The Quiet Road

Last night the British parliament enacted a thoroughly regressive piece of legislation. Called The Digital Economy Bill (DEBill), it is ostensibly designed to — amongst other things — prevent internet file-sharing. In fact, what it actually does is allow large corporations to legally victimise individuals based on nothing more than suspicion. Once again the representatives of the people have sold them out to appease the power of private capital.

And people say the coming election actually matters? Fact is, who ever gets into government, it’s Big Business who stays in power.

According to DEBill, corporations are permitted to monitor the nation’s internet connections and demand that anyone suspected of filesharing be disconnected. Yes, warning letters must be sent out first, but the fact remains that there is no actual burden of proof involved. If your IP address is spoofed, or WiFi network hacked, or computer compromised by a custom trojan*, say goodbye to your net connection. If your 14 year old kid continues to download music without your knowledge, say goodbye to your net connection. If you share your own home movies or music with others and can’t prove that it’s your material (in this case there is a burden of proof… but it’s on you; you must take the issue to court at your own cost), say goodbye to your net connection.

And this has happened in a climate where the Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, claims that “[b]roadband is no longer considered a luxury — it has become an essential service delivering social, commercial and economic benefits”. A climate where Gordon Brown insists that “the internet is as vital as water and gas” (hyperbole certainly, but he said it, not the anti-DEBill camp).

So Britain now has a Labour-driven law designed to allow corporations to legally withdraw essential services from individuals on the basis of suspicion of wrongdoing.

But of course it wasn’t just Labour who passed the law. It pretty much had all-party support. The tories were firmly behind it. And while the Liberal Democrats claimed to oppose it, they couldn’t be bothered to show up for the vote, let alone the debate. This is supposed to be the liberal party, the one that in theory would be most opposed to this kind of corporate power grab, and yet less than a third of their MPs were present in parliament to speak or vote against it. While Nick Clegg and his liberal democrats jet around Britain talking like they’re an alternative to the two large parties, their actions tell a somewhat different story.

Politicians are constantly lamenting the perceived public apathy with politics. Young people, they say, are disconnected from the political process. But here we have a bill that’s arguably of particular interest to young people and yet anyone tuning in to watch the proceedings last night would have seen a handful of disinterested and ill-informed MPs in a half-empty room acquiescing to the wishes of big business. If even the professional politicians can’t be arsed to attend a vote on important legislation, is it any wonder nobody else is interested in the bloody process?

UPDATE: It appears that the office of Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, is under the impression that IP (as in IP address) stands for “Intellectual Property”. I just don’t know what to say about that. Am I the only one who believes that perhaps MPs should actually understand the laws they are passing? That part of their job should be to research things before they legislate on them? Rather than merely being rubber-stamps to the whims of capital? Perhaps that’s why so few MPs showed up to vote… they were too ignorant to grasp the importance of the bill and too damn lazy to do anything about that fact. (via antonvowl on twitter)

Meanwhile, as Gordon Brown represented his nation by prostrating himself before the throne of Her Majesty, David Cameron was on the other side of the Thames prostrating himself before the altar of public opinion. He rolled up his sleeves and ran his fingers through immaculately styled hair to symbolise his dynamism and vigour. Unencumbered by other members of his party (almost none of whom can be trusted in front of a microphone) he desperately sought to portray himself in a presidential manner.

He echoed John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you” speech (though his phrasing was far clumsier and ended up being about as inspiring as a wet Sunday afternoon in Basingstoke). His promise to champion “the Great Ignored” called to mind Nixon’s appeal to the Silent Majority. In fairness to Cameron he did have almost as much charisma as Nixon. His body language and “look at how at ease I am” mannerisms screamed Bill Clinton. Though in a supremely irritating, nails-across-a-blackboard kind of way. I’d only have been mildly surprised if he’d pulled out a saxophone and donned a pair of shades.

