Soap Box column in PR Week
My monthly column in PR Week is here.
With space for only 200 words, writing the Soap Box column is a little bit like tweeting. But I hope I manage to say something of interest about the issues that will play big at the coming election.
Posted on 30 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Charles Moore's good sense
Once again, Charles Moore produces a column that contains a great deal of good sense. Today he writes about the need to profile suspects in the fight on terror.
"Anyone who has travelled to Israel will have noticed that the methods of searching passengers are more rigorous than anywhere else, but they are also, on average, less time-consuming", he writes.
Apparently they assess risk by taking into account a whole host of factors. Perhaps they're doing something we could learn from?
Posted on 30 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Euro ID?
I've just received my new driving license.
Is it my imagination, or has the card a slightly new layout compared to my old one? The Euro flag seems more prominent. Text in various Euro-languages has appeared.
It looks like a Euro-ID card to me.
Or put it another way, if one were to design a Euro ID card, in what way would it differ from the license cards issued by the DVLA? Indeed, I suspect that the DVLA - like many quangos - takes its instructions on how such card should appear direct from the EU.
When were we asked?
Posted on 29 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change: the dam is cracking
Andrew Neil sums it up pretty neatly when he states that the IPCC 2007 report on climate change is "crumbling in some pretty significant areas."
I don't like to sound like a smarty-pants, but anyone capable of thinking for themselves, and with the inclination to do some reading, could see this coming. Four months ago, I wrote of the "growing gap between public policy positions on climate change, and the supporting science". I forecast that "in the free market of ideas, expect a correction soon ...."
Not put off by the personally unpleasant emails then sent to me by a publicly-funded official calling me a fascist, I suggested that the "lunatic consensus" was about to break down.
There is a desperate need for those who determine public policy to stop deferring to endless, one-sided experts. Of course we must listen to scientific advice. But we must also think for ourselves.
Posted on 28 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Decentralise control over welfare
The Guardian suggests that the Conservatives may give councils power to set benefits. Apparently, "the Conservative Treasury team are holding talks on handing responsibility to local councils for setting and distributing benefits such as the jobseeker's allowance."
What a great idea. (In fact, it sounds like chapter 7 in The Plan...)
Decentralising responsibility means that councils could tailor their policies to suit local needs. It would allow local caseworkers to exercise judgement, rather than crude "tick box" assessment.
Devolved responsibility means pluralism - which spreads best practice. The freedom to innovate means that local authorities will come up with ideas and pilot schemes that Whitehall would never have dreamed of. Those that work will be copied elsewhere so that, as in the US, councillors start speaking of "adopting the Surrey model" or "introducing Essex-style reforms". Moreover, non-state agents – churches, charities, businesses – are likelier to involve themselves in local projects than in national schemes.
Most important, localised welfare will restore the notion of responsibility: our responsibility to support ourselves if we can, and our responsibility to those around us who, for whatever reason, cannot support themselves.
Here's a more detailed paper on the subject that spells out how such reforms might work in practice.
Posted on 28 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Private Accounts Committee?
Just been quizzing MoD chiefs about the way they spend the defence budget. Not unreasonably, given that it's public money and our armed forces are short of kit, I wanted to know about certain key projects.
Alas, Parliament is quite incapable of holding government to account for such things - as I soon discovered. Under current arrangements, the committee might as well not bother.
I asked a straight question about the A400M 'plane (rumoured to now cost over £100 million per 'plane and to be ridiculously delayed). But, I was told, commercial confidentiality meant I wasn't allowed to know. Unless the Public Accounts Committee went into private session.
Naturally, I refused. "If this session goes private, I will leave" I said. Why put yourself in a situation where you are bound from holding our blundering executive to account?
It is supposed to be a Public - not Private - Accounts Committee.
So much for open government. So much for democratic scrutiny. So much for a sovereign legislature. No wonder voters think politicians are useless.
Posted on 27 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Government out of control
The Supreme Court* today ruled that the government acted unlawfully in seizing control of terror suspects assets. The judges found that the executive created offences without putting it to a vote in Parliament.
On that basis, surely, most things government does could be struck down?
Bankers received a £billion bail out - without a proper vote. Most regulations pass through Parliament on the nod as Statutory Instruments, or as EU dictat. Quangos and statutory agencies make public policy as they please.
If a Commons vote was still a prerequisite for executive policy-making, the legislature would have to do a good deal more, and executive a lot less.
* - the Supreme Court is not really "supreme", now that our highest court is in Europe.
Posted on 27 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Holocaust Memorial Day
A couple of days ago, I visited the Yad Vashem centre in Jerusalem, built to remember victims of the Holocaust.
I was taught about the Holocaust at school, and have read books about it - most recently Richard Evans' Third Reich at War. Yet I found the Yad Vashem disturbing and powerful because, as Daniel Hannan blogs, it shows that the victims were just ordinary people, "as much the centre of his universe as you are".
