Full Court Press

So what do we all think of the Leveson report? Or perhaps more importantly, what do we think about what the important people and politicians of various colours are saying about the Leveson report? That's the key point really, seeing as not many of us will have read the 2,000 page dossier.

I did however, watch Hugh Grant's disarmingly charming performance in his new rom com on Channel 4 - "Taking on the Tabloids". I thought the initial storyline was good - principled, slightly rough around the edges but good looking nonetheless, foppish bloke in underdog struggle against big corporation. Unfortunately the love interest curiously never made it into the frame. I assumed she would work for said corporation; they'd initially hate each other but realise love is more important than their political differences and live happily ever after. Like the Coalition. But that didn't happen. He just talked about the press for ages. Some good stuff though.

Hugh and I agree that there's a difference between "in the public interest" and "of interest to the public", thought I don't know if he signs up to my idea that if you effectively make a contract with the press and those who read it that you make your money by their interest in your life (the Kerry Katonas of this world, for example), you have given up some of your rights to privacy. A Venn Diagram here would be most helpful, but I can't be arsed to draw one.

Before you get too tetchy, the long and the short of it is that if you are Jane Q. Taxpayer, the Sun or whoever has no right to publish photos of you topless on a beach on holiday. Yes it is a public place, but by living a non-public life you have a right to things that you put in the relative public space not being broadcast to the world. If you make money as a pop star or somesuch, and you are on the same beach, I reckon it's fair play for the Paps to snap you pups. This is because you put yourself in an overtly public place having got everyone interested in you.

It doesn't stretch to anyone naked anywhere (like for example the poor old Duchess of Cambridge) - if telescopic lenses etc are required to see you, you have gone to enough trouble to remove yourself from the public eye. That has to be then respected as private. And it's not just nudity, but details about your lives etc too. Private is private for everyone, but what is fair game from what is public is down to your 'contract type' and behaviour. It's a shades of grey argument (no, not that like that) which I covered in far more detail here.

So what do I think about press regulation? I'm not a fan. I would also point to the fact that most of the things we think are terrible that the press did were illegal already. Hacking phones is illegal. You don't need new statutes. Use the existing ones. The privacy law idea is always going to be hard to delineate. My 'common sense' approach might make sense (or not) but I imagine it would be hard to enshrine in law.

The press does some pretty despicable things, and there certainly appear to have been very few heads to have rolled, and often not the right ones. I would love to see a better watchdog rather than editors sitting in judgement of themselves. Putting the cat in charge of the cream rarely ends well - just look at the ongoing farce with MP's and IPSA as they continue to stick their snouts in the trough until they are found out (at which point they will apologise for our error in interpretation of their honest mistake and add some transparency that might not have been there before).

But I do not think statutory press regulation is right. Hague makes a very good point that it would do us no favours when trying to take the moral high ground overseas. You could go on forever with examples of when some aberration allowed Parliament to legislate at the thin end of the wedge with only the best of intentions but over time we wandered slowly to the thick end. Income tax started as a one-off levy to pay for the Napoleonic Wars - we all enjoy beating the French but this is taking it a little far (a childish example but you get my drift). Press regulation, as they say, is like pregnancy, and you can't be a little bit pregnant.

But what I really wanted to talk about, partly because I don't have an answer to the press problem; just a gut feeling that statutory regulation is wrong, will be a slippery slope, will have myriad unforseen negative ramifications and is in most cases unnecessary due to existing law, is who is talking about it.

I thought it was brilliant that Ed Milliwho has recently become clairvoyant. He didn't even need to read Leveson's report before he knew, he just knew, that everything in it would be just perfect. Nope, Ed wasted no time working out that Leveson would most likely suggest some form of statutory regulation that would be as unpalatable to the Tories as it would be impractical to apply. So he committed the Labour party (traditional defenders of liberty and freedom, no?) to supporting everything Leveson said and promise to enact any and all recommendations made. Why? Two reasons:

1. He doesn't have to make those decisions as he is not in power so he can make grandiose statements of intent safe in the knowledge they will simply remain just as that (traditional Lib Dem think).

2. It will make for discomfort for Big Dave.

Yup, the bit about Leveson I'm happy to say I have a view on is the behaviour of Red Ed, his party and many Lib Dems. No debate on what is a crucial political topic that could define an entire era, no sensible discourse in Parliament over potentially eradicating 300 years of press freedom. Nope, just political positioning for short term points scoring. One can only hope the British public are intelligent enough to see this and they are punished at the polls. My magic 8 ball suggests the outlook for that is gloomy.

Ed is also one of those who throws all his weight behind people like the McCanns, Christopher Jefferies, Hugh Grant - those who have suffered at the hands of the press. And they have. I should put that front and centre. I have the utmost sympathy for this category of people. I lamented in these pages the court of public opinion's riding roughshod over due process when Christopher Jefferies was essentially convicted of Jo Yeates' murder by the press before he was found totally innocent. But their very intimate involvement with press regulation, or lack of it, if anything makes them totally the wrong people to have at the forefront of statutory legislation.

