It seems that senior police officers have told ministers that they need new counter-terrorism powers to stop and search people without having to suspect them of any involvement in crime. Police, including the Met, believe they need these powers to guard against attempted attacks on big events such as the 2012 Olympics.
Hmm. As we know from bitter experience, if we give the police these powers, they will be used – and not necessarily for the purposes for which they were intended. Witness the detention, under anti-terrorism powers, of Walther Wolfgang, who dared heckle the Foreign Secretary at a Labour Party conference, or Sally Cameron who audaciously walked on a path marked as a cycle path in Dundee docks.
I actually think that it's perfectly reasonable for the police to stop us and ask what we are up to, provided they don't make a big bureaucratic deal out of it. A Canadian TV crew I was doing an interview for some months ago asked if they could do some set-up shots of me walking in the street and going into the office. Within one minute of them humping their enormous camera out onto the pavement, a squad car drew up (Westminster is the CCTV capital of the globe) and we were all asked to explain ourselves – and fill out a yellow form giving our name, address, height, sex, eye colour and probably religion.
Talk about rotten public relations. I would have had no problem with this if they had stopped us, asked us what we were doing and requested some ID, and parted with a cheery 'that's perfectly fine, thank you sir, carry on'. I would have been glad to help, and pleased that our friends in blue were so on the ball. But as it is, the bureaucracy of the exercise – though designed to prove that the police are being even handed in whom they stop – actually drives a wedge between the public and the police. It becomes an us and them situation, instead of a situation where we are all on the same side against a real threat.
We all know the police can haul us in and keep us locked up for 28 days without trial. We just don't want them to act like they can. If I believed that the police would use the powers they seek responsibly, I would have little problem over the issue. As it is, I'm not so sure.
The initiative to let people paying by credit card or using cash machines donate to charity shows that the government is looking hard at the politics of 'nudge.' Properly implemented, it should not trick people onto a path they would not otherwise have taken.
Some, mostly on the left, have talked about requiring smokers to take out a licence, or of a weekly limit on the units of alcohol people may consume. This is simple coercion, and has nothing to do with nudge. The aim of nudge is to make life easier by presenting opportunities, not about making life difficult for those who perversely take choices the state disapproves of.
Some in the medical profession want the default position on organ donation to be a presumption of consent, with the implication that your body belongs to the state unless you go to the trouble of specifically saying otherwise. This again is not nudging people but using their inertia to take them where they might not choose to go.
Nudge is about altering the choice architecture, as Thaler and Sunstein put it. One of their examples concerns organ donation. Roughly two-thirds of people approve of it, but only about a quarter sign up for it. Some states now ask the question when people apply for a driver's licence. They do not presume consent, but simply ask the applicant to tick yes or no. About two-thirds tick yes, roughly the number who approve of it. The aim is to present people with an easy opportunity to express a choice.
It is, of course, open to abuse. People will clamour for what they call a nudge to stop people from doing things they disapprove of. Already Nanny State is looking for ways to make it difficult for people to do what they want to. They will try to use opt-outs to coerce people by their own inertia. Nudge, done properly, is about making choices easier, not harder.
Giving people the opportunity to make charitable donations when they use plastic cards is a good idea, and will probably increase charitable donations. The banks and local business communities should ensure this does not exclusively favour the big name fashionable charities, but includes worthwhile efforts that are smaller scale or more locally based.
This is commendable. But watch out for any attempt to use your inertia to steer you. Freedom should be the default.
My true love sent to me: two turtle doves. In the original it seems that the turtle doves represent the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Perhaps today we should think of them as the coalition leaders, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, who seem to bill and coo constantly over their partnership.
But there was no love lost between pigeon fanciers and HM Revenue & Customs a couple of years ago, when HMRC left pigeon racing out of the official list of sports, and petitioned the Queen, who is patron of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA), to get this ruling reversed. What ruffled their feathers was that premises used for 'sports' are exempt from the rates, a local-authority tax. Under MHRC proposals to introduce rates on sports clubs and village halls, sports groups can formally apply for dispensation from HMRC for 80% relief and then to their local authority for a 20% reduction. So pigeon fanciers faced paying rates on their sheds, even though officially recognized sports such as yoga, arm-wrestling and trampolining were exempt.
Julian Assange's fate is inevitable. It started with his attempted kidnapping by the Swedish state. No matter that under Sweden's enthusiastic rape laws it seems that even if your sexual activity is consensual, you can be put in the slammer should you forget to give your partner a twenty-minute talk on the fundamentals of human reproduction, or neglect to make a nice cup of tea afterwards. No matter that Assange's lawyers insist that he has given every cooperation to the Swedish police in their investigations. It's just that Assange likes to move around for his own security, while the Swedish authorities find it more convenient to have him in one place while investigations continue.
