Civitas Blog

Anyone, like the present author, who spent the bulk of their working life in the public-sector will know just how demoralising and counter-productive has been the recent imposition upon it of a managerialist culture.

Formerly self-regulating professions like medicine and teaching have been reduced to box-ticking exercises carried out by hordes of fearful and demoralised zombies desperately counting out the days before they could retire from the monstrously overblown regimes of excessive and unneeded managerial oversight to which they know their once genuine forms of service to the public have been reduced.

Like ships in a convoy forced to sail at the speed of their slowest, this cumbersome and time-consuming method of management has been imposed on schools, hospitals and universities, often in response to purely local instances of malpractice that could have been remedied more easily and expeditiously at a corresondingly purely local level.

Well, this culture of bureaucratic over-management and over-regulation has not been without enormous personal cost for those working in this sector. A glimpse of just how much it has cost them personally has been given this week by a consultant psychiatrist at the Priory Clinic in Surrey.

Best known as the refuge of burnt-out over-partied show-biz celebrities like Robbie Williams and Pete Doherty, the clinic now apparently regularly provides sanctuary for burnt-out public-sector professionals, such as doctors and teachers, whose stay is being funded, reading between the lines of a report about this matter on the BBC News website, by the NHS that has driven so many of them there.

Some rather dry research into where the EU fits into citizenship teaching, and on the current teaching resources available on the EU, revealed this conundrum that at least made me giggle:

QCA writes: “When deciding whether a resource is appropriate for post-16 citizenship, it is important to consider the following factors:….
2. Is the content up-to-date?”

There is then a related link on their KS4 citizenship page to ‘Schemes of Work’ (DfES), which aims to give a framework for teaching citizenship. “Unit 11: Europe – who decides?” includes the following number one “Point to note”:
“The European Union currently has 15 member states”.

Not that I’m aware of! Is the level of ignorance in the DfES really this high?! I’m sincerely hoping this hasn’t been proof-read.

OfSTED critics - an ever-increasing community - frequently attack the inspectorate’s judgement scale. Virtually very time that OfSTED publishes national evaluations of how schools are doing, the teaching community protests that they have ‘raised the bar’. In light of how deep the inspectorate’s flaws run and how fundamentally defective the very premise of the inspection system is, concern about OfSTED’s grading system has always seemed to me to be redundant.

The European Commission is due to launch plans tomorrow for a ‘new generation’ of free trade agreements with the fast-growing ASEAN countries, South Korea and India. It is being hailed as the epitome of Mandelson’s drive to ‘Lisbonise’ EU trade policy in line with the strategy paper ‘Global Europe: competing in the world’ (Oct 06), which called for the rejection of protectionism across the EU and for the EU to play an active role in opening up markets abroad.

One has, at least, got to credit him for trying. And trying fairly hard. The strategy is purposefully based on “more rigorous” calculation of the possible economic gains from such free trade deals; in the case of South Korea, for example, Mandelson’s office has calculated that there lies the opportunity to increase trade by 30 per cent. There is also little doubt that the Commission’s request for a mandate to negotiate these free trade deals has been presented ‘en masse’ to make it more difficult for member states to pick-and-choose individual countries or regions, thereby blocking the process.

Who knows, it might succeed. But the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will need all his cunning to negotiate through some of the more protectionist states in the EU camp.

There's a good piece by Daniel Finkelstein in The Times today, which casts doubt on the notions of e-Democracy as a legitimate way forward in this country. He argues that it could all too easily be manipulated by the government - which is running an experiment on the 10 Downing Street website - as a way to justify policies on the basis of spurious public backing. We are all asked to go to the Downing Street website and vote for Ringo Starr to be knighted as a way to test the system. A more comprehensive plan for change - in the form of direct democracy - was laid out in the June edition of the Civitas Review.

A few weeks ago, our airwaves and newspapers were filled with criticisms of the growing practice among Muslim women in this country of wearing the full face veil or niqab -- at work or elsewhere in public. What had triggered this wave of criticism was license for it having been given by several prominent Labour ministers who had set it in train.

For a time, these criticisms seemed destined, if not to stamp out the practice, then at least to make serious inroads into its public acceptability.

Well, if a week in Westminster politics is a long time, a month in identity politics is almost an eternity. Yesterday, as if to register how unserious an issue it considered it to be, Channel Four announced this year its annual alternative Christmas message, broadcast to coincide with the Queen’s, will be given by a niqab-wearing free-lance lecturer on Islamic issues from Leicester named Khadija Ravat.

Come the appointed hour, so today’s Times reports, Ms Ravat will not be tuning into Channel Four to see herself. Instead, it reports, she will be watching the Queen. ‘I’m going to be watching the Queen’s speech. I like being British – being British has so much that can be shared by many people’, she is reported as saying.

