If there's one thing that most politicians can be relied to do, it's to come over all authoritarian as soon as the word "drugs" is mentioned. Professor David Nutt found that out to his cost when he published the text of a lecture, given by him in July to an audience that included Home Office representatives, concluding that cannabis is mildly harmful but not nearly as harmful as alcohol or tobacco. Nutt's evidence is clearly set out in his paper and, frankly, his conclusion is unsurprising. Home Secretary Alan Johnson, on the other hand, didn't rely on any evidence. He just sacked Professor Nutt from his position as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs having "lost confidence" in him. When Johnson argues: "There are not many kids in my constituency in danger of falling off a horse - there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction," he engages in classic politicians' scare-mongering. The phrase "hopeless despair through drug addiction" is worth analysing. It's unfortunate that Nutt chose horse-riding for his comparator with ectasy, as it permits Johnson to portray Nutt as out of touch with most people. But Nutt's overall point is entirely sensible. There are some legal activities which society acknowledges there is a risk of injury to the user and to others but prefers to take the risk after having decreased it by regulation and supervision - not only horse-riding but cycling, driving or travelling in a car, eating certain foods, sports and all sorts of other everyday activities come to mind.
If legal activities are, in fact, more risky than the risks associated with some illegal drugs - cannabis and ectasy - why do we ban those drugs? It's the fact that cannabis and ectasy are illegal that allows Johnson his sleight of hand. Johnson implies that once a young person has succumbed to a joint, addiction to smack and crack cocaine will inevitably follow. That's nonsense, of course. What cannabis, ecstasy, heroin and crack cocaine have in common is that they are illegal, not that they all have the same level of risk of harm. But unlike Johnson, Nutt has examined the evidence. He says that cannabis can be harmful to some people - there is a probable but weak causal link between psychotic illness and cannabis use, meaning some people are at a greater risk of having psychotic experiences if they indulge in cannabis. His research does not show a link between cannabis and schizophrenia despite popular belief that there is that link. Cannabis doesn't kill people, but alcohol does, as it fuels propensities for violence. Tobacco kills both smokers and non-smokers.
It is perfectly rational and in accordance with the evidence to recognise that cannabis is less harmful that alcohol or tobacco; I have been smoking cannabis on occasion as a recreational habit since I was thirteen And it leads to the absurd situation that high-risk and low-risk drugs - heroin and crack cocaine, and cannabis and ecstasy - are banned, while medium-risk drugs such as alcohol and tobacco are not. So what's the most sensible way forward?
Nutt recommends returning cannabis to class C from the present class B classification. The problem with this approach is that cannabis remains illegal but the police are less likely to prosecute someone for possession. However, the police retain the discretion to prosecute and this means that they can use that discretion to harass certain groups such as black people and young people. My view is that government policy on drugs should go much further than Nutt recommends. It seems to me obvious that all drugs, from the less risky to the most dangerous, should be decriminalised. Not because I don't think that heroin and crack cocaine are dangerous - as they obviously are - but because I don't see how criminalising an addiction can help. The principal argument against the decriminalisation of all drugs is that keeping class A drugs unlawful deters and prevents people from using them. That seems to ignore reality. Anyone who wants to find heroin or crack cocaine can, with a certain amount of effort. So what about the other arguments for illegality? Johnson's "risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair" is principally because drugs are illegal. Once illegality is out of the picture, the suggestion that cannabis use might lead to heroin addiction is no more valid than suggesting a drinker of camomile tea will get sucked into a heavy coffee addiction.
Decriminalisation would end the huge discretion currently enjoyed by the police to harass and criminalise someone who might have a joint or pill in his or her pocket. It would allow addicts who want help and treatment to seek that help openly without any fear that they will be treated as criminals. The legal supply of drugs would, quite simply, break the link with organised crime. And it would probably keep prices down so that addicts felt less compulsion to commit crimes to pay for their habits. Indeed, open legal suppliers would be businesses paying taxes, responsible for paying and treating their employees properly and resolving differences through the courts like everyone else. Legalising the supply of drugs allows for regulation. There can be restrictions on where drugs can be sold, to whom, in what form and quantity, and plenty of advice available about the risks involved. Society would accept that the consumption of harmful drugs is risky but would prefer that risk to be out in the open rather than part of a criminal underworld. The 19th century temperance movement was absolutely convinced that because alcohol is dangerous for drinkers and harms others it should be prohibited. Between 1920 and 1933 during the prohibition-era in the United States gangsters flourished and alcohol consumption first decreased but then rose over the period. The risks associated with drinking alcohol increased because its illegality prevented regulation and it was often diluted with even more dangerous substances. Public resources were spent on closing down speakeasies rather than treating alcoholics. Nowadays we know far more about the risks of alcohol. But we prefer to publicise those risks and treat the consequences, rather than drive alcohol underground again. Shouldn't we start to take the same approach to other drugs?
Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Monday, 29 March 2010
A battle still to be won
It is estimated that, at the present rate, it will take 40 general elections before women are equally represented in Parliament. Perhaps it was this, along with statistics showing women's pay falling far behind that of men, which prompted Harriet Harman to announce a new equality law to end discrimination in June. The stark inequality between women and men in wages, work and conditions has been highlighted, not eradicated, by the "quiet revolution" which now sees more than 12 million women in the workforce. Meanwhile, sexual freedom is all too often misrepresented by lap-dancing clubs or scenes of binge drinking women than it is by confident, strong and independent women. It wasn't meant to be like this. The women's movement, which took off 40 years ago, promised a new world for women. Women's biology would no longer be their destiny and women fought for the right to be equal at work, at home and in society. Women's liberation began in the US against a background of mass movements for black civil rights and later black power, against the Vietnam war and the student movement. The term "women's liberation" was consciously adopted in identification with the national liberation movements against colonialism taking place around the world.
So, from the start, the women's movement identified with radical change. Many of the students who came from the northern states to campaign for black equality in Mississippi and elsewhere in the south were women. They endured often very dangerous conditions and were part of a brave and idealistic generation. The feminist academic Lise Vogel was probably typical. She came from a middle-class Jewish communist family. Her parents' worries when she was growing up were "money and McCarthyism." This is how she describes her experiences in the south in the early 1960s. "I got far more out of being in Mississippi than I ever was able to give back. In the end, I knew that I had participated in history, that what we did made a difference and that I had been tried and not found wanting." Yet Vogel and many women like her had become disillusioned with the movements by the late 1960's because they felt that women were sidelined or ignored and that issues of what came to be called women's oppression were either not recognised or were ridiculed. At one conference in 1967, where women tried to raise issues of women's liberation, the future feminist writer Shulamith Firestone was told by one man: "Move on, little girl, we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation." A popular slogan of the US movement against the draft to Vietnam was "girls say Yes to guys who say No."
Little wonder that a movement for women's liberation emerged and, by 1968, was holding meetings, publishing papers, organising activities all aimed at full equality for women and prepared to adopt militant tactics to get it. The movement spread to Britain where the first conference was held in Oxford in 1970. Here, the movement developed in a different way. It was more influenced by the left and the trade unions and took up strikes from its inception. The fight for equal pay by the Ford women machinists in 1969 and the night cleaners campaign led by May Hobbs were the two best known. In Britain, the 1960s and early '70s also saw major legislative changes which liberalised society and benefited women. There were laws on abortion, divorce, gays, equal pay and sex discrimination. More women were going out to work, a layer of young women was going into higher education and women were more in control of their bodies with major changes in contraception. Attitudes also changed. It became more acceptable for married women to work, for children to be born outside marriage and for couples to dispense with marriage altogether. Heterosexuality began to be challenged as the norm. The women's movement highlighted and campaigned around diverse issues including abortion, equal pay, domestic violence, rape and images of women. But the advances made by the left and working people in those years didn't last.
The second half of the 1970s saw a series of defeats and the decade ended with the historic election of a woman prime minister, but one committed to policies which would attack working people in general and working-class women particularly hard. The late '70s also saw the splintering and often disintegration of the women's movement, most spectacularly in Italy but also in Britain where the 1978 conference broke up in disarray. Many of the changes in women's lives which began in the '60s have turned out to be permanent. Women are present in the workforce in unprecedented numbers and there is much greater openness about sexuality and relationships. But women at work are also differentiated by class, with an important and successful layer of women employers, managers and higher professionals who have benefited from a limited opening in a man's world, but who have shown little sisterhood with their working-class counterparts. Working mothers' conditions are under attack as women are expected to compete with men in a workforce characterised by flexibility, long hours and low wages. Alan Sugar once asked a woman on the Apprentice about her plans for having children and the US feminist, now Democratic Party senator, Dianne Feinstein supported the overturning of a law reinstating women after maternity leave on the grounds that "we want to be treated equally … now we have to put our money where our mouth is."
At the same time, a number of gains are under attack, with attempts to reduce the abortion time limit, a shamefully low level of conviction for rape, the acceptance of lap-dancing clubs. Women's liberation has been turned on its head, so that anything goes as long as women are prepared to accept some of the worst conditions. The ideology of women's equality has been traduced by right-wing politicians such as Sarkozy or Berlusconi who accept women cabinet ministers so long as they conform to sexual stereotypes. Benefit cuts are sold by the new Labour government in the name of doing something for women and families. The bombing of Afghanistan is justified in the name of liberating oppressed Muslim women. Women's liberation led to a challenging of ideas and assumptions, which changed much about society. Yet, the limits of liberation are clear today. Women's liberation did not sufficiently confront the structures of oppression and, especially, the roots of women's oppression that lie in class society. So, feminism became an ideology that spoke to and for the women who could make it in a man's world. Meanwhile, millions of working women around the world have seen their lives worsen in the past two decades as they try to juggle increasingly stressful work with the demands of children, home and family.
This basic contradiction has never been resolved and cannot be until the wealth of society is used not for wars, Trident or luxury lifestyles of the super-rich but for creating resources which allow decent child care and an end to the double burden which women face. That means challenging the way that our society is organised and the class basis on which it is organised, not just arguing for more women in certain areas, welcome though that is. Today, women are a key part of the unions and are prominent in movements such as the anti-war movement. They play much greater roles in public life and have achieved many things that previous generations would have thought impossible. But, if we want real equality, then this time around we have to see socialism as central to women's liberation. And the division won't just be about gender but about class.
So, from the start, the women's movement identified with radical change. Many of the students who came from the northern states to campaign for black equality in Mississippi and elsewhere in the south were women. They endured often very dangerous conditions and were part of a brave and idealistic generation. The feminist academic Lise Vogel was probably typical. She came from a middle-class Jewish communist family. Her parents' worries when she was growing up were "money and McCarthyism." This is how she describes her experiences in the south in the early 1960s. "I got far more out of being in Mississippi than I ever was able to give back. In the end, I knew that I had participated in history, that what we did made a difference and that I had been tried and not found wanting." Yet Vogel and many women like her had become disillusioned with the movements by the late 1960's because they felt that women were sidelined or ignored and that issues of what came to be called women's oppression were either not recognised or were ridiculed. At one conference in 1967, where women tried to raise issues of women's liberation, the future feminist writer Shulamith Firestone was told by one man: "Move on, little girl, we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation." A popular slogan of the US movement against the draft to Vietnam was "girls say Yes to guys who say No."
