Civitas Blog

Not content with having flogged off Britain’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices, and signed up Britain to what is a European constitution in all but name – something his predecessor vowed would not happen without a referendum, it now turns out that Gordon Brown personally authorised abolishing the image of Britannia on the country’s coinage.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

As Brown’s rejection of calls for a referendum (and in the process Labour’s manifesto pledge) remind us – we should not be so naïve as to trust the words of our elected representatives. That said, it is no use complaining unless you take the effort to learn a little about the issues on which you whinge.

Montreal hosted the 1976 Olympics. It took its taxpayers thirty years to pay off the bill for hosting them according to former Montrealer, Mark Steyn, in a piece published in the Daily Telegraph in November 2005 in which he warned Londoners of what their city could expect by way of costs for staging them in 2012.

A year after Steyn's warning , Jack Lemley, the American engineer employed to head the construction programme for the London Olympics, resigned, complaning his warnings about their rapidly spiralling costs had repeatedly been ignored by government ministers.

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!

Were it not bad enough that those responsible for London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games unknowingly chose to stage them during Ramadan, when Muslim competitors would be seriously disadvantaged, today’s Times reports their estimated costs have spiralled by so much as to have caused the early resignation of the man appointed to oversee the massive construction programme of work that staging them there will make necessary. Whereas the initial bid put the estimated cost at £2.3 billion, current estimates now run at a staggering £6 billion.

Apparently at issue is how large a contingency fund needs to be built in to cover possible over-run. Ken Livingstone, among the most fervent and enthusiastic supporters of London hosting the Games, denies the need for any. The Treasury, on the other hand, he has said believes a contingency fund of 60% is needed.

Ever the astute politician, the Mayor warned Londoners that, should the Treasury’s estimate be accepted, they might have to face a further increase in Council Tax above the extra 38p per week that it has already been decided they will have to pay to help finance the Games.

Partly behind the staggering upwards revision in the estimated costs is rhe need for much tighter security in wake of the London tube bombings of July 2005.

Personally, I would not have waited a second after the appalling events of that day to announce a moratorium on all preparatory building work, pending the outcome of a special referendum of all Londoners asking whether they want the Games staged in their city. If ever an issue cried out for decision by local referendum, this is one.

While not relishing the idea of being accused of being a spoil-sport, in the event of such a referendum, I for one would be prepared to work untiringly of behalf of a no- vote. Wouldn’t you?

Today’s Times reports senior members of the German government to be critical of the decision by the German national opera to cancel its planned run of a Mozart opera for fear that a recently added coda in which the hero appears brandishing the severed heads of several religious leaders, among whose is that of Mohammed's, and then announces the gods are dead, might so offend Muslims that they decide to bring the house down in an altogether novel way of registering audience disapproval of a show.

Of course, this kind of self-censorship is deeply regrettable. But under present circumstances, it is hardly unwarranted. Even if the opera went ahead with ‘Caveat Emptor’ warnings stuck on all billboards and tickets, it would still risk exacting reprisals that a theatre company is perfectly entitled to think are not worth taking, even for artistic reasons.

That is just a sign of how badly under threat Europe is now.

A delicious item of news appears in today’s Times to lighten, if not light up, your day.

It is reported that Melbourne brothel owners have asked the state authorities to exempt their premises from its ban on smoking in the workplace to stop their employees returning to the streets to ply their trade to escape the ban.

Speaking on behalf of the brothel-owners in explanation of their request, a spokesmen for them is quoted as saying:

‘People smoke when they fornicate’.

While that might well hold true of the more steamy Ozzies, we sedate Pomms prefer to postpone the mandatory cigarette reserved for these occasions until stumps are drawn at close of play.

While Sienna Miller's acting admittedly is never going to win her any awards, she certainly seems to deserve one simply for acting in the latest film that she is in process of making in New York, given a report about it posted yesterday on World Net Daily (hat-tip, as ever: Little Green Footballs).

The film is a re-make of one originally made in 2003 by Theo Van Gogh, who was brutally stabbed to death in Amsterdam a year later by an Islamist angered with the Dutch film-maker for having made a film for tv that was highly critical of Islam’s treatment of women.

Although the current film has nothing to do with Islam, because it is being made in tribute to the murdered director, Ms Miller has, along with her co-star, received threats warning she will be sorry unless she pulls out of the film.

