Conservative MP admits to having used drugs, so shouldn't she be in prison?

On  BBC Question Time last night, Conservative MP Louise Mensch, admitted she had used Class A drugs (she didn't specify what they were, and "A" is the "most dangerous" category including cocaine, MDMA, etc) and that they had had a "lasting effect" on her brain.   I'm not one to deny that, and I'm certainly not condemning her for it.

Yet I will criticise her hypocrisy.

See she thinks drugs should remain illegal and criminal, and supports the "war on drugs".

In which case should she now not hand herself into the Police and face charges, trial, conviction and sentencing?  Should she not also forward names of all of her family and friends who have done the same?

After all - if it's so bad, and criminalising drug users is the "right thing to do" by implication, why shouldn't upper class English catholic Tory MPs and their associates face the same legal sanction as young poor Afro-Caribbean or white working class boys?

You see it is very easy for those living in relatively cozy middle and upper class communities to support a "war on drugs", until you confront them with "how many people do you know have taken drugs" and then "shouldn't they be in prison too"?

Because of course it isn't those people that are allowed to "make a mistake".  Louise Mensch is smart, successful, married to a wealthy husband, herself a successful writer. She "knows better".  She wants to protect the ignorant, stupid, vulnerable poor folk who aren't capable of making such decisions.

She wants the war on drugs fought in Tottenham, Newham, Mossside, Brixton, Toxteth etc, not Kensington, Highgate, Hampstead and Tunbridge Wells.

So why don't the Conservative, Labour and "Liberal" Democrat MPs who believe in this simply say that the "war on drugs" is about poor people having drugs.  Rich people, the middle classes and the like often "make mistakes" when young but they shouldn't be condemned for it, because it only hurts themselves.   Louise Mensch has been allowed to get away with ingesting what she chose without prosecution, why does she deny that right to others, or why doesn't she insist the law she supports gets applied equally?

Just to be clear.  I wouldn't throw her in prison.  I think it would be absurd and unjust for her to be in prison for possession and ingestion of Class A drugs.  However, unlike her, I also think that everyone else in prison for such offences should also be set free and have their convictions expunged.  Had she been convicted, she could not have pursued the career choice she now has.  Why subject others to the same because the Police happen to more readily patrol their neighbourhoods and communities?

Judge says "society to blame" for sexcrime

That, according to the Daily Telegraph, is the conclusion of Judge Gareth Hawkesworth of Cambridge Crown Court (UK). It is also the logical conclusion of many decades of the embrace of the post-modernist philosophical morass of determinism and denial of the causality principle.

What happened?

A 14 year old boy tied an apron around the face of a girl of 4 and performed a sex act with her. The boy got a three year community order with supervision as a sentence.  The girl's parents are upset, but I don't want to dwell on what is an appropriate sentence, needless to say the boy needs both help and punishment.  What matters is how the judge got to his sentence.

The judge said of the offender:

"I'm satisfied it was impulsive and I believe you have become sexualised by your exposure to and the corruption of pornography. Your exposure at such a young age has ended in tragedy. It was the fault of the world and society.”

Actus reus and mens rea are the two key tests to secure a criminal conviction in most cases. Actus reus is the “guilty act” meaning the accused did the deed. Mens rea is the “guilty mind” meaning the accused intended to commit the crime. Prove both beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused is considered guilty of the crime.

Judge Hawkesworth has contradicted himself. For the boy has been found guilty and been sentenced, yet he effectively claims the boy did not have mens rea.  The boy was not "at fault".

For that to be true, there could have been a number of defences, such as acting under duress, or insanity. The age of criminal responsibility is 10, so he can’t legally claim that he is not responsible for his actions.  Yet the statement by the Judge implies just that.

He wasn’t under duress nor insane, but rather under “undue influence”, not by one person, but by “the world and society”. We are ALL to blame. He didn’t really have a choice. He was corrupted. Yet the murderers of James Bulger, who were younger when convicted, were not subjected to such an excuse (and their backgrounds did explain, but did not excuse their actions).