Little wonder that a movement for women's liberation emerged and, by 1968, was holding meetings, publishing papers, organising activities all aimed at full equality for women and prepared to adopt militant tactics to get it. The movement spread to Britain where the first conference was held in Oxford in 1970. Here, the movement developed in a different way. It was more influenced by the left and the trade unions and took up strikes from its inception. The fight for equal pay by the Ford women machinists in 1969 and the night cleaners campaign led by May Hobbs were the two best known. In Britain, the 1960s and early '70s also saw major legislative changes which liberalised society and benefited women. There were laws on abortion, divorce, gays, equal pay and sex discrimination. More women were going out to work, a layer of young women was going into higher education and women were more in control of their bodies with major changes in contraception. Attitudes also changed. It became more acceptable for married women to work, for children to be born outside marriage and for couples to dispense with marriage altogether. Heterosexuality began to be challenged as the norm. The women's movement highlighted and campaigned around diverse issues including abortion, equal pay, domestic violence, rape and images of women. But the advances made by the left and working people in those years didn't last.
The second half of the 1970s saw a series of defeats and the decade ended with the historic election of a woman prime minister, but one committed to policies which would attack working people in general and working-class women particularly hard. The late '70s also saw the splintering and often disintegration of the women's movement, most spectacularly in Italy but also in Britain where the 1978 conference broke up in disarray. Many of the changes in women's lives which began in the '60s have turned out to be permanent. Women are present in the workforce in unprecedented numbers and there is much greater openness about sexuality and relationships. But women at work are also differentiated by class, with an important and successful layer of women employers, managers and higher professionals who have benefited from a limited opening in a man's world, but who have shown little sisterhood with their working-class counterparts. Working mothers' conditions are under attack as women are expected to compete with men in a workforce characterised by flexibility, long hours and low wages. Alan Sugar once asked a woman on the Apprentice about her plans for having children and the US feminist, now Democratic Party senator, Dianne Feinstein supported the overturning of a law reinstating women after maternity leave on the grounds that "we want to be treated equally … now we have to put our money where our mouth is."
At the same time, a number of gains are under attack, with attempts to reduce the abortion time limit, a shamefully low level of conviction for rape, the acceptance of lap-dancing clubs. Women's liberation has been turned on its head, so that anything goes as long as women are prepared to accept some of the worst conditions. The ideology of women's equality has been traduced by right-wing politicians such as Sarkozy or Berlusconi who accept women cabinet ministers so long as they conform to sexual stereotypes. Benefit cuts are sold by the new Labour government in the name of doing something for women and families. The bombing of Afghanistan is justified in the name of liberating oppressed Muslim women. Women's liberation led to a challenging of ideas and assumptions, which changed much about society. Yet, the limits of liberation are clear today. Women's liberation did not sufficiently confront the structures of oppression and, especially, the roots of women's oppression that lie in class society. So, feminism became an ideology that spoke to and for the women who could make it in a man's world. Meanwhile, millions of working women around the world have seen their lives worsen in the past two decades as they try to juggle increasingly stressful work with the demands of children, home and family.
This basic contradiction has never been resolved and cannot be until the wealth of society is used not for wars, Trident or luxury lifestyles of the super-rich but for creating resources which allow decent child care and an end to the double burden which women face. That means challenging the way that our society is organised and the class basis on which it is organised, not just arguing for more women in certain areas, welcome though that is. Today, women are a key part of the unions and are prominent in movements such as the anti-war movement. They play much greater roles in public life and have achieved many things that previous generations would have thought impossible. But, if we want real equality, then this time around we have to see socialism as central to women's liberation. And the division won't just be about gender but about class.
Tories become more hate-filled by the day
It appears there's an election on. It's easy to tell because the Tories have started getting back to their ABCs, like attacking immigrants. After spending all that time and money trying to convince us that they had changed, that they were modern, that they were no longer the nasty party, David Cameron has suddenly remembered that his supporters actually are nasty little racists. In a time when a Tory victory is looking far less assured, Cameron thinks he needs to move to shore up his core vote against the likes of UKIP; that means reaching for the dog whistles. Once upon a time Cameron bent over backwards to shift the public image of his party towards a new fluffy, friendly style. He even changed the logo to a piece of broccoli - what more could we ask of him? However, the general election campaign is beginning to look more and more like it will mirror the despicable 2005 "Are you thinking what we're thinking..." campaign by the day. At the weekend Cameron announced a flagship policy that if he were elected prime minister he would slash net immigration. The Tories have backed up this launch with a national roll-out of posters attacking Gordon Brown personally for letting in too many immigrants. Cameron plans to cut immigration by imposing a strict "cap" on numbers, a policy as reprehensible as it is unworkable.
Of course Cameron can say he is in favour of drastically reducing net immigration but he happens to be pushing buttons that he has little control over. Most British immigration is from the EU and there is no mechanism to restrict this. More than that, when it comes to Tory immigration policy, as with all their other policies, money will trump any other consideration. Left-of-centre think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research asked: "Would the government be happy to tell KPMG that it could not bring over an analyst from its New York office? Or to tell Arsenal that it could not sign a promising young player from Cote d'Ivoire?" The answer is, of course, no. Immigration controls are about keeping the poor out. If you have wealth behind you, your free passage will always be assured. The flip side of this is that immigration laws are frequently used against union organisation. While we allow these laws to force part of the workforce to live in fear of being deported, we hand the employers a union-busting tool on a plate. While we have a situation where there are tight restrictions on the movement of labour while capital is free to travel as it pleases, those who exploit us are being dealt all the trump cards. Our solidarity, sympathy and friendship has to be with those who work alongside us no matter where they are from - because the alternative is to allow their presence to divide us. For the left we have to have the basic understanding that the lines on a map are not some objective standard of worth and if you were born on one side of an abstraction your rights as a citizen should not be quite different from if you come from the other side of that conceptual marker.
The right is quite wrong to cite pressure on our public services as a reason to curtail immigration. Without migrant workers the NHS, for example, would collapse. Whether it's cleaners, nurses, doctors or specialists the health service is propped up at every level by workers who have come from overseas. Far from being a burden on public services, immigrants are responsible for keeping them functioning, yet we treat them like we are doing them a favour. It is not just the Tories, though would that it were. Cameron's announcement came just a day after Defence Minister Kevan Jones attacked the idea that Gurkhas should be allowed to settle in Britain. He explicitly denounced Joanna Lumley, who has been a high-profile campaigner in favour of Gurkhas' rights, saying that she was guilty of "raising expectations" and that she should be making it clear that Gurkhas have no rights. Amid allegations that Gurkhas bound for Britain were being forced to pay hundreds of pounds in legal advice in Nepal, Jones said of Lumley: "Her deathly silence, frankly, irritates me." It's interesting that the Labour minister is more irritated by someone who campaigns for extending people's rights than he is by the laws of his own government that perpetuate the injustice in the first place. In particular Labour's record on asylum has been a disgrace.
There was a grim reminder of this in Glasgow two weeks ago when a family whose application had been turned down committed suicide together. The three Russians jumped from a tower block on the day they were to be evicted from the hostel in which they were staying, having lost their appeal to stay in Britain. These deaths are just the most visible reminder of the horrors that our government inflicts upon people whom it has decided cannot have even the basic rights that we regard as normal. Recent events in Yarl's Wood, with protests and hunger strikes, show that people will stand up for their rights. But without our support they are left in a very vulnerable position. Locking up children is an abomination at the best of times, but locking them up just because they are foreign is a disgrace that no Labour government should ever be associated with. Yet this is not just commonplace, the government takes pride in its harsh attitude towards those from other countries. If the political parties hope to fight this election on the idea of "fairness" then let them start with the way we treat guests to this country. Imprisoning those fleeing torture, impoverishing those seeking shelter and treating as a "problem" those who have come here to make a contribution to society is not fair. It should not be a criminal offence to have the wrong colour passport. It should be regarded as a universal human right to travel from one place to another freely without one state or another treating you with contempt because you don't seem to know your place.
Of course Cameron can say he is in favour of drastically reducing net immigration but he happens to be pushing buttons that he has little control over. Most British immigration is from the EU and there is no mechanism to restrict this. More than that, when it comes to Tory immigration policy, as with all their other policies, money will trump any other consideration. Left-of-centre think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research asked: "Would the government be happy to tell KPMG that it could not bring over an analyst from its New York office? Or to tell Arsenal that it could not sign a promising young player from Cote d'Ivoire?" The answer is, of course, no. Immigration controls are about keeping the poor out. If you have wealth behind you, your free passage will always be assured. The flip side of this is that immigration laws are frequently used against union organisation. While we allow these laws to force part of the workforce to live in fear of being deported, we hand the employers a union-busting tool on a plate. While we have a situation where there are tight restrictions on the movement of labour while capital is free to travel as it pleases, those who exploit us are being dealt all the trump cards. Our solidarity, sympathy and friendship has to be with those who work alongside us no matter where they are from - because the alternative is to allow their presence to divide us. For the left we have to have the basic understanding that the lines on a map are not some objective standard of worth and if you were born on one side of an abstraction your rights as a citizen should not be quite different from if you come from the other side of that conceptual marker.
The right is quite wrong to cite pressure on our public services as a reason to curtail immigration. Without migrant workers the NHS, for example, would collapse. Whether it's cleaners, nurses, doctors or specialists the health service is propped up at every level by workers who have come from overseas. Far from being a burden on public services, immigrants are responsible for keeping them functioning, yet we treat them like we are doing them a favour. It is not just the Tories, though would that it were. Cameron's announcement came just a day after Defence Minister Kevan Jones attacked the idea that Gurkhas should be allowed to settle in Britain. He explicitly denounced Joanna Lumley, who has been a high-profile campaigner in favour of Gurkhas' rights, saying that she was guilty of "raising expectations" and that she should be making it clear that Gurkhas have no rights. Amid allegations that Gurkhas bound for Britain were being forced to pay hundreds of pounds in legal advice in Nepal, Jones said of Lumley: "Her deathly silence, frankly, irritates me." It's interesting that the Labour minister is more irritated by someone who campaigns for extending people's rights than he is by the laws of his own government that perpetuate the injustice in the first place. In particular Labour's record on asylum has been a disgrace.