We put people on trial before an unbiased jury of their peers and subject to the sentencing of a qualified, independent judge for a reason. We don't let the plaintiff adjudicate guilt nor set the tariff. We don't do an eye for an eye. This is not to say that people touched by something are not ever able to be impartial, but it certainly means they are unlikely to be.

People who's loved ones die from a particular disease will often fundraise solely for the charity representing the fight against it; it's human nature. I give more to fighting Alzheimer's and cancer because they are the ones closest to my heart. It doesn't mean that I'm a bad person, or that fighting cerebral palsey is not a noble cause. It just means I probably shouldn't be put in charge of the budget for  disease research for the whole UK: I'm likely to be biased.

People clearly have views - that's fine. MPs might feel one way or another about different diseases or nuclear deterrents or whatever. So might judges. They are expected to put aside their subjective views and examine everything objectively, from the point of view of their constituents and the country. If we think they are sucking at this, we vote them out. Pretty simple.

But the fact remains that those most affected by an issue will in general find it hardest to be objective about it. Which means they shouldn't be the people influencing law. So I say no to Sarah's Law, Megan's Law, Madeleine's Law or any others. Not what is in them - they have fine intent and may be perfectly good pieces of legislation (I am not an authority), but I think composing their content is better left to those professionally obliged to be impartial and experienced in the process of law-making. Is that crazy? I think not. If you would like all of that summarised in a much funnier 1 minute and 42 seconds - listen to Mitchell and Webb's view on it here. I suppose I should have just put that bit at the top and be done with it...

The Limited Benefit of Children...

I've been storing up a follow-up post on the issue of child benefit - much of my previous work is here. I'll do it quickly because I don't see the point of repeating everything ad infinitum. The crux of the matter is whilst you have a right to have as many children as your body will allow (note that it is not a  right to have a perfectly functioning body, including reproductive ability), should the state (by which we mean the taxpayer) pay for all kids you wish to produce?

This is the argument raised last week by IDS with the proposal of the two child limit on benefits. There are various caveats, exemptions and anomalies to consider. Not least, the limit of two is one just being proposed as an idea. It is likely that it would only affect newcomers, grandparenting in those already beyond the threshold. I could imagine complications when talking about families with multiple parents - whose kids count, who gets the money etc. Triplets are rare but you can see the problem they might raise. Nobody says this would be easy. Nobody says it would bring in a vast amount of money either. The point that IDS is trying to make (and will probably fail to knowing the Tory party's failure to score open-goal policy wins and the predictable left wing media hysteria) is that the Big Society is about fairness, about responsibility, about one's own actions, not just about how much you can take.

I'm, as you'd expect, with him on this. And so should almost everyone. The majority of people in the country work, pay taxes and to one extent or other, budget their money. Asking them for support for a policy that asks for those being given free money (and welfare is just that) to have to live within their means like they do, or do something in return should be an easy win. This could be limiting to £20,000 net the contribution to rent (which the average worker on about £26,000 gross could never afford) gratis from the Government. Or it could be asking those claiming unemployment benefit to do some voluntary work to break the unemployment cycle and put them on a path to work. Or it could be asking them to pay for their own children if they want to have lots.

But the country is apparently not all behind this rather sensible idea. Nope - and you may forgive my lack of surprise - I heard on Any Questions on Radio 4 quite the opposite. It turns out this policy is one designed to give children cancer. And to force them to spend time with Jimmy Savile. Or something like that. I definitely came away from the programme with the idea this was a deliberately cruel policy designed solely to punish children. Cock. A load of it.

The argument put forward (and raucously applauded by the bus loads of morons the BBC source for an audience) by Dr Katherine Rake of the Family and Parenting Institute was that cuts in child benefits are unfair because they fall disproportionately on the poor. Yup. Because rich people don't generally get welfare; poorer people do. They just pay for it. It is the exact argument used by Nick Clegg and any of his lefty loon pals in the Labour or Lib Dems when any cut of any size or shape is devised which might remove one penny from the purse of someone who is of a financially lower status. They always say "same old Tories, looking to take it first from the poorest, and never from the richest", or to use his favourite phrase "from those with the broadest shoulders".

What Nick et al never mention is that those with the broadest shoulders are already paying a lot. We have started with them. It's called progressive taxation. Those with broad shoulders are paying massive truckloads of money. Dr Rake, and countless others like her, maintain that taking money away from welfare is de facto taking money away from poor children. Yes. To an extent. But it doesn't mean any cut in welfare is punishing children. Poor people often have children. Like rich people. And all the people in between. If you make any cut in welfare you are removing money from many families with children. This simple and obvious fact cannot be allowed to be trotted out as if it is proof that all welfare cuts are evil just because naturally the parents of some children will have been given less money. An increase in the top rate of tax was not touted as a punishment on the children of wealthier homes - but money was being removed (even worse than just less given, surely) from the homes of children. Child cruelty no? Of course not. Just selective lefty bullshit about which children matter and where cuts 'fall'.

