Ronald Reagan in Casablanca?

As we all know, Ronald Reagan was originally cast to play Rick in the classic film Casablanca. Except that, like a lot of things we all know, it turns out not to be true.

A contributor to the Powell and Pressburger e-mail group points us towards this page, which gives chapter and verse.

Round up the usual suspects.

America abroad

Labour Watch claims "increasing evidence suggesting US troops used napalm in the battle of Fallujah" without giving any links to that evidence. The most authoritative account appears to be this one from Aljazeera and there was also one in the last Sunday Mirror.

Meanwhile the New York Times reports:

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

You may need to register to read this, but it is free and well worth doing.

Fighting crime

This photograph on the Recess Monkey site suggests that some police crime-prevention tactics require a little fine tuning.

The march of the nannies

In a recent post on a column by Polly Toynbee I suggested that a tendency to treat adults like children and children like adults is typical of modern life in general and New Labour in particular. Two more examples have come my way in recent days.

The first comes from Margaret Hodge's defence of the nanny state as reported in Saturday's Guardian. According to that article, Hodge said:

critics of the nanny state misunderstood the role of nannies. "Good nannies don't just tell you what you can't do ... [or] must do. They are about ensuring that you can make real and informed choices for yourself."

Again there is no sense here that children need nannies but adults do not. It is hard to escape the conclusion that, to New Labour, we are all children and all in need of nannies - albeit enlightened New Labour nannies who do not rely on the back of the hairbrush to get their way. In direct contradiction of what she says, Hodge's meaning is clearly that adults are not competent to make choices for themselves.

The second example comes from the Spiked website and an article discussing attempts to foster media literacy in children. Its author Sandy Starr describes a session run by James Park, director of Antidote, the campaign for emotional literacy, and Barry Richards, professor of public communication at Bournemouth University. In it, those taking part were shown:

a video recording of six-year-old pupils in east London discussing the question 'Is Africa a free country?' (itself a politically illiterate question since Africa is a continent, but that was apparently part of the point of the exercise). The children's emotionally literate teacher sat with them in a circle, inviting them to contrast and reflect on the differing accounts of Africa in a picture book they had just read, in items they had seen on the news, and that they had received from members of their family.

Starr comments that:

While this might be a useful exercise for getting children to think about the world, how it constituted an emotional education escaped me. But what was disturbing was Richards' assertion that the video demonstrated a valid model for fostering political understanding in general. Here we see the infantilisation of the public that lies at the heart of projects to promote new forms of literacy.

Starr's "infantilisation" is the right word to describe what is going on here and in the views expressed by Polly Toynbee and Margaret Hodge. In Starr's example, however, the reverse process is taking place - we are demanding that children as young as six have an opinion on African politics and develop a sophisticated ability to weigh evidence. An ability which, incidentally, relegates what they learn from their parents to being just one more source of information.

This tells us a great deal about what enlightened opinion expects children to be like, but it is hard to see that the children themselves are gaining much from it. And it reinforces my belief that our infantilisation of adults goes hand in hand with a demand that children become more like adults.

Expanding "anti-social behaviour"

Thanks to the useful Labour Watch site for bringing this to our attention. The Labour Party's own website announces that:

One of the public’s top priorities – tackling the linked problems of crime, terrorism, illegal immigration, drugs and anti-social behaviour - is central to the Labour Government’s aims.

Linked problems? The concept of "anti-social behaviour" has always been a remarkably elastic one. It seems to cover everything from serious criminality to low-level nuisance from children that in a sane society would be settled without any thought of involving public authorities. Now it seems in danger of expanding even further and embracing terrorism too.

House Points

Here is this week's column from Liberal Democrat News.

State opening

It’s the Queen I feel sorry for. She dresses in full fig: crown, white gloves and reading glasses. She rounds up her retinue: not just men in tights, but boys in tights and ladies in waiting too. She rides to Westminster.

And all she is given to recite are gobbets of Blairspeak like “a modern and comprehensive framework” and “more security and opportunity for all”.

She should have brought the Internet Trawler Pursuivant, in doublet, hose and buckled shoes, to slip her the script of the BBC’s The Power of Nightmares. It would have made far more informative reading.

Then she could have said that politicians:

have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand.

Or:

American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists … created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The speech she was given to read confirmed this analysis. We are promised a happier approach from Gordon Brown next week. Though the chancellor’s career confirms P. G. Wodehouse’s observation that it is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

But this week the government is dealing in nightmares. Since it came to power there have been 27 criminal justice acts. We have more police officers and crime is falling. But Labour pretends to believe the times are darker than ever, so the Queen had to tell us all about terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour and ID cards.