I'm pleased that my local council now has a ceremony to mark today, and that children from our local schools now take part in programmes run by the Holocaust Education Trust.
Posted on 27 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Which Britain is "more conservative"?
Britain
is becoming more conservative in terms of public attitudes, apparently. More people, they tell us, are of the view that government should do less, and that as individuals we should have greater freedom.
Good. But what about the attitudes of official Britain? The
"official mind" seems remarkably unresponsive to change.
Indeed, the quango state, which actually makes public policy, seems immune to public feeling and attitudes. For example, the people might want less top-down regulation, yet our Whitehall establishment carry on with a Euro-corporatism straight from the 1950s. Our ipod society might take the view that we should have freedom to live as we choose, but this week government issued edicts dictating what our seven year olds must be taught.
The British people may want more freedom and less government. Yet the British state carries on eroding our liberties and imposing government into the nooks and crannies of our lives.
This is why we need direct democracy - to bring state institutions into line with the rest of us.
Posted on 26 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Cheap booze and localism
It's sometimes said that localism is impractical politics. "The theory's fine, Carswell" I keep being told," but just wait 'til the media start demanding that "something must be done".
Then my local newspaper calls me wanting my thoughts on cheap booze; "Shouldn't we ban it? Why not set minimum national prices".
"Do you really want Westminster politicians deciding the price of a pint?" I reply. "Cheap booze is a real problem in some places. But most responsible folk don't need government to run their pubs and clubs. So why not let our local council deal with it case-by-case?"
"Give councils real discretion over licensing. Let them levy any new tax. That way we get a specific solution to each different local circumstance".
"And local people, police and even newspapers, would get to have a real say over what needs to be done".
Which is more plausible? Saying that, or promising yet another regulatory sledgehammer from Whitehall, which would only miss the nut?
Making the case for localism doesn't need to be difficult.
Posted on 24 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Why does the Left hate Israel?
I've an article in this week's Jewish Chronicle looking at the extraordinary double standards applied to Israel by the British left. And indeed, the left-leaning Whitehall establishment.
Posted on 22 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Edlington case: the state is not on your side
Two brothers who tortured two boys have been given "indefinite periods of detention".
In other words, instead of a court of law handing down clearly defined sentences in public, it'll be left to officials - the kind who put rehabilitation ahead of justice - to oversee the punishment.
Except, I doubt that punishment is going to feature strongly in the minds of the probation officials in charge. They tend to see things more from the criminals point of view, rather than the victim. Compassion is easy to dish out when it's not your rights that were violated and when it's not up to you to forgive.
Already Ed Ball, the minister, has been keen to emphasise that the brothers "get support in custody to turn things around". He goes on the tell us that the review into this case, which apparently catalogues the incompetence of state officials, cannot be made public.
State officials hate public scrutiny because it forces them to answer outward to the public, rather than inward to each other. Answering directly to the rest of us would force those that run the justice system to abandon their sociological excuse-making for savage crimes.
Posted on 22 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
In a jam
Delighted to discover that a pot of blackberry jam I made has raised £20 in a local constituency charity auction.
Do you suppose home-made jam breaks lots of EU directives? I do hope so.
Posted on 22 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Obama gets tough on Wall Street ....
... declares the Guardian.
Let no one mis-think that this is a knee-jerk response to the good and wise voters of Massachusetts, eh.
Alternatively, re-read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Replace the word "rail road" with "bank", and you see that Wesley Mouch and Orren Boyle have become prototypes of those who make public policy, rather than fictional caricatures.
Posted on 21 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Cadbury, Kraft and capitalism
Listening to much of the outraged comment following Kraft's takeover of Cadbury, you'd never have guessed that the "hostile takeover" was in fact entirely voluntary.
As far as we know, no one forced those who actually owned the business to sell to Kraft. They did so entirely willinging. The transfer of ownership to Kraft might have been unwelcome to the old Cadbury management, but not to those who sold up at 850p per share.
It is depressing to hear some commentators suggesting a clamp down on takeovers. If you owned a flat or appartment, and engaged the services of a property management company to manage it for you, should they be able to veto you from selling it? Of course not. It's your property. So why should those that manage, as opposed to own, a business be able to do likewise.
Changing corporate governance rules to enable management to veto shareholders from selling would vastly strengthen the position of corporate fat cats - and consipire against the interests of those that actually owned the business. Following the outrageous banking bailouts, we ought to be looking for ways to make those that run businesses more directly accountable to those that own them - not less.
Giving public officials the power to veto takeovers means putting politicians and lobbyists in charge of other people's private property. Think about it. Reflect on the events in SW1 this past year. Now would that really make the world a better place?