All nice clean, good-humoured, knock-about but essentially harmless stuff, you might think, that fully accords with the spirit of peace and good-will to all men that lies at the heart of the festive season. Might I beg to differ?

In an intriguing twist to the story about Channel Four’s plan to make over its alternative Christmas Day message to a niqab-wearing Islamic Studies lecturer from Leicester, today’s Times reports the lady in question appears to have had second thoughts about appearing in the slot, claiming she hadn’t been told it was designed for broadcast at the same time as, and in competition with, the Queen’s Christmas Day message.

Channel Four is reported as not being at all concerned that the lady in question, Ms Khaija Ravat, might pull out, insisting it will go ahead with the broadcast anyway.

Could it be that, if Ms Ravat should not turn up for the recording of the message, all Channel Four need do is garb someone else in a niqab and no one would be any the wiser a substitution had been made!

Better still, should Ms Ravat pull out, Channel Four could employ a singer to do the slot and ask her to sing that time-honoured classic ‘I only have eyes for you’!

How silly of me to think Channel Four might do that. It would risk offending Muslims, whereas diss’ing the Queen by broadcasting a rival alternative Christmas Day message to hers, and ridiculing Christmas by giving over the slot to a niqab-wearing Muslim, apparently matters not one iota.

The chancellor’s speech on Wednesday was a critical one. More than a pre-budget indication of things to come financial, it was a pre-prime minister speech, an indicator of things to come under a new leadership. What a pity that a speech so critical for Brown was so uncritical of Blair. Despite the Blair-Brown personal spats, the forecast looks as though new leadership will not signal many new directions. Brown is set to roll out more of the same, apparently resolved to continue Blair’s policies, with only a little tweaking here and there.

David Cameron finally ended his impasse on that political nuisance called the European Union this week by challenging Jose Manuel Barosso and the EU’s leaders to end the prevalent ‘culture of hopelessness’ and confront its failings. In particular he attacked the EU on the CAP and development, fraud, its record on tackling carbon emissions and over-regulation. Tough-talking indeed. But, the question has to be asked: is it really possible?

Two commentary pieces have bothered me today. The first is by Alice Miles in The Times, the second by Deborah Orr in the Independent. Actually, both pieces are notable for their compassion and intelligence. They are well argued and persuasive. In both the general thrust is that the illegality of prostitution forces vulnerable women into dangerous situations, and that if legalised it’s extremely unlikely that the prostitutes in Ipswich would have been killed.

Have you wondered why City workers and others in the financial services sector are enjoying such huge annual bonuses this Christmas? Well, it seems they are doing so courtesy of the hard-pressed tax-payer.

Today’s Times reports the first independent breakdown of the costs to the public sector of hiring external consultants, published by the National Audit Office. It discovered a huge recent increase in such forms of expenditure: in the last three years, it rose by a third from £2 billion to £3 billion.

Following the success of the authorities last August in nipping in the bud an Islamist plot to hi-jack and blow up ten transatlantic aircraft, Prime Minister Tony Blair asked John Reid, the Home Secretary, to undertake a review of current counter-terrorism in the UK and propose ways it could be improved.

That review is now apparently completed, and the Home Secretary’s report, along with his proposals, have been sent to the Prime Minister for reading over the Christmas holidays.

According to Wednesday’s Times, what is being recommended by the Home Secretary is the creation of a new Whitehall department to oversee and coordinate all counter-terrorism. In announcing to a House of Commons Select Committee on Tuesday completion of his review, Dr Reid explained in the following terms what had persuaded him of the need for such a new department in light of the current terror-threat:

‘This is now a serious threat. It is no longer is easily divided into foreign affairs, defence or domestic affairs. It therefore needs a seamless, integrated, driven, politically over-seen counter-terrorism strategy which places at its heart the recognition that above all this is a battle for ideas and values.’

The left-leaning pressure group, Compass, has launched a campaign against what they refer to as the ‘commercialisation of childhood’.

Jan Zahradil, a Czech MEP, opened his keynote speech at the European Foundation’s conference in November with the statement: “we have a window of opportunity [to reform the EU] starting right now…[because] the paradigm of EU integration has run down”.

He presumed however that reform would have to be evolutionary, rather than ‘big-bang’. But 2007 could be a tumultuous year in the EU. It seems that wherever you turn at the moment there are huge contradictions and differences – if they are ever properly addressed, a crisis (and an opportunity for reform?) may well be looming.

