Liberal Vision

ID CARDS launch in Manchester – four terrorists already arrested

The Government launches its “voluntary” ID card scheme in Manchester today – meaning that people are “able” to apply for an ID card at the cost of £30 (hmmm… bet the queues will nearly be as big as those outside H&M for Jimmy Choo shoes).

Interestingly earlier this morning – on the very same day as the launch of the voluntary ID card scheme, four men have arrested under the Terrorism Act in Manchester (and Bolton).

What a result ! The scheme has only just started – and voluntary at that – and already they have arrested four terrorists. Marvelous!

Tags: ID cards, Manchester, terrorists

The Government that cried “WOLF”.

Ok, back from the USA – and just a tad jet-lagged so apologies for the delay in this post.

But only back 24 hours and I notice that according to The Times yesterday only 41% accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man made. Look at it another way only 1/3 (32%) agree that climate change is happening but believe it has not yet been proven to be largely man-made.

Should we really be that surprised? Afterall we have become not just sceptical of politicians, but actually assume that if politicians say it, it’s most likely untrue, twisted, manipulated, or at best a half-truth – which still counts as a lie in my book.

We have also had “scientists say” thrust down our throats just one time too many (rather like the “if it saves just one child” mantra). Those words have become meaningless. Worse , they begin to grate. If I hear the words “scientists say” these days, my immediate response is “which scientists?”, “who funded their research?”, “what motivated them to do this research in the first place?” “Where can I see the FULL study, not just the edited highlights”. These questions, are rarely, if ever, answered. The media doesn’t look beyond the startling headline grabber it will give them, and politicians are more swayed by where they perceive public opinion to be than what the facts of the matter are. Explain why else the Liberal Democrats have taken such a pathetic stand on the smoking ban or drugs classification – neither of which enjoyed  rigorous scientific research  to justify the legislation introduced.

But let’s not get distracted with lifestyle freedoms, lets consider more “serious” scientific studies of late.  Because , to be clear, scientists are not omnipotent gods incapable of error. They get stuff wrong.

 In 1999 Government scientists were telling us that “hundreds of thousands” could die from CJD, a year later the projections had been down-scaled to just a few thousand at most.

In 2001 the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, David King, insisted upon a massive cull to stop an outbreak of foot and mouth. Most farmers and vets said that the epidemic could be contained by vaccine, or isolation methods. But hell no, literally millions of sheep and cows were killed, farms put out of business, the tourist trade decimated.  

In April 2006 Government reports suggested that as many as 700,000 of us might die from bird flu. Even scientists most modest estimates stated that around 50,000 in the UK would die. To date about 500 people around the world have been infected with H5N1 and around 260 of them have died.

And only this year Government told us that 65,000 would be wiped out by swine flu. The current projections stand at 20,000 – and even those look widely pessimistic at this stage.

 Of course all of the above are to some extent “UK only”  issues and with climate change we are talking about a world problem – with scientists and governments from many countries involved in the debate. But even with climate change problems exist with what “the scientists say”….. In the 1980s scientists talked of  “global cooling” or a new Ice Age. In the 1990s this became “global warming”, now it is “climate change”.  And , let’s be clear, almost every country has a significant number of scientists that question their government’s analysis – we are not the only ones who are asking questions about “the science”.

Nor has it helped that we have been beaten – with almost religious zeal – by the environmental stick, witnessing increasing levels of legislation introduced under the name of climate change, that have raided our wallets and invaded our privacy.  And frankly even those that really do accept the worst case scenario on climate change are frustrated by the cynicism with which this potential crisis has been exploited.

So it is not very surprising therefore that when we are told by scientists  and politicians that we are all going to hell in a hand cart, we will, after a while, start to question it.

If all this sounds like I am a “climate-denier” – a term I particularly dislike – then I am sorry. I am probably in the one third that believe that there is some form of climate change but am not convinced that we have correctly identified the cause (or causes) of the problem. I am also pretty sure that we are far from finding the right solutions.

So, in my view, it is an inevitable consequence of Government action to date that we have responded the way we have in The Times survey (US citizens are equally sceptical). This Government – and others – have used science to cry wolf once too often. When faced with more pressing economic issues that are much more immediate, and if we add on top of that our scepticism of what Governments say – and increasingly what “science says” – why would we do anything other than start to doubt the information we are given.

If we are to move forward on this issue it must start with a consensus on the science – and the population buying into what the scientists have to say. That’s going to be tough given the respective track records of politicians and scientists.