This is the philosophical reef upon which Western society has been wrecking reason, objectivity and justice against for many years. It is the underlying foundation of so much taught in the humanities departments of universities. It is the fundamental dimunition and denial of free will and conscious volition.

It is, in fact, the argument put forward both by the post-modernist believers in a large state sector and many religious conservatives. The Muslim women who are told to wear the niqab do so because otherwise men “can’t help themselves” but molest them. Christian campaigners for censorship argue that erotica, pornography and violence in the media “makes” people commit those crimes, indeed the current censorship laws are in part predicated on this. That’s why you can (in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, but not the USA) be prosecuted for writing or owning erotic stories about certain sexual acts ( a woman was prosecuted for writing such letters). David Cunliffe supported this strongly in select committee when challenged about it. The idea is that such stories “make people do them”, so it is better to take away a bit of freedom than to risk “making people do crimes”.

In this case, “society” or rather EVERYBODY made the boy commit the crime, so EVERYONE should feel shame and contrition. Not only the little girl, but the perpetrator is a victim.  Consider what effect that will have on the girl, to think that the offender is somehow less responsible.  If "society" and the "world" are responsible, isn't she a tiny part of that?

In which case, the judge is effectively saying who is he to blame the boy? Society must do more to shield people from such corrupt influences. It is deterministic. Because the boy was exposed to pornography (although it appears he looked for it, watched it and kept doing so), it was inevitable that he would commit this crime.  He wasn't just corrupted (probably true), but he was incapable of reconciling fantasy and desires with reality.  He could not control himself.   Yet he is not insane.

I don’t need to explain the consequences of extending that principle. For indeed we see them today:

Excusing people who steal, vandalise and commit arson against the property of innocent people because they were “upset” at their own lives. Yet vast numbers of people can claim the same or worse, but do not commit such crimes.

Excusing those who beat up their children because they don’t have enough money. Yet millions are in poverty and do not mistreat their children.

Excusing the woeful life choices of this generation, because of what happened to past generations. Yet many make different life choices having inherited next to nothing from past generations.

I don’t doubt Judge Hawkesworth is, in part, politicking. He wants politicians to restrict the access of young people to pornography. You see, he could have blamed the boy’s parents, for allowing him such unfettered access to the internet. He didn’t. He blamed us all, implying the solution is going to come from government or at least from people listening to his preaching.  We all raise all children, we are all responsible for everyone else's children (and of course we must pay for them and have our behaviour regulated, as if we are children too).

Let me be clear, I believe there is an issue about unfettered access by young people to extreme content online, and that there are potentially serious consequences that can arise from this. Whether the state acts or not is a political question. However, when sane individuals commit crimes, including teenagers (who are between being children and adults), it is quite simply incorrect to claim that others are to blame.

To attribute blame to an amorphous collective such as “the world” or “society” is meaningless and even corrosive. There is no such thing as a collective brain or consciousness (unless you subscribe to the malignant class or race theories that ultimately justified mass murder on hitherto unknown scales). For a judge to even think it appropriate to “blame” in this way is not just unprofessional, but dangerous.

Who will turn up in his court next week to claim “it is society’s fault that I…” (insert crime)? How can he disagree when he believes this is a perfectly credible defence to grant someone leniency?

After all, if this boy isn’t to blame for his actions, why should others be to blame for theirs? Is not every criminal a product of their experiences, influences and history? Can everyone with rotten parents, or who was bullied, or who saw a violent or sexually explicit film, image or read a story, or had no friends, or grieved their dead pet or whatever – now say they are not to blame, but society is?

