Yesterday I received Tory propaganda in the post, along with a questionnaire. They are still repeating their claims that not only will they not cut NHS funding, but they will improve the service. On the face of things this seems like a reasonable proposition, but from the Tories it seems to demonstrate a disturbing lack of arithmetic ability.

The problem is, the Tories insist that they will not increase the deficit. They also claim that they will cut taxes (on rich people at least). How exactly do they propose to reduce government income and increase or maintain government spending without increasing the deficit?

The only solution is for them to cut some other services, but they attempt to gloss over this in the vain hope that people won't ask how they intend to pay for anything. They make vague and misleading promises and hope that they won't be caught out.

The simple fact of the matter is that the NHS, and the welfare state, are socialist ideas, and yet no matter how much some Conservatives might want to, they have no hope of ever getting rid of them. The Tories have no choice but to maintain and even improve these embodiments of left-wing principles, because like it or not, people want them. If they were to promise to abolish the NHS and replace it with a US-style system of private healthcare, I suspect that they'd not only be soundly beaten by Labour, but the Liberal Democrats would give them a tough time too; thus, they're reduced to basing their campaign on not Conservative principles, but Labour ones.

The French report calling for a ban on women wearing Islamic face veils worries me, for a number of reasons. Don't get me wrong, I think the world would be a better place in general if religion ceased to exist, but I don't think banning it, or specific religious practices, is the way forward.

I'd base my reasoning, in part, on John Stuart Mill: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. The wearing of a veil, when done willingly and without coercion or manipulation, harms nobody; therefore, it should be permitted.

The supporters of the report claim that “it is the symbol of the repression of women”; while ending the oppression of women is a goal I'd wholeheartedly support, I'm not entirely convinced that fining women for being oppressed is a particularly helpful solution. Punish men who force women to wear the burka; don't punish women who are forced to wear it (and, for that matter, don't punish women who wear it by choice).

The report also recommends that anyone showing signs of “radical religious practice” be refused citizenship or residence. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, assuming for the moment that “radical religious practice” is harmful to others; however, I suspect that the burka is a much more obvious symbol of “radical religious practice” than anything that might be worn by men, leading to disproportionate punishment of women.

In discussion with members of TermiSoc, I took my position further: though in many cases, religion is harmful to liberty, banning or restricting religion and most religious practices would be in contradiction with the Harm Principle quoted above.

It does not hurt others, for example, for someone to believe that the world was created by an omnipotent being. It does not hurt others, even, for someone to believe that the world was created in six days 6014 years ago, any more than it hurts others for someone to believe that the sky is green or that there is a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. They are almost certainly incorrect, but they have the right to be.

The point at which it becomes legitimate to oppose religion is the point at which it begins to affect others. When people demand that children are taught about the orbitting teapot as if it were fact, or at least likely, oppose it: being taught something as if it is fact when it is not is harmful. When people demand that women wear robes that covers their entire body aside from their eyes, oppose that, and oppose violence against women who don't wear it (in fact, oppose violence against all women) – but don't, as explained above, punish the victims for being victims. Conversely, when people try to demand that someone not wear a symbol of their faith, oppose that – a crucifix or turban harms nobody, and thus there are no grounds on which to forbid it.

When people try to pass laws based solely on their religion, oppose them, because while people may opt into a set of religious laws if they like, such laws shouldn't be enforced upon others. In fact, any laws that are not simply an application of the Harm Principle should be opposed: government has no right to exercise power over individuals for any other purpose, and neither do other individuals.

This was written for week 4 of project52, see others .

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the banning of the fundamentalist group “Islam4UK”. Opinions are strongly divided; many people on both the left and the right think it was perfectly acceptable, while others (at least on the left; I'm afraid I don't know of any sensible right-wingers, or even if such a thing exists) believe that “free speech should be absolute”, or at least that Islam4UK had not abused freedom of speech (nobody had shouted “fire” in a crowded theatre, for example).

I'm in the second camp; I'll explain my reasoning shortly, but first I want to talk about the Governmental tactic of proscribing organisations that are seen to be a threat.

What exactly does this achieve? Fundamentally, all any organisation, of any kind, is, is a group of people and a name. Proscribing an organisation does not forbid its members from associating with any other members (and indeed cannot, as freedom to associate is a fundamental human right). Therefore all it does is prevent people from using a particular name, which is completely impractical in preventing any sort of crime (al-Qaeda would be unlikely to operate under that name in the UK even if it were permitted, so why should they care what name they use?). In fact, Islam4UK is just the latest of a series of names used by what is effectively the same organisation: proscribing it is clearly achieving nothing.