Most of all though, he was aiming for that Barack Obama vibe. He never actually said “Yes We Can!” but you could see how much he wanted to. It was all about Change. Vote for Cameron and he’d usher in an era of change. It’s a time for change. Indeed, it’s the Year Of Change. So everyone in Britain should Vote For Change. Change and Hope. Oh, and Optimism. Change, Hope and Optimism. That’s what President Cameron would represent.

Unfortunately though, a vote for President Cameron would actually result in the election of Prime Minister Cameron. And if you thought the shower of fools and villains flanking Gordon Brown on Downing Street were depressing, just wait ’til you see who Cameron will be taking into power with him. Tawdry backward-looking reactionaries who actually mean it when they sing God Save The Queen. Bankers, puppy-killers, nuclear weapons enthusiasts… and that’s just Oliver Letwin.

Still, at least the moats will be clean.

And as Daveybloke Cameron was filmed in front of a carefully selected crowd of young, ethnically diverse supporters on the South Bank he spoke passionately about the sort of people he would represent. The sort of people his government would really listen to. “The Great Ignored” he called them. They were black and white, he said. They were rich and poor, he said (though I found it difficult to swallow the idea that “the rich” are really part of The Great Ignored). They were hard-working taxpayers, he said.

In the background you could see a short scuffle as Conservative security guards wrestled a megaphone from shadow home secretary Chris Grayling who was shouting “not the queers though, Dave, not the fucking queers!”

Indeed, if anything illustrates just how shallow this tory ‘change’ really is, it’s the ugly homophobia that seeps from under the pretty plastic facade that Saatchi & Saatchi are fashioning around the party. The past couple of weeks have seen Cameron spectacularly implode during an interview with Gay Times. An interview in which he first claimed that homosexual equality was “a fundamental human right” and then suggested that he was unwilling to put pressure on other tories to support it. The next leader of Britain, it seems, is pretty damn equivocal on the subject of fundamental human rights.

Gay Rights campaigners predictably criticised Cameron for his less than forthright support of their fundamental human rights. At the same time, Conservative elder statesman Lord Norman Tebbit was also attacking Cameron for this wishy-washy attitude to gay rights. Except he was under the impression that Cameron’s lip-service to equality was actually going too far. All a bit limp-wristed and pink for Grand-Vizier Tebbit’s liking, it seems. Daveybloke shouldn’t be concerning himself with such “trivialities” as “political asylum for African homosexuals” says Vice-Emperor Tebbit. Protecting fundamental human rights shouldn’t be a high priority for the British Conservative Party. At least, not according to the British Conservative Party.

Then, to top it all off, out comes Chris Grayling — shadow Home Secretary let’s not forget — with his suggestion that people who run Bed & Breakfasts should have the right to refuse entry to guests on the grounds of their sexuality.

That the people of Britain look likely to elect these bigots as their next government is very sad indeed.

Queen Elizabeth II.
Kindly permitting democracy in Britain.

The sorry spectacle of an elected leader travelling to the palace of an hereditary monarch to request permission to hold an election played out in the UK this morning, as it has done prior to every British election in living memory. The people of the United Kingdom (the clue’s in the name) doffed their collective cap to Queen Elizabeth in recognition of the ruthless ability possessed by her ancestors to violently subjugate the masses. Well done Liz! And well done people of Britain, for permitting such a weird and demeaning custom to continue for the amusement of the rest of the world.

And yes, we all know the queen’s role is technically ceremonial but the symbolism of the prime minister’s visit to Buckingham Palace is surely distasteful — at the very least — to anyone with a commitment to social justice and equality. Brown’s announcement on Downing Street, flanked as he was by his profoundly unlikeable and discredited cabinet that “the queen has kindly agreed” to allow the democratic process to get underway merely underlined the cringeworthy absurdity of the charade.

The thing it called most to my own mind was the explicit promises by the current government (promises that have been echoing in their speeches and manifestos since 1997) to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords. This assembly possesses plenty of real, non-ceremonial power and influence, yet there are still over 90 members of the legislature whose position is predicated on who their dad was.

And this is a nation that feels comfortable exporting democracy at the barrel of a gun?