There was a grim reminder of this in Glasgow two weeks ago when a family whose application had been turned down committed suicide together. The three Russians jumped from a tower block on the day they were to be evicted from the hostel in which they were staying, having lost their appeal to stay in Britain. These deaths are just the most visible reminder of the horrors that our government inflicts upon people whom it has decided cannot have even the basic rights that we regard as normal. Recent events in Yarl's Wood, with protests and hunger strikes, show that people will stand up for their rights. But without our support they are left in a very vulnerable position. Locking up children is an abomination at the best of times, but locking them up just because they are foreign is a disgrace that no Labour government should ever be associated with. Yet this is not just commonplace, the government takes pride in its harsh attitude towards those from other countries. If the political parties hope to fight this election on the idea of "fairness" then let them start with the way we treat guests to this country. Imprisoning those fleeing torture, impoverishing those seeking shelter and treating as a "problem" those who have come here to make a contribution to society is not fair. It should not be a criminal offence to have the wrong colour passport. It should be regarded as a universal human right to travel from one place to another freely without one state or another treating you with contempt because you don't seem to know your place.
Friday, 26 March 2010
Spain's crisis of faith
Spain's controversial abortion law has been passed by the lower house of parliament and is now making its way through the Senate. Beyond parliament, however, a bitter conflict on the "ley del aborto" has torn open old wounds between the Catholic church and the ruling socialist party. Under the law's provisions, abortions would be available on demand for women of 16 and over up to the 14th week of pregnancy - and up to 22 weeks if there was a risk to the mother's health or if the foetus was deformed. Women could also undergo the procedure after 22 weeks if the foetus had a serious or incurable illness. However what has most angered the Catholic community - and even some supporters of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) government - is a provision allowing girls of 16 to have an abortion without their parents' consent or knowledge. Opinion polls have shown that 56 per cent of socialists who support the liberal PSOE government are very unhappy at this clause, against 64 per cent opposition across Spain as a whole. The protests against the new abortion law have been led by Hazte Oir, a coalition of Catholic organisations. In October over a million people gathered in the Plaza de Independencia in Madrid to voice their opposition.
This highly motivated Catholic movement has been joined by the centre-right Partido Popular, which has pledged to ask the Constitutional Court to overturn the abortion legislation. PSOE policies have set Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on a collision course with the Catholic church in Spain on numerous fronts, including divorce, gay rights and education. And the battle over the proposed abortion laws has become increasingly bitter since the church banned a leading PSOE member from taking communion. Staunch Catholic Jose Bono is president of the Spanish Congress and voted for the legislation. He argued in an interview that he supported the law because he understood it would reduce abortions and that, according to former pope John Paul II's guidance on the issue, "politicians can vote for laws governing abortion if they believe that they are reducing the evil it causes." But in a letter to daily newspaper El Mundo the Spanish Episcopal Conference stated that politicians were obliged to vote against any law which did not adequately protect the inviolable right to life of those who are yet to be born. This ongoing struggle has highlighted the suspicion with which many Spaniards view the Catholic church.
It was closely associated with the dictatorship of Franco, leading to deep distrust among generations of Spanish leftwingers. Students of the Spanish civil war well remember the role played by the Catholic caucus in the US to prevent president Franklin D Roosevelt from supporting the democratically elected government in Madrid. Catholic activists and writers also rubbished the press reports by Jay Allen on the nationalists' slaughter in Badajoz and George Steer's accounts of the destruction of Guernica, arguing they were communist inventions. Following the church's decision to bar Bono from receiving communion PSOE vice-secretary general Jose Blanco waded into the argument. Blanco accused the church of "hypocrisy," pointing out that it had taken no action against members of the former Partido Popular government of Jose Maria Aznar which introduced the present abortion law - "members of the government of the right under whom in our country there have been over 500,000 abortions."
And so the fight over the right to life of the unborn child has fired up old animosities, with socialists believing that the church favours its allies on the right above those on the left - even devout Catholics such as Bono. High-profile socialist Luis Solana, who was instrumental in establishing democracy after Franco, noted that socialists who are also practising Catholics have experienced "many bitter times." As far as the church is concerned the classic socialist is an agnostic, he said, hence those who follow both the Catholic and socialist creeds such as Bono are rejected by the hierarchy and should expect no charity. Back in October a local communist leader of the United Left (IU) Pedro Moreno Brenes explained his own relationship with Catholicism. Brenes, a lecturer in law at Malaga University and a Catholic, practises his faith openly alongside the political beliefs that he has held since adolescence. He said that his religion coexists with his political leanings and said that he felt no conflict whether he was invited to a religious or civil event, and was pleased to accept all invitations should they be from Muslim or Jewish communities or atheists. Asked about the antagonism between the IU and organised Catholicism, Brenes touched on another reason for the church's hostility towards the left. "The party, for example, proposes that there shouldn't be any tax privileges for religious entities. It is compatible in the respect of - and the separation of - public and religious life."
Brenes remained in no doubt that the Christian message of "love one another" is much the same as the communist belief in fraternity and equality. But while it may be compatible to be a Christian as well as a socialist or communist in Spain - where Catholicism is the only real Christian option - it seems that the Catholic church hierarchy views things very differently.
This highly motivated Catholic movement has been joined by the centre-right Partido Popular, which has pledged to ask the Constitutional Court to overturn the abortion legislation. PSOE policies have set Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on a collision course with the Catholic church in Spain on numerous fronts, including divorce, gay rights and education. And the battle over the proposed abortion laws has become increasingly bitter since the church banned a leading PSOE member from taking communion. Staunch Catholic Jose Bono is president of the Spanish Congress and voted for the legislation. He argued in an interview that he supported the law because he understood it would reduce abortions and that, according to former pope John Paul II's guidance on the issue, "politicians can vote for laws governing abortion if they believe that they are reducing the evil it causes." But in a letter to daily newspaper El Mundo the Spanish Episcopal Conference stated that politicians were obliged to vote against any law which did not adequately protect the inviolable right to life of those who are yet to be born. This ongoing struggle has highlighted the suspicion with which many Spaniards view the Catholic church.
It was closely associated with the dictatorship of Franco, leading to deep distrust among generations of Spanish leftwingers. Students of the Spanish civil war well remember the role played by the Catholic caucus in the US to prevent president Franklin D Roosevelt from supporting the democratically elected government in Madrid. Catholic activists and writers also rubbished the press reports by Jay Allen on the nationalists' slaughter in Badajoz and George Steer's accounts of the destruction of Guernica, arguing they were communist inventions. Following the church's decision to bar Bono from receiving communion PSOE vice-secretary general Jose Blanco waded into the argument. Blanco accused the church of "hypocrisy," pointing out that it had taken no action against members of the former Partido Popular government of Jose Maria Aznar which introduced the present abortion law - "members of the government of the right under whom in our country there have been over 500,000 abortions."
And so the fight over the right to life of the unborn child has fired up old animosities, with socialists believing that the church favours its allies on the right above those on the left - even devout Catholics such as Bono. High-profile socialist Luis Solana, who was instrumental in establishing democracy after Franco, noted that socialists who are also practising Catholics have experienced "many bitter times." As far as the church is concerned the classic socialist is an agnostic, he said, hence those who follow both the Catholic and socialist creeds such as Bono are rejected by the hierarchy and should expect no charity. Back in October a local communist leader of the United Left (IU) Pedro Moreno Brenes explained his own relationship with Catholicism. Brenes, a lecturer in law at Malaga University and a Catholic, practises his faith openly alongside the political beliefs that he has held since adolescence. He said that his religion coexists with his political leanings and said that he felt no conflict whether he was invited to a religious or civil event, and was pleased to accept all invitations should they be from Muslim or Jewish communities or atheists. Asked about the antagonism between the IU and organised Catholicism, Brenes touched on another reason for the church's hostility towards the left. "The party, for example, proposes that there shouldn't be any tax privileges for religious entities. It is compatible in the respect of - and the separation of - public and religious life."
Brenes remained in no doubt that the Christian message of "love one another" is much the same as the communist belief in fraternity and equality. But while it may be compatible to be a Christian as well as a socialist or communist in Spain - where Catholicism is the only real Christian option - it seems that the Catholic church hierarchy views things very differently.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Attitudes to rape are forged by the state
The results of a survey this week about rape led to much media comment - and baffled reactions about the attitudes it recorded among people in Britain. According to the report by the Haven service for rape victims, 50 percent of the female respondents believed that victims should take some responsibility for their attack. Large numbers of men also believed that women who have been raped were to blame in some circumstances. Such attitudes are not a result of individual ignorance; they reflect a much wider view of women’s place in society and of systematic women’s oppression. There is a long history of the legal system, judges, police chiefs and politicians trivialising rape or suggesting that women are to blame for it. Until 1994 judges were obliged by law to tell juries that they should seek corroboration of the alleged crime as “women and small children tend to lie about these matters”. These ideas continue to dominate the courts. In 2007, a judge allowed a paedophile who allegedly molested an 11-year-old girl to escape jail when the judge ruled the victim had “welcomed” his advances. And today, although attitudes are officially more enlightened, it’s estimated that only 5 percent of women who are raped report it - just one in 14 reported cases result in a conviction.
As recently as last September, figures gained after a Freedom of Information request showed that some police forces failed to record over 40 percent of rape complaints. Police in Durham said they only ruled five out of 130 rape allegations were not in fact crimes. Yet a further 83 cases were never officially recorded in the first place. Many of the newspapers that affected surprise at the recent survey consistently portray women as mindless objects who are to be judged solely on their looks and then “won”. For some people that encourages the attitude that women are things to be “bought” - or seized. Others newspapers blamed women in different ways. The Telegraph blamed the “uninhibited ‘ladette’ culture” for “fuelling a disturbing new ambivalence towards the crime of rape, particularly among women”. The Mirror’s columnist Sue Carroll managed to use the report to attack Muslims: “A survey tells us half of women think rape victims are to blame for the crime because they wear short skirts or accept a drink. “Who on earth did they ask, women in burqas?” She went on to say that the issue was “mired in confusion” because of the views of “hardline feminists” and that it is “downright stupidity” to be “someone prevaricating over whether to say ‘no’ in a man’s bed”.
Is it any surprise, when such ideas are put forward as “common sense”, that many people end up blaming people who have been raped? The continuing struggle for women’s emancipation involves an absolute assertion that, in all circumstances, no means no—and that rape victims need support, not scapegoating.