If we double the welfare bill overnight (to about £400 billion, or what would then be about 1/2 of all spending) and then took a single pound off, that cut would fall 'disproportionately' on poor families. That fact does not make it a bad policy decision. It is simply because they receive the benefits that others have generally paid for. How they use that money is up to them. There is generally more than enough of it there to keep children fit and well. Just because some people will misuse their handouts and thus punish their own children does not mean we should never decrease the amount of money we give them (see this argument over state-aid for the poor children of nuclear-equipped and space-age countries). It is a senseless argument that the left are yet to confront. Mainly because the right seem to be struggling to make them do so and put it in the right terms.

Cutting one's coat according to one's cloth means adjusting what you spend based on what you can afford. Both Dr Rake and Charles Clarke mentioned they agree with the policy, but when asked how they pay for the Labour-induced deficit, they predictably trot out the same old leftie mantra of not properly defending ourselves by not renewing our nuclear deterrent, or raising more taxes from their favourite golden goose - 'the rich'. This is not cutting one's coat according to one's cloth. The point is that we are spending too much. We need to cut spending. We need to cut spending. WE NEED TO CUT SPENDING. This is CUTTING one's coat appropriately.

We do not have enough money (cloth) as a Government to pay for everything we currently have chosen to spend it on. We clearly have no chance of overnight increasing our tax take by 15-20% to match our spending 'requirements'. So we need to decrease what we spend (our coat). Welfare is a fucking enormous bill. The biggest in fact. It was never intended in its present form even by the most left wing supporters of its creation. It must be reduced. It is costing every working person in this country nearly 1/3 of all the money they hand to the Government in taxation. It is as unhelpful as it is disingenuous of the Opposition (inside the Coalition and outside) to suggest that it shouldn't be reduced - and their reasoning of "not punishing poor children" is as incorrect as it is corrosive.

What is being proposed is a move towards a sensible, affordable rebalancing where welfare stops being a comfortable lifestyle choice. The sooner the Tories can properly explain to the population of this country that cutting one's coat according to one's cloth is about budgeting what to do with what you reasonably have rather than about working out where you can get more money to pay for unaffordable idealogically-driven policies, the sooner we might have a chance of returning to being a country of producers, not just receivers.

Thank You For Giving (Did You Realise You Were?)

Well it has been a couple of days since I blogged so I shall ease myself back into it with what I consider a pretty simple topic - overseas aid. Britain's overseas aid programme ran at a shade under £8 billion in 2009/10. The Coalition has pledged to keep increasing that to £11.5 billion over the next four years. Now the concept of aid, domestic or international, is a good one - nobody should dispute this. It is, however, true that some pretty large chunks of world international aid does not end up in the right hands. So there is the ongoing issue of implementation of aid programmes, but that's not what I'm going to concentrate on today.

Today, I'm going to talk about where our aid goes, specifically considering the richer recipient countries. The big ones are probably well known, because they've received a bit of attention already on precisely this topic. On 2009/10 figures, Britain gave India some £330 million, China £35 million in international aid. I think this is wrong.

Now there are a couple of obvious canned responses; "but there are still very poor people in those countries" being the most obvious. How do we counter this then? There are some very poor people in the UK too. So why don't we get international aid? In my mind it is because the very concept of aid is not being adhered to when you give money to a country who have a space programme. Likewise, you don't give aid to a country that runs a surplus year on year, especially not when everyone else (including the donor countries) are running deficits.

Those who beat the drum of international aid would do well to realise examples like these go a long way to discrediting the whole system. It is hard to explain to the man on the street in the UK why the NHS is having to make billions of savings yet Britain is giving nearly £60 million in aid to India, the world's eleventh largest economy to pay for health services. Or why we are having to look for savings in education when we are giving China, the world's second largest economy, nearly £10 million to bolster their education spending.

I have no doubt that the poor of China and India can well do with an extra £30 million combined spend on HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and education, but that is not the point. They are incredibly rich countries who are choosing to use their resources not to help their own poor but to widen the gap between rich and poor. It is as simple as that. The philosophy of giving money to someone who refuses to spend what they have on the right things is without a doubt one of the reasons behind our cripplingly expensive yet utterly ineffective welfare system. The international community should be pressuring these countries to spend their money more wisely - clearly it is not working to simply make up for their basic shortfalls whilst allowing them to grandstand with not just strong economies and nuclear weapons, but the temerity even of an international aid programme of their own.

The problem comes when you remove money and the previous recipient country refuses to fill the gap. This is made all the more difficult when dealing with non-interactive Governments (say, North Korea). So we are left with a moral dilemma. Do you remove the aid and hope for the best, or continue to pour money into rich countries with interesting moral compasses? The answer probably lies somewhere in between, with the onus being on the international community to exert pressure on these countries to wean themselves off aid. This will only begin to happen, though, if we are willing to look at the situation as it is and realise it is wrong. I wonder if anyone is brave enough to stand up and say it in Government though, knowing the predictable backlash that awaits anyone who asks for entrance into a dialogue over anything the liberal left hold dear, no matter how deludedly. The Coalition pledge suggests not in this Parliament - we'll have to see who wins the next election to find out if the Tories don't understand this one, don't care, or are just picking their fights. I hope the latter, but there's probably more chance of India putting a man on the moon. Oh, wait...