Posted on 21 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Defence reform - the idea is catching on
The penny is beginning to drop; there's something profoundly wrong about the way we spend our defence budget.
Defence correspondents (if not yet all MPs) are beginning to ask the right questions. Thomas Harding today wants to know why we’re spending on one single Eurofighter the amount we could be spending to buy an entire squadron of sixteen Tucanos.
I want to know why we are spending £1.9 billion on 60-something helicopters that we could've got for less than half the amount. Indeed, I've a list of 12 major defence programmes which could have cost us £12 Billion (a third of this year's total defence spend) less – if only we had we not bought them via the absurdly protectionist Defence Industrial Strategy.
So why do we spend our defence budget so badly? Greedy contractors running rings around inept civil servants - and with indolent politicians do nothing to stop it.
Great powers stay great by adapting quickly to new circumstance. Yet our current procurement process means we’re still spending the lion’s share of our budget on cold war weapons systems. Protectionist procurement is sapping our military capability as a country. We need to change.
Posted on 20 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Thank goodness for America
Paul Goodman has an interesting piece about anti-Americanism here.
Anti-Americans should try to explain why, when there's a natural disaster, Haiti or the tsunami, it's so often those Americans who turn up with help first.
No country is perfect. But the US is basically a force for good in the world - and what is good for the US is generally good for us, too.
Well done America.
Posted on 19 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Quangocrats are the problem - not the solution
Whitehall
under Labour has become dysfunctional, they now tell us. A decade of ad hoc decision-making, says the Institute of Government (IoG), has left our civil service in a fix.
No kidding. As an analysis of what's wrong, the IoG’s report,
Shaping up: A Whitehall for the future
, is hard to fault.
But we should be wary of certain of the IoG’s proposed remedies.
The Institute of Government is not some idealistic “think tank”, with a founding commitment in, say, free markets or democracy. One might instead call it a think tank for quangocrats, funded by plutocrats. If Sir Humphrey Appleby was involved in a think tank, this would be it.
As the IoG powerfully demonstrates, our system of governance is indeed in a mess. Accountability, via ministers, simply does not work. Indeed, ministers end up as departmental mouthpieces, being run by civil servants, rather than the other way around. Decisions and cock-ups are occasionally justified in Parliament, but in no sense are those we elect really deciding or scrutinising policy.
The IoG is right, too, to recognise that changing ministers alone is not enough. But the proposals that the report makes would actually make matters worse. Accountability would remain inward, to Whitehall.
The report contains lots about Whitehall departments being more accountable to others in Whitehall – departmental boards and non-execs. Sir Humphrey wants a “strategic role” on making policy, but isn’t that what we hold elections to decide? There’s precious little about any accountability outwards to either the people or their elected tribunes.
If “post bureaucratic” government means anything, it is making those who make public policy more directly outwardly accountable. Change in Whitehall should be about making those who run big departments answer directly for how they do so - not less. Why not reform the powers of patronage, so that Sir Humphrey had to face a proper confirmation hearing in front of elected officials, before getting his job? The prospect of a P45 might reduce the number of expensive IT disasters.
Rather than create more Whitehall non-executive directors, why not use those elected non-executives called Members of Parliament? Why not force each Whitehall chief and quangocrat to plead annually for his or her budget before each Commons select committee?
As the report recognises, the Treasury is indeed failing to control public spending. But that is because no executive can be relied upon alone to rein in the executive. Give the task to Parliament – as has supposedly been the case since the civil war.
Implementing the IoG’s recommendations will do nothing to make Britain better governed. It will merely insulate the governing from the governed.
Posted on 19 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Europe referendum? Yes, we can
My Private Members Bill pushing for a referendum on Britain's EU membership is coming along nicely.
Thanks for your suggestions on the precise wording of the ballot question.
It's sometimes implied - often by SW1 people - that an "in or out" referendum is impossible. Too complicated. Not practical. Too many legal issues now tied up in Europe now etc etc ....
I've always taken the view that that which Parliament has made, Parliament can unmake. And just to be sure of the legality of the proposed question, I'm seeking a formal statutory opinion from the Electoral Commission (as sanctioned under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000). They are being very helpful.
Once I've their response, I’ll publish the formal Bill.
Posted on 18 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change doubts
I see that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has 'fessed up to the fact that some of its "evidence" about melting Himalayan glaciers is, in fact, speculation. What else in the IPCC's tablets of stone is blah blah?
Is it my imagination, or do I sense certain politicians who talk about climate change beginning to emphasize the fact they're just following the best scientific advice.
And what if the IPCC advice turns out not to be quite the best?
One very senior Labour minister recently asked me, in a genuine spirit of inquiry, how I could be so certain of climate change scepticism. I said I couldn't - that's the whole point of scepticism. But I did recommend he read Plimer.