Since these warning letters clearly have in mind something other than the disappointing reviews the film is likely to receive, one can only take off one’s hat to Ms Miller and her co-star for their determination to press on regardless of them.

Mind you, some starlets will do practically anything to keep themselves in the limelight.

Still, putting your life on the line to do a film surely goes well beyond the call of beauty, or at least of that particular one. Certainly, given what befell Theo van Gogh, the threats Ms Miller and her co-star have received cannot be taken lightly.

Three cheers then for Sienna!

We can only hope and pray that the only corpsing to which Ms Miller and co-star may fall victim on set is that from which a rapid recovery is possible upon a subsequent take.

They're all the same to Ken
The Times reports today that Ken Livingston, who has stridently supported Sheik Qaradawi against all criticism of extremism (the evidence indicates that Qaradawi is not exactly al Qa’ida but hardly moderate either: he supports suicide bombing in Israel, is anti-Semitic and anti-gay), has restated his opinion in interesting terms. Not only, he says, is the Muslim figurehead a leading Islamic scholar calling for Islam to engage with the world and accept the changing role of women, but he is a reformer on the scale of the late Pope John XXIII. It’s difficult to see what is gained by making such a comparison. It is not to the benefit of Ken’s crony and it has already caused outrage within the Catholic community. This is precisely the kind of foolish cant that the debate about religion in our society can do without.

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph devoted its lead front page story, plus its main editorial, to the subject of the National Lottery Bill. When enacted, the Government will have a much bigger say in determining how money raised from the Lottery will be allocated.

When first created in 1992, the primary purpose of the Lottery was to raise monies for worthy causes not otherwise funded by state revenues, such as sport, heritage, and the arts.

Upon being elected in 1997, New Labour changed the remit of where Lottery funds could go so as to include health, education, and the environment, into which areas they have increasingly since flowed.

As was predicted at the time, the effect of New Labour’s decision has been a substantial reduction in Lottery money going into the areas it was created to help. As the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday:

‘In 1996-97, … the lottery gave £291 million to good causes. Last year it was down to £216 million. The amount spent on health, education and the environment has grown from £231 million in its first year, to a peak of £433 million last year. Since 1997, £360 million of lottery money has been spent on heart disease, cancer and stroke care, while £300 million has gone on “healthy living centres”’

Both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, which today runs a two-page feature on New Labour’s plans for the Lottery Fund, are both highly critical of New Labour for diverting it from the areas the Lottery was created to help into plugging gaps in public services supposedly financed by taxes and national insurance.

But should the state have ever got involved at all in charitable funding in the first place?

As is well-known, the prime Lottery punters are the lower social classes, not noted for their patronage of the arts and national heritage, or even sports.

As the Mail notes in its report, ‘since the Lottery started, the percentage of Britons taking part in sport has not increased at all.’

Instead, it seems Britons prefer to remain inveterate couch potatoes, topping the European league table for nightly hours spent glued to the box and devoting precious few to reading.

As ever, the prime beneficiaries of state largesse would appear to be the middle classes. For example, £78 million of Lottery money went towards the costs of rebuilding and refurbishing the Royal Opera House, a venue not exactly noted for drawing to it to the social classes who patronise the Lottery.

Far more disturbing than reports of the National Lottery failure to fulfil its original purpose has been the apparent manifest failure of income tax to fulfil the purpose for which it was introduced.

This, as all good students of English history know, i.e. anyone born before c. 1960, was to finance the military.

Politicians and pundits here have currently worked themselves up into a lather about voter-apathy in the forthcoming general election and are seeking to work us all up into the same condition of concern about it as themselves.

Personally, I can barely stifle a yawn, or, rather, suppress a cheer, about the apparent lack of enthusiasm on the part of so many of the current British electorate to visit their local polling booth come election day to put a cross on their ballot slip, or else, and ever more likely these days, to have handed over their blank voting paper before then to whichever local Mafiosi is rigging the ballot in their constituency. (Apologies to any Italian readers for the apparent slur on their community. However, I use the term in question generically. You all surely are thinking of exactly of whom I am also thinking!)

The Blithering Bunny blog by Scott Campbell is always good value.