It’s time for Governments to make a fresh start. Fewer, better researched, scientific studies would help. So would a  more consistent approach from Government on when they will and wont take heed of their own science. Finally a more rounded view of the problem must surely now be implemented – one that embraces geo-technological solutions with as much vigour as modification of population behaviour. If politicians can actually discard their natural instincts to micro-manage every aspect of our lives with scant regard to our intelligence – oh and start being honest with us about “green taxes”, then maybe we can actually solve this issue. But I doubt we can do it before then.

Tags: climate change, The Times

An Africa Perspective on the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Having just celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall whilst scouring the interwebby I came across this interesting and beautifully written article (which I’ve sadly had to edit down for Liberal Vision). Temba A Nolutshungu lived in Aparthied South Africa, and has the benefit of hindsight to comment on walls of tyranny, be they in South Africa, Korea, Germany and their various shades through out Africa.

“The history of the Wall symbolises the truth that a free society, based on private ownership of the means of production, best delivers what people want.”

In the early 1960s I was cutting my political teeth, becoming aware of the forces that rule the world. The all-pervasive apartheid system that was in force at the time inevitably politicised many of us. The South African government displayed a systematic and deep-seated hatred of communism and this was manifest on an almost daily basis in propaganda generated by the communications network at the disposal of the various state organs. So for us blacks the equation was simple. The oppressors, who had inflicted so much suffering on our people, hated communism. So what the enemy hated had to be good for us, the oppressed people. After all, communism was about a classless society and how the people shared everything.

I began asking myself questions related to how communism worked in practice. I found it hard to come up with credible answers. And the lack of answers stimulated my curiosity. I learnt of the Berlin Wall, which had been built by the East German government to keep people living inside the workers’ paradise – communist East Germany – from fleeing to the capitalist West, which typified man’s exploitation of his fellow man.

In Africa, most of the liberation movements, which sought to overthrow repressive European colonialism by force, embraced variations of communism or socialism. Once in power, and transformed into political parties, these movements implemented economic policies informed by a socialist perspective. It gradually became clear that these policies were very much to the detriment of the welfare of their people.

But for quite a while the vision of the nirvana that socialism would bring, along with an awareness of the manifest injustices of the colonial past (which were blamed largely upon capitalist interests), bought the system time and caused people to put up with the consequent suffering.

It was only with experience that it became clear to me that the nationalisation of productive assets doesn’t actually mean that they are owned and controlled by either the proletariat or the people and operated for their collective benefit. They are owned, controlled and managed by the state, which in reality means the elites or elite factions, which wield power and control the state.

It gradually became apparent that, as with East Germany and North Korea and other countries of communist persuasion, the leadership of these African socialist states was the only class to derive any real benefits from the policies of collectivisation. As in the case of East Germany, it eventually transpired that attempts to impose communist systems in Africa were economically unsustainable, politically tyrannical and morally bankrupt.

As I began to subject the apartheid system to more careful scrutiny, it seemed to me that it was a system that had more in common with a communist state than with a free capitalist society. Apartheid controlled every facet of black people’s lives from the cradle to the grave. Among other things, consistent with the policy of racial segregation, it decreed where black people could be born, where they could live, where they could carry out limited subsistence trade with all sorts of restrictive conditions, it denied them property rights, mandated where they could get the legislatively prescribed form of education, where they could work and what form of work they could do, which hospitals and amenities they could use, how and when they could move from place to place and even where they could be buried.

In fact, blacks were effectively nationalised by the apartheid government. Apartheid, a ubiquitous and omnipotent system, was, like its communist cousins, economically unsustainable, politically tyrannical and morally reprehensible; but, as with communism, the few who benefited vehemently rejected this characterisation of the system.

For me, then, the fall of the Berlin Wall brought home some very important truths: that people value freedom above all other ideologies; that the system that fails to acknowledge this definitive attribute of human nature will eventually succumb to pressure, however long that might take; that the system that operates on the basis of what human nature is and not what it ought to be will unleash the spirit of enterprise that runs across all cultures and all nations. This is encapsulated in the words of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter who said, “It is human nature that rules the world, not governments and regimes”.

My understanding of the history of the Berlin Wall, the circumstances surrounding its historic breach on 9 November 1989 and its subsequent destruction by popular demand has fundamentally contributed to my own ideological metamorphosis. The history of the Wall symbolises the truth that a free society, based on private ownership of the means of production, best delivers what people want.