"But all the scientific advice tells us it's happening. It's in the IPCC" he insisted, a vaguely troubled expression on his face.
Not all scientific advice, my friend. Nor, it seems, is the IPCC always quite as "scientific" as we once thought.
If I'd hiked up house hold energy bills by 10 - 15 per cent through hidden charges, in order to siphon £billions onto the balance sheets of a few big corporations, I'd at least have taken the time to dig beyond the chapter summaries first. Not all ministers, apparently.
What are the odds that those Himalayan glaciers will be around rather longer than conventional thinking on man-made climate change?
Posted on 18 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Politics needs more choice and competition
"It's surprising to see democratically elected officials express such contempt for the people who elected them" writes Alasdair Palmer in the Sunday Telegraph.
Hummm....
Not, perhaps, when they come from safe seats. In four of the past five General Elections, fewer than one in ten seats changed hands. Even in the 1997 Labour landslide, seven in ten proved safe.
Exposure to choice and competition drive up levels of customer service - in politics and as well as business.
Posted on 17 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Talking to Fabians
Spoke at the Fabian conference in London this morning.
Loved it - once we got past the ranty bit from the ranty woman who was there to rant against wicked Tories.
The point I most wanted to make was that the left faces a real crisis - and I don't just mean Gordon Brown. Fabianism is a product of the rise of organised labour - perhaps the defining political development of the last century. But the key development of our time is the rise of organised consumerism and citizenry on the internet. It's not mass production, but long tail, niche production that'll be key.
The new right - with its embrace of direct democracy, radical localism and the "post-bureaucratic age" - has some idea of how to respond. The left, which having ditched Marx seems (unconsciously) guided by a pastiche of Gramsci and Rousseau, does not.
Interestingly, many of the audience seem in denial. They couldn't step out of their comfort zone and see the centre right's new ideas as anything more than tactical guises. Few seemed to despair at how the party of English radicalism, which stood for dispersed power, ended up on the side of Euro-elites and quangocrats, and deeply suspicious of direct democracy and true localism.
Suits me.
Posted on 16 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Going to the wall?
Wall Street banks will be forced to pay $billions in tax to recoup the cost of the bail outs. Except it remains to be seen if those who actually took the taxpayers' handouts will be the ones paying this new levy.
I suspect responsible banks, who kept their liabilities under control, will be hit by this new tax every bit as hard as the feckless.
And what of the most reckless of them all, the Fed? Will the folk whose ultra low interest rate policy created the toxic brew pay up too?
Of course not. Much easier for public officials to blame "the markets", rather than those whose disastrous public policy created the debt bubble - on which the markets called time.
Posted on 15 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Google in China
News of Google's problems in China got me thinking; is China's continued ascendancy inevitable?
We've become so used to hearing about China's rise, we've perhaps forgotten the fact that this isn't the first time in history China has seemed on the verge of global great power status.
Except something rather odd happened; Excessive centralised control stifled innovation and enterprise. It was left to others to apply Chinese inventions and - for all her size - overtake her.
Look at how China invented printing - as radical an innovation as the internet. Yet it was in early modern Europe - where there wasn't (then) any central political authority on hand to strangle innovation - that the printing press had the greatest effect. Knowledge and ideas flourished in the West, but in China printing was largely confined to official texts.
Could China's response to the internet have parallels to her earlier use of printing? Control, centralise, restrict.
Perhaps economic dynamism and development are a product of political liberalism?
I doubt a society that restricts the flow of knowledge and ideas online will be as economically successful and innovative as one that does not. In the digital age, added value increasingly comes not from mass production, but from ideas, niche manufacture and Chris Anderson's Long Tail market.
Perhaps China's official response to Google will have far bigger consequences for China than for Google.
Posted on 14 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Universal jurisdiction will end badly
It all sounds so straight forward and reasonable. Bad people, who’ve done horrific things, can be brought to account anywhere. Under "universal jurisdiction", our courts can bring justice to genocidal killers, regardless of where they committed their crimes or against whom. Great, eh?
Except universal jurisdiction goes well beyond previous notions of extra territorial jurisdiction. And it has big implications that don't seem to have been thought through. Allowing courts in one jurisdiction to administer justice for crimes committed in another means, in effect, there is no longer any such thing as “another jurisdiction”.
International law, as defined by supranational courts, takes precedence over national laws, made by national governments. Indeed, since 2002, an International Criminal Court has existed that claims an authority that transcends that of nation states. Legal obligations to a world community take precedence over the laws of any actual community.
Think that through; it gives unelected judges some pretty big powers. It could mean a single judge having more power than millions of real people on the other side of the planet. Who guards the guardians when they’re supranational?
As Henry Kissinger puts it, “Universal jurisdiction risks creating universal tyranny - that of judges”. Not since the globe was carved up into empires have we seen one group of human beings claiming quite such authority over others.
