Quotulatiousness

February 10, 2012

This is why the “patriarchy” is an unlikely culprit

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Henry Hill explains the key market mechanism that would undermine “the patriarchy”:

Let’s imagine we have ten businesses competing for the same market. If we are spectacularly ungenerous to the male sex (as to get into Harriet Harman’s brain we must surely be) let’s assume that nine of those businesses are run by real, conviction sexists who consciously exclude capable women on the grounds that they’re women. This leaves a vast talent pool available to the tenth business, which presumably can lap up these highly capable workers. If sexism was depressing their wages as well, then this business would have a significant competitive advantage over the competition.

How long would rival businesses really keep deliberately hiring inferior labour at inflated prices out of allegiance to the principle of sexism? It would only take one company in a competitive market to break the ranks of chauvinist solidarity for such arbitrary and costly employment practises to be rendered totally unaffordable.

There are all kinds of reasons for differing employment patterns between men and women, including different priorities, working hours, child-rearing and so forth that have firm bases in business sense. To ascribe these differences to an omnipresent, more-important-that-profit sexist conspiracy, one must believe the entire spectrum of business subscribes to the exclusion of women at the expense of their own industrial and economic interests. That they literally looked at the ‘profits’ David Cameron is waving in front of them and decided that, if the cost was employing women, £40bn wasn’t for them.

February 9, 2012

Boardroom quotas are a bad idea

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

James Delingpole on the British government’s half-baked notion to introduce quotas for female board members in business:

I love women. Women are great. I’ve married one, I’ve personally bred one and I’ve got lots who are my friends. And after years of close observation, here’s what I’ve concluded: chicks are definitely the superior species. They’re more intuitive, more versatile, more articulate, more competent. Plus, of course, they have breasts.

Given that all this is so, I really don’t understand why David Cameron feels he needs to impose quota systems on boardrooms. Not for the reasons he gives anyway. I could understand it if he said: “Look, I have no shame, no principles, no moral or ideological core in my blubbery, spineless, Heathite body. My Coalition government is run by Lib Dems, a marketing man and focus groups. And what they all tell me is: “Suck up to the female demographic.” So that’s why I’m saying this crap.”

But that’s not what Cameron has said in Stockholm. He’s actually trying to claim that he’s doing it for the good of British business.

    Government figures suggested that Britain’s slow progress was costing the economy more than £40 billion in lost potential each year, roughly equal to the defence budget.

Yeah right. I’m sure there are also “government figures” which suggest that green technologies will create millions of new jobs; “government figures” which suggest wind farms are a vital part of Britain’s energy package; “government figures” which suggest that a 50 per cent upper band tax rate is really healthy business.

Doesn’t make it so, though does it?

Update: Megan Moore says that the tokenism on display in Cameron’s comments “represents the ultimate triumph of style over substance”:

The first and most obvious objection to boardroom quotas is that they don’t actually work. A 2010 study by Amy Dittmar and Kenneth Ahern of the Ross Business School, University of Michigan, found that in Norway, a 10 percent increase in female board members in a company — enforced through a quota introduced in 2003 — caused the value of the company to drop. After all, if quality is no longer the sole criterion for choosing board members, it is highly likely the quality of the board will suffer.

You’d just as easily make a case for boards being required to match the ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual profile of the country: “Oh, sorry, due to the quotas we can’t invite you to join the board unless you’re Irish or Sikh and are either handicapped or left-handed. Bonus points if you’re transgendered.” Rather than emphasizing the needs of the organization — hiring someone who brings skills, talents, or connections that the organization can benefit from — this kind of social engineering only values people for their plumbing or their skin colour, or their sexual lifestyle.

January 19, 2012

The Guardian: Cameron is being foolish over Falklands

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

Michael White on the last time Britain and Argentina collided over the Falkland Islands:

As soon as I heard David Cameron suggest at Wednesday’s PMQs that Argentina’s latest squeeze on the Falkland Islands was “far more like colonialism” than Britain’s stance on the subject I knew there would be trouble. Sure enough, 8,000 miles across the global village in Buenos Aires, the home secretary denounced the remark as “totally offensive”.

