Robert Sharp

There is a section on Harriet Harman’s Commons Leader website called ‘Your Voice‘, where citizens are invited to submit their thoughts on the Government’s Draft Legislative Programme (a.k.a. Draft Queen’s Speech).

The speech was launched yesterday in the House of Commons, with an event immediately afterwards in which Gordon Brown and other Cabinet Ministers went to Bermondsey to meet local people. This concentrated use of ministers was similar to what Hazel Blears had suggested on Tuesday, in a speech to the SMF:

why shouldn’t the Cabinet meet in locations other than the Cabinet Room at Number Ten Downing Street?

Just imagine if the Cabinet meeting took place at the British Legion, Swindon, the Town Hall, Grimsby, or the Victoria Community Centre in Crewe.

Regardless of whether you think this is a cynical publicity stunt or a genuine attempt to listen to the people, it is clearly an example of direct democracy. People are being invited to converse with Ministers directly, without mediation. Via the Commons Leader website, they are now being asked to write to Government directly.

Surely this undermines representative democracy (see my earlier worries about citizen juries). Rather than provide new ways for the Government (which even the most committed statist would admit is a sprawling bureaucracy) to interact with sixty-five million people, why not strengthen the channels by which citizens can already speak to the state, via their MPs? Why not award Members of Parliament a larger office budget, say, so they can maintain more staff in constituency surgeries, so that problems could be dealt with in more detail, and quicker?

Why not budget for MPs or Councillors to convene some kind of constituency convention, or panel, at which citizens could feedback thoughts on the DLP? Individual MPs could compile a summary of local feeling, in much the same way as select committees and independent commissions summarize the testimony of their witnesses. Do it over the summer recess, say, just before party conferences, and you would have a pretty comprehensive snap-shot of what the country thinks… but without the tiresome bother of an undersubscribed yet expensive web-tool which has no visible method of actually engaging the citizen in dialogue.

Websites are a fantastic way for individuals in relatively small networks to communicate with each other. But I’m not sure it is the most efficient way for the Government to enter into a conversation with its citizenry. A basic online form definitely falls short.

An interesting post on the Daily Dish about miscegenation:

For older people, and people who live in areas that have long been predominantly white, the miscegenation issue is the last bastion of knee-jerk racial identity. And whites are not alone in this. Every well-defined racial and cultural group has this taboo actively at play, even today, regardless of political bent.
…
[When] a young West Virginian hankers for someone a bit more “full-blooded” than Obama, they are using code-words for the ultimate threatening “other”, the other that sneaks into your home and screws your daughter and destroys your bloodline.

The idea that there is any value in a pure ‘blood-line’ in has to be one of the most evil concepts invented by man. As Hanif Kureishi reminds us, “purity is incestuous”. Worrying about your ‘blood-line’ is against nature.

Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.

Loving it:

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper.

Which is odd, because it means that footage of the Free Tibet Olympic torch harassing in London, Paris or San Francisco must have squeezed past Chinese censors.

“Did you inhale?” A cliché of modern politics. Ever since Bill Clinton’s bizarre admission of not-quite-drug-use, that question has become a staple of sniggering journalists everywhere. Meanwhile, “Yes I have and yes I did” has become the boilerplate response for those politicians eager to demonstrate their flawed, human side.

Such admissions are possible because currently, the morality of such individual choices barely gets discussed. “It’s a choice I made when I was young” is the limit of the debate. The transgression is framed as a purely internal, moral choice of the individual. In a liberal, tolerant society, this is not matter for public discussion. (If it were, then another example of tweaking your reality, drinking alcohol, would be dragged into the debate too, and no one wants that). Instead, cannabis use becomes a simple public health issue. The recent furore, in March, was concerned with whether cannabis use can induce psychological problems, and therefore whether class B or C is an appropriate designation.

But there is another argument against cannabis use: It is part of a highly unpleasant and criminal supply chain. For every eighth of hash or bag of weed you buy and smoke, there is a chance that you are lining the pockets of some gangster. Sure, your local dealer is probably a gentle sort, but there is no guarantee that somewhere along the line there is not a more dangerous character who is trafficking in other things too. Heroin. People. It is noteworthy that when a politician is asked about his or her past drug-use, the question is the anodyne “did you inhale?” when it should be “did you know where it came from?” Few of them would know the answer, and “I knowingly contributed to the problem of organized crime and the exploitation of the vulnerable” is a very different mea culpa compared to the usual “I did things when I was young which I now regret.”
(more…)

For those that are interested, I’m thoroughly enjoying my think-tankery, although its one of the reasons (along with the theft) why I’ve not been as regular with my movements here.

One project we’ve been working on is the publication of a book on 14-19 education. We hosted a debate in March with Policy Exchange, which I wrote up for OurKingdom:

The first is the degree to which sixteen year-olds should be treated as adults. Both Sheerman and Rossiter were in no doubt they are still children, and should not be thrown out into the world without sufficient guidance or qualifications. Meanwhile, Willets and Smithers were concerned that sixteen year-olds are already constrained adults, and that attempting to control them to such a large degree was bound to be counter-productive.

It seems to me our muddled sense of when one reaches adulthood is to blame for a lot of unnecessary political wranglings. We allow people to smoke, marry, and condone sex and procreation, from age 16, yet we do not allow people to drive until 17. The voting age remains 18, as does the age at which you can buy alcohol, and (bizarrely, to my mind) we are perfectly at ease in allowing people to choose a religion at age 10, 12 or 14. Surely the mental calculus by which we deem someone responsible enough to do one activity, applies equally to the other activities?