Official first draft of the new Tory campaign poster

Make your own poster here (via Chicken Yoghurt).

Yesterday over in London the New Labour government delivered a “pre-budget report”. This is essentially a way to test the reaction of the electorate to the contents of the budget without going through the hassle of leaking stuff through journalists. And despite the fact that opposition parties are wailing and gnashing their teeth based on claims that they’d make a 5% adjustment here and 4.2% adjustment there, there was ultimately little of note in Chancellor Darling’s speech. Aside from the one-off 50% windfall tax on bank bonuses, there will be little in the next UK budget that can be considered radical in any way (and, being a “one off”, that 50% tax isn’t even all that radical and will probably be avoided by many by deferring their bonus until next year… given that plenty of the recipients can afford to do so).

On the other hand, there was some genuinely tough decisions made here in Ireland yesterday as our own Finance Minister (Brian Lenihan) delivered our third unpopular budget of the year, building upon the tax rises and spending cuts already seen in 2009.

Predictably, the budget has met with a polarised response. Those on the left have roundly condemned it, while those on the right have lauded it (including the British conservatives, whose support always makes me suspicious of a thing). Equally predictably, such blanket condemnation / praise simplifies the issues involved to the point of meaninglessness. The economic mess that Ireland finds itself in right now is serious and it’s complex, and while I’m certainly not going to cut the government any slack — they’ve spent the past decade steering us up this creek after all — there is merit to some of Lenihan’s strategy.

The first thing to point out is that Ireland is a small nation. Our population is roughly the same as Greater Manchester, so our tax base is limited. The second thing to point out is that we are in serious debt. This is a direct result of the policies of the current government who oversaw the greatest period of prosperity in the history of the nation but failed to use it as an opportunity to safeguard the future. When George Osborne, the British Shadow Chancellor, hailed Ireland in 2006 as “as a shining example of the art of the possible in economic policy-making”, it was this short-sighted short-termism he was celebrating. Given that the British appear ready to hand the purse-strings to Osborne early next year, it seems they are unwilling or unable to learn from the mistakes of others. And the third vital point to make is that we are not in charge of our currency.

These three points — small tax base, large debt, no currency control — significantly limit the options for the Irish government in comparison with a nation like Britain. This is why we have little choice but to impose a series of painful budgets on the country. Having spent beyond our means for the past 10 years, it’s time to balance the books.

Incidentally, while membership of the Euro limits our options in certain ways, those who view this as an argument against the single currency are willfully ignoring the fact that our membership of the Euro probably protected the nation from bankruptcy and the banking sector from collapse last year. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Unemployment payments

Back with the budget, yesterday’s 4.1% cut in unemployment benefit effectively reduces the payments to the level they were about a year ago. Taken in tandem with the significant deflation Ireland is experiencing, our unemployed are still paid more than almost any other nation in the world. I’m not suggesting it’s a life of luxury being on the dole in Ireland — and those who claim it is are talking politicised nonsense — but it is a life above the breadline. Which is ultimately what our social welfare system is designed to provide. And I say that as a socialist.

That our nation of four million people, in significant debt, can nonetheless keep almost all of the 12.5% of us who are unemployed fed, housed and warm while still treating their illnesses and educating their children is to be applauded, not lambasted. Cutbacks will have to be made in already tight household budgets, certainly. But that’s what happens when the entire nation goes on a decade-long credit-fueled spending spree. An unemployed single parent in Ballymun may not have been responsible for that spending spree, but nor are they responsible for the creation of the welfare system. And the uncomfortable fact is that the large rises in dole and child benefit payments during the past few years represent a not-insignificant part of that spending spree.

Life is still better for the average unemployed Irish person than for the average unemployed American, Briton, Serb, Russian, Pole, Italian, Spaniard, Rwandan, Mexican or Greek. Yes, unemployed Scandanavians, Canadians and French probably have slightly higher standards of living — but we’re near the top of that particular table and should acknowledge that. Personally I figured that a 7-10% cut in welfare payments would have been possible without anyone going hungry or cold. That it’s been limited to 4.1% is as much political as it is economic (given the size of the unemployed voting bloc these days) and has meant cuts elsewhere that are — arguably — larger than is fair.