Similarly, does it not mean that everyone who does well at school, who wins a sports match, starts up a very successful business, becomes wealthy, becomes popular, invents, creates or discovers something of note, is not actually responsible for that? Are not those who succeed therefore “because of society”? Should not everyone who does well then be made to share the fruits of their endeavours? Think how often you hear that trotted out by those on the left who fondly believe in increasing taxes for those on higher incomes, who say that successful people are only successful because of “everyone else”. That if the state hadn’t provided a hospital, school or roads, these people would have been “nothing”.  Even though the number of tall poppies that grow from this very same field are always few and far between.

Think what that means for how the state treats individuals. You’re not to blame when you do bad, and you’re not to get all the credit when you do good. It was all going to happen anyway, and we’re here to soften the punishment and to share the proceeds. Individual choice? Not so important now.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is at the core of so many of the political debates that are engaged in today.

Is the individual to be treated as a thinking, conscious, choosing human being, who whilst carrying a vast array of influences from family, peers, media, community, school, religion, business, can decide whether or not to act in a certain way, including whether or not to act with objectivity, reason, benevolence and respect for others? Or is the individual already pre-determined, with his ancestors, sex, race, religion, sexuality and class effectively programming him to think, act, succeed or fail in certain ways?

If the former, shouldn't people be free to live as they wish, as long as they respect the right of others to do so?  If the latter, is there any point to anything people do at all, unless it is a constant battle of power between those pre-determined to succeed and those pre-determined to fail, until everyone is ironed flat so we are all pre-determined to be in the same way?

Who will bail out Germany?

This is the question economist Detlev Schlichter has asked in today’s City AM.

Seems ridiculous right? After all, Germany is bailing out the rest of the Eurozone. Its economy is growing, its budget deficit is low. Greece is the basket case of the Eurozone, with Portugal, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Ireland not far behind. If you were look at who would be next, both Belgium and France appear on the scene, because both have high public debt, budget deficits and are structurally sclerotic economies (imagine Belgium without the massive EU bureaucracy sucking in money from across Europe and consuming in Brussels).

Germany though? Well yes. It is, once again, wilful blindness to reality. Germany’s public debt is 81% of GDP, this having risen from 61% in 1999. That should indicate that there is a day of reckoning to come. Yes the budget deficit is low, but in an environment of steady growth, low unemployment and very low interest rates (meaning public debt can very cheaply be refinanced), Germany isn’t able to run a surplus. Remember how the Keynesians say that in good times you can run a surplus and pay down the debt you incur in the bad times. Well this is the good times for Germany, and it can’t run a surplus. Why?

Quite simply, the German state is lumbered with the same burgeoning welfare state and social policies that have already been bankrupting its southern neighbours. The difference is that the economic growth Germany is experiencing for now, and the low interest rates are slowing the inevitable slide towards that day of reckoning.

Schlichter points out that in the past four decades “Germany extended considerable, unfunded promises to the populace, mainly in the areas of public health insurance, state pensions and the public care insurance”. He blames this as an inheritance from the Helmut Kohl administration, an ostensibly “right wing pro-business” government. He says it implies effective government debt in excess of 200% of GDP. It is Germany’s ticking time bomb.

The difference with France and the south of Europe is that Germany has a more liberal labour market than all of them, but that isn’t hard. Germany’s state may be more efficient in tax collection and operation than the southern states, with much less corruption, but again that isn’t hard. It was the centre-left government of Gerhard Schroeder that implemented modest reforms (Agenda 2010). He liberalised labour laws, reduced the size of the welfare state and reduced regulation. Merkel has been unable to continue this further, even though she started her administration in a grand coalition with the leftwing SPD opposition, after he resigned as leader as his party had lost badly in the 2005 election. The message was clear. You don’t get re-elected in Germany after implementing radical reforms.

You can now see why Angela Merkel doesn’t want Germany to be the saviour of the rest of the Eurozone anymore – Germany cannot afford it. German voters are as attached to their big generous welfare state as other Europeans, but they have been immune to actually paying for the full costs. The legacy has been rising debt.

