfort available to the legion of Labour’s supporters in the Media is that our electoral system has become so skewed in favour of Labour that the Conservatives must accumulate a substantial number of votes in excess of  those secured than Labour simply to break even in terms of seats in the House of Commons.  It is thus disingenuous of Labour-sympathetic commentators to continually equate the projected, modest number of Conservative seats in a new Parliament with David Cameron not having support of the electorate, when on current form he is likely to secure literally millions of votes more than his Labour opponents, at the General Election.

To quote Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Luton South,

“[Esther Rantzen’s] involvement could split the anti-Moran vote and help Labour to win again”.

What do these prospective “independent” candidates really wish to achieve, other than to deny the electorate the chance of representation by a genuine, Conservative MP?

MPs' expenses: Simon Heffer still considering opposing Alan Haselhurst

Esther Rantzen should stick to Strictly Come Dancing

Just as The Daily Telegraph today disclosed the identities of those Liberal Democrat MPs who have taken ample advantage of the lax parliamentary expenses rules, a large part of the mainstream media has concentrated on the generalities of the scandal, with ample references to Labour and Conservative “miscreants”.  This is not surprising given the Liberal Democrats are the “progressive” media’s last best chance of preventing a Conservative landslide at the next General Election.

“As usual the [Conservative] party’s spin doctors will try hard to dampen expectations, but the story is clear. The Tories may be at an historic high water mark across local government as a whole, but there is room for improvement at this particular election cycle. If they do not make substantial gains, they are little better off than that day four years ago when they were simultaneously losing a general election. Nothing less than gains well into three figures and a share of the national vote above 40% will justify the claim that David Cameron is on his way to Downing Street.”

Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher

Outlook for the June 4 local elections

Media commentators circle to pick over the bones of the Conservative "defeat" in the May 2007 local elections

Local Elections: The Conservatives are being set up for a fall

What a complete and utter disgrace.

The Evening Standard reports today that Linda Bowman, the mother of murdered model Sally Anne Bowman, has called for a DNA database of everyone in Britain to help police catch serious criminals.

Mrs Bowman believes that her daughter’s case highlights the value of a universal database.  It does no such thing. Mark Dixie, the man convicted of Sally Anne’s murder was detected because like most criminals he committed more than one offence.  It is what nearly all criminals do. In a later incident, he provided a DNA sample to the Police.  It was by this means that his involvement in Sally Anne’s murder was detected.  His detection plainly took place without the need for there being a national database.

Whilst it is obvious that a national DNA database should have enabled Mark Dixie’s earlier detection (bearing in mind the fiasco that occurred in the case of serial rapist Kirk Reid) this is not a compelling reason for the DNA of tens of millions of innocent people being stored on a national database.  It is not only a question of everyone being considered by the State as a potential suspect, which is repugnant enough in itself.  I simply object to my DNA (or fingerprint records, or any other information for that matter) being maintained on any database just because an arm of the State thinks that it might prove useful.

“The loss of liberty is one of the big legacies of an appalling, shallow, dishonest and vindictive government, which has failed the hopes and trust of so many. None of the brilliant lawyers and academics who leap to the defence of the Human Rights Act can deny that the Government's and Home Office's contempt for rights are habitual, and appear to be an ineradicable part of their nature that the HRA cannot restrain.”

Henry Porter  “The Human Rights Act can't restrain the Government”

“Enough. There's something wrong in our politics, something big and bang-in-the-middle: a howling question that is not about the global economy at all. It's about domestic leadership. It's about Mr Brown.  He isn't any good.  He's failing. He's embarrassing. He's dreadful. His colleagues know this. Yet they are gripped with a terrible fatalism, sliding towards election defeat as though catastrophe were unavoidable.”

Matthew Parris  “Do the honourable thing, Mr Brown. Run away”

“Those who have to work with him say that [Gordon Brown] really seems to think that announcing such initiatives is the same as achieving them. Is he, they sometimes wonder, quite right in the head?”

Charles Moore  “Mervyn King's timely lesson in economics for Gordon Brown”

All is not well down at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).  Reports The Guardian,

“Part of the concern stems from a shift in the tone and style of the new body, which emphasises the concept of “fairness” more than the notions of “equality” and “discrimination”, and is less focused on campaigning. A spokesman for the EHRC said it saw itself as “a regulator and not simply a campaigning organisation.  He said, ‘Fairness is a great British value. I think fairness is a concept that a wider population understands.’ ”

The report continues,

 “An equality lawyer, who also asked not be named, said: ‘The problem is that ‘fairness’, unlike equality, has no basis in law. It’s a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it’s about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men.’¹ ”

Out of the mouth of babes…

_________________________

1   My emphasis.

“It would appear that the government has an agenda which is driven by the Association of Chief Police Officers. That involves neutralising an independent legal profession whose future role will be to stand by ticking boxes while people are rushed to conviction, whether innocent or not.”

Robin Murray

Speaking of the phenomenal response on the internet to his speech at the European Parliament on the 24^th March 2009, says Daniel Hannan MEP in The Daily Telegraph today,

“The episode serves to show how utterly and irretrievably the internet has changed politics. In 24 hours, 380,000 people had watched a video before a word appeared on the BBC or in any newspaper.  The Daily Telegraph was the first. The days when political journalists got to decide what was news are over. Ten or even five years ago, a dozen lobby correspondents would dictate the next day's headlines. Now, millions of bloggers and commentators come to an aggregate view.”