Public service pay cuts

And when I talk about unfair cuts, specifically, I’m talking about this. The public sector pay cuts represent the single largest spending cut in the budget and is being imposed upon workers who have already taken large pay cuts this year. It’s being met with satisfaction by the private sector and business leaders who seem to view it as somehow unjust that public sector workers have a modicum of job security. In reality, almost everyone in the public sector traded the opportunity to become wealthy for that job security. Business leaders can start complaining about public sector job security when they accept a government mandated pay cap. Until then, let me just point them towards Article 45 of our Constitution which makes it pretty clear that we’re a socialist nation at heart. I particularly like…

The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing:
… ii. That the ownership and control of the material resources of the community may be so distributed amongst private individuals and the various classes as best to subserve the common good.

Excerpt from Article 45 of The Consitution of Ireland

And if you don’t like it, then I suggest moving to a country where wealth distribution isn’t enshrined in the constitution.

Part of this wealth distribution is our welfare system, our free health (means-tested, admittedly) and education. And part of it is the maintenance of a relatively large public sector in which jobs are secure.

And I’m not suggesting that public service workers should be immune from pay cuts. The money has to be found somewhere after all. But I don’t think it’s right that they should be bearing so much of the burden. Cut the welfare budget by another 4% and raise income tax by another 3%. Put up corporate tax by 2.5% (still giving us an extremely low rate). Whatever’s raised by those means should then be used to reduce the cuts experience by the public sector — who have already been hit hard this year.

The carbon tax

Predictably, I’m all for this one. The Greens may claim it as a victory, but I believe it’s more about Fianna Fáil looking for at least one new revenue stream that they can blame on somebody else. Doesn’t matter though; taxing fossil fuels is necessary and while this tax probably isn’t enough to produce significant reductions in their use, it’s a positive first step.

Transportation fuel prices have already been increased as a result, though home heating fuel is exempt until next spring (which is fair enough, as many low-income households will already have budgeted for their winter fuel, and any hike in home heating in the middle of December would run the risk of some going cold).

I think the car scrappage scheme (getting paid by the government to trade in your old car and buy a new one) is ultimately counter-productive. As an economic stimulus package I think it’s of dubious merit (we have no indigenous car manufacturing) and as a strategy to reduce emissions I think it’s extremely limited. The difference in emissions between an old car and a new one, after factoring in the carbon emitted by the car’s production and importation is unlikely to be worth the money being spent on the scheme. Far better to take that cash and invest it in renewable energy.

What I’d like to see, however, is a scrappage scheme that genuinely reduced carbon emissions. Citizen S proposed such a policy, and I think it would probably work. Essentially the government pays people to scrap their cars, but only if they agree not to buy another one for a given period of time. They’d voluntarily have their driving-licence suspended for (let’s say) two years; though they could return the scrappage fee should their circumstances change and they need to drive again.

The scrapped cars could be melted down and recycled as wind turbines.

Booze and fags and stuff

Strangely enough, the budget included a reduction in the rate of alcohol tax. The rationale behind this was to combat cross-border shopping. Large numbers of Irish people drive up north to buy cheaper booze (just as the British cross the channel for it). While there, they tend to spend money on other stuff as well and Lenihan sees this cross-border shopping as a significant drain on the treasury. I don’t know exactly how big a drain it is, but if — as he suggests — a reduction in alcohol tax will actually increase revenue by reducing cross-border traffic then it may make sense.

Domestic violence and addiction groups have complained that the reduction will have the effect of increasing alcohol consumption, and while that may be true, I suggest it’s probably quite marginal (much of the savings to be made on a pint or a short are being negated by pay cuts and tax increases).

