'Nother Solent

Department of Health recycles paper shock.

What a pointless non-story this is: Petition to save ward dumped in skip. "The Department of Health today promised an investigation after a petition to save a hospital's children's ward was dumped in a skip," says the Daily Mail, and goes on to say how shocked all the signers were and how contrite the authorities were and how disappointing the entire situation is.

What were they meant to do with it, bury it with full military honours? Or keep it lovingly in the basement along with every other petition, letter, memo, report or minute ever sent their way, like an old granny with a drawer containing every Christmas card she has ever received? I've worked in the civil service. If the DoH tried that it would soon be overwhelmed by paper and cease to function...

My goodness, it has only this minute come to me how monstrous the behaviour of the Department has been. Don't let them rest until they change their wicked ways.

Holding firm against the shifting winds of doctrine.

Not the pope. Harry from Harry's Place. Edited highlights from a comments thread from a post about one of the greatest strangeness of these ill-starred days: Tariq Ali, Liberal Democrat:

Just out of interest Harry, what were your politics in 1972? were you a member of the Labour party? did you believe in supporting the US army that was bringing "democracy" to Vietnam at the time?
If your political positions have not changed since 1972 this post is fair enough, if they have you are opening yourself up to a charge of inconsistancy.
Posted by: sonic at April 21, 2005 11:30 PM

Sonic,
You have gloriously missed the point.
Once again.
Posted by: Harry at April 22, 2005 12:25 AM

Of course in 1972 I opposed the Vietnam War.
All us two year olds did.
Posted by: Harry at April 22, 2005 12:26 AM

Position on public breastfeeding consistent.
Posted by: tim at April 22, 2005 12:31 AM

Are you

unskilled and unaware of it? This is a paper about how the inability to know when one is incompetent is a major part of incompetence.

Frightening stuff.

Those people who mocked Donald Rumsfeld's "But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know" did not know as much as they thought they did.

UPDATE: A helpful person has written in to say that the link provided gives horrible formatting with the Mozilla Firefox browser. Here is one that doesn't.

They don't have lawyers in Oz.

The authors of these quotes, officials (we are assured) of an unnamed Australian tourist organisation, are touchingly devoted to the promotion of harmonious relations between the different parts of the Anglosphere.

Here's a Samizdata post all about Jim Bennett's The Anglosphere Challenge.

Lots of fuss

about the new pope having been a member of the Hitler Youth at the age of 14. Big deal. By then it was compulsory. And he was, like, 14.

In point of fact Britain came close to making membership of a youth organisation compulsory during the war.

"A year later it seemed as if the State was about to take a further step - compelling young people to belong to youth organizations. This was to be the first stage in the introduction of pre-military training. However, the practical and ideological questions were such that, the resulting Circular 1577 (Board of Education, 1941) simply required all young people aged 16 and 17 to register with their LEA. Young people were also to be interviewed and advised as to how they might spend their leisure time and of the local opportunities for them to give voluntary help to the war effort. This was usually done under the auspices of local youth committees. At first there was an attendance rate nationally of around 70 per cent. But as people began to realize the interview was not compulsory, the rate dropped, and the system was gradually dismantled as pressure for a paramilitary training scheme disappeared."

I don't mean to minimise the vast gulf between making people join the Hitler Youth and thinking about making them join the Boy Scouts. But, given the deeply statist climate of opinion throughout and just after the war, I'm sometimes amazed that we in Britain did as well as we did in maintaining our liberties. Rather puts the present generation to shame, doesn't it?

UPDATE: Interesting Jerusalem Post story which I found via Random Jottings, Ratzinger a Nazi? Don't believe it. He wasn't a hero. But (have I mentioned this?) he was only 14.

ANOTHER RANDOM THOUGHT: Why is everyone so much more worked up about his having been in the Hitler Youth than in the Wehrmacht? Maybe it's because he eventually deserted from the army, or maybe because everyone knows that you couldn't say "no thanks" to an invitation to join the Wehrmacht. Maybe it's just the vivid mental image that the words "Hitler Youth" call up.

I am a little bit sozzled, actually.

It is a mistake to bolg while you are sozzled. Last time I did it I produced a post to which - gosh even when sozzled I can still say to which in that posh way, good for me - I am far too ashamed to link, in which (good for me again) I linked to a news story which I then described in terms which bore no resemblance whatsoever to reality.

Anyway, even though I am a pretty ropey sort of Catholic I raise a glass to Pope Benedict, seems a pretty good egg, and Cathilocosm genererally. Anyway.

Short Primers on Free Trade versus Fair Trade.

Tim Worstall has written an article for the Globalisation Institute called "Trade is what humans do." He also writes that if I can point him in the direction of a specific Christian Aid advert he'll have a go at refuting it, and adds "No charge :-)" That would be cool, if you can find a moment. I'll fish out that copy of the Guardian and post it in the next few days.