So when the protestors in the rest of the Eurozone think Germany will write them cheques to bailout their own bankrupt welfare states, they are deluded. For not only can Germans not afford that, they can’t afford their own. The difference is that German politicians are hoping that no one notices for now, and that the problem becomes someone else’s. On top of that, German taxpayers are carrying, still, the burden of the deeds of their ancestors as guilt that makes them at least partly amenable to helping the rest of the Eurozone.

The problem is that if German taxpayers/voters and politicians don’t confront their own bubble of debt and overspending, they too will face a crisis. That will indeed be a Eurozone crisis, a European crisis and a global one. That’s if Japan and the United States haven’t dealt with their similar looming crises in the meantime.

Peak oil is bullshit - ask George Monbiot

Yes, the poster boy for the green movement, George Monbiot, has come out in today's Guardian admitting he was wrong. 

Oil isn't running out, there isn't an energy crisis.  He's not happy about it, because you see it fits into the broader agenda about fighting climate change...(emphasis added)

For the past 10 years an unlikely coalition of geologists, oil drillers, bankers, military strategists and environmentalists has been warning that peak oil – the decline of global supplies – is just around the corner. We had some strong reasons for doing so: production had slowed, the price had risen sharply, depletion was widespread and appeared to be escalating. The first of the great resource crunches seemed about to strike.

Among environmentalists it was never clear, even to ourselves, whether or not we wanted it to happen. It had the potential both to shock the world into economic transformation, averting future catastrophes, and to generate catastrophes of its own, including a shift into even more damaging technologies, such as biofuels and petrol made from coal. Even so, peak oil was a powerful lever. Governments, businesses and voters who seemed impervious to the moral case for cutting the use of fossil fuels might, we hoped, respond to the economic case.

You see, he made the shocking discovery that the free market and the price mechanism delivers some remarkable results:

A report by the oil executive Leonardo Maugeri, published by Harvard University, provides compelling evidence that a new oil boom has begun. The constraints on oil supply over the past 10 years appear to have had more to do with money than geology. The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that.

Yes, the price goes up, so the economics of production change, with more expensive fields and sources becoming economically viable.

Now George is distressed about this because he is convinced climate change is the new armageddon:

The problem we face is not that there is too little oil, but that there is too much.

In other words, the arguments against consumption of fossil fuels on the basis that they are "running out" are absurd.  The claims that aviation is going to collapse, that private motoring is going to evaporate, that export and tourism driven economies dependent on goods and people travelling long distances need to become autarkic "green economies" are nonsense.  

Many years of industrial, energy and transport policies based on "peak oil" scenarios need to be revisited.   All need to be put on a market footing.   Pursuing unprofitable, unviable renewables with taxpayers' money is fraudulent and wasteful.  Building big new railways on the basis that "people wont be able to get about" without it in an age of "peak oil" is bullshit.

Meanwhile, there ARE environmental arguments about the use of fossil fuels, but those are arguments first and foremost about noxious emissions (which a property rights approach can address), and then about climate change.   However, as I have said before, an appropriate response would be for governments to stop subsidising activities that emit CO2, and get out of the way of those using or developing technologies that offer alternatives.  Let's say "first do no harm".

I can't wait to see how quickly or otherwise the rest of the green movement stops using the "peak oil" rhetoric (they can't admit making a mistake collectively), and starts moving back to the armageddon rhetoric he is using.   A big underground rail loop in Auckland will no longer be about "protecting us from peak oil", but rather "saving the planet".  Hmmm.

Meanwhile, Monbiot's children will be saved being lectured about how we are all doomed since he said "right now I’m not sure how I can look my children in the eyes".  With such self-loathing I'm hardly surprised.

UPDATE:  James Delingpole does a delightful review of Monbiot's previous scaremongering in the Daily Telegraph, and describes him quite appropriately as:

one of those bitter, misanthropic, control-freak kill-joys, green on the outside but red on the inside, the true purpose of whose "environmentalism" is not so much to save the planet as to end Western industrial civilisation.