Well now he is rooted to one place, thanks to the wonders of GPS technology and Robert Peel's finest. Which also makes it much easier for any other country with a grudge to slap and extradition order on him. Luckily for the United States, it couldn't be easier to extradite someone from the UK. Under a post-9/11 agreement between the UK and US, terrorist suspects can be 'fast tracked' to America. It took the US Congress some time to reciprocate and consent to send people the other way (and they did that only when it looked as if Parliament might actually renege on the one-sided agreement), and to agree to actually provide some grounds for suspicion before they demanded British residents should be hauled off to US jurisdiction. But let that pass. The fast-track system has been used many times – almost always to extradite businesspeople, like the NatWest Three, whom the US has suspected of fraud, even if the offence was not committed in the US.
Once you are hauled off through this judicial imperialism, you are sunk. You will be held in custody, and your bank accounts frozen, so you can't even mount a defence. You will be hit with the most severe charges the US can muster, such as 'racketeering', originally designed to get mafia members jailed for thirty years and more, but commonly used as a threat so that you will avoid the risk of being convicted plead guilty to some lesser charge, notching up a 'success' for the prosecutor. This is what passes for justice in the US.
Assange may be extradited – no, inevitably will be extradited – to the US on some charge like conspiracy to steal secret documents. But once on US soil, the full might of America's anti-terrorist laws will be thrown against him. Maybe that is right, since his actions – like publishing lists of sensitive potential terrorist targets – put US lives at risk; but some people might think there's a big difference between that and actually blowing up skyscrapers full of people. Whatever the rights and wrongs, the UK authorities will meekly hand him over. They would do the same for you and me. But this is what passes for justice in the UK.
It’s a pity politicians rarely discover their zeal for individual liberty while in power. Bob Ainsworth's call yesterday for the legalization of all drugs allows him to join the club of politicians whose conversions came after it stopped mattering. By waiting until the twilight of his career he's wasted his chance to do the right thing on drugs.
Ainsworth is right that drug prohibition is about as effective as alcohol prohibition was – not at all – and that the War on Drugs is exceptionally harmful to drug users and society in general. Many point to the damage caused to countries like Mexico and Guinea-Bissau by the War on Drugs, but even at home it makes the drug problem worse by an order of magnitude.
Counterintuitively, the worst thing about the War on Drugs is how much it drives up the cost of drugs. Many addicts live in poverty and commit crimes to pay for the expensive drugs they crave, but that expense is a direct consequence of the government’s prohibition laws. Fears that drug legalization would lead to people becoming addicted and be driven to crime to pay for their addictions ignore this.
Some might not like the thought of cheaper drugs, but if it means less crime then it's not really anybody else's business. And nearly everybody who has looked at this issue from a ‘harm reduction’ standpoint agrees that the prohibition laws are the worst possible option for drug users and society.
Furthermore, the Telegraph report linked to above says that drug-related crime costs the economy £13bn every year, and most crime lords make their money from drug trafficking. If you legalized drugs and prostitution, it’s hard to see how organized crime would make any money at all.
Bob Ainsworth’s intervention is welcome and might encourage other politicians to come out of the closet in their open-mindedness about drug legalization. But in waiting until his opinion is largely irrelevant and – a cynic might suggest – using this to grab some attention for himself as his profile wanes, he has thrown away a chance to be brave and effect real change. An anti-prohibition speech an ex-minister might be interesting, but from the minister responsible for crime prevention it might have been decisive. Still, better late than never.
Forest, the lobby group which defends the right to smoke, has put together the above video criticizing the EU's proposals to try to disrupt smokers' lives by banning cigarette displays in shops and, incredibly, introduce plain packaging rules to cigarettes. The question of whether you enjoy smoking or not is irrelevant – what matters is that adults are allowed to make their own decisions without meddling from the government. Unfortunately the EU seems to have no regard for civil liberties – their consultation document, outlining the arguments for and against smoking restrictions, doesn't mention these concerns at all.
The video features Eamonn Butler and other liberal voices, and is linked up with Forest's petition against the EU measures here.
The government wants to increase tax on beers with more than 7.5% ABV (alcohol by volume). Despite the fact that this will affect only 0.5% of total alcohol sales, the measures are somehow supposed to discourage the supposed anti-social behaviour and alcohol abuse associated with strong lagers. Yet again, higher taxes seem to be the government’s answer to every question.
The measures are being introduced after health and homelessness groups raised their concerns over how accessible strong lagers were becoming. It may be right that these beers do create problems for a small number of people but does that mean the government should intervene and protect all consumers? No. Even if you concede that the government has a role to play in shaping people’s drinking habits, raising tax on these products will do little to affect the problem of binge drinking or alcohol abuse amongst the homeless. People who choose to drink purely to get drunk will simply switch to spirits or ciders, which are already popular amongst the groups that the tax is supposed to target.
What the government hasn’t considered is that those who choose to drink these beverages are not always guilty of such stereotypes. There are some who enjoy Imperial stouts and Belgian beer who will be penalised by this new duty purely because of the choice of drink they prefer. Fans of Belgian trappist beers don’t strike me as the problem demographic in binge drinking. Those who prefer wine or spirits the duty rates will have no problem.