We can expect more of this on both sides as the 30th anniversary of the Argentinian junta’s invasion approaches. Sabre-rattling may be fun for the armchair generals of Fleet Street and their Latino counterparts, but it will be a waste of energy. Nothing looks like changing — and if it does, Britain is in a far worse position to do much to prevent it than it was then.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are some fascinating parallels between the situation in 1982 and the situation today:

Even at the time the Falklands war, which I witnessed from the Commons press gallery as the Guardian’s sketchwriter, was a pretty odd business. I later likened it to the last fleet sent out by the ancient Venetian Republic to tackle the Barbary (North African) pirates in the 1780s a few years before the maritime empire of Venice finally collapsed — the last hurrah.

In cutting defence spending and withdrawing the Falklands guardship, HMS Endurance, in an ill-considered round of defence cuts, Margaret Thatcher’s government had more or less invited the discredited and brutal junta of General Leopoldo Galtieri to try to ingratiate itself with its own people at our expense. The cunning plan: to reclaim their “Malvinas” islands which the Spanish colonialists had never inhabited, but were just 400 miles from their shore — a sort of Latin version of the Channel Islands, an anomaly.

Ignoring noisy hints from BA, as the Labour government of the ex-Navy man Jim Callaghan did not in 1977 (Callaghan quietly dispatched a nuclear hunter-killer sub to the South Atlantic, then leaked the fact), Thatcher and Co looked prime idiots on invasion day — Friday 2 April 1982 — and spent it denying that an invasion had happened. Meryl Streep does not convey this bit very well in Iron Maggie. The decision to sent a 40,000-strong task force was taken by the cabinet on the rebound next day.

And also echoing my criticism of the particular defence decisions the current British government has made:

But gung-ho attitudes in the Fleet Street press in 2012 are a nostalgic echo of 1982, which strike me as both foolish and delusional. Yes, after the 1982 war we spent a lot of money building a proper airfield to resupply the islands in a military emergency and the Royal Navy too has its own port.

But the latest round of hasty defence cuts, made by Liam Fox at the behest of the Treasury in 2011, have left the armed forces weaker than before. Even in 1982 Britain was lucky to have two carriers at its disposal — having planned to sell one off. The US, which proved a loyal ally under Ronald Reagan once the diplomatic options failed (were sabotaged, say some) is not the US it was then. Latin America, richer and more confident, is a different region too.

January 10, 2012

Scottish independence on the front-burner

Filed under: Britain, Government, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

An interesting summary of the independence debate in Scotland from The Economist:

Put up or shut up. That is the risky (but arguably rather canny) message that David Cameron has sent to the pro-independence head of the Scottish devolved government in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond. Specifically, Mr Cameron has announced that the British government and Westminster Parliament are willing to give Mr Salmond the referendum on Scotland’s future that he says he wants — as long as it is a proper, straight up-and-down vote on whether to stay in the United Kingdom or leave, and is held sooner rather than later.

It is not that Mr Cameron wants to break the three hundred year old union between London and Edinburgh. Both emotionally and intellectually, he is fiercely committed to the union as a source of strength for both Scotland and Britain, insist Conservative colleagues who have discussed the question with him. Publicly, he has pledged to oppose Scottish independence with “every fibre” of his being.

But Mr Cameron and his ministers also feel that Scotland has been drifting in a constitutional limbo, ever since Mr Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) won an outright majority at Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011 (a feat that was supposed to be impossible, under the complex voting system used in Scotland). The SNP campaigned on a simple manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the future of Scotland. But after his thumping win Mr Salmond slammed on the brakes and started talking about holding a consultative vote in the second half of his term in office, ie, some time between 2014 and 2016.

December 15, 2011

James Delingpole on Great Britain, the Green Movement, and the End of the World

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Environment, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Mick Hume: Dispelling Euro-myths

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, Germany, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:49

In this post at Spiked, Mick Hume pours cold water on five Euro-myths:

Euro-myth No 1: ‘It was a triumph for Cameron — or Sarkozy’

Depending on who you listen to, either UK prime minister David Cameron bravely stood alone for Britain by rejecting a new EU treaty, or else he was beaten by the wily French president Nicolas Sarkozy who got what he wanted by the UK’s omission from the new deal around the Eurozone.