He also points out this interesting blog by a development professional who is not a complete free trader, "Owen's Musings." Owen talks about Christian Aid's advert here.

Prompted by the same impulse my regular correspondent A.R.C. has composed some arguments addressed to Christians:

'Make Poverty History' is Christian Aid's stated goal. Christians who want to make poverty history must be prepared to learn from the history of poverty; what causes it and what cures it. Christians know that greed is a sin, and that sacrificing it to the needs of the poor is a duty. However we also know that the ultimate sin is not greed but pride. We must be prepared to sacrifice our pride to the needs of the poor, not just our comfort. Sacrificing pride in this case means sacrificing prejudices.

Addressing that demand to Christian Aid's leaders might surprise them; are they not often denouncing prejudice? Alas, that may be just the trouble; those who make a habit of denouncing others' prejudice may be least able to see their own as the problem. There is a humble way of helping the third world: try out ideas and honestly observe which work and which fail. There is an arrogant way: decide that your idea must be right and don't waste time reviewing it; if the recipients are absurd enought to become still poorer, blame something else and serve up more of the same. And there is a selfish way: discuss the plight of the poor in the third world with one eye on the domestic political debate, half-consciously keeping that eye averted from any symptoms of poverty that do not serve your side of the argument. The leaders of Christian Aid claim the moral high ground but do not appear to be guarding against these moral dangers.

Since the end of colonialism, we have acquired decades of evidence of what works and what fails in the third world. Sometimes the evidence approaches as near to experimental proof as can be hoped for in the complex real world. Consider the famous bet between Nkrumah, ruler of Ghana, and Felix Houphouet-Boigny, ruler of the Ivory Coast as to whose policies would promote growth. Nkrumak was an enemy of globalisation, Houphouet-Boigny its friend. Ghana began well in the lead at independence, and ended well behind two decades later, a natural result of its experiencing steady year-on-year shrinkage of GNP while the Ivory Coast experienced steady growth. What does Christian Aid say to the many examples like this? As in any real world case, of course, one can always find other factors at work, but does it not trouble them that one cannot so easily find counter-examples?

The evidence alone should suffice: the history of the post-colonial third world tells a clear enough story of countries where poverty has lessened and countries where it has grown, and of their governments' policies. It may help some to see that free trade is also not merely theologically defensible, it is more theologically attractive. 'Fair traders' seem to believe that trade and wealth creation is a zero-sum game, where what one gains is taken from another, so that only power can ensure that the poor get their share. But Christians have no business believing that creating prosperity is naturally a zero-sum game, as if God had chosen to create a world where human transactions were naturally a matter of dog-eat-dog. Likewise, while we all often fail to return good for evil in everyday life, we surely believe God did not create a world in which refusing to copy wrongdoing was naturally an unwise choice. Thus we should have no problem with Adam Smith's argument that if others practice unfree trade, it is still not economically advantageous to practice it ourselves.

In short, there is no Christian reason to hesitate over evidence for the benefits of free trade, and nothing suprising in the fact that free trade was the universal creed of British politics when Christian belief was also more universally professed here than today. Thus the obligation is very much on Christian Aid to expose (by explanation, not mere assertion) the injustices that require a countervailing 'fair-trade' power to be exerted by governments. They should also explain why we should not expect this power to become merely another injustice in a world that already has plenty.

Perhaps Christian Aid could do so by pointing to the E.U.'s tariff barriers. Blocking agricultural imports from the third world, and dumping the resultant surpluses on them from time to time at subsidised prices, is certainly a direct exercise of first-world power. An African country, denied agricultural trade, can hardly switch to selling us high-tech goods. Subsidies that our taxpayers only grumble about may be devastating to its much smaller economy. I have often heard the aid parable, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life." I would add, "Give him a market for fish and you don't just feed him for life; you give him the chance of a life he chooses." The E.U. denies him that market.

Here above all, Christian Aid's strangely counter-intuitive reasoning defeats its purpose. Every eurocrat can put hand on heart and say, "But I was never guilty of free trade." What chance has a movement against free trade of defeating this powerful vested interest? What chance has it even of avoiding helping it continue?

As for the slogans of Christian Aid's campaign, what strikes me chiefly about them is that they are not very charitable. 'They used to call it slavery, now they call it free trade', says one. Another compares free trade to a tsunami. Such words show little awareness that those who trade freely with the third world might honestly think they do people there good rather than harm by letting them buy and sell without tariffs. A Christian charity should practice the virtue it preaches, in word as well as deed.