Quite.

There is a lesson to be learned from the case of Erica Connor which might not be immediately obvious.  Mrs Connor was the former headmistress of New Monument School, a primary school in Woking, Surrey.  She was a victim of a campaign by two Muslim governors to give Islam a greater presence in her school. New Monument School is situated in the Maybury district of Woking and its local education authority is Surrey County Council.

Surrey County Council is controlled by the Conservatives.  Save for a period between 1993 and 1997, it always has been. Its employees hail largely from Conservative supporting Surrey and surrounding areas.  In spite of that fact, a significant proportion of its management level bureaucracy seems to be of a distinctly guardianista mentality.

Mrs Connor was forced to leave her school because of stress after she was unjustly accused of “Islamophobia” and racism by Islamic elements on the school’s board of governors. Surrey County Council failed in its duty to protect her and intervene.  The Council’s excuse for that failure was “fear of a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality.” In the High Court, the judge, Mr John Leighton-Williams, QC found that council officers had shown “excessive tolerance” towards the two governors [who had caused the school’s governing body to become dysfunctional] and displayed “misplaced sympathy for [one of the governors]”.  In consequence, the Council was ordered to pay Mrs Connor £407,781 in compensation for psychiatric injury, loss of income and pension, medical expenses and the premature end of her career.

After twelve years of Labour misrule, at senior management level most of our institutions are now riddled with individuals of a guardianista persuasion. The Conservatives must adopt a strategy to deal with this. Otherwise, upon returning to the helm of national Government, though perhaps not being baulked outright at every turn by a reluctant bureaucracy, they might find themselves undermined continually or at the very least severely embarrassed.

Asks Matthew Parris, whilst pondering the advantages of judgment-based regulation as against rule-based regulation,

 “...And the question arises: wouldn't it be cheaper, wouldn't it be faster and simpler, and would it really add much to the sum total of general injustice, if we moved in the direction of appointing more commissar-like adjudicators: men and women empowered to consider the spirit and purposes of regulation and then to pronounce definitively, to deem - their judgments final, with no rights of appeal or judicial review?”

To a significant degree, too many decision makers rely upon an unnecessarily restrictive, literal interpretation of rules to enable themselves to avoid making robust decisions. Their fear of being “taken to law” by someone adversely affected is in most cases irrational.  Worse, it is feeble.  Ultimately, it is a question of mindset. Thus, if Mr Parris’ “commissar-like adjudicators” are possessed of the same trepidity the vice he desires expunged will endure.

There is also the issue that in recent years, rules have been amended and clarified in ever greater detail to achieve a political purpose. In such instances, where decision makers have contrived to do the right thing, the rules have been changed again to tighten the straitjacket.  A prime example is the constant amendment of the criminal law where legislators have sought to enable the securing of convictions where evidence is weak or uncorroborated.  Here, more often than not the Courts have still been able to dispense justice against all the odds.

In essence, in so many spheres of life we appear to have appointed the wrong sort of decision maker.

Whilst we are all engaged in the debate as to whether Sir Fred Goodwin should be entitled to retain his pension and his knighthood, it is worth bearing in mind that when Gordon Brown is finally prised from power and the dust has settled, the former Prime Minister will in all likelihood drift into a knighthood (if not ennobled as Lord Brown of Kirkcaldy and/or Cowdenbeath) to enjoy his very ample gold plated pension.  Given the severe damage that Gordon Brown has inflicted upon the economy, should this be any less worthy of censure than the case of his former best mate, Sir Fred?

Said Huw Edwards in an article promoting the BBC programme “Gladstone and Disraeli: Clash of the Titans”,

“I have more than a few reasons to name William Gladstone as a hero of mine. He was an even greater hero to some of my ancestors. In the mid-19th Century, most of the Edwards family were tenant farmers in Cardiganshire. Refusing to vote for the local (Tory) landowner at election time was a very dangerous thing to do. In those days, voting was not a secret process. Employers or landowners could check up on how workers or tenants had voted. The “rebels” were promptly punished. One of my ancestors was thrown off his farm near Tregaron for daring to vote Liberal…….It was William Gladstone who put a stop to this obnoxious system by introducing the secret ballot in 1872.”

The subliminal message is that the Conservative Party of the past was not above underhand tactics to achieve electoral success.  However, the myths do not accord with the facts.  The Whigs and Tories of the nineteenth century were of the same social class and neither party nor their supporters, were wholly immune from the vice of seeking electoral advantage by less than fair means.  Thus, a tenant farmer who supported a Conservative candidate was just as likely to suffer the wrath of his Liberal supporting landlord. 

It is also important to look at the issue in context of the age. Whilst the Reform Act of 1832 extended the franchise to a limited degree, the Act that really began the process of “the working man” being enfranchised was the Reform Act of 1867. Thus, the opportunity for the great landowners to purportedly bully the “little people” into voting their way had only just arisen.  It is important to bear in mind also that the Reform Act 1867 was passed by a Conservative administration.  That administration lost power in 1868, only for the Conservatives to be returned to power in 1874 (after a secret ballot) with a large majority over Gladstone’s Liberals.

The secret ballot was a roaring success......but not for the Liberals.