Interestingly, the government decided not to increase the cost of tobacco products, claiming that doing so would be counter-productive as cigarette smuggling is already extremely prevalent and any further price increases would actually lower tax revenues from that source as yet more people sought out an illegal supply. I can’t comment on this as I don’t know how true that may be, but if it’s a fact that increasing cigarette tax would result in a decrease in revenue without substantially affecting the number of people smoking, then such an increase would indeed be silly. I don’t smoke tobacco any more so it’s all rather moot from my perspective.

But tobacco isn’t the only thing that can be smoked. One wonders how bad things would have to be before the Minister for Justice reforms drug policy and Lenihan announces a cannabis tax. Certainly such a move, if done sensitively and carefully, could be a boost to the treasury without creating any serious social problems. But I suspect the government doesn’t possess the sense, the bravery or the imagination to consider this idea.

In conclusion

Overall, I don’t think this budget was the disaster it’s being painted as by the Irish left. The public sector is being asked to bear an unfair proportion of the burden, and frankly that’s problematic. That said, this budget is unlikely to be the last round of belt-tightening that Ireland will face over the next year or so. Assuming the public sector has felt the worst of the cuts aimed at them (and I believe they probably have) then we’ll almost certainly see some kind of balance restored during the next budget. Welfare payments will come down by a smiliar amount to yesterday’s announcement, and taxes for corporations and high earners will surely rise by a few percentage points. The cannabis tax will doubtlessly remain a dream, though the carbon tax will surely rise slightly. We’ll also see a return to tobacco and alcohol increases (despite the rationale used this time round) given that we’re likely to still be in a deflationary situation by then and prices will have come down across the board.

Ultimately, Ireland needs to get back on its feet as soon as possible as I firmly believe we need to be investing heavily in renewable energy over the next ten years or so. And we can’t do that without first balancing the books. This budget, though imperfect and creating justifiable anger in the public sector, goes some way towards achieving that balance.

I’m generally a fan of engineers and the engineering mindset. Although I’ve now left that industry, I always felt that being an engineer meant that I was essentially a problem-solver. In fact, often when people asked me what I did, that was my response… “I solve problems”. Of course, the primary problem I tended to be solving back then was how to get fizzy pop into bottles as efficiently as possible which — let’s face it — probably doesn’t rank very high on the list of the world’s priorities. All the same, the last project I worked on prior to my career change involved saving a company that was about to go out of business. Safeguarding the world’s fizzy pop supplies may not be all that important, but ensuring that a couple of thousand people kept their jobs (many in some of the most deprived towns in America) seemed like a positive thing at the time.

These days my views about the nature of unnecessary economic activity call even that assessment into question, but we live and learn, eh?

Given my belief that engineers are the world’s problem solvers (leastways when it comes to physical systems), I was both taken-aback and dismayed when I encountered an article in The Guardian yesterday entitled Britain’s renewable energy targets are ‘physically impossible’, says study. It cites a study carried out by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers which insists that Britain needs to begin looking at some of the more esoteric geo-engineering solutions to Climate Change because there is no chance of installing enough renewable power in the required timescale.

They talk about a lack of construction and installation capacity for wind turbines (as one example) and instead suggest untested and, in many cases, still-theoretical solutions. This seems bizarre to me when the obvious response to a lack of turbine manufacturing and installation capacity is to add more, not throw our hands up in the air and suggest that it’s somehow easier and more realistic to explore theoretical carbon capture technologies than it is to build some more turbine factories and installation vessels.

Certainly research should continue into these new technologies, but if the Institution tells us that we run out of turbine manufacturing capacity in 2018, then I suggest that increasing that capacity before 2018 might be something we should explore rather than announcing it’s impossible.

In 1997 the Spanish government made a decision to begin a rapid expansion of wind energy. About a week ago, on November 8th, a milestone was reached when — for a period of five hours — wind power accounted for 50% of the electricity being produced in the country (link in Spanish). And they are far from finished building turbines.

The technical problems are not insurmountable. The rapid expansion of renewables is not impossible. It just requires the political will. And engineers willing to solve problems.

