Friday, December 17, 2010 

Burying bad news? Never!

It's good to see that regardless of the political shade of government, unpopular decisions still get mysteriously announced on Friday afternoons when the hope is that almost no one will notice.

As far as almost inevitable compromises go, the decision to give those serving prison sentences of less than 4 years the franchise seems to be about the best that could have been hoped for. Certainly, it would have been far fairer to either allow the judge to decide who should and shouldn't be denied the vote at the time of sentencing, although that leaves things very much on his whim and could also lead to countless cases of those told they won't be allowed the vote challenging the decision when others given similar or even the same term have been, or alternatively to give the vote to everyone not sentenced to life. This might also save time and further expense: as the Heresiarch points out, the more recent Frodl case decided by the European Court of Human Rights makes clear they favour either of the two aforementioned solutions, leaving the door wide open for a further legal challenge. Whether the court will be prepared to rule against a piece of legislation specifically designed to deal with their judgement remains to be seen.

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12/17/2010 10:35:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, December 16, 2010 

A proper, rational debate on drug policy is exactly what we can't have.

Did anyone actually know that Bob Ainsworth was once drugs minister, or more accurately, a under-secretary at the Home Office? I sure as hell didn't. Admittedly, it was in the far off mists of Labour's second term, between 2001 and 2003, when there were more immediately pressing issues than the government's drug policy, yet I don't think anyone really remembered until he reminded everyone today in the most praiseworthy of circumstances.

Whether Ainsworth is the most senior former minister to come out publicly and call for the decriminalisation of all drugs (he hasn't called for the legalisation of heroin for example, legalisation and decriminalisation often being confused when they are completely separate proposals) certainly is debatable. Best known for his recent stint as defence secretary, he's probably held the highest office of state, but is most likely less well known than either Mo Mowlam, who called for legalisation in 2002, or Clare Short, whom I'm fairly certain has also done so although I can't find any authoritative sources backing that up. The real point is more that Ainsworth, probably about as a traditional Labour MP as you could find, has become convinced of the need to end drug prohibition.

Equally uncertain is Professor David Nutt's claim that most politicians are of the same view and are simply too terrified of the potential implications and difficulties of altering almost 40 years of successive government drug policy is much harder to tell. Certainly, the reasons for not doing so could hardly be more vividly shown than by the media coverage of recent years, firstly over the downgrading of cannabis to a Class C substance and the subsequent, successful campaign for it be made Class B again, with not just the likes of the Daily Mail scaremongering over the supposed increased potency of the drug and link with schizophrenia but the broadsheet press also joining in, and secondly this year's short-lived moral panic over meow meow, with apparently almost every schoolchild in the country taking it, necessitating an instant ban as advocated by the Sun. If anything, it's the few journalists that are convinced they're reflecting the views of their readership that are now more opposed to reform than most politicians are, who tend to be much better briefed and acquainted with the consequences of prohibition, not to mention the futility of the revolving-door that exists in the criminal justice system as a direct result of addiction and desperation.

Again, while polls have shown public support for a fairly draconian drug prohibition policy, this is partially the result of ignorance and press coverage, not to mention the role of government in promoting the myth that illegal drugs are inherently dangerous regardless of how and when they're taken. It's also increasingly clear that attitudes towards drugs are generational, with most boomers, despite having been those who first most widely used the now illegal substances being in favour of their current legal status. Few younger people hold the same views, although whether they will turn against liberalisation as they age in a similar fashion remains to be seen. The fact is though that most political discussion of drugs, especially those less harmful, has generally moved on from condemnation and bothering to argue that the use of them in itself a very bad thing to the even more pathetic suggestion that discussing legalisation or decriminalisation in itself is unhelpful because it sends the "wrong message". This was basically the line taken by the government when it ignored the advice of the ACMD to downgrade Ecstasy to Class C, and is also exactly what was spouted today by Ed Miliband when asked his opinion of Ainsworth's view.

The hypocrisy of this is especially apparent when anonymous briefings are given rubbishing Ainsworth for so much as raising the point while the party itself welcomes him for starting a debate, as Hopi Sen does here. It's impossible to have a debate when politicians themselves refuse to consider any alternative to the current policy, which is what both Conservative and Labour spokesmen did today without addressing any of the actual wider points he made, or indeed misrepresenting them as James Brokenshire did.