If the members of Islam4UK have committed a crime, prosecute them for it. If they have not, then do not. It's not a complicated matter. “Proscribing” an organisation is about as effective as demanding that they stop misbehaving without actually doing anything about it.

As for the wider freedom of speech issue: as David Mitchell argued in the Guardian, protecting the right of free speech even for people with whom you disagree is essential for a free society. I don't agree with what Islam4UK have to say – but then, I don't agree with what the other side have to say either. I doubt that living in a Muslim nation with enforced Muslim religious law would be any worse than living in a Christian nation with enforced Christian religious law (or “values”, as they're generally called). I put up with Islamic nutters like Anjem Choudary for the same reason that I put up Christian nutters like Rowan Williams – because, loony or not, they have the right to an opinion and to express it. (Incidentally, Dr Williams: yes, I do think you're an oddball, along with any other grown man or woman with an imaginary friend, but you're not doing any harm so feel free to carry on.)

Nobody seriously considers preventing the BNP and similar organisations from having their say – as much as I wish they'd shut up and go away on their own, and as much as I support acting against them wherever possible, even I don't believe that banning them outright would help in the slightest. Why, then, should they be permitted to have their say and not other, similarly extremist groups?

I'm not arguing that free speech is, or should be, absolute – as mentioned, the crowded theatre is the canonical example of when free speech should be limited. If their speech caused harm, or was likely to cause harm, then by all means restrict it; if they want to incite a mob to rampage across a city, burning and looting as they go, then lock them up. If they want to express their disagreement with the UK's involvement in the Middle East (which, by the way, I would entirely sympathise with), then stop whinging, let them go ahead, then organise your own march to express your support for the war. Don't stop people having their say, just have your own say back. More speech, not less, is the way forward.

This was written for week 3 of project52, see others .

For quite some time, I've believed very firmly that public services should be public — not private, run for the benefit of their shareholders to maximise their profits, but public, run for the public good, to maximise the service provided to the people who use the public service. There's a simple reason for this — while a privately-provided service might operate in the best interests of its users if that provides the maximum profit, if there's another way to make a larger profit (like, say, screwing over the customers any way they can) then they will do so. Further, many public services are natural monopolies (it's difficult, for example, to run multiple competing train services along the same route, without causing accidents), so it's hard to ensure competition (which, hopefully, would keep prices down).

However, more recently, I've become less convinced that having all services centralised under Government control is necessarily a good thing — rather, it's just another sort of monopoly, and even with the most benevolent government in history that's less than ideal. It also limits regional autonomy, which is often desired in public services — Devon and Cornwall are very different to Greater London and should be run in different ways.

However, there's a third wa–no, wait. We've had a third way and it was just like the first one. How about a fourth way? Public services, public ownership (“common ownership of the means of production”, even) does not require ownership by the government — why not ownership by the public?

There are probably a dozen different ways in which a co-operatively-run transport system could work, but the model which occurs to me is one of many small, regional co-operatives running local bus services (and metro, and so on). Think Transport for London, but run by the citizens (London is possibly too big an area for a single co-operative — perhaps one per borough would work better, but I don't want to get too bogged down in specifics — the only way to know is to try and see what works). The boundaries of these co-operatives might coincide with council boundaries, but that's not a requirement — in some cases, it might be more practical for an area to belong to a different co-operative, or to more than one (Torpoint and Saltash spring to mind, on the Cornish side of the river but with regular bus services to Plymouth as well as Liskeard).

These co-operatives would be responsible for all the public transport infrastructure in a small area — managing the local railway station and lines, maintaining bus stops as well as planning and organising services and maintaining the vehicle fleet (of course, there'd be nothing stopping someone starting a private bus company, but why use a private bus when you can use one in which you have a say in the running of?). How, though, would transport on a larger scale work — say national rail services, or (assuming London was split into several co-operatives) services across the capital?

Co-operatives with a stake in the service (both those with stops or stations as well as those responsible for the track used, even if a long-distance service passes through the area without stopping) would work together to negotiate the services needed to best benefit the users. This would work on both a small scale (Plymouth to Torbay bus services, with Ivybridge, Totnes and Newton Abbot consulted as to how many services should stop in each and how many should pass them by, as well as arranging matters so that the buses are sensibly spaced out) and a larger one — the Edinburgh to Penzance service (which would obviously involve many separate groups, all of whom should have a say in how the service is run).