Just like imperialism, universal jurisdiction is pretty contemptuous of national sovereignty. Under it, everything is under. Authority comes, not upward from the people, but on high from lofty principles – which a priesthood of jurists and lawyers alone can divine. Put that way, to students of medieval Europe, perhaps the concept of universal jurisdiction doesn’t seen quite so modern after all.
Taking part in a Westminster Hall debate yesterday about the Goldstone report, I was struck by an irony. In the chamber, MPs from a party that was once proudly anti-imperial, lined up to attack the principle of national self-determination. one Labour MP after another queued up to advocate a system under which a (largely Western) elite sits in judgment of the rest of the planet, with lofty disregard to the locals. Seems pretty neo-imperial to me.
Perhaps lefties like the idea of universal jurisdiction because many of the universal jurists tend to share their outlook? Could that explain why those on the receiving end of it tend to be people disliked by London lefties?
Threatening people like Tzipi Livni is one thing. But is a British court seriously going to arrest Chinese officials anytime soon? Tibet? What about Russia? What if a Chinese or Russian court cited universal jurisdiction before the arrest of our officials? Iraq? As Belgium discovered, giving your courts the go-ahead to prosecute on a global scale gives you global headaches – which is problematic when you're not a superpower.
The British government has already indicated it would like to change the law following the Livni case. I question the self-righteous certainty of those who advocate universal jurisdiction, and suspect we’ve not heard the last of the muddle this lawyerly doctrine creates.
Posted on 13 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Oldest tree in Tendring
News reaches me that the oldest tree in our district is still going strong - with a little help from the council, who are pollarding the branches.
Old Knobbley, a magnificent oak in Tendring, is estimated to be between six and eight hundred years old.
It's rather lovely to think that the tree was going strong at the time of Cromwell. She's been around for longer than the United States, or for that matter, Parliament. She's been doing rather well since the Middle Ages.
Posted on 12 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
A good day for liberty? Not really
The power to randomly stop and search someone has been ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights.
Should lovers of freedom rejoice at the news? Alex Deane, of Big Brother Watch fame, thinks so. I'm more doubtful.
The European Court has, in effect, struck down Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (although the judicial activist lobby seem adverse to admitting that judges now strike our laws down).
While I agree with the sentiment of the ruling, is it not for our elected Parliament to curb the excesses of the executive? Today merely reminds us of the fact that the Commons is no longer up to the task.
The price we pay for a supine, spineless legislature is not merely an overbearing executive. It is that responsibility for holding it in check passes from those we can elect directly ourselves, to those we must hire expensive lawyers to plead before.
Posted on 12 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change; has the tipping point arrived?
According to James Delingpole, those who dispute the "consensus" view about man-made climate change are winning the argument.
Perhaps we've reached a tipping point after all? Just not the catastrophic, global apocalypse one that the "experts" have been promising us.
Posted on 11 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
BBC values paid for with your money
An elderly constituent complains about the amount of foul language on the TV. "My husband and I don't like all the effing and blinding on some of the programmes," she tells me.
"You never get that kind of language in the newspapers", she continues.
It's extraordinary, when you put it like that, isn't it? Newspapers are free to use whatever language they like - but they tend never to use coarse words or offensive language. So there's no need to lobby politicians in the vain hope they'll do something about it.
Perhaps newspaper editors recognise that if they did use low language, they'd lose readers and money. The BBC, on the other hand, which helps determine broadcasting culture and standards, gets its money off of us regardless. So it can afford to treat people like my elderly constituent with contempt.
Posted on 11 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
New quangos are not new conservatism
Anthony Browne, Boris Johnson's policy guru, is one of the most interesting thinkers on the centre-right - and someone I like and admire. But I think his latest proposal in the Sunday Times is wrong.
His call for a "national institute for policy evaluation" is superficially attractive. Why not use evidence evaluated by national experts to make our policy decisions?
But isn't that a pretty good description of what our elected Parliament is supposed to be?
Anthony makes the mistake that many very intelligent people make when contemplating public policy; if only expert policy-makers used evidence-based research to ascertain what works, we'd have good public policy. The trouble is, who decides "what works"? Who determines what evidence to apply to the evidence base? Why would experts be any better at deciding public policy than they were once supposed to be at running the economy?
If you leave it to an appointed panel of experts to decide on policy, you have a technocracy, not a democracy. You end up with an endless succession of people with a particular professional outlook telling us that if only a few more £millions were spent on their hobby horse, we'd save £billions. How do I know this? Because it’s pretty much what we have already.
Over the past generation - and under both parties - a vast alphabet sea of national bodies have sprung up, overseeing public policy on the basis of what they tell us is the evidence; the “evidence-based” NICE, MPC, PCTs, both FSAs, the CSA, EA, HA et al. It is they that are responsible for so much of the waste and public policy failure that Anthony rightly recognises.