May I add that, for Africans, faced with a plethora of trade barriers and protectionist measures which impede the free flow of their products to Europe, it may seem that, while the Wall has gone, the fortress mentality still lives on in Europe in another guise. The Berlin Wall of tariff protection impedes the free flow of mainly agricultural, but also other African products, from reaching the European markets. That wall should also be broken down.

Temba A Nolutshungu is a director of the Free Market Foundation, South Africa, an affiliate of www.AfricanLiberty.org. The views expressed in the article are his own.

Interesting Video on Libertarians in the Military

Anonymous dedication to David Howarth

Liberal Vision has received an anonymous dedication to David Howarth MP, who is standing down at the next General Election. We’re more than happy to publish it here:

Most aptly called ‘Rumpolian’ by Quentin Letts, David Howarth, to the dismay of many, announced on Thursday that he will not be seeking re-election, in order to concentrate on his other life as an academic.

In the week that saw the dismissal of a government advisor on drug use by a Home Secretary more wedded to spin than science, David Howarth’s words have never been truer:

“Liberals still believe in what is fashionably called the ‘Enlightenment Project’. Not only should everyone be capable of participating in political discussion, but also, reason and knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, should form the basis of that discussion. Liberals instinctively reject the reliance on traditional authority and the cynical manipulation of myth and superstition which are fundamental to conservatism, including its modern ‘communitarian’ forms. Critics say that the Enlightenment Project has led to arrogant and ultimately disastrous attempts such as Marxism, to claim to apply scientific methods to politics. But Liberals have never claimed, as socialists did, that they possess knowledge that authorises them to reconstruct society. They claim instead that a society is rational to the extent that its members debate the future in a rational way” *

Rationality, absent in the current policy-making era, is a Howarth trademark. He uses it to great rhetorical effect when an opponent is making a simply absurd statement or policy, and it informs the stance he takes on almost every issue. It doubtless will inform the lectures and legal insights David makes in this other life.

Much has been said about David’s achievements as a stalwart defender of civil liberties, the right to protest, on the environment, and many of his successful campaigns, but he was and is also quite simply an excellent MP on the ground. A man from a working class background in Walsall, David went to Cambridge and Yale. He is a tall poppy even in the intellectual hothouse of Cambridge, yet because of his background, or his affable manner, or his earnest desire to make things better, he transcends class and is able to engage on any level in a way that is friendly and unceremonious but dignified and proper. He understands the importance of local democracy and localism.

In a year that the expenses saga engulfed parliament, he is someone with probity and integrity. Although entitled to go by First Class he travels Economy and his ad hoc surgeries start the minute a constituent recognizes him boarding the Cambridge train and continues, as other people join in, all the way to Kings Cross; more like a one-stop MP shop. Few people have wisdom, the dignity, and the good sense to walk away from a desired career at the height of their powers (although intellectual heights last a long time). If David suffers from anything it is being a polymath, in an era where democratic politics seem to require people who are full time professional politicians with, apparently, few other interests or capabilities.

One of David’s legacies on the ground is a buoyant local party which had an injection of new blood in the years since he left local government with continuing success at local level. A highly professional team of councillors runs the City Council and there was a good showing in the County Council elections too. More seats were contested and won by the Lib Dems than ever before in Cambridge elections in one go and they were jubilant at the count. The next stage will be to spread out into Cambridgeshire where the County Tories, seemingly lacking intelligent life form, are perplexed by the more cerebral but down-to-earth Lib Dems.

Selections can be dangerous territory though. Witness the Tory debacle in Bedford where, without taking detracting from Dave Hodgson’s great victory (Lib Dems majority of over 2,000 votes) their ‘open primary’ left the Tories with a candidate who could not garner full support, and a local party that felt patronised by High Command. Witness also the current Tory comedy of errors about Ms Truss as the hapless ‘no-one in Norfolk knows how to Google’ locals try to explain their distress to the dismissive aristocrats of Notting Hill.

A held seat is an attractive option for most would-be candidates. What is important for the local party now is to make sure that those short-listed next month work flat out to lay new foundations, for the City of Cambridge, to again be the winner by having another Lib Dem MP. Whoever follows will be different but the biggest tribute to H’s leadership in Cambridge is the legacy of continuing strength in local government and the large number of excellent potential MPs for what will doubtless be a hard fought, intellectually rigorous but good natured selection process – classic Cambridge.

* full text available here: http://www.csld.org.uk/

Tags: David Howarth