As recently as last September, figures gained after a Freedom of Information request showed that some police forces failed to record over 40 percent of rape complaints. Police in Durham said they only ruled five out of 130 rape allegations were not in fact crimes. Yet a further 83 cases were never officially recorded in the first place. Many of the newspapers that affected surprise at the recent survey consistently portray women as mindless objects who are to be judged solely on their looks and then “won”. For some people that encourages the attitude that women are things to be “bought” - or seized. Others newspapers blamed women in different ways. The Telegraph blamed the “uninhibited ‘ladette’ culture” for “fuelling a disturbing new ambivalence towards the crime of rape, particularly among women”. The Mirror’s columnist Sue Carroll managed to use the report to attack Muslims: “A survey tells us half of women think rape victims are to blame for the crime because they wear short skirts or accept a drink. “Who on earth did they ask, women in burqas?” She went on to say that the issue was “mired in confusion” because of the views of “hardline feminists” and that it is “downright stupidity” to be “someone prevaricating over whether to say ‘no’ in a man’s bed”.
Is it any surprise, when such ideas are put forward as “common sense”, that many people end up blaming people who have been raped? The continuing struggle for women’s emancipation involves an absolute assertion that, in all circumstances, no means no—and that rape victims need support, not scapegoating.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Nazi vermin never change
Nick Griffin had the cheek to say yesterday, following the change to the BNP constitution which will now allow non-white people to join the party, that no-one could now call the BNP racist. Well, I for one am.I've always been slightly uneasy with the media's unhealthy fascination with the BNP membership rules, often to the exclusion of their other policies and rules. I was always afraid that the media would really believe something had fundamentally changed when they altered the party rulebook. Nothing has changed and it is vital for everyone to realise that. Quite apart from the thuggery which saw a Times journalist assaulted because he had written something unfavourable to the BNP, the rules were changed only because a court had demanded it.
The Times, in its editorial, summed it up perfectly: “The BNP is racist. Racism is an attitude, not a legalistic nicety. Mr Griffin made clear that the vote was merely an acknowledgement of “legal reality”. The party does not throw off a history of ideological conviction by acquiescing in what the law demands.” While the BNP will want everyone to focus on its rulebook change as proof of its new non-racist view, I would like people to concentrate on another part of the BNP constitution - which remains unchanged.“The British National Party stands for the preservation of the national and ethnic character of the British people and is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples. It is therefore committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent, the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948.” Now, tell me that the BNP is not racist.
Meanwhile Griffin continues frantically to try to persuade his members to upgrade to gold or life membership of the party. In his latest electronic newsletter, Griffin claims that the legal process undertaken by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure the BNP complies with anti-discrimination legislation is in fact “criminal actions … designed to scupper our General Election plan” by starving the party of membership fees. The party agreed in court to put recruitment on hold pending adoption of a new constitution, which his members have agreed to at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 14 February. However Griffin has now decided there is more to the supposed conspiracy against the BNP. “Recent developments have revealed a far more sinister long-term plan”, he writes. According to Griffin, the “old-gang Lib-Lab-Con” parties want to introduce proportional representation and state funding of political parties but to exclude the BNP. The recruitment freeze is designed to damage the BNP’s general election effort, limit the number of constitu-encies the party can contest and thereby ensure it receives a low percentage of the national vote. Then PR and state funding of parties would be introduced, but the BNP would receive nothing because of its low vote.
Seriously, that is the imaginative scenario Griffin describes, before referring to “low-life vermin [one of Griffin’s favourite words] that are trying to sabotage our party”, invoking “the heroes of the Somme, D-Day and the Falklands” and urging: “If we cannot welcome new members, then existing members MUST upgrade to fill the gap, otherwise their evil plan might succeed!” The fact is that the membership freeze cannot have much effect on the BNP’s income. In 2008 the party took in membership fees amounting to £166,006. Much of this would be renewals, which are still allowed. New membership fees during the three to four month membership freeze would hardly top £30,000 and may be much less. The party could easily save that sum by shedding one or two of its large number of staff. But when has the BNP ever allowed the truth to get in the way of a good fundraising pitch?. As Darby said when confronted with the evidence that the party had only spent £282,843 on its European election campaign rather than the over £500,000 it had claimed, the party needs to exaggerate “there’s a bit of hyperbole with politics”.
The British National Party voted on Monday to abandon its bar on non-white members. This was not a belated and humbled acknowledgment of historic bigotry but an expedient to avoid a court injunction under human rights legislation. Meanwhile, BNP security guards assaulted and expelled Dominic Kennedy, theTimes journalist who was reporting the party’s meeting. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, declared after the meeting: “We will carry on throwing The Times out until they report the truth. That’s all we ask.” The Times meets that request with journalistic scrupulousness and no little incredulity. If Griffin wants the truth to be told about the BNP, we can recount it from direct observation. The BNP purports to be a legitimate party; yet its behaviour reveals it at every turn to be exploitative, cynical, xenophobic and thuggish. Griffin also said after yesterday’s amendment to the BNP constitution: “We have done it and now, for one thing, they can’t call us racist any more.” The BNP is racist. Racism is an attitude, not a legalistic nicety. Mr Griffin made clear that the vote was merely an acknowledgement of “legal reality”.
Political parties by definition have a point of view. A newspaper’s responsibility is to report their actions and statements fairly but with critical detachment. When Mr Kennedy entered the BNP’s press conference, Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, demanded that he leave. Mr Barnbrook had taken exception to a profile of him published in Saturday’s edition of The Times. That was enough. Mr Kennedy was not attending the meeting covertly. He had expressly been invited to report on it by Simon Darby, the party’s national press officer. On pointing this out, Mr Kennedy was physically ejected. His nose was grabbed, twisted and bloodied. A punch was thrown. He was pushed into a parked car outside the building. Mr Griffin complained recently that the press would “go overboard to demonise and create an atmosphere in which lunatics will feel justified in physically attacking us”. The extravagance of his rhetoric betrays the ugly underlying reality. Even the BNP’s extremist associates in the European Parliament are at pains to present themselves as wedded to constitutional politics. The BNP, by contrast, just cannot help its lineage from showing. It affects a respectable and patriotic face, and a concern with popular welfare. But its ideology draws on extremist currents and its attempts at concealment are dishonest.
The most contemptible of the BNP’s tactics is to associate itself with the Armed Forces and Services’ charities. A group of generals expressed their concern last October that the party was hijacking the reputation of the Forces. BNP organisations have masqueraded as servicemen’s support groups. It would be an affront to public service for any political party to claim a special relationship with the Armed Forces. It is repugnant for it to be done by a party that reviles the values of fairness that the Armed Forces exemplify and defend. The BNP now likes to pose as a normal British political party. In fact, they are no such thing. In this country, it is not normal for political parties to rough up journalists. In this country, it is not normal for people to disown racism for reasons of convenience, rather than conviction. In this country, it is not normal to hijack the birthday celebrations of a wounded soldier for electoral gain. The BNP like to boast their Britishness but seem to have forgotten the most essential British values: free speech and fairness, compassion and respect. Yesterday, the BNP showed they are many things, but not British.
The Times, in its editorial, summed it up perfectly: “The BNP is racist. Racism is an attitude, not a legalistic nicety. Mr Griffin made clear that the vote was merely an acknowledgement of “legal reality”. The party does not throw off a history of ideological conviction by acquiescing in what the law demands.” While the BNP will want everyone to focus on its rulebook change as proof of its new non-racist view, I would like people to concentrate on another part of the BNP constitution - which remains unchanged.“The British National Party stands for the preservation of the national and ethnic character of the British people and is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples. It is therefore committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent, the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948.” Now, tell me that the BNP is not racist.
Meanwhile Griffin continues frantically to try to persuade his members to upgrade to gold or life membership of the party. In his latest electronic newsletter, Griffin claims that the legal process undertaken by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure the BNP complies with anti-discrimination legislation is in fact “criminal actions … designed to scupper our General Election plan” by starving the party of membership fees. The party agreed in court to put recruitment on hold pending adoption of a new constitution, which his members have agreed to at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 14 February. However Griffin has now decided there is more to the supposed conspiracy against the BNP. “Recent developments have revealed a far more sinister long-term plan”, he writes. According to Griffin, the “old-gang Lib-Lab-Con” parties want to introduce proportional representation and state funding of political parties but to exclude the BNP. The recruitment freeze is designed to damage the BNP’s general election effort, limit the number of constitu-encies the party can contest and thereby ensure it receives a low percentage of the national vote. Then PR and state funding of parties would be introduced, but the BNP would receive nothing because of its low vote.
Seriously, that is the imaginative scenario Griffin describes, before referring to “low-life vermin [one of Griffin’s favourite words] that are trying to sabotage our party”, invoking “the heroes of the Somme, D-Day and the Falklands” and urging: “If we cannot welcome new members, then existing members MUST upgrade to fill the gap, otherwise their evil plan might succeed!” The fact is that the membership freeze cannot have much effect on the BNP’s income. In 2008 the party took in membership fees amounting to £166,006. Much of this would be renewals, which are still allowed. New membership fees during the three to four month membership freeze would hardly top £30,000 and may be much less. The party could easily save that sum by shedding one or two of its large number of staff. But when has the BNP ever allowed the truth to get in the way of a good fundraising pitch?. As Darby said when confronted with the evidence that the party had only spent £282,843 on its European election campaign rather than the over £500,000 it had claimed, the party needs to exaggerate “there’s a bit of hyperbole with politics”.
The British National Party voted on Monday to abandon its bar on non-white members. This was not a belated and humbled acknowledgment of historic bigotry but an expedient to avoid a court injunction under human rights legislation. Meanwhile, BNP security guards assaulted and expelled Dominic Kennedy, theTimes journalist who was reporting the party’s meeting. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, declared after the meeting: “We will carry on throwing The Times out until they report the truth. That’s all we ask.” The Times meets that request with journalistic scrupulousness and no little incredulity. If Griffin wants the truth to be told about the BNP, we can recount it from direct observation. The BNP purports to be a legitimate party; yet its behaviour reveals it at every turn to be exploitative, cynical, xenophobic and thuggish. Griffin also said after yesterday’s amendment to the BNP constitution: “We have done it and now, for one thing, they can’t call us racist any more.” The BNP is racist. Racism is an attitude, not a legalistic nicety. Mr Griffin made clear that the vote was merely an acknowledgement of “legal reality”.
Political parties by definition have a point of view. A newspaper’s responsibility is to report their actions and statements fairly but with critical detachment. When Mr Kennedy entered the BNP’s press conference, Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, demanded that he leave. Mr Barnbrook had taken exception to a profile of him published in Saturday’s edition of The Times. That was enough. Mr Kennedy was not attending the meeting covertly. He had expressly been invited to report on it by Simon Darby, the party’s national press officer. On pointing this out, Mr Kennedy was physically ejected. His nose was grabbed, twisted and bloodied. A punch was thrown. He was pushed into a parked car outside the building. Mr Griffin complained recently that the press would “go overboard to demonise and create an atmosphere in which lunatics will feel justified in physically attacking us”. The extravagance of his rhetoric betrays the ugly underlying reality. Even the BNP’s extremist associates in the European Parliament are at pains to present themselves as wedded to constitutional politics. The BNP, by contrast, just cannot help its lineage from showing. It affects a respectable and patriotic face, and a concern with popular welfare. But its ideology draws on extremist currents and its attempts at concealment are dishonest.