Last week there was a good article in The Times by Camilla Cavendish. Writing on the subject of charities lobbying and campaigning, she said that the Red Cross – and with it the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – has always been able to maintain its effectiveness on the ground, in the direct provision of services and aid, because it has always been politically neutral. She says:

‘By refusing to take sides in conflicts, it has always stood for the victims. This has historically given it access to places that other organisations cannot penetrate… We are a sentimentalist society. We are supposed to get angry to show we care. The world now is full of advocates, and that is a good thing. But sometimes, the best way to speak for those with no voice is to keep silent.’

I remember, back in 1997, before the general election that brought to an end eighteen years of Tory rule how New Labour made such a fuss about the problem of ‘social exclusion’ among the young and how it boasted it would tackle youth unemployment by offering tem a ‘New Deal’.

Well, a decade on, and what do we find but that, according to a report in today’s Times, both the proportion and total number of young people officially unemployed is today greater than it was then?

Unemployment is particularly prevalent among 16 to 17 year olds, of whom as many as one in four are now unemployed.

As this is the last Civitas blog before the great annual Christmas shut-down, I shall endeavour as best I can to inject a festive note into today’s posting. This is harder than at first sight may appear, having just read on the ABC website that a senior US law enforcement has informed its reporters that “it will be a miracle if there isn’t a terror attack over the holidays in London”.

Pretty grim news, eh?

Well, at least the state-church separation the US Constitution’s First Amendment mandates seems not yet to have reached the idiolect of its federal officers. Doubtless, in due course, however, this will rectified by secular humanists there ensuring all federal employees attend suitable sensitivity training to expunge all religious imagery from their speech while at work.

I digress, however, from my main purpose, which was to offer up a lighter observation on the passing scene. Here then is my small contribution to the season’s festivities. The Times reports today that the police in the Lancashire town of Kirkham are giving pensioners in sheltered accommodation there this Christmas a thousand bottles of alcopops that have been confiscated from underage drinkers.

That’s what I call giving in the spirit of Christmas!

On behalf of colleagues at Civitas, may I express the hope that yours be no less full of it and no less free of terror incident, unless Al Qaeda decides to make prohibition one of its immediate objectives!

On a slightly more serious but genuinely uplifting note, it was gratifying also to read in today’s Times that, notwithstanding all the difficulties they have experienced this year, recruitment into the British army has increased by 16% over the last twelve months. It shows that, despite all the anti-patriotic and defeatist propaganda with which young people are filled these days, our boys and girls will never become slaves -- or at least not without putting up one hell of a fight first!

Merry Christmas!

Being devout Christians of a traditional outlook regarding questions about sexual morality, an elderly couple from Wyre, Lancashire, were appalled last year upon discovering that their local council had decided to display in its offices literature that promoted a homosexual lifestyle. When they phoned the council to ask if they might display alongside the offending literature countervailing material that reflected their own outlook on the subject, they were informed that they couldn’t because it might give offence to homosexuals. They replied that they found the literature being displayed by the council offensive whereupon a complaint against them was lodged with the local police who subjected them to extensive interrogation to establish whether they had committed any criminal offence in having expressed their disapproval of homosexuality.

Although eventually no charges were proffered, the couple decided to take legal action against the council and constabulary for infringing their freedom of expression, an action that was due to be heard in the High Court next month.

On Christmas Eve, it was reported that the couple has agreed to drop their action after receiving an apology from the local constabulary and council and an offer to pay their legal costs plus £10,000 to a charity of their choice.

Homosexuals clearly deserve protection from violence and abuse, but not immunity from all criticism from those who consider their lifestyle to be a sin or otherwise immoral.

If anyone thinks Britain would have enjoyed greater immunity from Islamist terror had it not sent forces to Iraq, they should reconsider the matter after reading a report that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on the Wednesday before Christmas (hat-tip: Dean Godson in yesterday’s Times).

Entitled ‘French counterterror forces on high alert', it reports French anti-terror chief Jean-Louis Brugiere to have revealed recently that, between June 2005 and September 2006, no fewer than 76 arrests have been made there in connection with three foiled attacks, one to bomb the Paris metro and another that targeted Orly airport.

France played no part in the overthrow of the Saddam regime. Indeed, it was vociferously opposed to the venture. Yet its stance on that issue seems to have brought it not one iota of greater security.

The annual pilgrimage to Mecca, incumbent on all Muslims at least once in their lifetimes, today reaches its climax.

Concerning this annual festival, today’s Times reports the Saudi Minister for Islamic Affairs as saying: ‘The pilgrimage to Mecca is not a place for place for raising political banners … The haj is a school for teaching unity, mercy and cooperation’.

To that sentiment I say: ‘Amen, brother’.

Yet if that is the official view of the Saudi government, how come it has allowed a two day conference to take place in Mecca at the same time as this year’s haj which is being used by its organisers as a platform to call for world-wide concerted legal action against anyone criticising Islam or suggesting any link between it and terrorism?