The inevitable ID cards. Every time you hear a minister calling for them it is for a different reason. Illegal working. Identity theft. Benefit fraud. International terrorism. Whatever the issue, cards are the answer. They sound more and more like a solution looking for a problem.

Matthew Taylor said on Tuesday: “The Government is focusing on fear, whereas the Liberal Democrats offer hope.” I’m not sure you can use “whereas” in a sound bite, but he is right.

Why left-wing Liberals hate Labour the most

I was reading a profile Alex Salmond in The House Magazine earlier today. It is the Westminster in-house magazine and has a very good website, except that the article I am reading seems to be the only one for the 15 November issue that is not on line.

These profiles are always written in the subject's own words, and this one quotes Salmond as saying:

I get on well with unionists and, indeed, you find nationalists from Northern Ireland get on with unionists. Actually, Irish members in Westminster and in Europe have tended to co-operate very well on social and economic matters. There are actually far more divisions between the Ulster Unionists and the Democratic Unionists because they are fighting for the same votes - making their relationship that much more fratricidal. They are chasing the same customers, rather like the SNP and Scottish Labour. So I don't have too many friends in the Scottish Labour Party - I have one or two but I better not say who they are for their own sakes. But I have got a lot of Labour friends among MPs south of the border.

Salmond is right. His observation explains why it is that West Country Liberal Democrats are at the Tories' throats yet strike the rest of their party as rather right-wing and why the Lib Dems who hate Labour the most are radicals from Northern cities.

When I read this I was also reminded of a fringe meeting on Lib-Lab relations held at the Liberal Democrat a few years ago. Among those on the panel were Menzies Campbell and Jackie Ballard. I was struck at the time how odd it was that it was the patrician Edinburgh lawyer who was keen on getting closer to the Labour Party and the former lecturer and social worker who was hostile to the idea.

Here the rivalry was not so much for votes as for ideas, but Salmond's theory still holds true. Ming, coming from the Whig side of the party, felt no pressure to present himself as a political radical and in particular was not concerned with competing for that title with Labour. He was therefore open to the idea of closer relations with them because he was not fighting with them to occupy the same ideological niche.

Jackie did feel an obligation to wrest the right to call herself radical away from Labour, and was therefore more hostile to that party. So she argued against deals and pacts with them even though, on any objective assessment, her political views were closer to Labour than Ming's were.

Libertarian England

The pro-market campaign group Reform has details of an encouraging opinion poll on its homepage:

Asked in general about “legislation on things like hunting, smoking and parents’ ability to smack their children”, 71 per cent of voters agreed that “Too many infringements on personal liberty are being proposed on matters that should be for individuals to decide for themselves”, while only 27 per cent agreed that “The Government should legislate on such things even if they mean restrictions on personal liberty.”

You can download a .pdf file giving the full figures from the same page.

Reform's regular e-mailing breaks down the figures by party. The libertarian view was supported by 82 per cent of Conservative voters, 66 per cent of Lib Dem voters and 62 per cent of Labour voters.

Impeach Blair

I wish to see Tony Blair impeached and required to answer in the Court of Parliament that he repeatedly and substantively misled the people into the Iraq War of 2003 while choosing to remain in office when he is in clear violation of the traditional convention of ministerial resignation.

If this is how you feel then this website allows you to sign a petition in support of the parliamentary moves to bring Blair up before the beak.

The Skakagrall reports that this website was taken down yesterday by its previous hosting company and the database of supporting signatures deleted.

Meanwhile, Charles Kennedy (may he live for ever) is introducing the following amendment to the Queen's Speech:

… but regrets that the Gracious Speech contains no commitment to introduce legislation to clarify the responsibility of the Prime Minister to Parliament, particularly in relation to the prerogative powers and the role of Parliament in matters of war and peace, and calls for a special Select Committee of the House to consider these matters.

The Liberal Democrat press release has Kennedy calling it:

a genuine opportunity to invite cross-party support for the amendment next week on the role of the Prime Minister in his relationship to the House of Commons arising from Iraq.

Charlie Whelan, John Peel

Two short extracts illustrating the malleable accents of these two distinguished figures have been posted to my anthology blog Serendib.

Latest news from the Ukraine

Harry's Place points us towards the English-language website of PORA, the Ukranian pro-democracy movement.