Equatorial Guinea is a pretty awful place to live. Unless, of course, you happen to be a member of the ruling elite. Despite experiencing recent economic growth thanks to the discovery of oil, the population largely live in poverty with almost all of the petroleum revenue being appropriated by President Obiang to fund a luxurious lifestyle for him and his inner circle, as well as ensuring the military are paid well enough to keep him in power. Although there are occasional elections, they are quite obviously loaded in Obiang’s favour and nobody is under any illusions about him being willing to relinquish power voluntarily. He is a dictator in all but name, and while he probably isn’t responsible for quite as much bloodshed and tyranny as the guy he overthrew, that’s really not saying much given the record of Francisco Macías Nguema. Macías reputably had a penchant for mass public executions to the soundtrack of Mary Hopkin’s Those Were The Days. His regime was nightmarish in the most literal of senses… terrifying and surreal all at once, like a David Lynch film writ large.

If you’re an ordinary person in Equatorial Guinea, you have a difficult life and probably quite a short one.

It’s worth pointing out that when people describe Equatorial Guinea as “oil rich”, it’s a statement that needs to be placed in some context. In fact, with estimated recoverable reserves of a little under 2 billion barrels, Equatorial Guinea represents a fraction of one percent of global oil. However, with a population of less than 650,000 that should, in the right hands, be enough wealth to provide the country with a more than adequate health, education and social welfare system. Given their oil resources in proportion to their population size Equatorial Guinea could be a very pleasant place to live given radically different circumstances.

It’s the sort of place that could desperately do with a change in government.

And about five years ago, a group of men decided to try do just that. A bunch of South African mercenaries led by Simon Mann (a former British SAS officer turned soldier-for-hire) were preparing to launch a coup d’état when they were seized enroute to Equatorial Guinea. The Zimbabwean government intercepted their chartered plane when it touched down in Harare to take on supplies and Mann was extradited to the small West African nation to stand trial. During the trial allegations were made that Mann’s coup attempt was being backed by members of the British establishment including Sir Mark Thatcher (son of a certain ex-Prime Minister) and Jeffrey Archer (baron, bad novelist, prominent tory and all round git). These remain “allegations”, though Thatcher’s involvement in providing logistical support has been proven despite his insistence that he was unaware of the details of the plan and had no idea Mann and his private army were up to anything dodgy.

The details of the operation are obviously a little vague, but the basic plan seems to have been to overthrow Obiang and install either Mann himself or a local puppet as President of the country whereupon those who organised, financed and took part in the coup would reap the rewards in much the same way that Obiang currently does. I feel confident that largescale infrastructure projects and a redistribution of the oil wealth to the general populace wasn’t on the cards.

Mann was placed on trial in Equatorial Guinea and found guilty of plotting to overthrow the government. In July last year he was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

Now, it’s fair to say that Equatorial Guinea probably doesn’t have the most robust or transparent judiciary. People like President Obiang rarely install that kind of thing in the countries they rule. Dictators can be funny like that. Nonetheless, there’s no question — given Mann’s own public statements — that the basic facts are as stated. Surprisingly (or not if you assume that some kind of deal was done… cf. not the most robust or transparent judiciary) Mann has just been released having served less than a year and a half of his 34 year sentence. He appears to be a guy with an axe to grind and is looking to get even with the other coup plotters who left him swinging in the wind.

Despite the obvious relish with which some are anticipating whatever he’s got up his sleeve for Thatcher, there are others; Merrick for instance; who point out quite rightly that “a vicious mercenary is now free to enjoy his millionaire’s lifestyle and work on his book deal and film options”. This is hardly very satisfactory and is a somewhat lamentable outcome to the entire affair.

John Band, on the other hand, via that horrid twitter service that irritates me considerably, makes the following comments…

and then (because twitter insists on breaking simplistic soundbites down into absurd soundnibbles)

Taken at face value (and Twitter is doubtlessly doing John a disservice by reducing his position to two sentences of less than 140 characters each) that’s a pretty dreadful sentiment. It seems to be saying that so long as the regime is bad enough, it doesn’t matter if rich westerners storm into an African country, kill a bunch of people, overthrow the government and then syphon off the mineral wealth for their own benefit. It’s an endorsement of violent imperialism because the suggestion that Mann and his 70 heavily armed mercenaries were going to liberate the people of Equatorial Guinea from tyranny is risible.