Do they believe that free traders cannot honestly think this? I find Christian Aid's stance so strange that I have a hard time accepting that they came by it entirely honestly, entirely uninfluenced by more domestic political prejudices. Just how proper is this suspicion and just how forcefully should I, as a Christian, present it? Should I imitate the style of Christain Aid or should I restrain myself? Of course, as with believing in free trade even in a world of tariffs, I can believe that more courteous argument will also prove more effective argument.

ARC's piece is aimed at a different audience from what I had in mind. That's no criticism and no problem - this isn't a zero sum game, either! The first line is eminently quotable.

A coda to a coda.

On March 27 1945 the last V2 rocket of World War II landed on Hughes Mansions, a tenement block in Stepney, East London. At that time many Jews lived in the East End and most of the 134 people killed were Jewish. If Hitler ever got to hear of that perhaps it cheered him up in the bunker. But that coda to his symphony of hate now has a little coda of its own.

Last Sunday the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland went to Hughes Mansions to mourn his grandmother and his mother's aunt, both among those killed by the bomb.

People were choked with emotion from the start; they had come back to the spot where they had seen brothers, sisters, parents and friends die. They were expecting to feel sorrow. What they did not bargain for was fear.

Within minutes, the mourners were pelted, first with vegetables, then with eggs. Some said they saw stones; others said they had been spat at. Gathered in old age to remember their dead, they felt under siege.

Looking around, it was difficult to spot individual culprits. All that were visible were groups of young Asian men, standing on the balconies of the rebuilt block.

Freedland's impression was that the attacks weren't so much anti-Oona King (the local pro-Iraq War Labour MP) as anti-Jewish.

I was there and I must confess it did not look like an attack on Oona King to me. She was not especially visible, and no slogans were chanted or words uttered - as surely they would have been if this was merely a stance against King's support of the Iraq war.

Most of those there thought it much more straightforward. They believed this was an attack by Muslims on Jews. After all, the men wore skullcaps, the prayers were in Hebrew. There was no doubt who they were.

Still, it was hard to be certain. Not a word was spoken to explain the missiles raining down. So this week I went back to Hughes Mansions to ask around: what was all that about?

One young man said it was nothing to do with politics or religion:

Instead, Syed explained, the area was overcrowded and rundown. "There's a lot of aggression." The result is that when the police show up they get pelted. If even a resident drives in with a newly clean car, he'll get "egged". Here was a group of outsiders, so they got the treatment too. His friend Bokkar Ali added: "They're just kids having a laugh. They do it to everyone."

Except the culprits did not look like kids; most seemed to be in their late teens or 20s. And there's the testimony of Aminur Rahman, 18, who told me: "There's a lot of hatred towards the Jewish. We've got hatred towards them." He knew Sunday's group were Jewish because of the skullcaps and he knew the story of the 1945 bomb. So was it wrong to attack people who were grieving? "It was wrong in a way, but I think they deserved it because they came into a Muslim community."

Replace "Muslim" with "white" and you have a line straight from the British National Party songbook. Even if, as Jonathan Freedland speculates, the average is somewhere between the two views expressed, that's a pretty poor average after thirty years of official anti-racism.

What's to be done? Sadly, a potential for communal hatred seems to be an ineradicable part of human nature. But like other evils it can be inflamed or damped down depending on conditions of society. We could do worse than try the strategy for racial harmony that has worked comparatively well for Britain before, and has worked in other countries too. Strict equality before the law. (I call that a "strategy for racial harmony" for convenience but in fact the principle uppermost in its practitioners' minds is individual justice, not racial anything.) No government recognition for ethnic groups, still less government support targeted at any particular group as a group*, however poor that group is. Why not? Because competing for state bounty is a zero-sum game that sets groups against each other. In my opinion - though I doubt Jonathan Freedland, or, perhaps, the author of the first link, would agree - government bounty also tends to make and keep its recipients dependent, ghettoized and poor.

One reason for my saying that the old "strategy" for racial tolerance worked better (despite all that Oswald Mosley could do) than the present one is that the survivors and descendants of the near-final spasm of Nazism represented by that last V2 no longer live in tenement blocks. They moved up and out. In general they are now prosperous, educated and integrated. In contrast the present system keeps the present occupants of Hughes Mansions (the block was rebuilt but is now sadly decayed) stuck there, mentally and economically.

*I'm no supporter of individual government bounty, either. But group bounty is worse than individual because it engenders hostility as well apathy.

Iraq's mass graves - a report by the New York Times.

"At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say."

Kids want a children's champion!

Over at Biased BBC I have a dramatic offering concerning the battle to appoint a Children's Commissioner for England that I humbly present to my public. Odd bits of Wordsworth also available.

I gather old Willie W spent most of his life revising the Prelude. I've been fiddling with this one on and off since March, which isn't quite so bad.

My struggles were nothing compared to those of England's children.