‘Labour wants to destroy Mr Howard as a political leader by using his Jewishness against him. They know to a hair’s breadth what they are doing. Of course, any anti-Semitism has been denied; the purpose of the operation is to raise the controversy and then withdraw…. [V]oters who do not like Jews will have been reminded of their prejudice, by modern advertising techniques… It is a dirty, dirty, dirty business and it disgraces both the Labour Party and the Prime Minister …[for]this is his campaign’

Although Labour Party spokesmen vehemently deny any anti-Semitic intent behind them, Labour has now removed the advertisements displaying Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin as flying pigs and Howard in similar guise to Fagin from its official web-site and will not use them in its forthcoming election campaign.

However, the words quoted above from Lord Ress Mogg's characteristically astute and trenchant article in last Monday’s Times continue to have cause to resonate. For they have a profound bearing on an important political issue currently facing this country that has by no means been resolved.

The response of the public to the terrible tragedy in South East Asia has been almost as difficult to take in as the disaster itself. The stupendous generosity shown by people in this country, and in many other countries, shows that there is no shortage of compassion for the victims of one of the worst natural disasters anyone can remember.

However, some people in political circles are trying to turn this into something more than humanitarian aid. There have been calls for a programme of large-scale, long-lasting aid – i.e. transfers of capital from Western governments and Western-funded multi-national organisations to the governments of affected countries.

This is a very different thing, and could have serious negative consequences. Foreign aid, although well-intentioned, creates welfare dependency on an international scale. People become accustomed to thinking that they do not have to pull their own weight: someone else will always be there with a handout. The effects on the recipient nations are the same as those on long-term welfare support in our own country: industry and initiative are suppressed, sloth, self-pity and mendacity are encouraged.

Giving people money doesn’t make them rich. No rich country in the world today became rich because of free or subsidised transfers of capital from other countries. Wealth is the product of hard work, inspired by entrepreneurial vision. Getting a handout just puts off the day when you realise you have to roll your sleeves up and get down to it. There is a direct correlation between the amount of aid nations have received and their poverty and backwardness. Most foreign aid has gone to sub-Saharan Africa, and the results are there for all to see. Do we really wish to inflict this on the peoples of South East Asia, where a number of countries already have flourishing economies? Indeed, it is not unusual to hear people calling for trade barriers to protect our home-grown producers from the ‘unfair competition’ of Asian suppliers! The irony is that those calling for protectionist measures are often the same people who demand more foreign aid.

Gordon Brown and others have been speaking of a new Marshall Plan. This is misleading, since the Marshall Plan, which was a great success, had a clearly-defined and time-limited goal: to rebuild the devastated infrastructure of Europe after the Second World War. In fact, Europe got back to work so quickly that the Plan was curtailed earlier than had been estimated. It was never intended to be a permanent stream of funding, which is what the foreign aid lobbyists now demand.

Gordon Brown’s dream of managing the affairs of developing countries from the West, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, is not only completely politically unfeasible: it would actually leave the people of the ‘beneficiary’ countries worse off.

Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister of finance, once gathered together a group of merchants from Paris and asked what they would like the government to do for them. One of them replied: Laissez nous faire – leave us alone. This is the origin of the phrase laissez faire.

Charitable bodies would do well to remember the words of this wise merchant as politicians of all parties try to conscript their services. At a meeting held to celebrate the centenary of Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel last night, Michael Howard outlined Tory plans for a voluntary sector in which charity schools and hospitals would be able to compete for government funding to offer more choice to parents and patients. Alan Milburn, on the same day, was predicting that the voluntary sector would one day play as large a role as the state and the private sector in providing public services. He wants to encourage local authorities, primary care trusts and other bodies to award long-term contracts to charities, backed by substantial funding.

Of course, this is not really a new idea. We are already there. Many so-called ‘charities’ are no more than vehicles for carrying out the government’s statutory responsibilities on the cheap. Take away the government funding and they cease to exist. This actually happened to an organisation which used to be in the office next to ours in Waterloo. Of course, anyone can do anything cheaper than the government, but since when has cheapness been the defining characteristic of voluntarism?

Voluntary action is an essential component of a free society. Charitable bodies are schools of citizenship. They benefit not only the recipients of the services, but the providers. They make us better people and better citizens, capable of acting responsibly and altruistically, meeting other people’s needs in a way that builds them up, rather than degrading them to welfare-dependent status, in the manner of state-run welfare programmes.