The most contemptible of the BNP’s tactics is to associate itself with the Armed Forces and Services’ charities. A group of generals expressed their concern last October that the party was hijacking the reputation of the Forces. BNP organisations have masqueraded as servicemen’s support groups. It would be an affront to public service for any political party to claim a special relationship with the Armed Forces. It is repugnant for it to be done by a party that reviles the values of fairness that the Armed Forces exemplify and defend. The BNP now likes to pose as a normal British political party. In fact, they are no such thing. In this country, it is not normal for political parties to rough up journalists. In this country, it is not normal for people to disown racism for reasons of convenience, rather than conviction. In this country, it is not normal to hijack the birthday celebrations of a wounded soldier for electoral gain. The BNP like to boast their Britishness but seem to have forgotten the most essential British values: free speech and fairness, compassion and respect. Yesterday, the BNP showed they are many things, but not British.
Monday, 1 February 2010
Another civil right up in smoke
Smokers are under attack again. After banning us from lighting in public places, even open-aired such as bus stops and train stations, the health fascists are plotting to curb smoker's rights with new measures such as removing branding from packets and banning cigarette vending machines, as will happen in Scotland next year. Smokers' lobby group Forest criticised the proposals for eroding people's ability to make lifestyle choices. Health charity Ash said that while it supported the plans in principle, there was a need for more detail and stronger pledges. The government strategy includes a commitment to try to stop young people taking up smoking by cracking down on illegally imported cheap cigarettes. Every smoker will be able to get help from the NHS to suit them if they want to give up. And there will be a review of smoking legislation, which could see public bans extended to places such as the entrances of buildings. Health Secretary Andy Burnham said: "We've come so far and now we'll go even further, to push forward and save even more lives. This strategy renews our commitment to virtually eradicate the health harms caused by smoking, and I firmly believe we can halve smoking by 2020. In 10 years' time, only one-in-10 people will smoke."
The government said each year smoking caused 80,000 deaths and cost the NHS £2.7bn - the same as alcohol related illness and injury. We can all understand and fully accept the health risks of smoking and the nature of that risk. Indeed, the health risks have been known for so long (the US Surgeon General first announced a link between smoking and lung cancer in 1964) we believe there cannot be a sane adult in the UK who is not aware of the potential danger. We do however have a problem with the tactics adopted by politicians and the health industry who routinely use the health argument to say they are "protecting" smokers from themselves. The health argument is then presented in one of several ways. The first is to frighten smokers into believing that they will almost certainly die before their time ("Quit or die"). The problem with this message is that it is so obviously false. As a great many families (and even doctors) will testify, many smokers live a long and healthy life, sometimes outliving their non-smoking peers. Moreover, with one major exception (lung cancer), none of the illnesses described as "smoking-related" is exclusive to smokers and all are primarily diseases of the elderly. In reality, two-thirds of all deaths in the UK are caused by "smoking-related diseases", despite the fact that only half of those people actually smoke.
Common sense would suggest that something else must be responsible for these "smoking-related diseases" (and, no, it's not passive smoking!) which is unrelated to smoking. Diet, perhaps, or genetic factors, or even general lifestyle (lack of exercise, for example). Or maybe (horror of horrors) it's just old age. One disease that smoking cannot ignore is lung cancer for the simple reason that it very, very rarely afflicts non-smokers. (The average annual risk of a non-smoker getting lung cancer has been calculated to be 0.01%.) Even for smokers, however, the quit or die message seems a bit excessive. According to Professor Sir Richard Doll (the man who first discovered a correlation between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s) research suggests that if you start smoking as a teenager and quit aged 30, the risk of developing lung cancer is 2%; give up at 50 and the risk goes up to 8%; give up at 70 (by which time you have been smoking for more than 50 years) and the risk rises to 16%. Surprised? Let's face it, these figures paint a rather different picture from the anti-smoking lobby which gives the impression that most if not all smokers are going to die a horrible, agonising death well before their time. Again, this isn't to deny the health risks, but let's get this in perspective. In spite of what some people would have you believe, smoking is not a one-way ticket to Death Row.
Revealingly, the anti-smoking lobby refuses point blank to acknowledge that smoking has any beneficial qualities whatsoever. The health risks of smoking may outweight the health risks of stress, for example, but there are many smokers who believe passionately that the former helps reduce the latter. Likewise, many smokers believe (rightly or wrongly) that smoking (and the occasional smoking break) helps improve their concentration and makes them more efficient at work. Meanwhile, instead of welcoming research which suggests that smoking may help ward off Alzheimer's Disease (one of most debilitating illnesses known to man), the anti-smokers pour scorn on the idea. Why? Finally, there is a clear lack of perspective in the smoking debate, a factor most clearly illustrated by the anti-smokers' complaint that James Bond, in the 2002 film Die Another Day, was filmed smoking a cigar. The fact that they had no problem with 007 having casual, unprotected sex, driving dangerously fast or being in possession of a loaded gun (with intent to kill!) reveals more about their narrow-minded obsession than it does about the dangers of smoking.
Smoking may have been banned in the workplace, but smoking is still an issue for many employers and their employees. Unfortunately the emotive nature of the debate often sees common sense relegated to the bottom of the list when employers are considering what type of smoking policy to introduce. While it is against the law to discriminate against people on the basis, for example, of race and religion, it is perfectly legal for employers to refuse to hire smokers and, under certain circumstances, fire them. In December 2005 the World Health Organisation said it would no longer recruit people who smoke or otherwise use tobacco. The ban applies to any applicants who smoke and say they would continue to smoke, either daily or occasionally. In January 2005 four employees at a healthcare company based in Michigan, USA, were fired after they refused the firm’s ultimatum to quit smoking. The company began random drug tests for nicotine at the beginning of that year saying it would fire workers who failed the test or refused to quit smoking. Other US firms are refusing to hire applicants who admit they smoke while many American companies require workers to take breathalyser tests that detect traces of carbon monoxide in the lungs or else submit to urine tests to detect nicotine.
In Florida a sheriff’s office demanded that all job applicants who have a recent history of smoking pass a polygraph test proving they no longer smoke outside work; this was later rescinded when the sheriff’s office was unable to recruit enough properly qualified police officers. US legal experts say there’s not much smokers can do if other bosses bring in similar rules. Kathleen Bogas, National Employment Lawyers’ Association vice president, said: “This will empower employers to take further steps to restrict the rights of employees – and that is the tragedy.” n the UK reports that British companies were refusing to employ smokers, even if they promised not to smoke during working hours, first appeared in 2001. After Forest highlighted the issue, the issue did not reappear until October 2004 when anti-smoking campaigners called for Manchester health workers to be banned from lighting up in public - even when they are off duty. The call came after health bosses in Suffolk announced plans to sack staff caught smoking, while wearing uniform or identity badges even if they are off the premises or in their own cars. The moves would be one step further than the toughest bans currently in place in the region, which stop some council and hospital staff from smoking on work premises.
That same month it was reported that bosses of a UK company, who dismissed an employee after 15 minutes when they found she smoked, acted legally. Lawyer Cathy Tailby said, “There is no law which would expressly prevent an employer imposing a condition that it will only employ non-smokers. As a rule, an employer can employ whomever it wants, so long as it does not breach a statute that outlaws particular sorts of discrimination.” In January 2006 ambulance staff in Staffordshire were banned from smoking in public even when off-duty, if they can be recognised by their uniform or name badge. Spokesman Bob Lee said the tough measures were being brought in, in common with other health organisations across the country. “I am not defending smoking but, for some people, smoking is a form of stress relief,” he said. “But this is the policy we are having to bring in due to national guidelines and government pressure.” The following month BT announced it would ban its workers from smoking in its offices and vans. BT’s 100,000 employees across the world, including 20,000 outside the UK will not be allowed to smoke on company premises or in vans bearing the BT logo. The decision was “warmly welcomed by anti-smoking groups who urged other companies to follow suit”.
In March 2006 two leading luxury hotels in Scotland threatened to sack staff that smell of smoke. In a move that goes well beyond what is required by the law, the hotels issued strict guidelines to hundreds of staff on complying with the legislation. In April 2006 Marks & Spencer employees were banned from lighting up in public with their uniforms on show. Bosses barred workers from smoking outside stores a week after banning it inside company premises and vehicles. In May 2006 a Dublin-based e-commerce business advertised for new employees saying that smokers were not welcome. The Advertising Authority of Ireland confirmed that the advertisement did not contravene its code and the Irish Government said they had no power to clamp down on such advertisements. Company director Philip Tobin commented, “If I get away with this, there is no doubt in my mind that other firms will follow suit and I certainly hope that is the case.” Meanwhile, in England, a company in Howdendyke extended its no smoking policy to a half-mile radius of the firm’s buildings. Anyone at the warehouse who was seen smoking would be sacked. In June 2006 seven supermarket workers in Scotland were fired for smoking. The employees of Morrisons in Inverurie lost their jobs after they were caught on CCTV having a cigarette break during the night shift.
Unusually, smokers have to look west - to the United States - for signs of common sense. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times reported that company moves against employees who smoke could backlash. Apparenty, around 30 states have passed legislation prohibiting companies from discriminating against people who embrace lifestyle choices such as smoking. Smoking in the workplace should be approached like any other workplace issue - as a management problem to be solved - rather than allowing emotion to govern the decision making process. A solution that accommodates both non-smokers and smokers has to be better than one that openly discriminates against one party. A poorly conceived smoking policy - banning smoking anywhere on company property - can have a profoundly negative effect on both staff and management. The worst of all solutions is prohibition without consultation, a policy that leaves many employees feeling neglected and hard done to. A failure to make proper provision for smokers within the premises - leaving them no with alternative but to smoke at, or nearby, the entrance to the premises - reflects badly on the employer because it illustrates an inconsiderate attitude towards staff who smoke, and looks unpleasant for any client approaching to do business.
Smokers pay £19,000 a minute to the Exchequer, and that's enough to pay for the whole police force. Or to put it another way, for every £1 we cost the NHS, we give it £3.60. Please don't encourage the state to dictate how I live your life. If you want to smoke you should be allowed to do so. For those who smoke it is a natural, relaxing part of life. Years of anti-smoking laws and campaigns have amounted to a public shaming of smokers that could make it harder for them to quit, a group of UBC researchers argue in a new report. There is an "urgent" need for governments to revisit their anti-smoking policies, the academics say, suggesting that the stigma around smoking could lead to patients hiding their tobacco use from doctors, and feeling desperate about ever kicking the habit. The policies run counter to how other addictions are treated by the public-health field, they argue. Their work looks at a range of anti-smoking measures they contend have "de-normalized" smoking and smokers themselves. Those include restrictions on where people can light up, bans on convenience-store "power walls" and other limits on tobacco sales, publicity campaigns to deter smoking, and graphic warnings on cigarette packages. Such programs have generally been hailed as a public-health triumph, with smoking rates plummeting to about 20% in Canada from 50% in the 1960s, according to the most recent federal statistics.
