Civilian casualties in Iraq

The BBC reports that a paper in the Lancet claims that poor planning, air strikes by coalition forces and a climate of violence have led to more than 100,000 extra deaths in Iraq.

Speaking on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, Jack Straw sought to cast doubt on this figure and mentioned that the website Iraq Body Count offers a much lower estimate.

At present that site suggests there have been between 14,181 and 16,312 civilian deaths since the military intervention began.

So that's all right then.

Frank Furedi

One of this blog's heroes now has his own website.

Democracy and the blogosphere

The Adam Smith Institute is holding an event under this title on the evening of Tuesday 16 November.

Full details here.

Local democracy?

A glossy leaflet was put through my door the other day. "Harborough District Community Strategy," it says, "Your Summary Guide 2004."

It lists eight themes, together with their long-term aims, and I do not take exception to any of them.

But what am I supposed to do if I do disagree with this strategy?

The leaflet tells me that it has been developed by something called the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP). This includes "organisations such as Harborough District Council, Health Trusts, Police, Voluntary Groups and Business".

So the elected local authority is just one group among a number of official bodies, voluntary bodies and interest groups, and there is no sign in the leaflet that it has precedence amongst them.

Nor does it sound as though the council will be encouraged to rock the boat:

For too long, many of the organisations that belong to the LSP worked on their own and not with each other. This has often caused problems but now the LSP is helping these organisations work together.

Previous convictions

Trenchant words from Neil Fawcett on his blog A Liberal Dose:

This is yet another 'quick fix' attempt to be seen to be doing something about crime, without actually helping the situation one bit.

Read the rest here.

Lord Bonkers' links

I have begun the process of updating Lord Bonkers' website, begining with the links page. If you do go there, please let me know of any broken links.

Michael Howard and purple sheets

Continuing David Hemmings week, this report from the Daily Telegraph of his death last year reveals that Michael Howard is a great admirer of Blow-Up and sleeps in purple sheets.

An unexpected supporter of Proportional Representation

Further reading of David Hemmings' memoirs reveals the following passage:

Before the 1974 election I found myself caught up in politics, whipped into activity by Honor Blackman and canvassing in London and Devon for Jeremy Thorpe and the Liberals. This was, of course, a few years before Norman Scott's infamous pillow-biting revelations and the inauguration of Auberon Waugh's dog-lovers' party. At that stage, the Liberal Party's main attraction for me was its championing of proportional representation, which has always seemed to me to be a better expression of parliamentary democracy that "first past the post".

Six-year-old offenders will be sent to boot camps

Or so an Independent headline read this morning. I checked the date - it wasn't 1 April - so I tried the first paragraph:

Shoplifters, joy-riders and tearaways as young as six are to be sent to military training camps under a government attempt to instil discipline in disruptive children, with those succeeding winning a place with a military cadet force.

The full story is here, though after a week it will disappear into the darkness of the paper's Portfolio scheme, which means you will have to pay to read it.

The BBC's account is free, and more measured:

Organisers say the format is expected to be similar to Outward Bound courses rather than harsh American boot camps.

Such courses might well do some young offenders good, but why does it have anything to do with the Army? Perhaps part of the answer is that not enough people volunteer to work with children any more, and another part is that the existing agencies are not terribly good at their jobs.

Or you may see something sinister when the Independent reports that:

Those who successfully complete the military programmes will not only win a certificate but automatic referral to a cadet force. The Army has a recruitment drive aimed at young people from all backgrounds.

An interventionist foreign policy is going to need more recruits, and it may be a help to the Army to have them pointed its way by the courts. How much say the young offenders will have in the matter is not discussed in either report.

The BBC says that the Youth Justice Board's outreach workers will identify young offenders aged between 10 and 17 who would benefit from the courses. But what is most objectionable about this scheme emerges when it goes on to say:

The same staff, during multi-agency discussions, will also identify children aged eight to 13 who have not committed a crime but are at risk of offending.

Any one like to guess what "children at risk of offending" will look like? Certainly poor, probably male and possibly black. When you are born into such circumstances, it seems that the authorities do not care if you break the law or not. The best thing is for you to treated like a young offender.

The reforms of the 1960s were supposed to make society see criminal children as merely troubled. Their long-term effects has been to make us regard all troubled children as criminal.

The last people to be this keen on camps and discipline were the Scouting movement. But at least they had a strong ethos of encouraging children to mix across the classes and races.