One of those was that the new government strategy on drugs announced last week wasn't different from what had gone before as claimed except in that it was worse. Rather than reducing harm, which has been the mantra ever since the Misuse of Drugs Act was first passed, the new strategy is built around the three themes of reducing demand, which no government has ever succeeded in doing through criminalisation, restricting supply, which is one of the worst things you can possibly do as it increases prices, leading to more acquisitive crime and to those addicted becoming more desperate and so likely to cause even more damage to themselves and those around them by looking for alternatives, and finally building recovery, which is made all the more difficult by treating addicts as criminals instead of needing help. The current government then doesn't just want to avoid a debate on ending the drugs war, it wants to intensify it. When it's the most unusual suspects calling for an end to the status quo, we might finally be able to start building an effective opposition to just those plans.

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12/16/2010 11:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 15, 2010 

Opaque consultations and Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms.

As political U-turns go, the Liberal Democrat about face on tuition fees has absolutely nothing on the promise made in the coalition agreement that the new government would not indulge in top-down reorganisations of the NHS. The full pact between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives was published on the 20th of May; on the 12th of July the government published the Liberating the NHS white paper, advocating the abolition of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts. If you were feeling cynical you might fall into the belief that the two parties had no intention whatsoever of honouring the pledge made in the agreement, and had been planning all along to do exactly the opposite. Appropriately enough, the website setting out the coalition's Programme for Government has already been closed down, and is now only available through the National Archives' cache.

Today the government published its response to the consultations launched by that previous health white paper. Considering how quick the coalition was to abandon its opposition to carrying out the kind of top-down reforms which had so angered and demoralised NHS staff during Labour's years in power, you'd expect it to at the least recognise or catalogue just how many responses were either in favour of their proposals and how many were against. While this would be time-consuming as there were over 6,000 submissions, it would not only signify this government's dedication to transparency but also enable us to ensure that they aren't misrepresenting the overall tone of those responding.

Instead the document cherry picks from this vast cache of opinions, and while it does provide a small amount of space for trenchant criticisms of the original plans (paragraph 1.15, page 10), it quotes at far greater length those who were supportive, which it describes as coming from "across the spectrum". It's impossible to know whether this is an accurate summary of the consultation submissions for the simple reason that the only thing we have apart from the tiny pieces directly lifted from them littered throughout the paper is the names of the organisations that took part. These are listed in this highly professional 58 page PDF file (original mirrored here in case it's replaced), 27 pages of which are either completely blank or have what may have been the remnants of earlier edits to the document strewn across them.

This wouldn't be so bad or so hilariously hypocritical if the document itself didn't propose an NHS "information revolution" (paragraph 2.23, page 22), the kind where "information can drive better and safer care, improve outcomes, support people to be more involved in decisions about their treatment and care, and, through extending opportunities for people to provide feedback on their service experience, improve service design and quality". Such as by perhaps asking whether those responding to consultations would mind having their submissions published alongside the official government paper, ensuring that their own objections and proposals can be used to hold the department to account? A further consultation was incidentally launched on this "Information Revolution", alongside another on greater choice and control, with very little fanfare back in October (an introduction to the "IR" on the DoH website has so far received only 18 comments). Most will only now be learning of them, with the consultations closing on the 14th of January, leaving little real time for many to respond.

It may well be the case that the responses to the consultation have somewhat altered the government's plans, as it sets out (paragraph 1.13, page 8), although you certainly wouldn't know if from the way it's presented the opposing submissions. For instance, while the summary of how the government has listened suggests that it's changed its view on the commissioning of maternity services due to the response, a look at the actual relevant section (paragraph 4.97, page 79) sees four different organisations quoted as supporting the original plan while another four, described as representing the majority view, differed. Here's where it would have been incredibly useful to have the full submissions to be able to see the real strength of opinion. Without them you're left to take the Department of Health's word for it, which judging by previous performance would be a very foolish thing to do indeed.

As with so much else the coalition is proposing, speed is being favoured over properly thinking through the possible consequences of such rapid and untested reform. The response given in the white paper to those arguing that the proposed changes are a "revolutionary" leap in the dark (paragraph 1.20, page 12) is that they would be better characterised as a logical evolution of the reforms put in place by the last government, with it commenting that practice-based commissioning and GP fundholding have been around for 20 years. This is despite Andrew Lansley previously arguing that comparing the former and GP commissioning is meaningless as they are completely different things. It also doesn't make clear that £80bn of NHS funding will be going straight to the new GP consortia to allocate and spend, a truly massive change, and one which the government is yet to prove the majority of GPs actually want. The cost of this reorganisation, yet to be revealed despite the health secretary apparently knowing the figures, comes as it seems unlikely the government will be able to keep its other promise of a real terms increase in spending on the NHS without making further cuts in other departmental budgets. If no one other than NHS staff originally cared about the breaking of the "no more top-down reforms" pledge, millions of voters will come to if it leads inexorably to Cameron's "cutting the deficit rather than the NHS" policy becoming just another election soundbite.