Intentionally or not, though, such policies have also stigmatized the remaining smokers, with various potentially negative impacts, the paper argues. It cites anecdotal reports of surgeons and other doctors refusing to treat cancer patients who smoke heavily. As many as one in four doctors who responded to a 2005 Canadian Lung Association survey admitted to providing lesser care to smokers. A University of Washington survey published last year found just under one in 10 smokers hid their tobacco use from doctors, often because of stigma. In a survey of smokers and ex-smokers soon-to-be published by the UBC group, respondents talked of being refused access to city buses after they were spotted smoking at a bus stop, harassed by strangers in public and otherwise treated as pariahs. "You really are labelled as a bad person if you smoke," said one person. Tobacco policies also now disproportionately affect the poor, as smoking rates are almost twice as high amongst those on low income as the highest income group. Katherine Frohlich, a public-health expert at the University of Montreal, said studies found that poorer smokers feel the policies have discriminated against them by, for instance, restricting their social interaction and isolating them at home.
Cynthia Callard of the group Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada rejected the notion, however, that smoking is now a predominately low-income phenomenon. The rates may be higher among the poor, but the sheer numbers are still much larger in middle-and upper-income groups, she said. But evidence proves otherwise, as yet another minority are increasingly marginalised and discriminated against; that smoking is a choice should be completely irrelevant. I've been smoking for five years this summer, and have no wish to quit. I know about the many health risks. I know about how much it's costing me, and how much it makes my clothes smell. I know how it could potentially cut my life expectancy considerably; my grandmother died aged just 51 from a heart condition possibly exacerbated by her heavy smoking habit. Despite all this there's a certain pleasure I receive from smoking - as do most of my friends evidently. One mate of mine lets me smoke in the house, and we are forever scrounging for a cigarette from each other, or anyone else we can manage to convince to give one up. I go through about fifteen fags a day, but I refuse to be looked down on by the health Nazis attempting to stop me from enjoying a few minutes every now and then to spark up. It's relaxing, and it helps me to concentrate. Why should anyone take those benefits away from me because they disagree with smoking? What makes it alright for them to claim their moral high ground whilst increasingly forcing us to quit smoking or suffer as second-class citizens?
The government said each year smoking caused 80,000 deaths and cost the NHS £2.7bn - the same as alcohol related illness and injury. We can all understand and fully accept the health risks of smoking and the nature of that risk. Indeed, the health risks have been known for so long (the US Surgeon General first announced a link between smoking and lung cancer in 1964) we believe there cannot be a sane adult in the UK who is not aware of the potential danger. We do however have a problem with the tactics adopted by politicians and the health industry who routinely use the health argument to say they are "protecting" smokers from themselves. The health argument is then presented in one of several ways. The first is to frighten smokers into believing that they will almost certainly die before their time ("Quit or die"). The problem with this message is that it is so obviously false. As a great many families (and even doctors) will testify, many smokers live a long and healthy life, sometimes outliving their non-smoking peers. Moreover, with one major exception (lung cancer), none of the illnesses described as "smoking-related" is exclusive to smokers and all are primarily diseases of the elderly. In reality, two-thirds of all deaths in the UK are caused by "smoking-related diseases", despite the fact that only half of those people actually smoke.
Common sense would suggest that something else must be responsible for these "smoking-related diseases" (and, no, it's not passive smoking!) which is unrelated to smoking. Diet, perhaps, or genetic factors, or even general lifestyle (lack of exercise, for example). Or maybe (horror of horrors) it's just old age. One disease that smoking cannot ignore is lung cancer for the simple reason that it very, very rarely afflicts non-smokers. (The average annual risk of a non-smoker getting lung cancer has been calculated to be 0.01%.) Even for smokers, however, the quit or die message seems a bit excessive. According to Professor Sir Richard Doll (the man who first discovered a correlation between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s) research suggests that if you start smoking as a teenager and quit aged 30, the risk of developing lung cancer is 2%; give up at 50 and the risk goes up to 8%; give up at 70 (by which time you have been smoking for more than 50 years) and the risk rises to 16%. Surprised? Let's face it, these figures paint a rather different picture from the anti-smoking lobby which gives the impression that most if not all smokers are going to die a horrible, agonising death well before their time. Again, this isn't to deny the health risks, but let's get this in perspective. In spite of what some people would have you believe, smoking is not a one-way ticket to Death Row.
Revealingly, the anti-smoking lobby refuses point blank to acknowledge that smoking has any beneficial qualities whatsoever. The health risks of smoking may outweight the health risks of stress, for example, but there are many smokers who believe passionately that the former helps reduce the latter. Likewise, many smokers believe (rightly or wrongly) that smoking (and the occasional smoking break) helps improve their concentration and makes them more efficient at work. Meanwhile, instead of welcoming research which suggests that smoking may help ward off Alzheimer's Disease (one of most debilitating illnesses known to man), the anti-smokers pour scorn on the idea. Why? Finally, there is a clear lack of perspective in the smoking debate, a factor most clearly illustrated by the anti-smokers' complaint that James Bond, in the 2002 film Die Another Day, was filmed smoking a cigar. The fact that they had no problem with 007 having casual, unprotected sex, driving dangerously fast or being in possession of a loaded gun (with intent to kill!) reveals more about their narrow-minded obsession than it does about the dangers of smoking.
Smoking may have been banned in the workplace, but smoking is still an issue for many employers and their employees. Unfortunately the emotive nature of the debate often sees common sense relegated to the bottom of the list when employers are considering what type of smoking policy to introduce. While it is against the law to discriminate against people on the basis, for example, of race and religion, it is perfectly legal for employers to refuse to hire smokers and, under certain circumstances, fire them. In December 2005 the World Health Organisation said it would no longer recruit people who smoke or otherwise use tobacco. The ban applies to any applicants who smoke and say they would continue to smoke, either daily or occasionally. In January 2005 four employees at a healthcare company based in Michigan, USA, were fired after they refused the firm’s ultimatum to quit smoking. The company began random drug tests for nicotine at the beginning of that year saying it would fire workers who failed the test or refused to quit smoking. Other US firms are refusing to hire applicants who admit they smoke while many American companies require workers to take breathalyser tests that detect traces of carbon monoxide in the lungs or else submit to urine tests to detect nicotine.
In Florida a sheriff’s office demanded that all job applicants who have a recent history of smoking pass a polygraph test proving they no longer smoke outside work; this was later rescinded when the sheriff’s office was unable to recruit enough properly qualified police officers. US legal experts say there’s not much smokers can do if other bosses bring in similar rules. Kathleen Bogas, National Employment Lawyers’ Association vice president, said: “This will empower employers to take further steps to restrict the rights of employees – and that is the tragedy.” n the UK reports that British companies were refusing to employ smokers, even if they promised not to smoke during working hours, first appeared in 2001. After Forest highlighted the issue, the issue did not reappear until October 2004 when anti-smoking campaigners called for Manchester health workers to be banned from lighting up in public - even when they are off duty. The call came after health bosses in Suffolk announced plans to sack staff caught smoking, while wearing uniform or identity badges even if they are off the premises or in their own cars. The moves would be one step further than the toughest bans currently in place in the region, which stop some council and hospital staff from smoking on work premises.
That same month it was reported that bosses of a UK company, who dismissed an employee after 15 minutes when they found she smoked, acted legally. Lawyer Cathy Tailby said, “There is no law which would expressly prevent an employer imposing a condition that it will only employ non-smokers. As a rule, an employer can employ whomever it wants, so long as it does not breach a statute that outlaws particular sorts of discrimination.” In January 2006 ambulance staff in Staffordshire were banned from smoking in public even when off-duty, if they can be recognised by their uniform or name badge. Spokesman Bob Lee said the tough measures were being brought in, in common with other health organisations across the country. “I am not defending smoking but, for some people, smoking is a form of stress relief,” he said. “But this is the policy we are having to bring in due to national guidelines and government pressure.” The following month BT announced it would ban its workers from smoking in its offices and vans. BT’s 100,000 employees across the world, including 20,000 outside the UK will not be allowed to smoke on company premises or in vans bearing the BT logo. The decision was “warmly welcomed by anti-smoking groups who urged other companies to follow suit”.
In March 2006 two leading luxury hotels in Scotland threatened to sack staff that smell of smoke. In a move that goes well beyond what is required by the law, the hotels issued strict guidelines to hundreds of staff on complying with the legislation. In April 2006 Marks & Spencer employees were banned from lighting up in public with their uniforms on show. Bosses barred workers from smoking outside stores a week after banning it inside company premises and vehicles. In May 2006 a Dublin-based e-commerce business advertised for new employees saying that smokers were not welcome. The Advertising Authority of Ireland confirmed that the advertisement did not contravene its code and the Irish Government said they had no power to clamp down on such advertisements. Company director Philip Tobin commented, “If I get away with this, there is no doubt in my mind that other firms will follow suit and I certainly hope that is the case.” Meanwhile, in England, a company in Howdendyke extended its no smoking policy to a half-mile radius of the firm’s buildings. Anyone at the warehouse who was seen smoking would be sacked. In June 2006 seven supermarket workers in Scotland were fired for smoking. The employees of Morrisons in Inverurie lost their jobs after they were caught on CCTV having a cigarette break during the night shift.
Unusually, smokers have to look west - to the United States - for signs of common sense. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times reported that company moves against employees who smoke could backlash. Apparenty, around 30 states have passed legislation prohibiting companies from discriminating against people who embrace lifestyle choices such as smoking. Smoking in the workplace should be approached like any other workplace issue - as a management problem to be solved - rather than allowing emotion to govern the decision making process. A solution that accommodates both non-smokers and smokers has to be better than one that openly discriminates against one party. A poorly conceived smoking policy - banning smoking anywhere on company property - can have a profoundly negative effect on both staff and management. The worst of all solutions is prohibition without consultation, a policy that leaves many employees feeling neglected and hard done to. A failure to make proper provision for smokers within the premises - leaving them no with alternative but to smoke at, or nearby, the entrance to the premises - reflects badly on the employer because it illustrates an inconsiderate attitude towards staff who smoke, and looks unpleasant for any client approaching to do business.