More specifics are difficult to give — it's difficult to say what will work and what won't without trying it, and correcting problems as they arise. Probably someone with more knowledge of co-operatives could say more about the practical details that I could; this is just a general suggestion from me.

This was written for week 2 of project52, see others .

So, I saw an article on ConservativeHome defending David Cameron’s proposal for all-women shortlists, and another opposing it, and the more I read the more I had to comment on it myself.

My first thought was "hey, didn’t Labour try that" followed quickly by "hey, wasn’t that deemed illegal when Labour tried it"; yes, and yes, but apparently it’s since been legalised. Still, I find it amusing that the Tories are doing something they no doubt criticised Labour for.

However, I can’t say I’m opposed at all — as I previously commented, I dislike this sort of "reverse discrimination", but I dislike the inequality it’s meant to fix even more. (Unless you have a better solution to the inequality in Parliament, I suggest you shut up and stop whinging about "sexism" when your party is primarily made up of rich white men).

What really drove me to comment, however, were the replies:

In my experience 30% women is about right. Higher than that and it had better not be a critical enterprise.

Yes, really showing up the Conservative Party as a progressive, inclusive party there.

Doesn’t the fact that the members of Westminster North chose you as their candidate cut the ground from under your argument that Conservative Party members are too prejudiced to select women candidates?

Yes — there is at least one candidate who is not a woman, so that proves that the Tories aren’t sexist! On a similar note:

Did Mrs Thatcher need an all-women shortlist? Did Anne Widdecombe? Teresa May? Edwina Currie?

Four women have been Tory MPs! That’s practically sexist against men, that is.

As someone who is short and bald and 53,what will Dave do for us,perhaps a short bald and middle aged shortlist?

Yes, bald people are definitely discriminated against; look how few of them there are in Parliament, for a start…

Isn’t it racist and sexist to blame the problem with politics on white men? What about Jaquii [sic] Smith, Keith Vaz?

More of the same. "Some women/ethnic minorities aren’t perfect, so that proves that white men aren’t a problem!". Yes.

…the once-Conservative party has been taken over by an unrepresentative clique of non-Conservatives who have about as much idea of what the ordinary Joe and Josephine think and want as does Stephen Fry.

Yes, multi-millionaire David Cameron and "you’re just jealous of my big house" Anthony Steen (among others) have a much better idea of what ordinary people want. Personally, I think that’s extremely unfair to Stephen Fry.

Seriously, I could go on all night. Instead, I’ll leave you with my favourite:

I know they used to call the Tories the ‘stupid party’…

Used to?

Harriet Harman is quoted as saying that “One of Labour’s top two posts should always be held by a woman”, and that she does “not agree with all-male leaderships” because men “cannot be left to run things on their own”.

I initially started writing about how I felt that positive discrimination was a bad thing, and that discrimination for whatever reason just harms both the group who are discriminated against, and probably the group who are discriminated in favour of, too.

Then I stopped and read what I’d written, and wondered if I was possibly missing the point by quite a wide margin. After all, it’s almost certainly not me who’d be gaining anything from positive discrimination. So, I had a look for some explicitly feminist opinions of positive discrimination (and came across various anti-feminist pieces on the way, plus one that started “I’m not a feminist, but…I’m in favour of equal rights for men and women”. If that’s not a feminist, what is?). I came across the following quote from former Liberal Democrat MP, Jackie Ballard: “Every liberal bone in my body is opposed to positive discrimination but every liberal bone in my body is even more opposed to gender inequality.”

That really struck a chord with me. I’m not going to say that the end justifies the means, because in a lot of cases it just doesn’t. In this case, though, I sort of feel that it does. A few years of carefully-regulated discrimination in favour of women and minorities, to redress the balance of decades (or centuries, even) of unregulated, out-of-control discrimination and bigotry against them, and working towards a truly equal society, can’t be a terribly bad thing.

Ann Widdecombe’s comments interested me, and Penny Red makes a similar point: she insists that positions should be handed out on the basis of merit, rather than mandating a 50/50 split between men and women. Why, though, aren’t these the same thing? If giving the jobs to the people who will do them best means giving most of them to men — why? Why aren’t there an equal number of women who can do a job just as well? If you think that government positions should be given out on the basis of merit, ask yourself why they’re overwhelmingly held by men.