We do need "independent assessors policing Whitehall", as Anthony says. But they're called MPs. Why not ask select committees of MPs to annually approve Whitehall and quango budgets?
Today, not all MPs are up to the task of holding government to account as a proper legislators. But they would be if each one of them had to face properly competitive election contests in order to remain MPs.
1980s Conservatism was about decentralising control over economic things. Modern Conservatism should be about decentralising control over politics and public services - not creating new national quangos to oversee things.
Anthony's proposal means more powers to the quango state. Conservatism in the age of Google should be about dismantling it.
UPDATE: Anthony has posted his thoughtful response here:
Douglas
, thanks for your kind comments about me, if not my proposal! Just to clarify the point I was making -
Obviously, MPs and indeed ministers should remain in charge, and make the decisions. I was not arguing that they shouldn't, nor was I arguing in favour of a technocracy (I am a democrat to my core, and agree with most of your agenda on devolution and localism). Almost all policies will require political judgements that only politicians can and should make. In the example I site, Washington State Policy Institute doesn't make policy, but informs policy approval at the state legislature.
My point is that politicians should be armed to make better informed decisions on policy - that means both developing a strong evidence base, and ensuring the evidence is integral to the decision making process. Politicians would and should then be free to ignore/override whatever evidence there is, but they should actually know what that evidence is (and obviously you need officials to collect and establish the evidence). To be fair, the government has made strides developing cost-benefit analyses of policies, but the microeconomists who do that work remain peripheral to the policy making process, and have little impact on the decision. It is probably fair to say that most government policy making is done in ignorance of the what evidence there is of the real costs and benefits of that policy. I think most of the public would be horrified to know how much policy is made on a hunch and a whim, rather than verifiable evidence. If you don't want to invent a new quango (and I share your reservations!), this work could always be done within the Audit Commission, which does some related work already and already anwers to Parliament.
Hope that sounds more acceptable.
Anthony Browne
Posted on 10 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Cameron on Marr
Cameron says that government must live within its means. Absolutely.
Posted on 10 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Local grit
Almost precisely a year ago, Gordon Brown was busy telling local government that he was full square behind "localism". Speaking to the New Local Government Network, he told them of his desire to place "greater power in the hands of local people - alongside greater local accountability."
When it comes to devolving power, what counts is what you do - not what you say.
Twelve months on, the state has centralised the distribution of salt to cope with a week of snow. Prudent local authorities, who ensured they'd be prepared for a tough winter, are in effect having their salt supplies requisitioned to provide for those who failed to do likewise.
Local accountability? Why would a town hall ever try to take the initiative itself and plan ahead for the unforeseen if central government is going to wade in whatever? Why use your initiative to help out your neighbouring authority, if a 'phone call from Whitehall is going to dictate the relationship anyhow?
I imagine that next time there's a harsh winter, there'll be fewer prudent local authorities who've ensured they've enough salt themselves - and more in need of "a fair share" of someone else's grit.
Posted on 9 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Charles Moore's brilliant insight
Charles Moore's campaign to bring the BBC to account seems to be working.
Following Jonathan Ross' obscene 'phone calls to Andrew Sachs last year (in the name of comedy), Moore refused to pay his TV poll tax license fee - until Ross was fired. Perhaps fearful of what might happen to state-funded broadcasting if everyone else did likewise, the BBC is not now going to renew Ross' £6 million-a-year contract.
Moore
uses his column in today's Telegraph to make a piercing observation - which I think everyone interested in public affairs ought to reflect on:
"Credit crunches expose a lack of value. Things that were thought to be worth a great deal turn out to be worth very little, or nothing at all. This applies not only to “sub-prime” housing in the United States, or the share price of financial institutions, but to less quantifiable value too.
[BBC chief] Mark Thompson ..... everyone can now see ... that he is not worth his £800,000-plus annual earnings. .... Gordon Brown has become unbelievable because of events, as have the great majority of members of our current Parliament.
It applies to almost everyone in charge of anything important in the folly years of the boom. Jonathan Ross, Mark Thompson, Alan Yentob, Fred Goodwin, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Dame Suzi Leather, Keir Starmer, Mr Speaker Martin… These and hundreds more, are all going, or gone."
We've been led for too long by fools guided by their folly.
Posted on 9 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
BBC witchcraft
A disturbing programme on the BBC last night about witchcraft in northern Uganda. What I found fascinating was not just what the programme told us about Africa, but what it also said about the mindset of those at the BBC.
The presenter, Tim Whewell, was at pains to tell us that witchcraft was not endemic to northern Uganda's past - but something that had arisen only recently. Against a backdrop of modern Kampala (hundreds of miles from northern Uganda), he asserted that the rise in witchcraft in Uganda was a modern phenomenon.