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12/15/2010 11:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 14, 2010 

Richard Desmond and a "fork in the road".

(Hat-tip to Anton.)

The saying goes that you can't keep a good man down. With Richard Desmond, proprietor of the Daily Express and Daily Star, the Television X softcore subscription TV channels and since the summer, Channel 5, it's more that effluent tends to float. Last July, it seemed that Desmond's apparent inexorable rise might finally be checked, and all as a result of his own insecurity and vanity. He had brought what turned out to be a disastrous libel action against Tom Bower, the unauthorised biographer, for claiming in his book on the downfall of Conrad Black that the Canadian media tycoon had "ground him [Desmond] into the dust". Integral to the case was that Desmond had played the role of a newspaper owner of the old school, interfering directly in the editorial process, or dropping the most blatant of hints to his journalists as to what they should write, including on his business rivals and enemies. Bower's win seemed to open the door to the publishing of his own biography on Desmond, titled Rogue Trader.

Almost a year and six months on, Rogue Trader is still without a publisher. Desmond, meanwhile, succeeded in purchasing Channel 5 with barely a squeak of protest, not even from the usual likes of Private Eye, and has started the same process he carried out at the Express and Star: sacking dozens of employees while cutting costs to the bone, with the focus to be on the pumping out of celebrity obsessed content, cheaply produced and piled high. Desmond, who has long cited Rupert Murdoch as the person he would most like to emulate, has gone even further than his idol in wholly owning a terrestrial British television channel. He even supposedly recently offered Murdoch a billion for News International, something the Australian-American regarded as a good price, even if he had no intention off selling.

It's not therefore much of a surprise, flush with cash as he is, that Desmond is once again objecting to paying the annual fee to the Press Standards Board of Finance, the body that funds the Press Complaints Commission, having previously spent nearly two years refusing to pay the bill, supposedly as a protest against the editor of the Daily Express having to leave the board after the payout to the McCanns. Whether this is just the usual prevarication from a businessman who objects to any variety of oversight concerning his dealings, or signals that the end of his patience has been reached with the frequency with which the Daily Star especially has been referred to the commission is not entirely clear, although if it was the latter it certainly wouldn't be a shock.

While it would certainly be a stretch to describe the Star as ever being a newspaper of repute, increasingly over the past few years it's became little more than a daily version of OK!, Desmond's downmarket version of Hello! The front page lead article is invariably more inaccurate than it is accurate; today's cover, speculating on Katie Price being pregnant for the umpteenth time is for instance completely false. When the cover hasn't been dedicated to the entire industry that seems to follow the antics of a couple of permatanned half-wits, it's been given over to even more inflammatory material, such as this story from earlier in the year on "Muslim-only" toilets in a shopping centre in Rochdale, according to the paper funded by the local council. The only problem was that they weren't Muslim-only, as anyone could use them, and they weren't put in place with the use of public money. The Star, without apologising, was ordered to recognise these facts in a clarification on page two, after the Exclarotive blogger complained to the PCC. Numerous other recent examples of the Star and Express either deliberately misleading their readers, displaying a wholesale lack of normal journalistic ethics or just a complete lack of care abound.

Should Desmond carry through his threat to withdraw funding, it's not immediately clear whether or not the PCC would just continue as it did previously: still taking complaints against the papers, simply without the ability to force them to publish adjudications or corrections. Far more serious would be if he actively took the papers out of the PCC's oversight, something which as Roy Greenslade explains has only happened previously once. Even then, it's hard to see this as being the "fork in the road" or the threat to press freedom some have already put it down as; rather, as all the other newspaper groups are dedicated to keeping up the pretence of self-regulation, almost nothing would change. Any blame would be put purely on Desmond continuing to operate as a rogue proprietor, with doubtless the other owners and editors privately trying to persuade him to rejoin. We've already seen recently how terrified government ministers are when they start to even think of taking on the likes of News International; the idea that a form of state regulation would be imposed now in the social networking age, especially when David Cameron is just as hand in glove with the Sun as New Labour ever was, is unthinkable.

More pertinently, the PCC always has been and remains a cartel rather than anything approaching an active and concerned regulator, as even a glance at their piss-poor investigations into the phone-hacking at the News of the World demonstrates. The PCC's code is hardly set in stone, and changes to it are more than possible. Extra allowances could be made for publications that dedicate themselves almost solely to the discussion of celebrities, where the facts are far more difficult to establish and where rumours are actively encouraged by the stars themselves, so often complicit in much of the content printed about them. After all, how can they possibly operate under such onerous restrictions when gossip blogs, often operated from America, only answerable to their courts can put up almost anything they like? We should never underestimate the ability of organisations under apparent terminal pressure to adapt, regardless of how their actions appear to anyone outside the industry. As all the polling undertaken has shown, trust has never been lower in the tabloid press. The readers almost expect to be lied to; why should a regulator prevent that from happening when it's almost what they want?