Otis Ferry

I normally rely upon the Shropshire Star for light relief. Today it carries an intriguing story that has not made the radio news bulletins:

Shropshire hunt protester Otis Ferry has had guns and other property seized by police after a raid on his home, it emerged today. Officers took away the legally-held guns, a computer and other items after an extensive search of the 21-year-old's house on the outskirts of Shrewsbury.

And:

it is believed police carried out the search because of concerns over Mr Ferry's behaviour during hunt protests. He has said he will continue a campaign of peaceful protest against the hunting ban.

Imagine the fuss in some quarters if Ferry had been planning to take up a more fashionable cause.

Families and the state

What's this? An article that shares my analysis of government family policy? And in the Guardian too:

After 20 years of the state in retreat, abdicating power and responsibility over the circumstances of people's lives in places such as Sunderland, now it's on the advance again. The state is carving out new territory where it will exert its authority and attempt to reshape society - penetrating deep into one of the hitherto most private aspects of people's lives: how to parent.

They were there

Tonight I am busy writing Friday's House Points on the State Opening of Parliament - "Liberal England: Topical comment three days after the event."

In the mean time, here are eyewitness accounts from Richard Allan and Sandra Gidley.

Understanding Tony Benn

I have posted a short piece to Serendib which reveals that Tony Benn was a cousin of the British film actress Margaret Rutherford.

As Rutherford was best known for her portrayal of eccentric characters, this helps us see Benn in a new light.

Reclaiming public spaces

Writing in the Guardian today, Martin Wainwright reports that moves to bring back park keepers are gathering pace.

Further exploration reveals this press release from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. It quotes one of the organisation's bigwigs as saying:

"There is a temptation to believe that CCTV and tough security is the only way to tackle these problems. However, many of the park managers here today would tell you that it is possible to tackle problems like vandalism and graffiti and achieve long-term cost savings by investing above all in staffing, maintenance and good design."

Amen to that. The rise of CCTV cameras has gone hand-in-hand with the depopulation of the public world. All the semi-official figures who used to people it, such as bus conductors and park keepers, have been removed. (The left thought they were crypto-fascists, the right thought they cost too much.)

The result has been to leave people feeling less secure. When politicians call for "more bobbies on the beat" they would do better to support schemes like this one and employ more park keepers.

Margaret Hodge

The best comment on the Fathers 4 Justice activist who handcuffed himself to Margaret Hodge comes from a radio phone-in, as reported on the blog This England Project:

I hope that the man is unhurt but what I really don't understand is why it took the police so long to release him.

The Power of Nightmares

The Amsterdam-based blog Silt has transcripts and Bitttorrent files (whatever they are) of the whole of this important recent BBC series.

There is also a BBC page for it here.

House Points

Here is my column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

A cunning plan

As I write, the Lords and the Commons are fighting over the hunting bill like two greyhounds with a hare. It looks as though their lordships are going to force the prime minister to ban hunting at once so the resulting row takes place in the run up to the general election.

Forget all the guff about the upper house being the repository of the nation’s wisdom: this is a brilliant piece of low politics. And, whatever your views on hunting, Blair deserves it for his dithering and duplicity.

For Tony Blair never wanted to ban fox hunting. He wanted to be always in the process of banning it. That way, whenever his backbenches threatened to rebel over some nasty right-wing policy, he could buy them off with a little more progress on blood sports.

Not that most Labour MPs who vote to ban hunting are particularly concerned about animal welfare. You don’t find them putting down questions about factory farming. What they really want to do is have a go at the toffs. They would be just as happy banning polo or the Henley Regatta.

But when politicians insist on fighting the class war the outcome is seldom happy. We saw this during the miners strike and also when the Tories brought in the poll tax. In the long run, outbreaks of public disorder rarely do governments much good.

What will become of the foxes in all this? If hunting is banned, they will still be killed and the methods used may well be no more humane than hunting.

Worse than that, they will learn that under New Labour nothing comes without strings. Expect to see the introduction of compulsory lectures for foxes on the rights of chickens – or “members of the egg-laying community”, as they will probably be called. Look too for a network of Cubs Clubs run by Margaret Hodge and a Brush Your Brush campaign headed by John Reid.

All this may accelerate the trend that has seen foxes abandon the countryside to become urban scavengers and, as many householders know, significant pests. It will be a sad day when the only foxes you see are sitting round shopping malls wearing Burberry baseball caps and giving their children Sunny D.

The latest canvassing accessory

Tired of wearing out your shoes during elections? Want to get around more quickly?

This could be just what you are looking for.