Despite the fact that this tax will aim to influence people's behaviour, it will have limited impact. With hardly any pubs or clubs selling beers over 7.5% ABV, it won’t do anything to binge drinking on our streets. For those who the government are trying to protect from themselves, it will simply result in them switching to other forms of alcohol, spirits or cider, to satisfy their wants.
The increasingly virtual world in which we live is creating a domain where the boundaries of law are unclear. There is currently a consultation going on to see whether granting the serious and organised crime agency (SOCA) the power to close domains which they consider to have criminal links. Once again, it seems that the police are taking the heavy-handed approach without any consideration for people’s right to free speech and private property.
Under the current proposals, there is no requirement for judicial services to be consulted before the sites are shut down. It is clear that the issue surrounding the legality of certain Internet sites is complicated, but that is no excuse for bulldozing the rights of those who legitimately use them. The maxim that people are innocent until proven guilty should have no less relevance when it comes to people’s digital property than their tangible property. By granting power to the police to violate digital property rights, we are moving towards a more controlling state.
Several lawyers specializing in information technology have stated that such a move is “deeply concerning”. Without a judicial review, the police hold all the power to decide which sites are legal and which are not. Simply looking at the police’s targeting of photographers with anti-terror legislation shows that they cannot be trusted to operate in good faith – the watchers need to be watched. In the free society in which we are supposed to live, police cannot be given control over which websites are and are not allowed to exist. Complicated though this issue may be, criminality on the Internet cannot be solved by giving the police the power to request that websites be shut down without judicial oversight.
One of the more positive outcomes of Ed Miliband's election as Labour leader is that his social liberalism is beginning to manifest itself in party policy. He made it very clear during the campaign that he thought the previous government had gone too far with its assault on civil liberties. Now Ed Balls, amongst the most authoritarian and statist members of the shadow cabinet, is admitting the same: he has indicated that Labour may back moves to reduce the period of detention without trial from 28 to 14 days. He has also dropped any calls for the use of ID cards, although the position on the use of CCTV will remain the same.
So what? Well, the mark of a successful government is not one that enacts bold reforms, but one that makes those reforms politically irreversible. The easiest way to do this is to achieve cross-party consensus on reform, or else cause a tectonic shift in political debate, making certain realms unelectable. New Labour emerged as a response to Thatcher and Major – it dropped the more economically illiberal elements of Labour policy in order to become electable. Likewise, the Conservatives have had to become increasingly socially and culturally liberal in response to the Blair years.
Although the consensus may be shifting in favour of civil liberties, we must ensure that it shifts far enough. As Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch rightly points out, the debate must now move towards whether we want to go lower than 14 days. Shifting the political tectonic plates takes incremental change, but the shift must not end with what an ostensibly liberal Labour party will accept – the defence of civil liberties has the potential to become the coalition government's most enduring legacy if it takes truly bold steps to secure them.
One of the more positive outcomes of Ed Miliband's election as Labour leader is that his social liberalism is beginning to manifest itself in party policy. He made it very clear during the campaign that he thought the previous government had gone too far with its assault on civil liberties. Now Ed Balls, amongst the most authoritarian and statist members of the shadow cabinet, is admitting the same: he has indicated that Labour may back moves to reduce the period of detention without trial from 28 to 14 days. He has also dropped any calls for the use of ID cards, although the position on the use of CCTV will remain the same.
So what? Well, the mark of a successful government is not one that enacts bold reforms, but one that makes those reforms politically irreversible. The easiest way to do this is to achieve cross-party consensus on reform, or else cause a tectonic shift in political debate, making certain realms unelectable. New Labour emerged as a response to Thatcher and Major – it dropped the more economically illiberal elements of Labour policy in order to become electable. Likewise, the Conservatives have had to become increasingly socially and culturally liberal in response to the Blair years.
Although the consensus may be shifting in favour of civil liberties, we must ensure that it shifts far enough. As Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch rightly points out, the debate must now move towards whether we want to go lower than 14 days. Shifting the political tectonic plates takes incremental change, but the shift must not end with what an ostensibly liberal Labour party will accept – the defence of civil liberties has the potential to become the coalition government's most enduring legacy if it takes truly bold steps to secure them.
It seems that senior police officers have told ministers that they need 
My true love sent to me: two turtle doves. In the original it seems that the turtle doves represent the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Perhaps today we should think of them as the coalition leaders, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, who seem to bill and coo constantly over their partnership.
It’s a pity politicians rarely discover their zeal for individual liberty while in power. Bob Ainsworth's call yesterday for the legalization of all drugs allows him to join the club of politicians whose conversions came after it stopped mattering. By waiting until the twilight of his career he's wasted his chance to do the right thing on drugs.
The government wants to increase tax on beers with more than 7.5% ABV (alcohol by volume). Despite the fact that this will affect only 
The increasingly virtual world in which we live is creating a domain where the boundaries of law are unclear. There is currently a 
One of the more positive outcomes of Ed Miliband's election as Labour leader is that his social liberalism is beginning to manifest itself in party policy. He made it very clear during the campaign that he thought the previous government had gone too far with its assault on civil liberties. Now Ed Balls, amongst the most authoritarian and statist members of the shadow cabinet, is