In fact, what the rupture showed was that both the six-footer Cameron and the diminutive Sarkozy are, to coin a phrase, pygmies in political terms. And so are German chancellor Angela Merkel and the rest of Europe’s political elite. Far from a triumph for anybody, it marked an embarrassing failure of basic diplomacy among substandard statesmen and women. There are always tensions and ructions at international summits. But in other times they would have been kept under control by careful diplomatic preparation and consultation beforehand – not left to break out in a schoolboy spat on the day, with Cameron and Sarkozy reportedly almost coming to blows. Even far more strident Eurosceptics such as Margaret Thatcher knew how to play the great power game without tripping over their own laces. Europe’s destiny is now in the hands of self-regarding pygmies who think more of their next headline than the shared future of the continent.

As for the notion that Cameron struck a noble blow for the British people and ‘our’ national sovereignty — come off it. Indeed, one of his main motives appears to have been to avoid giving the British people any kind of say on the matter, by dodging both the referendum that would be demanded if he accepted an amended EU treaty, and the general election that would follow if he went too far the other way and broke up his coalition with the EU-loving Liberal Democrats. The government would rather fall out with the French than risk the wrath of British voters.

December 14, 2011

Eurosceptics described as “bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner fascist”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

Frank Furedi exposes the real reasons behind the chattering classes’ abuse of David Cameron:

It is one thing to accuse Cameron of committing a diplomatic faux pas or the Foreign Office of ineptitude. But the criticisms currently being made of Cameron verge on the hysterical. When I listen to the hyperbole about what will apparently be the consequences of his destructive behaviour, it almost sounds as if he has committed an act of political betrayal in order to appease a handful of incorrigible reactionary Eurosceptics.

Why this over-the-top reaction to what could turn out to be a relatively minor case of diplomatic miscommunication?

Outwardly, the anger of the cosmopolitan clerisy is directed at Cameron’s alleged appeasement of Tory Eurosceptics. The term Eurosceptic has a special meaning for the adherents to cosmopolitan policymaking. In their view, Euroscepticism is associated with values they abhor: upholding national sovereignty, Britishness and a traditional way of life. The moralistic devaluation of these values was vividly communicated by the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who this week characterised Tory Eurosceptics as the ‘pinstriped effluence of an ex-imperial nation’. He seeks to dehumanise these people by arguing that this ‘specimen’s ascendancy’ was reflected in Cameron’s behaviour during the treaty negotiations. Cohen’s moral devaluation of Eurosceptics, his dismissal of them from the ranks of humanity, is captured in his description of them as a ‘bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner fascist’.

The intemperate language suggests that the venomous anger directed at Eurosceptics cannot simply be driven by the clerisy’s love affair with the European ideal. Rather, what is at issue here is the clerisy’s preference for the technocracy-dominated and cosmopolitan-influenced institutions of Brussels. From their standpoint, the main virtue of the EU is that its leaders and administrators speak the same language as the UK clerisy. They read from the same emotional and cultural script, which they believe to be superior to the script and values associated with national sovereignty. That is why it isn’t surprising that a BBC journalist can casually ask the Estonian prime minister to have a go at her own national leader. The UK-based communications clerisy has a greater affinity with the outlook of EU technocrats and political administrators than it does with the outlook of its own people.

December 12, 2011

“Cameron has made a crucial misjudgment, simply to appease the City and his own jingoistic right-wingers”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Bruno Waterfield looks at the frenzied abuse being heaped on David Cameron’s head over the EU negotiations:

The breaking of the EU at an all-night summit last week, where British prime minister David Cameron vetoed changes to the EU Lisbon Treaty, is a healthy sign that politics can assert itself over the slavish routines of Euroland. Until this crack occurred, the EU had been using the full force of statecraft to deny new facts and to enshrine failed doctrines in a world where reality had changed.