All in all, a democratic government should reflect the makeup of the population as closely as possible. If it doesn’t, there had better be a bloody good reason why. If there’s a better way of getting there than positive discrimination, but in the mean time (and given that I don’t really have any useful suggestions myself), that’s what we’ve got.

(As an aside, I do have to object to Harman’s comment that “men cannot be left to run things on their own”. That sort of comment is on exactly the same level as “women belong in the kitchen” and such things. Men should not be left to run things on our own; we make up only half of the population and should have no more than half of the political power.)

According to the Grauniad, the Queen lacks the funds “to properly maintain some royal residences”.

Surely this means that the royalist claim that the Queen earns for the country more than she costs is on somewhat shakier ground?

If nothing else, I find it very hard to muster up any sympathy for the fact that she can’t maintain all of her various residences; most people manage on much less than £41.5m a year, partly by only having the one house to live in.

(Incidentally, I heard recently a response to the argument that the monarchy earns plenty of money through tourism: France has been a republic for most of the last two centuries, yet people still come to visit Versailles and many other French palaces and so on.)

So today we’ve had leaflets from the Tories and Labour. In fact, we’ve had quite a lot from the Tories; they sent one to each voter registered at this address (that’s four). Obviously they realised that we’d each want to have one to ourselves, rather than having to share. They also sent them by post, rather than just sticking them through the letter box; does the Conservative Party have nobody willing to volunteer to spend some time delivering leaflets for them?

My first complaint is about David Cameron’s statement in it. Not particularly with anything he says in it (well, okay, that too) but just the lack of any demonstrated writing ability. I hope he got someone else to write it for him, and I hope he fired that person. Somebody with a First from Oxford should know, for example, that sentences can’t start with conjunctions, and a politician should know that “Euro-MPs” are actually called MEPs.

Next is that in the section of the leaflet quoting newspaper headlines that make Labour look bad, they couldn’t find any more reputable than the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Daily Express, and the News of the World. (Well, one from the Daily Telegraph. One out of eight’s not bad, right?)

On to actual policies, rather than just the Conservative Party’s embarrassing attempts at telling people about them.

“Voting to keep the UK’s opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive, allowing people to choose how much overtime they work.”

Now, for anyone who doesn’t know, the WTD limits working hours to 48 hours a week, averaged over 17 weeks, and mandates a rest period of 11 hours in each 24 hours. That’s nearly seven hours a day, every day of the week (6 hours 51 minutes) — seven hours doesn’t sound like much, but I must say I’d quite like to have a weekend, and to have just one day off a week pushes that up to 8 hours a day. Now, I realise this is about overtime, not ordinary hours — but if I was having to work from nine in the morning until gone nine in the evening from Monday until Friday (9.6 hours over five days, plus mandatory 0.5 hours lunch break) then I don’t expect I’d be going out of my way to try to do some more.

The WTD is not intended to screw people over who want to do some overtime occasionally; it’s intended to stop people working such long hours as to be dangerous. If you’re working a 50-hour week every week for four months, then you don’t need to opt out of the maximum — you need a better manager.

They go on to say that the WTD “could cause massive problems for our NHS and emergency services”. “Could cause”? It’s been around for 15 years, don’t you think that if it was going to it would’ve done so? Aside from that, if doctors and nurses not being allowed to work 50-hour weeks is a problem for the NHS, we don’t need to let them work more — we need more doctors.

“Local Conservatives have spoken of their “shock and disgust” at the continuing scandal of our fishermen being forced to throw away millions of tons of fish into the sea every year. Our fish stocks are in a perilous state and people are shocked at the amount of fish wasted each year due to a system that is immoral and environmentally wrong.”

Well, firstly, I’m not sure that you can say that something is “environmentally wrong”. Bad for the environment, certainly. However, the Tories don’t seem to explain what the issue is — merely that something is bad. I’m going to assume that what they want is for the fishing quotas to be raised, so that the fish don’t go to waste — since that’s what they’ve asked for in the past. I’m not sure how that is better for the environment, though: whether the fish are eaten or thrown away, they’re still dead. The real solution is not to catch so many in the first place; I realise this might make some people unhappy, but they’ll be a damn sight more unhappy if they don’t and cod are hunted to extinction.

I’m also amused by their claim to be “tackling climate change”. As I mentioned earlier, we received four copies of this leaflet — obviously the Conservative Party would like to make sure that everybody knows how seriously environmental issues are taken. Four leaflets when one would’ve done is frankly ridiculous — in fact, we’d’ve been happy with none, but that would mean I’d have nothing to mock this evening.