Why does a BBC programme maker, reporting on animist beliefs in Africa, feel obliged to tell us that such brutal practices are not in fact the product of a backward, irrational past, but the fault of modernity?
Because of cultural relativism.
It’s an article of faith amongst the contemporary British left (and BBC-types) that modern, industrial society is not in fact more "advanced" than that which is "primitive" or pre-industrial. Bad things need to be blamed on modern (preferably Western) influences to sustain the myth.
Yesterday's programme - however unconsciously - seemed to owe much to the 18th century philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his wrong-headed theory of natural man.
Posted on 8 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Signs of double dip?
UK house prices will be flat 2010, predicts the Halifax.
Sounds optimistic?
When you've a debt-induced recession, but your government merely tries to borrow its way out of it, you end up with an even bigger debt-induced recession. Until the price of credit rises, real credit - not the state handouts to banks - will remain in short supply. Either way, people and the economy take a hit.
Posted on 7 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Hugh Orde and ACPO
Mark Reckless has a first class post here. He asks why it is that the head of a private company, Sir Hugh Orde of ACPO, is interfering in the operational affairs of the Chief Constable of Wiltshire.
Despite it's name, ACPO - or the Association of Chief Police Officers - is no more than a private company. Far from being an official public body, it isn't. It is entirely unaccountable, even being exempt from FoI. Yet curiously, it seems to have carved out a role to determine public policy. Why?
Hugh Orde's main objection to Conservative plans for directly elected police commissioners is that they would interfer in the operational independence of Chief Constables. He persists in arguing this, despite evidence presented to the contrary. Yet here he is directly concerning himself with the operational affairs of the Chief Constable of Wiltshire.
Police accountability doesn't just mean having an individual directly elected police commissioner. It also means taking a look at the role of ACPO.
Posted on 7 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Is Brown sunk?
SW1 rumour mill yesterday full of chatter about a move against Brown. Not much change there then.
Yet today it seems Hoon and Hewitt are / will go over the top against him. Extraordinary.
Snap General Election, anyone?
Posted on 6 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
What's top of the policy agenda?
Watching the news the other night, it struck me that around half the items involved radical Islamist terror; the Detroit plot, airport body scanners, Yemen and Afghanistan, Wootton Bassett marches, Danish cartoonists attacked ....
It's starting to look like the Western political elite have a bigger problem on their hands than they care to admit, even to themselves.
Yet they seem in denial. Rather than rethink any of the late twentieth century public policy assumptions since the September 11th attacks, what has actually changed? Quangos continue to churn out divisive multi-culturalism. Student visas (as I discovered with this Parliamentary question in October) are still handed out like confetti. Human rights rules (which in the heat of an earlier terror attack Tony Blair suggest would be changed) still prevent us doing what we need to do to remove foreign trouble-makers.
Many politicians seem to simply hope this will all go away, so they can get back to talking about what interests them. Things like Copenhagen and climate change.
But it won't just go away.
The alarm bells keep ringing, yet still we slumber.
Posted on 6 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Where to buy seeds this year?
Cold, dark wintry days are perfect for buying seeds. There's nothing like mentally mapping out the veggie patch to keep the gloom at bay.
Where to buy seeds?
This year I've decided to give the big commercial suppliers a miss and try a small, independent supplier called Alan Romans. All the seeds I could possibly want for much less than I seem to remember paying last year.
Can't wait for spring to spring ....
Posted on 5 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Politicians to decide what you eat
Government will require restaurants to label "unhealthy meals". It'll be unlawful to use cartoons to promote "junk food". Government will even regulate the size of crisps and chocolates under a food strategy for the next 20 years, outlined today.
It's hard to know where to start against this bizarre micromanagement of our lives. Reading it, I half imagined it was an early April fool story.
If cuisine had been left to government to develop, we'd still be living off turnips and bread. If government ran supermarkets, there'd be catchment areas for breakfast cereal and waiting lists for bananas - just like there is with the other stuff they run.
Having comprehensively messed up most of the things they are supposed to be in charge of - like immigration control or equipping our armed forces properly - ministers and officials now want to control what we each eat.
Thousands of years of human history, how did we ever cope without Hilary Benn sorting out what's right for us? Once again, we see adults treated like children. The infantilisation of society continues.
Perhaps bossy politicians hectoring you and your family are the inevitable by product of a political system where 7 out of 10 politicians have safe seats. If we had real competition to decide who gets to be your MP, we might be left to enjoy choice as to what we eat.
Posted on 5 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Financial responsibility on the curriculum
The government's latest wheeze is compulsory lessons for every five year old on managing their finances.