Smokers pay £19,000 a minute to the Exchequer, and that's enough to pay for the whole police force. Or to put it another way, for every £1 we cost the NHS, we give it £3.60. Please don't encourage the state to dictate how I live your life. If you want to smoke you should be allowed to do so. For those who smoke it is a natural, relaxing part of life. Years of anti-smoking laws and campaigns have amounted to a public shaming of smokers that could make it harder for them to quit, a group of UBC researchers argue in a new report. There is an "urgent" need for governments to revisit their anti-smoking policies, the academics say, suggesting that the stigma around smoking could lead to patients hiding their tobacco use from doctors, and feeling desperate about ever kicking the habit. The policies run counter to how other addictions are treated by the public-health field, they argue. Their work looks at a range of anti-smoking measures they contend have "de-normalized" smoking and smokers themselves. Those include restrictions on where people can light up, bans on convenience-store "power walls" and other limits on tobacco sales, publicity campaigns to deter smoking, and graphic warnings on cigarette packages. Such programs have generally been hailed as a public-health triumph, with smoking rates plummeting to about 20% in Canada from 50% in the 1960s, according to the most recent federal statistics.
Intentionally or not, though, such policies have also stigmatized the remaining smokers, with various potentially negative impacts, the paper argues. It cites anecdotal reports of surgeons and other doctors refusing to treat cancer patients who smoke heavily. As many as one in four doctors who responded to a 2005 Canadian Lung Association survey admitted to providing lesser care to smokers. A University of Washington survey published last year found just under one in 10 smokers hid their tobacco use from doctors, often because of stigma. In a survey of smokers and ex-smokers soon-to-be published by the UBC group, respondents talked of being refused access to city buses after they were spotted smoking at a bus stop, harassed by strangers in public and otherwise treated as pariahs. "You really are labelled as a bad person if you smoke," said one person. Tobacco policies also now disproportionately affect the poor, as smoking rates are almost twice as high amongst those on low income as the highest income group. Katherine Frohlich, a public-health expert at the University of Montreal, said studies found that poorer smokers feel the policies have discriminated against them by, for instance, restricting their social interaction and isolating them at home.
Cynthia Callard of the group Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada rejected the notion, however, that smoking is now a predominately low-income phenomenon. The rates may be higher among the poor, but the sheer numbers are still much larger in middle-and upper-income groups, she said. But evidence proves otherwise, as yet another minority are increasingly marginalised and discriminated against; that smoking is a choice should be completely irrelevant. I've been smoking for five years this summer, and have no wish to quit. I know about the many health risks. I know about how much it's costing me, and how much it makes my clothes smell. I know how it could potentially cut my life expectancy considerably; my grandmother died aged just 51 from a heart condition possibly exacerbated by her heavy smoking habit. Despite all this there's a certain pleasure I receive from smoking - as do most of my friends evidently. One mate of mine lets me smoke in the house, and we are forever scrounging for a cigarette from each other, or anyone else we can manage to convince to give one up. I go through about fifteen fags a day, but I refuse to be looked down on by the health Nazis attempting to stop me from enjoying a few minutes every now and then to spark up. It's relaxing, and it helps me to concentrate. Why should anyone take those benefits away from me because they disagree with smoking? What makes it alright for them to claim their moral high ground whilst increasingly forcing us to quit smoking or suffer as second-class citizens?
Monday, 11 January 2010
Get serious on immigration
David Cameron's weekend promise that the Conservative cap on immigration will bring net migration to Britain down to "the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands" is beginning to look like the dance of the seven veils. Once again the Tory leader has garnered widespread tabloid coverage for his policies on curbing immigration without spelling out how his fixed cap or quota would actually in practice. He also made clear once again that he didn't "support the population going to 70 million" as though it was some kind of clear aim or manifesto commitment being promised by either Labour or the Liberal Democrats to be achieved within the next parliament. But both the immigration cap and the 70 million population figure are based on will-o'-the-wisp calculations that appear to have more to do with a hangover from the "dog-whistle" politics of Michael Howard's Tory party than serious migration policy. The idea of a cap or a limit on immigration sounds straightforward as a soundbite but gets complicated as soon as you look at the detail.
The first point is that Cameron can't limit the number of people who come to live and work in Britain from the rest of the EU without tearing up the basic commitment to the free movement of labour and putting in question the UK's continued membership. At most all he can do is promise to impose restrictions on any new members of the EU – Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus would all like to join – but they could only last a maximum of seven years. Second, as far as immigration from outside Europe is concerned a blanket cap would also have to exclude the 39,000 people a year who come to the UK on spousal visas after marrying British citizens abroad. Or are they to be subject to an arbitrary quota and told to wait until next year? The third category which would also have to be excluded is the number of British citizens who have been living abroad who come back to live in the UK. This category has been growing rapidly and the 85,000 figure for 2008 includes those went to retire in the Spanish costas and now find that the NHS is a more attractive proposition than the Spanish medical system. It also includes those coming from recession-hit Dubai and other places.
Indeed back in 2008 the Home Office estimated that only 20% of possible migrants to Britain would be covered by a cap as it could only be applied to those who came from outside the EU under the points-based system. The vast bulk of those covered would be the highly skilled migrants and overseas students whose presence has been crucial to the economy and the expansion of higher education. The Conservatives have yet to spell out exactly how it would work. At a recent all-party debate on immigration, when a leading city firm, KPMG, asked the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, if a cap would mean they have to cut their global recruitment for specialist posts in London, he confirmed that it could mean that some recruits would be told they have to wait until another year. Net annual migration – the numbers coming to live in Britain minus those who move abroad – is already falling sharply down from 233,000 in 2007 to 163,000 in 2008 and is believed to have fallen even further in 2009 as many Poles went home and the numbers emigrating from Britain continue to rise to a 17-year high of more than 400,000.
The magic "70 million" is based upon a projection by the Office for National Statistics of what would happen by 2029 if the peak of migration to Britain between 2005 and 2008 were sustained every year for the next 20 years. It is not going to happen. Even if it were – and that would mean a new Poland joining the EU every three years – then immigration is not the only factor that determines the UK's population. The birth rate is actually currently more crucial than net migration in determining population growth. So what is David Cameron going to do next to avoid the population hitting 70 million? Impose a Chinese-style policy of one child per family as Alan Johnson has mockingly suggested? If even a seventeen year old can comprehend the many illogical pitfalls of Tory policies, who can truly believe they can triumph in the election on May 6th? If they continue to fanny around on the issue of immigration, can we really trust them on any other important issue, like health or education? I don't see why the inept David Conman doesn't quit now, it's obvious that as a leader he is condescending, corrupt and generally unfit to even pass comment on government.
Whatever the headline, the aim of the declaration is really to call for stringent limits on immigration. It is high immigration which the signatories say will have "a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society". While much of the projected population growth is a result, directly or indirectly, of immigration, you have to wonder if the signatories of the declaration are really concerned about population projections as such. If the population was growing fast because many more British-born couples were choosing to have large families, would they have made their intervention? Lord Carey advocates a values-based immigration policy that might produce a higher proportion of Christian immigrants. It is not just numbers of immigrants that are of concern, it seems, it is also types. That aside, the main thrust of the declaration is to call on party leaders to commit in their manifestos to reduce net annual immigration to below 40,000, returning to levels last seen in the early 1990s.
At present, because Britain is in recession, net immigration is flattening out anyway. If the economic recovery is slow, this trend could continue. But setting an arbitrary limit on numbers is, as the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Chris Huhne said at a recent Institute for Public Policy Research debate, akin to "Stalinist state planning". How do we know how many immigrants the UK economy might need in any one year? A cap could be very damaging for businesses needing skilled personnel to compete in the global economy. So going back to the immigration levels of the 1990s might help slow population growth, but at the price of pushing the economy backwards too. Moreover, it is not clear how any future government could keep net immigration below 40,000 a year. The UK now has quite a tight system for the management of immigration, but there are constraints on our ability to control inflows when we are part of an interconnected global economy in which capital, goods and people can move fast. If the Balanced Migration group is serious in its call, it needs to be able to answer some difficult questions.
We have free movement of people within the EU: do the signatories want to stop that? We are signatories to the UN convention on refugees: do they want the UK to withdraw from it? A lot of people arrive as a result of family reunion: do we want to stop settled immigrants being able to bring in their families? Foreign students studying at UK universities account for a substantial proportion of immigrant numbers – but surely this is good for the higher education sector and national prestige? The institute's debate saw the home secretary and his two shadows discussing the sensitive subject of immigration in an open and constructive manner – with the focus on realistic solutions. This is the way to address the sophisticated and complex business of managing migration in the 21st century, not ill thought-through, backward-looking declarations such as this one, which risk stoking up anti-immigrant sentiment.
The first point is that Cameron can't limit the number of people who come to live and work in Britain from the rest of the EU without tearing up the basic commitment to the free movement of labour and putting in question the UK's continued membership. At most all he can do is promise to impose restrictions on any new members of the EU – Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus would all like to join – but they could only last a maximum of seven years. Second, as far as immigration from outside Europe is concerned a blanket cap would also have to exclude the 39,000 people a year who come to the UK on spousal visas after marrying British citizens abroad. Or are they to be subject to an arbitrary quota and told to wait until next year? The third category which would also have to be excluded is the number of British citizens who have been living abroad who come back to live in the UK. This category has been growing rapidly and the 85,000 figure for 2008 includes those went to retire in the Spanish costas and now find that the NHS is a more attractive proposition than the Spanish medical system. It also includes those coming from recession-hit Dubai and other places.
Indeed back in 2008 the Home Office estimated that only 20% of possible migrants to Britain would be covered by a cap as it could only be applied to those who came from outside the EU under the points-based system. The vast bulk of those covered would be the highly skilled migrants and overseas students whose presence has been crucial to the economy and the expansion of higher education. The Conservatives have yet to spell out exactly how it would work. At a recent all-party debate on immigration, when a leading city firm, KPMG, asked the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, if a cap would mean they have to cut their global recruitment for specialist posts in London, he confirmed that it could mean that some recruits would be told they have to wait until another year. Net annual migration – the numbers coming to live in Britain minus those who move abroad – is already falling sharply down from 233,000 in 2007 to 163,000 in 2008 and is believed to have fallen even further in 2009 as many Poles went home and the numbers emigrating from Britain continue to rise to a 17-year high of more than 400,000.
The magic "70 million" is based upon a projection by the Office for National Statistics of what would happen by 2029 if the peak of migration to Britain between 2005 and 2008 were sustained every year for the next 20 years. It is not going to happen. Even if it were – and that would mean a new Poland joining the EU every three years – then immigration is not the only factor that determines the UK's population. The birth rate is actually currently more crucial than net migration in determining population growth. So what is David Cameron going to do next to avoid the population hitting 70 million? Impose a Chinese-style policy of one child per family as Alan Johnson has mockingly suggested? If even a seventeen year old can comprehend the many illogical pitfalls of Tory policies, who can truly believe they can triumph in the election on May 6th? If they continue to fanny around on the issue of immigration, can we really trust them on any other important issue, like health or education? I don't see why the inept David Conman doesn't quit now, it's obvious that as a leader he is condescending, corrupt and generally unfit to even pass comment on government.