Perhaps they’d have set up a regime that was moderately less oppressive? But that resolves into an endorsement of Obiang’s government given the fact that it is moderately less oppressive than the Macías dictatorship it replaced.

The reason we should be upset about the likes of Simon Mann and his establishment backers… the reason their actions should matter… is because military intervention and murder for personal gain should not be tolerated even if most of the dead were bastards. People like Mann are no different to the Obiangs of the world, even if he did go to Eton. And I’m a little taken aback that John seems to think it doesn’t matter if they go tearing around Africa pocketing the continent’s wealth at gunpoint.

While the question is implied in my previous post, I’d like to spell it out directly here in the hope that someone can provide an answer.

Why is it a criminal offence to possess cannabis?

The recent admission by the British Home Secretary that their policy is not based upon scientific advice is merely an unusually candid statement of a well-understood truth.

Stephen Whitehead, in the comments to my last post, suggests that the policy might be a product of “values and social norms”. But which values, specifically? And how does one pin down “social norms” long enough to legislate and incarcerate based upon them?

I’d argue that the values of a liberal society are actively transgressed by a government that chooses to destroy the lives of those who engage in a private activity that harms nobody except in extremely rare cases, themselves. Intoxication is not itself a transgression of any western values. And social norms are a dreadful basis for legislation. Those who speak of the wisdom of crowds have never studied group psychodynamics. Groups of people can be manipulated into accepting almost any set of social norms one cares to mention. For good or for ill.

So if a government acknowledges that drug prohibition is not based upon the harm caused by drugs (and indeed seems to exacerbate that harm), then what is it based upon? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. Up until now I assumed it had something to do with our laws being made by a generation of people who were ignorant and fearful of drugs and who erroneously assumed drugs were more harmful than prohibition. Now, however, we have law-makers who were adolescents in the 1960s and 70s, many of whom admit to having tried it themselves* and who have received clear advice from experts in the field that prohibition simply doesn’t have a scientific justification.

What worries me is that Stephen Whitehead may well be right. Drug prohibition, like so many other areas of policy, is indeed based upon “values and social norms”. But “values and social norms” is little more than a respectable way of saying “the editorial position of tabloids”. Our law-makers (and this goes for us over here in Ireland as well as my friends in Britain) appear infinitely more concerned with keeping The Daily Mail and The Sun happy than they are with passing rational laws and doing the right thing.

And people still wonder why I (and so many others) have begun to hold the democratic process in such contempt. There’s no way of testing it, of course, but I pretty much guarantee that were the editors of tabloid newspapers and Sky News to shift their position on drug prohibition tomorrow that the entire public debate would have changed within a couple of weeks and we would see major changes in the law within a few months or so. And when a handful of media moguls have the power to substantially alter “values and social norms” it becomes quite clear why “values and social norms” should never trump scientific evidence and rational assessment in the arena of public policy.

Update 15:36: And on roughly the same topic…

As I’ve pointed out in the past, the drug policies of most governments are profoundly irrational. They are based upon ideology, spurious reasoning and outright falsehoods. Furthermore there is no evidence whatsoever that they achieve their stated aim. In fact, the circumstantial evidence available seems to suggest they have precisely the opposite effect to that which is desired by policy makers. Prohibition appears to increase drug use, as well as increasing the social problems associated with that drug use.

Never has this bizarre irrationality been thrown into more stark relief than with the British decision to sack Professor David Nutt. Professor Nutt was the UK’s chief scientific advisor on drug policy and chaired the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). In response to his dismissal two more members of the council have resigned and there are rumblings that the entire ACMD is about to dissolve in disarray with Professor Nutt claiming that there is “no future for the council in its present form”.