It is simply not possible for voluntary bodies to carry out this role when they are acting under directions from Whitehall. Instead of following their own vision, they have to help the government of the day to achieve its targets, with a view to getting them re-elected. They cease to be part of civil society, and inhabit a ghastly twilight world in which politics poisons everything.

It is said that when you dine with the devil you should take a long spoon. When it comes to negotiating contracts with Whitehall, voluntary bodies would be well advised not to go to the table at all.

Charlie Brooker writes a regular TV column for the Guardian. In the conclusion to his Saturday piece, Mr. Brooker went on bit of a… well, a tangent, to say the least:

‘On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?’

The article apparently is no longer on the Guardian’s website, and they have apologized by ‘associating’ itself with Brooker’s claim that it was all just a joke:

‘The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer. "Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."’

The Guardian claims that Brooker’s views do not represent those of the paper, and that’s fair enough. However, that the paper could run something that not only speaks to an astounding arrogance (is the whole civilised world really rooting for Kerry, or merely the social circles of self-important critics?) but also makes crass use of murderers for a cheap laugh begs the question: Exactly who is editing this stuff? The Guardian should enjoy the right to publish materials they may not agree with, but its readers should demand they hold themselves to at least a modicum of good taste and good sense. In an election year that has been especially polarized and out-and-out nasty, running pieces that long for a return of presidential assassins further cheapens the idea that elections can actually be about the civilised exchange of ideas. Whatever your politics, you deserve better from your daily.

(Thanks to A Small Victory for this.)

From Guardian Unlimited (some colourful language ahead):

‘Last week G2 launched Operation Clark County to help readers have a say in the American election by writing to undecided voters in the crucial state of Ohio. In the first three days, more than 11,000 people requested addresses.’

Following this is a collection of responses from Americans who had heard of the Guardian’s distress over the state of their democracy. These ranged from the intriguing, to the bewildering, to the out-and-out hilarious (‘Mind your own business. We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidential election. If it wasn't for America, you'd all be speaking German. And if America would have had a president, then, of the likes of Kerry, you'd all be goose-stepping around Buckingham Palace’).

Has the Guardian completely lost the plot in its attempt to demonstrate such Grave Concern over the election? Someone there must have realized that such a plan would likely spark anger amongst Clark County voters; Americans would surely resent being told what to do by anyone, let alone a newspaper whose leftist slant makes the New York Times look like the Daily Mail. (Advocacy journalism such as this does not usually exist in mainstream North American media.) Imagine that you are Joe Undecided in Ohio and you get a letter from your typical Guardian reader imploring you to vote for Kerry: ‘Thank goodness this not-at-all patronising British person knows more than I do about my own nation’s affairs. Heaven knows what took me so long to make up my mind. Why, Britain must be some kind of political Utopia if all they have time to worry about is my vote… and, of course, fox hunting!’

Despite the paper’s unwillingness to admit this may have been a mistake, even the Kerry campaign has expressed its dismay at the stunt. Ohio is a key state and one Bush barely won four years ago and one Kerry’s supporters are desperate for now. Unless something big breaks in the news in the next few days, this election is going to be quite close. In an irony almost too mind-boggling to enjoy, is it possible that the Guardian just helped George Bush get re-elected?

The editor of the Spectator, Boris Johnson, should not have apologised for the leading article in last week’s issue. Instead, he should have offered someone from Liverpool equal space to reply.

The Spectator leader drew attention to legitimate concerns. It may be that, in the light of criticism, the writer would want to amend or tone down some of what was said, but the main concern was valid: that the one-minute silence at the England/Wales football match and the two-minute silence in Liverpool were not justified.

But isn’t it a good thing if people come together in periodic acts of solidarity? Yes it is and, perhaps, we don’t do it often enough. But when a decision is made to display our unity we should be careful about the message that we are sending. The focus of the criticism in the Spectator was on the motivation of Liverpudlians for taking part. They stand accused of wallowing in victim status. In reality, I suspect that many were drawn in, as they were into the public displays of grief after the death of Princess Diana, for far worthier reasons. Above all, they felt a wish to belong, to be part of something bigger than themselves. But such a longing can be made to serve noble or ignoble, wise or unwise, purposes and it is reasonable for us all to ask ourselves what exactly we are giving our loyalty to when we take part in public displays.

Today, we are launching a new weblog, to allow us to comment immediately on the issues of the day. The system allows readers to respond, although comments are moderated before publication and will not, therefore, appear instantly.