Clearly, all these activities are related to ideas of freedom, choice, and responsibility. Below the age, and you are deemed incapable of making those choices, or wielding wisely the responsibility entrusted to you. In terms of our relationship to the state, it seems reasonable to say that childhood may be defined as the age when the rest of society does not allow you to make your own decisions. Therefore, it is legitimate to constrain the freedom of a child - a second class citizen - from an adult. Above that age, you’re responsible for your actions. Below it, your legal guardian carries-the-can. It would seem sensible to concile the various ‘coming of age’ ages into one, easy-to-remember figure.

To my mind, sixteen seems to young to do most stuff, but eighteen seems to old to prevent someone from driving or having sex. What say we just agree to split the difference, and have a universal age of adulthood at age 17? As with current arrangements, there will always be people who are constrained by this, and others who cannot handle the responsibility. But no more or less than the current situation.

Either that, or why not formalize teenagerdom as a third legal category of person? They could have a similar set of rights to those attempting to earn citizenship. That might help some of those sullen teenagers get a job, and learn proper English…

Here’s a classic piece of obscurity, from HM Treasury, launching a consultation:

The Government seeks input on proposals to update the Myners principles with a set of refreshed and simplified, higher-level principles and the development of a comprehensive suite of authoritative best practice guidance and tools which will give further assistance for trustees to improve investment decision-making and governance.

Now the Myners principles are guidelines for pensions fund trustees, who often lack the knowledge required to act competently and responsibly. So the consultation on this is actually quite important. Could not the opening paragraph be a little less obtuse?

A classic multiculturalism scare story without substance, now honed to a fine art. This time, Ben Elton is the stooge:

Ben Elton has said the BBC is too “scared” to broadcast jokes about Muslims for fear of provoking radical Islamists… [he] added that the broadcaster would “let vicar gags pass but would not let imam gags pass”.

I’ve dealt with the difference between vicar gags and imam gags before (though I can’t seem to find the appropriate comment at the moment). Vicars are inherently more funny, especially to the British mind-set which sees more humour in taking the piss out of the familiar, than the exotic.

The other strand to the story is the second-guessing among well-meaning yet ultimately clueless decision makers. The story here is not “muslims can’t take a joke” or even “BBC thinks muslims can’t take a joke” but the ridiculous third degree of separation: “Ben Elton thinks that the BBC thinks that muslims can’t take a joke.” Is this what passes for discourse now?

As an aside to all this, may actually be the case that taking the piss out of minority religions could actually signify integration an acceptance, rather than intolerance.

I know its perhaps a forced comparison, but I wonder if there aren’t some similarities between the Presidential elections in Zimbabwe, and the Presidential Primaries in the USA. Not, of course, between the policies, candidates or the reliability of the democratic process. I am thinking more terms of concepts like momentum, perception, and the role of bit-players in the race.

Over the past months, watching Obama overtake Clinton in the polls, and watching John McCain come from near bankruptcy to seal the Republican nomination, its clear that the art of PR is crucial to the winning of an election, and I think the MDC need to be similarly savvy in shaping the message in Zimbabwe. What is tortuous just now, is watching the momentum that the opposition party built-up towards the vote of Saturday, slowly disperse as the results are further ‘delayed’. This uncertainty allows people to doubt, and consider where their allegiances lie. The relatively long delay between Primaries seems to have hurt Obama in a similar manner.

Crucial to both examples is the role played by supporting characters in the contest. It seems very much as if the Zimbabwean security chiefs will play King-maker in that country, while the so-called ’super delegates’ will probably have a similar role in the Democratic Convention in Denver. In both cases, pundits will look to see how these people ‘break’ to one candidate or another. Each faction seeks to persuade the power-brokers that they are the inevitable choice, although in both the African and American examples, this can never be conclusively proved. Each candidate seeks to prompt a stampede of power-brokers in their direction. They need to engineer a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is, of course, profoundly depressing and anti-democratic, since the actual number of votes cast for a given candidate becomes just one of many factors in the decision making process, and not the last word on the matter. However, the one source of optimism in this is that we are reminded how fragile a person’s grip on power can be. Mugabe is more weak now than he has ever been, and that’s purely a perception thing.

In the case of the US Primaries and the Zimbabwe elections, what we need know is a killer blow to definitively swing the power-brokers. In America, I would say that the endorsement of Al Gore, rightly timed, could be crucial. In the Zimbabwean case, it is probably the actions of South African President Thabo Mbeki that could break Mugabe. Do either men have the cojones to make history, or are they waiting to see which way the wind is blowing too?

Update 7th April

It looks like others have draw a similar parallel, with similar provisos. (via Patrick at the Daily Dish).

And another thing:

Even now the Prime Minister has relented, and allowed his MPs a whip-less vote on the Embryo Research Bill, for Catholic MPs that does not necessarily mean more freedom. Instead of being whipped by the high-priests of the Labour Party, the beleaguered Catholic MPs now face being told how to vote by apparatchiks of the Vatican machine instead. Worse, the penalties for defying The Church are presumably much harsher than the opprobrium the awkward squad receive every time they rebel over a Foundation Hospital. We’re talking eternal damnation here! Some freedom.