A final, unrelated point, found in Hansard when I was researching this article. Iain Duncan-Smith described Turkey as a “secular, democratic Muslim nation” — just how is it possible to be secular and Muslim at the same time?

So the EU Parliament elections are approaching (4th of June). I was a little concerned by the number of right-wing anti-EU parties standing in the south-west region; at the very least, there are five (BNP, English Democrats, No2EU, Libertas, UKIP). That’s not counting the Tories, an independent whose policies I don’t know, various other obscure parties whose policies I’m not sure on, and ‘the Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship”’, (and yes, the quote is part of the name, just like Libertas are apparently officially “Pro Democracy: Libertas.eu”, meaning they obviously have a very different idea of what “democracy” means).

The wingnuts aren’t really a concern, though, since there’s only so many right-wing loonies who can vote for them; all it’s going to do is split the vote. What I’d like to know is why are there so many different small parties all with the same goal? Do they not realise they’re shooting themselves in the foot, competing with people who have ostensibly the same goals? Are right-wing loonies particularly prone to disagreeing with other right-wing loonies to the extent that they go and form their own political party, with hookers and blackjack? Certainly there don’t seem to be any redundant parties other than the right-wing anti-EU types.

There are a couple of other parties that caught my attention. Firstly, “WAI D”, who say that ‘The name “Wai D” stands for Your Decision. (YD)’. They appear to be trying to introduce direct democracy single-handedly, by setting up “an internet site where citizens will have the chance to express, at any moment, during the entire legislative process, their own opinions”. They also claim that the entire party is run “money-free”, apparently appearing to believe that it is some heinous crime for a government to actually spend money.

The “Fair Pay Fair Trade” party are also interesting; they appear to mean well, but they have some truly hilarious policies, like establishing a single world currency, free passenger rail transport throughout Europe, abolishing “most” prisons, and phasing out private vehicles and lorries. Not that I don’t think there should be more and cheaper rail transport, less road traffic, more cycle traffic, and so on, but I doubt it’s as simple as they seem to think. Their policy on water shortages, especially, concerns me: “The EU will ban the vast bulk of imported fruit and vegetables from countries with water shortages.” — thus bringing about the economic collapse of every one of those countries, as a major source of their income disappears? Maybe not, but I really don’t think it’s as simple as they appear to believe.

I got bored before looking up most of the rest. Mebyon Kernow I already know about, but I don’t believe their specific goals are more useful than, say, the Green Party’s (they appear to be basically a watered-down version of the Greens or Lib Dems, vaguely liberal/leftish leaning, with the specific additional goal of greater self-determination for Cornwall). The Jury Team and Pensioners’ Party I just couldn’t be bothered with. The Socialist Labour Party, again, I already knew of, and likewise (obviously) Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Tory scum.

Finally, the Green Party, whom I’m planning to vote for, since they have pretty sensible policies all-round, including things like abolishing the constitutional role of the monarchy and replacing the House of Lords with an elected body, and nationalising the rail network.

Update: the People’s Republic of South Devon linked to this post.

The USA has plenty of prominent fundamentalists in important positions, but for the most part the UK has seemed to avoid it. Except in Northern Ireland, where apparently the government is full of them. For example, Mervyn Storey, who threatened the Ulster Museum in Belfast with legal action if they went ahead with an exhibition on evolution, because apparently it’s discrimination.

Yep, because some people don’t believe in it, it’s discriminatory to even talk about it.

"They could be subject to a legal challenge under equality legislation within Northern Ireland if they chose to ignore alternative views that many people here in the Province believe in," he said.

Firstly, it is not required for a museum to put on exhibitions about everything under the sun. I’d be surprised if the exhibition didn’t talk about alternative theories at all, but the exhibition is focusing on evolution.

The bit which pisses me off the most:

…and let’s stress it is still only a theory…

"Only a theory" demonstrates that he has no clue what a theory is; for a start, I’m not even convinced that creationism/intelligent-design are even theories at all. According to the United States National Academy of Sciences:

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.

Creationism and "Intelligent Design" are not, by that definition, theories. They’re simply statements that this is how the world works. At best, they start with the assumption that God exists and then look for evidence to support that belief. That is not science.

(The National Academy of Sciences goes on to say "The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory." It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact"; that is, we know evolution happens, just like we know gravity happens; we just don’t quite understand all the details as to why.)