Whatever the headline, the aim of the declaration is really to call for stringent limits on immigration. It is high immigration which the signatories say will have "a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society". While much of the projected population growth is a result, directly or indirectly, of immigration, you have to wonder if the signatories of the declaration are really concerned about population projections as such. If the population was growing fast because many more British-born couples were choosing to have large families, would they have made their intervention? Lord Carey advocates a values-based immigration policy that might produce a higher proportion of Christian immigrants. It is not just numbers of immigrants that are of concern, it seems, it is also types. That aside, the main thrust of the declaration is to call on party leaders to commit in their manifestos to reduce net annual immigration to below 40,000, returning to levels last seen in the early 1990s.
At present, because Britain is in recession, net immigration is flattening out anyway. If the economic recovery is slow, this trend could continue. But setting an arbitrary limit on numbers is, as the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Chris Huhne said at a recent Institute for Public Policy Research debate, akin to "Stalinist state planning". How do we know how many immigrants the UK economy might need in any one year? A cap could be very damaging for businesses needing skilled personnel to compete in the global economy. So going back to the immigration levels of the 1990s might help slow population growth, but at the price of pushing the economy backwards too. Moreover, it is not clear how any future government could keep net immigration below 40,000 a year. The UK now has quite a tight system for the management of immigration, but there are constraints on our ability to control inflows when we are part of an interconnected global economy in which capital, goods and people can move fast. If the Balanced Migration group is serious in its call, it needs to be able to answer some difficult questions.
We have free movement of people within the EU: do the signatories want to stop that? We are signatories to the UN convention on refugees: do they want the UK to withdraw from it? A lot of people arrive as a result of family reunion: do we want to stop settled immigrants being able to bring in their families? Foreign students studying at UK universities account for a substantial proportion of immigrant numbers – but surely this is good for the higher education sector and national prestige? The institute's debate saw the home secretary and his two shadows discussing the sensitive subject of immigration in an open and constructive manner – with the focus on realistic solutions. This is the way to address the sophisticated and complex business of managing migration in the 21st century, not ill thought-through, backward-looking declarations such as this one, which risk stoking up anti-immigrant sentiment.
Friday, 18 December 2009
Drugged up Britain?
Government attempts to persuade thousands of young people to stay away from drugs have failed and done nothing to curb the soaring popularity of illegal substances, a devastating report has warned. The number of young people using cocaine and cannabis has increased rapidly over the past 20 years despite high-profile campaigns, such as the £9m 'Frank' initiative aimed at 11 to 15-year-olds, according to an in-depth examination of official efforts to tackle Britain's chronic drug problem. It is also expected to claim that Britain's 'unusually severe drug problem compared with that of our European neighbours' is linked to social and economic deprivation, that punitive laws have had little effect and that police efforts to disrupt the drugs trade have also failed. The study, 'An Analysis of UK Drugs Policy', has been written by two internationally respected experts, Professor Peter Reuter of Maryland University in the US and Alex Stevens, senior researcher at the European Institute of Social Services at Kent University. The report cites an array of official statistics charting the steady growth in Britain's drugs culture. For example, according to the 2005 British Crime Survey, 40.4 per cent of 16 to 19-year-olds have used drugs at some point in their lifetime, as have 49 per cent of 20 to 24-year-olds, 51.6 per cent of 25 to 29-year-olds and 45.8 per cent of 30 to 34-year-olds. While cannabis use by young people has fallen recently, it remains around 50 per cent and consumption of cocaine has increased. The Home Office rejected the new body's findings. A spokesman said research showed that giving young people information about drugs, rather than adopting a 'just say no' approach, was a more effective way of warning them about the dangers.
Young people in Britain are reported to be taking up to five times more illegal drugs than their European counterparts. Britain topped the western European league on ecstasy and amphetamines and came second for cocaine and cannabis. Nine per cent of young people in the UK said they had tried ecstasy, compared with only 2.8% of Germans, 3.1% of French and 1% of Belgians and Swedes. And as many as 16% of British young people said they had tried amphetamines, compared with 1.6% of French people and 4% of Germans. Spain topped the league, but French, Swedish and Belgian young people were half as likely as the British to try the drug. Around 36% of Britons admitted to taking cannabis - the most common illegal drug in Europe, compared with 25.7% of French people, 21% of Germans and 22% of Spanish people. A smaller Danish survey showed cannabis use running at 43% among teenagers and people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Heroin use was low across Europe. In most countries, less than 1% of people had tried the drug. However, it accounted for the most health problems; the report says there are up to one million heroin addicts in Europe. Some countries have noted a small rise in its use. Drug abuse in Britain is worse than anywhere else in Europe - Young people in the UK are more likely to take cocaine, Ecstasy and amphetamine than those in any other country on the Continent, but they are also using cocaine in quantities and with a frequency unmatched anywhere else in the world apart from the U.S.
It's pleasing to see, in the storm of commentary over Professor David Nutt's sacking as the government's chief drugs adviser, that everyone outside politics now recognises the importance of scientific evidence in devising laws. But a strange reasoning twitch has appeared, in the arguments of politicians and rightwing commentators. Science can tell us about the molecules, they say, about their effect on the body and the risks. But policy is separate: a matter for judgment calls on social and ethical issues. Only politicians, they say, can determine the correct way to send out a clear message to the public. It is not a matter for science. This is wrong. Alongside research into the risks of drugs, lots of work has also been done on the deterrent impact of different laws, classifications and levels of enforcement. As every piece of research has its own imperfections (and nobody has yet conducted a randomised controlled trial on drugs policy) you can make your own mind up about whether you find the results compelling.
One strategy is to compare different countries. A World Health Organisation study from 2008, published in the academic journal PLOS Medicine, compared drug use and enforcement regimes around the world. It was clear: "Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones." Alternatively, you can compare drug use between states within one country, if they have very different enforcement regimes, as when parts of the US liberalised their laws a few decades ago. Another line of evidence comes from "before and after" studies, when laws are changed. Cannabis use in the UK dropped after cannabis was moved from class B to class C. Prohibition of alcohol in the US from 1920 to 1933 is the most famous example: alcohol use fell dramatically when prohibition began, and the price of alcohol rose to 318% of its previous level. By 1929 this initial impact had begun to wear off and rapidly: alcohol consumption had risen to 70% of pre-prohibition levels, and was still rising when prohibition was repealed, and the price had fallen to 171% of pre-prohibition levels. This reversion to old patterns of use occurred despite escalating spending on enforcement, up 600% over the same period. There are many more examples.
This is not an unresearchable question. There are other factors at play in all of these studies, and if they are not sufficiently rigorous for the government, or a brief informal dip into the literature is not enough, (it shouldn't be) then they should commission more research: because it is a tenet of evidence-based policy that if you discover a gap, you commission work to fill it. This work is important for one simple reason. If you wish to justify a policy that will plainly increase the harms associated with each individual act of drug use, by creating violent criminal gangs as distributors, driving the sale of contaminated black market drugs, blighting the careers of users caught by the police, criminalising three million people, and so on, then people will reasonably expect, as a trade-off, that you will also provide good quality evidence showing that your policy achieves its stated aim of reducing the overall numbers of people using drugs.
Young people in Britain are reported to be taking up to five times more illegal drugs than their European counterparts. Britain topped the western European league on ecstasy and amphetamines and came second for cocaine and cannabis. Nine per cent of young people in the UK said they had tried ecstasy, compared with only 2.8% of Germans, 3.1% of French and 1% of Belgians and Swedes. And as many as 16% of British young people said they had tried amphetamines, compared with 1.6% of French people and 4% of Germans. Spain topped the league, but French, Swedish and Belgian young people were half as likely as the British to try the drug. Around 36% of Britons admitted to taking cannabis - the most common illegal drug in Europe, compared with 25.7% of French people, 21% of Germans and 22% of Spanish people. A smaller Danish survey showed cannabis use running at 43% among teenagers and people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Heroin use was low across Europe. In most countries, less than 1% of people had tried the drug. However, it accounted for the most health problems; the report says there are up to one million heroin addicts in Europe. Some countries have noted a small rise in its use. Drug abuse in Britain is worse than anywhere else in Europe - Young people in the UK are more likely to take cocaine, Ecstasy and amphetamine than those in any other country on the Continent, but they are also using cocaine in quantities and with a frequency unmatched anywhere else in the world apart from the U.S.
It's pleasing to see, in the storm of commentary over Professor David Nutt's sacking as the government's chief drugs adviser, that everyone outside politics now recognises the importance of scientific evidence in devising laws. But a strange reasoning twitch has appeared, in the arguments of politicians and rightwing commentators. Science can tell us about the molecules, they say, about their effect on the body and the risks. But policy is separate: a matter for judgment calls on social and ethical issues. Only politicians, they say, can determine the correct way to send out a clear message to the public. It is not a matter for science. This is wrong. Alongside research into the risks of drugs, lots of work has also been done on the deterrent impact of different laws, classifications and levels of enforcement. As every piece of research has its own imperfections (and nobody has yet conducted a randomised controlled trial on drugs policy) you can make your own mind up about whether you find the results compelling.
One strategy is to compare different countries. A World Health Organisation study from 2008, published in the academic journal PLOS Medicine, compared drug use and enforcement regimes around the world. It was clear: "Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones." Alternatively, you can compare drug use between states within one country, if they have very different enforcement regimes, as when parts of the US liberalised their laws a few decades ago. Another line of evidence comes from "before and after" studies, when laws are changed. Cannabis use in the UK dropped after cannabis was moved from class B to class C. Prohibition of alcohol in the US from 1920 to 1933 is the most famous example: alcohol use fell dramatically when prohibition began, and the price of alcohol rose to 318% of its previous level. By 1929 this initial impact had begun to wear off and rapidly: alcohol consumption had risen to 70% of pre-prohibition levels, and was still rising when prohibition was repealed, and the price had fallen to 171% of pre-prohibition levels. This reversion to old patterns of use occurred despite escalating spending on enforcement, up 600% over the same period. There are many more examples.
This is not an unresearchable question. There are other factors at play in all of these studies, and if they are not sufficiently rigorous for the government, or a brief informal dip into the literature is not enough, (it shouldn't be) then they should commission more research: because it is a tenet of evidence-based policy that if you discover a gap, you commission work to fill it. This work is important for one simple reason. If you wish to justify a policy that will plainly increase the harms associated with each individual act of drug use, by creating violent criminal gangs as distributors, driving the sale of contaminated black market drugs, blighting the careers of users caught by the police, criminalising three million people, and so on, then people will reasonably expect, as a trade-off, that you will also provide good quality evidence showing that your policy achieves its stated aim of reducing the overall numbers of people using drugs.
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