Nutt is a psychiatrist and pharmacologist. He heads the Psychopharmacology Unit in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Bristol, is a Consultant Psychiatrist to Avon and Wiltshire Partnership NHS Trust and is Head of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging at Imperial College London. He was appointed Chairman of the ACMD because he probably knows more about the science of drug use than anyone else in the UK.

Professor Nutt was fired by the British Home Secretary, Mr. Alan Johnson. Johnson left school when he was 15 to stack shelves at Tesco. He then worked as a postman for a while before becoming a career politician.

Science Vs Policy

In a letter to Professor Nutt, Alan Johnson informed him he was being dismissed because “I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy”.

This is a remarkable admission, by the man in charge of UK drug policy, that the policy is not based upon scientific advice. It’s reminiscent of the Bush Administration’s contempt for what they described as “the reality-based community”.

We’ve known for years, of course, that the British government (along with almost every other) do not base drug policy on the scientific advice of those actually qualified to provide it. Professor Nutt’s statements about the relative dangers of various drugs (the statements that got him into all this trouble) are very similar to the conclusions reached by the Wootton Report forty years ago. According to that report (published in January 1969), “Cannabis is less dangerous than the opiates, amphetamines and barbiturates, and also less dangerous than alcohol.”

In Nutt’s case, his indiscretion was to provide a list of commonly consumed drugs in order of the harm they cause based upon the scientific evidence available. Cannabis is listed in 11th position while alcohol is 5th and tobacco 9th.

It’s worth pointing out that this list was published two years ago. In the intervening period, Nutt has essentially watched as every piece of scientific advice provided by the ACMD has been ignored, while at the same time parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee sought the advice of Amy Winehouse’s dad (a cab driver)* on drug policy. One imagines that Professor Nutt’s frustration began to increase when he noted that his advice was not merely being ignored, but that policies were being pursued (the reclassification of cannabis as a Class B substance) which actively contradicted his advice.

I would argue, despite Alan Johnson’s claims, that Professor Nutt was not merely right to inform the public that his advice was being ignored, but actually had an obligation to do so. The public, after all, should know the basis upon which policy is being decided. Particularly if that policy involves the potential criminalisation of between 2 and 5 million people (“In the UK, around 15 million people would now admit having tried cannabis, with between 2 and 5 million regular users.” — Cannabis Use in Britain, PDF).

Professor Nutt, and it’s worth making this clear, never made any specific policy recommendations. He didn’t call for legalisation or decriminalisation and never suggested that cannabis or ecstasy were harmless. He merely made the following observations:

1. most of the drugs for which we currently incarcerate people for using are less harmful than drugs we sell in corner shops and derive tax from.
2. some of the drugs for which we currently incarcerate people for using are less harmful than common recreational activities such as horse-riding.
3. there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the current drug classification system results in a reduction of drug use.
4. the current drug classification system may actually result in significant social harm.
5. numerous statements made about drugs by politicians are demonstrably false (including Gordon Brown’s bewildering comment about “lethal cannabis”).

I am forced to wonder, now that Alan Johnson has admitted that drug policy isn’t actually evidence-based (not in those words of course, but it’s the inescapable interpretation), just what he believes it is based upon. Whatever it is, the tories are clearly in on the secret as David Cameron is — unsurprisingly — supporting Alan Johnson on this issue and suggesting that Professor Nutt’s comments about ecstasy were not “a particularly good way of putting it” (it seems Nutt failed to spin the truth sufficiently to make it palatable to Cameron’s irrational hardline stance).

Of the mainstream politicians, only the Liberal Democrats seem to have worked out exactly what’s going on, with Chris Huhne insisting that “any minister who hides away from scientific advisers who are saying clearly what the scientific evidence shows is frankly going to end up with policy which is a complete mess.” He also suggested that the government may as well set up “a committee of tabloid newspaper editors to advise on drugs policy”.

Personally I suspect they already have.

Tune in next week when Gordon Brown appoints a window-cleaner from Stoke to design the next generation of nuclear power stations.