How long before the Moonbat Monbiot followers Green Party in New Zealand either excommunicates Monbiot or starts showing some contrition, or will it persist in its pursuit of the swivel eyed peak oil doom mongers?

TVNZ7 funeral and braindead TV, where have these people been?

I'm amused at those who chose to hold a "mock funeral" for a little watched state TV channel (TVNZ7) on the basis that without it New Zealand TV would be completely braindead.  As if equating the closure of a TV channel with "death" isn't itself rather childish and unbalanced.   Indeed, quoting the 1.6 million cumulative viewing figure as being meaningful is also rather braindead.  All it means is that at some point, 1.6 million people had the channel on for at least five minutes.  At no point has TVNZ7 had viewing figures representing 1% of all people watching TV at any one point. 

Where were the handful of people who give a damn been?  New Zealand television has been braindead for nigh on 25 years, it all started when then TVNZ CEO Julian Mounter prepared an all out attack against the upcoming TV3, by focusing on adventure, entertainment and by dumbing down national news and current affairs into a simple binary "good vs bad", "us vs them" format.  Lindsay Perigo said so himself not long afterwards.  The focus was on growing the news audience to include the vast bulk of people whose main interest in news is the sport, celebrity "news", disaster and crime stories (so easy to make it a story of victims against adversity) and then some cute kid, animal or quirky piece at the end.

TVNZ7 did not challenge that, it was TVNZ news lite, and had a handful of local programmes with certain high profile commentators who would host debates.  However, viewing figures were abysmal and the standards although higher than TVNZ could hardly be said to have been at the cutting edge of intelligent debate. It didn't present a wide range of incisive opinions with in depth analysis.  National Radio with Pictures it was not (if that is the standard its acolytes were aiming for, though it isn't mine).

However, why the fuss over this channel?

Regional channels did make attempts to have more uplifting TV.  Triangle has done so (excluding Martyn Bradbury) as has CTV over some years, yet the demise of Stratos from nationwide coverage caused far less fuss.  However, it is possible to see more current affairs on free to air TV now than it was 20 years ago, given both TV3 and TVNZ have Sunday morning shows that they did not previously have.

Yet I wont pretend this amounts to anything of particular note.  The reason is simple; regardless of what politicians, pundits, bloggers and journalists think, most people most of the time do not turn on television wanting intellectual stimulus and debate.   Television is an entertainment medium.

Most people, most of the time, don't want the sort of television that the public television advocates want to push.  After all, the Australian ABC has long had audience levels well below that of the big three commercial network oligopoly. The BBC's highest rating shows are indistinguishable from what is on commercial television (talent shows, sit-coms, soaps and sport).

Yet it's not hard to understand the disdain many hold against most TV in NZ, especially given the dominant free to air broadcaster is state-owned.  The bigger question is the chicken and egg one.  Did TVNZ result from a braindead culture of whim worshipping entertainment driven airheads, or is TVNZ in fact part of the problem? (take for granted that TV3 has essentially gone along with it)

I'd argue that TVNZ follows the culture (it wouldn't be a roaring success if it didn't tap into it), but that it also reinforces it.  Not challenging it, not extending people, not trying to go a step above the audience.  Not uplifting,  but in fact embracing and celebrating the "average mediocrity" of "everyday kiwis".  Their interests, their understanding of the world, even how they talk is just replicated by TVNZ, or even lowered.   In fact, my favourite braindead TVNZ moment was in 2000, when a TVNZ "journalist" said the "people of Pyongyang took a day off work to welcome the south Korean President", when Kim Dae Jung undertook his historic visit of north Korea.  Braindead indeed.

This airhead culture predates TVNZ, and is now seen in the regular political discourse of many commentators.  It is seen in the hysterical hyperboles seen lately about part-privatisation, the anti-scientific scaremongering about anything nuclear or anything to do with genetic engineering.  Complex ideas, issues that have more than two perspectives and anything that needs plenty of time to explain doesn't work well on TV after all.