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12/14/2010 10:18:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, December 13, 2010 

Those deadly gas canisters strike again.

Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly's failed attack in Stockholm, as many have already noted, was remarkably similar in execution to the assault launched by our old friends Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed (aka Abu Beavis and Abu Butthead) against the Tiger Tiger nightclub and Glasgow airport back in 2007 and not just because al-Abdaly was the only one to die.

As with their attack, al-Abdaly seems to have either been trained to use gas canisters as part of his makeshift bomb or decided upon using them as obtaining explosives in the necessary quantities for a truly spectacular detonation was just too difficult. The really key connection, as yet unconfirmed and still somewhat disputed in the case of Abdullah, is that both seem to have at least some connection with the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq, the jihadist umbrella group mainly made up of the remnants of what was once al-Qaida in Iraq. The ISI claimed midway through Abdullah's trial that he had been a member and was trained by the group, only for the attack to go wrong due to his incompetence. While they haven't yet claimed responsibility for al-Abdaly's strike, the ISI have released a statement praising him and expressing approval.

Quite why, if al-Abdaly does turn out to have even tenuous connections with the ISI, they seem so set on encouraging the use of gas canisters is difficult to ascertain. While they might make up a part of the bombs used in Iraq, the notion that you can just heat up or pierce gas canisters and the end result will be a deadly explosion is a silly one, as this article from the Register made clear back in 2007. You might, as the footage from Sweden showed, get a somewhat impressive looking fire going and create a fireball which could conceivably hurt or even kill people if you're lucky, or you might, as in London and New York (Faisal Shahzad, hilariously, is charged with attempted use of a "weapon of mass destruction") spark absolutely nothing at all. Either our Islamic extremist friends are getting something very wrong indeed once they're back in the West, or they're being actively trained to fail, as unlikely as that sounds. Jihadist thinking seems to have moved on from cells producing "spectaculars" to individual actions, where even if they fail they're still frightening people and showing that this is a war without apparent end, with the only option being to get the troops home. Conversely, it also means the authorities can keep on intensifying security whilst continuing to justify the lunacy of the war in Afghanistan. Everyone wins, except us.

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12/13/2010 04:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, December 11, 2010 

Swarf pot.





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12/11/2010 03:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, December 10, 2010 

Coulson in knowing nothing shocker.

Has anyone ever been charged with perjury as a result of evidence given at a perjury trial? You have to ask on the basis of the truly astonishing performance being put in by Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World and still for now David Cameron's chief spin doctor, who has been all but denying he ever even worked for the Murdoch paper while being cross-examined by Tommy Sheridan. Completely unsurprising is that he's still keeping up the pretence that he was the only person in what used to be termed Fleet Street that didn't know about phone hacking and all the other illegal blagging tricks being used and abused by both the tabloid and broadsheet press.

The incredible and what could end up damning him new shtick to his act is his insistence that he had never had any contact whatsoever with Glenn "Trigger" Mulcaire, just one of the private detectives the Screws was using at the time. In fact, Coulson went even further than that:

"I didn't know him as an individual. I didn't meet him, didn't speak to him, didn't email him, never heard his name," he said.

Now, either Coulson really was completely ignorant of what went on in the Screws' newsroom, despite him boasting the exact opposite to the Press Gazette at the time, or he's telling one of the most blatant and easily disprovable lies of recent times. His explanation is that he knew of Mulcaire's company, Nine Consultancy, knew that they were being paid £2,000 a week, yet somehow didn't know the main man behind the outfit. Is it really possible that he hadn't even heard Mulcaire's name being mentioned in connection with stories that he must have been working on to earn that £2,000 a week?

Not that anyone will ever get the chance to testify against him. It was a foregone conclusion that the renewed investigation into the phone hacking allegations would end with no new charges once the police had decided to question those who had come forward disputing Coulson's account under caution. Sean Hoare and other former hacks on the paper were hardly going to incriminate themselves by admitting to working in a newsroom where the use of the "dark arts" was completely out of control. Happily this also means that the first investigation by the Met, which limited itself to just the phone hacking carried out by Clive Goodman and Mulcaire has been completely vindicated. Everything is once again right with the world, and the Met and News International can continue to have a fruitful and reciprocal friendship. Who could possibly object to that?

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12/10/2010 08:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

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