Pity the lessons aren't available to middle aged Scottish Prime Ministers and Chancellors. If they were, Messrs Brown and Darling could be given a quick course on how to live within one's means. Or perhaps lessons on how not to over borrow? Micawber's law, even?
Does anyone seriously believe that putting this stuff onto the curriculum is going to make the slightest difference? Thrift is a virtue. It can no more be conjured into existence by adding bits to the curriculum than national identity can be imposed via citizenship lessons.
Once again, we see politicians confronted with a public policy problem tinkering with the national curriculum as if it were some sort of solution. Is this really what it was intended for?
Perhaps we Brits would be a more thrifty, prudent lot if politicians had not spent years creating a mirage of cheap credit and easy money?
Posted on 4 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
End of the line for the Defence Industrial scam?
Malcolm Rifkind has an excellent article about UK defence policy. "The most serious problem" he suggests "has been the inability of the Ministry of Defence to control the escalating costs of procurement."
Spot on. Until we recognise this, we'll never be able to give our armed forces the full range of kit they'd otherwise have.
"Procurement decisions and costs must be controlled from the very top of the Ministry of Defence" ... rather than driven up by "the competing demands and aspirations of the individual Services".
Indeed. But it's not just inter service rivalry that's driving up costs.
The Defence Industrial Strategy deliberately limits the range of suppliers to our armed forces in order to advantage a handful of contractors. Good news for their share price, but bad news for our military
The faux reasons given for such protectionism are sovereignty of supply or job protection. Yet neither argument stands up to intelligent scrutiny. The real reason for such protectionism is that it is in the commercial interests of some suppliers to exclude rival bids.
Getting better value from the procurement budget isn't just about dealing with inter service riviary or dozy officials. It means buying kit off-the-shelf and scapping the Defence Industrial Strategy.
Posted on 3 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Cameron's Plan
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David Cameron yesterday declared that "Within months of a Conservative victory there would start the most radical decentralisation of power this country has seen for generations."
Sounds like The Plan to me....
Clean up Westminster? Page 45.
Parliament answering to people? Page 153
Government answering to Parliament? Page 165 - 169.
Directly elected police commissioners? Page 53.
Radical localism? Page 89.
Free schools and parental choice? Pages 75.
Wiki-politics and crowd sourcing to let people draft policy? Page 116.
Last year, many thousands of people bought a copy of The Plan. Seems some have been reading it, too.
Posted on 3 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
The sluggish noughties
According to John Redwood "In the noughties the UK economy grew at only 1.7% per annum on average, well below the post war consensus view of a trend rate of growth of 2.5% ... more slowly overall during the noughties than .... in either the eighties or the nineties."
Was slow growth just a consequence of having that chump, Gordon Brown, at the helm?
Or was slow growth also caused by something more profound? Perhaps sluggish growth is also the cumulative impact of all that over regulation and high taxation? Endless directives and compliance dictates?
If you're governed by an alphabet soup of quangos - HSE, FSA, OFCOM et al - the cost of all those officials telling you what you can and cannot do eventually weighs you down.
Freeing our economy to grow again means doing more than just ousting Gordon Brown ....
Posted on 2 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
International aid shake up
The Conservatives have announced plans to shake up the way the Britain gives overseas aid. Good.
It's right that rich countries look to foster development in poorer nations. But too much of our aid budget gets spent on big 4x4's and never-to-be-implemented strategy documents.
Worse, in some countries where Britain has given direct budget support, UK taxpayers have been subsidising kleptocracy. Recipient governments are able to spend money on the things that they want (big 'planes and Mercedes Benzs) because they are able to beg for the things that their people need (education and health care).
Sitting on the Public Accounts Committee, I recently quizzed some DfID officials about the way that budget support is being spent. Deeply unconvincing.
Budget support also undermines democratic development in Africa. With such a large slice of government revenue coming from the donor community, ministers and officials in recipient countries answer to outsiders, rather than to the communities that elected them.
Recalibrating the way we target aid give us an opportunity to use our aid budget to protect the natural environment. For example, in Uganda, where Britain spends £billions, we should be looking to help establish fishing conservation areas on overfished Lake Victoria. Doing so would mean fewer 4x4's, but it might just help local people and preserve the environment.
Posted on 1 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell
EU carbon trading scheme hit by fraud ...
... reports the Telegraph.
No kidding! You don't say?
To anyone who's ever read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, this is entirely predictable. By creating a world in which men must seek permission to innovate and trade, we give power - intentionally or otherwise - to all manner of spivs and politicians.
Throughout Europe's Dark Age, men needed the permission of over lords to trade or make things. And things stayed pretty dark as a consequence. Civilisation and the industrial revolution happened once it became possible for men like Arkwright to make things - including a profit - without the local war lord or aristo, confiscating the lot.
After 400 years, perhaps Europe is merely reverting to type?
Posted on 1 January 2010 by Douglas Carswell