New Labour, by contrast, wants to separate those children it sees as dangerous from the rest of society.

Kennedy attacks "climate of fear"

The BBC's report of Charles Kennedy's speech reminds we why I am a member of the Liberal Democrats:

A "climate of fear" has been used to undermine civil liberties in the wake of the 11 September attacks, Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has said.

The full speech is here.

Such devoted sisters

Thanks to Labour Watch for pointing me to this intriguing story in the Derbyshire Evening Telegraph.

A Derby MP and Cabinet minister has been "stitched up" by political opponents within and outside the Labour Party following accusations of wrong-doing over a £50,000 expenses claim.

Sources close to Margaret Beckett, the Labour MP for Derby South, today dismissed the accusations - referring to statistics discovered in the list of MPs' expenses last week - as "galling"...

The story is likely to be a "stitch-up" by political opponents both within, and outside, the Labour Party, the source said."Most of the women in the Cabinet have got it in for her," the source added.

Randy's ladybird

Sometimes Statcounter tells me that people have come here from another blog, but when I look at it there are no links to Liberal England. I suspect, therefore, that they are arriving thanks to the NEXT BLOG button in the top right-hand corner.

So thanks to that button for this picture, which I would not otherwise have seen.

Lincolnshire chain gangs

One of the things the Statcounter gizmo on this blog does is to tell me which keywords people have used to find me.

The other day someone came here thanks to Lincolnshire "chain gangs". I find this slightly unnerving. Is the Home Office planning to try out a new prison regime somewhere in the Wolds?

Even more unnerving is the fact that, when I try that search myself, my sites come up first and fifth on the list.

For some more encouraging news about Lincolnshire, see this story on Liberal Dissenter.

Presidential election jokes

Get your titters out here.

Was Bush wired?

MSN's web-based Slate magazine offers a summary of the evidence in the Case of the Box on Bush's Back.

According to taste, you may treat it as the anatomy of a scandal or an interesting study of how rumours spread over the Net.

Serendib

I maintain another blog at Serendib. It is an anthology of quotations I come across in my reading. In effect it is part of my writer's notebook, and it may as well be on the Net as anywhere else.

I have just added the first quotation for a month. It is from David Hemmings' memoirs (published posthumously the other day) and shows that, though he was its star, he was no nearer to understanding the ultimate sixties film Blow-Up than the rest of us.

Today's Tesco

Writing in today's Spectator Rod Liddle points his readers towards an article on the power of the supermarkets on The Ecologist magazine's website.

By tracking what you buy through your Clubcard, Tesco creates for you a favourite products list (similar to a list of favourite websites). When you connect to Tesco.com there is the list of products you normally buy. A helpful short cut, or too much information about you? One woman contacted Tesco when she saw condoms on her favourites list: she was puzzled because she and her husband didn’t use them when they were having sex. Tesco knew her husband was having an affair before she did.

There is more good stuff on the same subject from the New Economics Foundation here.

Old left, old tricks

www.perfect.co.uk reprints the New Statesman's account of the travails of the European Social Forum 2004:

What went wrong? The answer can be summed up in three words: Socialist Workers Party.

The New Statesman's site is here.

Lest we forget

Iraq Body Count now estimates the number of civilian casualties as lying between 13,278 and 15,357.

Unwillingly to school

It is hard for those outside the professional world to make much of the job advertisements in the Guardian's Wednesday Society section. The job titles are obscure and the description of duties are obscurer, even if the salaries are sometimes all too clear.

My favourite advertisement in today's edition is for a "Schools Travel Adviser":

We are looking for someone to develop School Travel Plans within schools in Bolton.You will be responsible for planning, compiling, implementing, managing programmes of work, and evaluating the Plans.

It happens that I once published an article on the Spiked website bemoaning the fact that:

what used to be a mundane task - deciding how our children get to school - has become the focus of concern for a whole range of professionals. So at Horndean Community School* in Hampshire there is a 'safe routes to school' committee, chaired by a representative from the sustainable transport charity Sustrans and including pupils, teachers, governors, parents and the parish, district and county councils.

Now this process seems to be accelerating through the employment of dedicated local authority staff.

How long will it be before we hear a council say: "We would like our children to walk to school, but it is just too expensive"?

* I found this example from a trawl of the net, but it happens that I was born in Horndean.