The whole issue about the airhead culture is big in itself, and it's the height of hypocrisy for some of those who embrace shallow, sound bite culture and participate in it, to think that a small TV channel that doesn't challenge any of it is the way to deal with it.  The same people who think paying teachers based on performance is wrong think somehow they are well placed to judge the performance of broadcasters catering to the people those teachers helped churn out.

Yet is there a case to say intelligent TV can help?  Arguably yes.

Of course, intelligent TV is widely available and seen throughout NZ.  It's called Sky.

Sky brought New Zealand 24-hour news in the form of CNN, and more recently multiple options ranging from the BBC, Sky News, France 24, Fox News, CCTV and the new channel for nutty conspiracy theorists who are anti-American - Russia Today.  New Zealanders have never had better access to news about Australia, the USA, UK, Europe, the Arab world, China and Russia.  It also brought multiple dedicated channels for documentaries and then classic movies, arthouse movies and well as the mass market entertainment channels it supplies.

Sky started by paying the government for its first network, a series of UHF frequencies, installed its own transmitters and bought content.  It spent the first seven or eight years losing money, and now gets into around half of New Zealand homes.  People who are prepared to pay for the content it provides, which is not just sport, not just movies, but far more content than state TV can ever provide.  Now we all know Sky succeeds because of sports coverage, but nobody would have predicted what it now brings, thanks to an open market, absence of foreign ownership restrictions and absence of local content quotas.  It isn't just because of the poor standards on other channels, because pay TV thrives in the UK, which has seven state owned national non-commercial TV channels (and which heavily regulates three commercial ones to provide "public service content").

Yet that isn't the point according to public TV advocates.  Indeed, they don't like Sky very much at all.  The Listener, once the state owned magazine with a statutory monopoly on TV listings, has already published an article rallying an unsurprising set of arguments about Sky - with it being foreign owned, owned by News Corp (the "devil incarnate" to much of the left), owning the rights to much compelling TV content, and allegations this is "unfair" against a state owned broadcaster that has existed for over 50 years, 29 years of which was in a monopoly position. 

What isn't braindead about embracing such shallow, xenophobic, anti-big business attitudes? 

You see, the Save TVNZ7 club have moved away from this now, as Clare Curran intimated on Twitter saying:

@publicaddress have pretty much said all of that before. Good to hear Maharey on this though. Things have moved on tho. Time to address Sky

A successful business, which has brought far more choice and intelligence to NZ television that any other broadcaster, is now in the firing line from one of those who asserted that she is against braindead TV.

I'd have more sympathy if those who wanted to Save TVNZ7 had raised money to set up their own TV channel - which of course you can in New Zealand, given that there are no legal barriers to entry and there is a surplus of digital TV frequencies available on Freeview.  It is a matter of money.

The problem is that the Save TVNZ7 people don't want to put their money where their mouths are, they want to make everyone do it.  So when the investors in Sky, have put their money in, have done so with no taxpayer subsidy at all, have been supported by around half of the adult population in subscriptions, you might wonder why they don't like that very much.

I'm resigned to free to air TV in NZ being braindead, because it's what most people want most of the time.  There is better on Sky and some regional broadcasters.  There is more online and that is where the media is heading.

I don't trust politicians to bring me better broadcasting, because I don't trust them to buy me food, clothing or buy me healthcare or a pension.  Those who want better should support what is there now and if so inclined, make their own content.  It is remarkably cheap to do so given digital technology (none of which came from public broadcasters).

The coming years will continue the profound revolution in media that has been going on for the last 20 years, a revolution that is challenging existing free to air broadcasters and newspapers.   The ability to access content from all over the world and publish your own content is transforming media, discourse, journalism and starting to affect politics. 

That is where the future is - not a small state owned TV channel, nor in considering ways to regulate one of the country's most successful broadcasters (particularly when just about any way that a government might consider regulating it will breach the country's WTO commitments on audio-visual services).

UPDATE:  Mark Hubbard has also written well on this.