Still, over the next few weeks, there will be a concerted establishment campaign to depoliticise the split in the EU and to paper over the cracks with the bureaucratic pieties and conceits at which the EU excels. Quick out of the gate on Sunday was Lord Paddy Ashdown, a serially unelected panjandrum and one-time UN viceroy of Bosnia, who accused Cameron of ‘acting as the leader of the Conservative Party, not the prime minister of Britain’.

[. . .]

The opprobrium heaped on Cameron’s head by Europe’s elites and their fellow travellers is because he is perceived as having allowed the politics of party to triumph over the bureaucratic routines of state. ‘As an act of crass stupidity, this has rarely been equalled’, opined Will Hutton in the Observer. ‘Cameron has made a crucial misjudgment, simply to appease the City and his own jingoistic right-wingers.’

The shrill attacks on Cameron’s failure to achieve the ‘national interest’ demonstrate the extent to which that priceless commodity is now defined by permanent Whitehall officials rather than by public politics or through a clash of parties competing to lead the British people. Similarly, the EU, particularly during this economic crisis, has shown itself to be a mechanism for evading or even overthrowing public politics; it is about drawing up policy away from the institutions of democratic accountability, in an arena that is ‘independent’ of the public.

December 2, 2011

Biggest general strike since 1926 becomes a “damp squib”

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:07

Some sense the evil hand of . . . Jeremy Clarkson?

It was to be the biggest strike in a generation. People were openly and unabashedly comparing Wednesday’s day of action over public sector pensions to the general strike of 1926. It was to bring Britain to a standstill. Mark a turning point in the battle against the cuts instigated by the spawns of the evil Iron Lady. Become a talking point that would strike fear into the cold heart of Cameron and pave the way to bigger, more decisive action.

Except, erm, the very next morning it had been almost completely forgotten. It barely registered as a blip on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. Newspaper coverage was on the whole sympathetic, but slight. None of the predicted chaos came to pass. Prime minister Cameron could quite safely dismiss the strike as a ‘damp squib’ and provoke few comments except from the usual suspects. People shrugged and went back to work. Far from being a Great Event like the 1926 strike that people would draw inspiration from in 85 years time, it was barely discussed. As my colleague Brendan O’Neill had anticipated, it all felt more like a ‘loud and colourful PR stunt ultimately designed to disguise the fact that, in truth, trade unions are a sad shadow of their former selves’.

Just as the PR flames were beginning to dim, however, enter Jeremy Clarkson, the cartoonish presenter of Top Gear, who sped to the rescue with a particularly naff joke about the strikers being shot in front of their families. Of course, he didn’t actually mean it. In the context of the programme, BBC1’s The One Show, his remarks were actually more a dig at the BBC: he had in fact been praising the strikers (‘London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you can whizz about… it’s also like being back in the 70s. It makes me feel at home somehow.) but then said, as it was the Beeb, he had to provide ‘balance’, making his now notorious quip: ‘Frankly, I’d have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?’

Update: James Delingpole said he’s been flooded with interview requests since the strike began, largely because of the public’s reaction to the strike:

I got my answer from a chance remark made by Jeremy Vine after our interview. He was telling me about the phone-in he’d done the day before during the public sector workers’ strike and what had astonished him was the mood of the callers. If I remember what he said correctly, one of his studio guests was a nurse on a £40,000 PA salary, with a guaranteed £30,000 pension, and this had not gone down well with the mother-of-three from Northern Ireland struggling as a finance officer in the private sector on a salary of £14,000 and no pension to speak of. The callers were very much on the side of the private sector. In fact, they were on the whole absolutely apoplectic that privileged, relatively overpaid public sector workers with their gold-plated pensions should have the gall to go out on strike when the people who pay their salaries – private sector workers – have to go on slogging their guts out regardless.

[. . .]

After all, as Fraser Nelson reports, the strike itself was a massive flop. Only a minority of union members voted it for it; the turn-out was so poor that the unions felt compelled to send out hectoring letters accusing their membership of being “scabs”; the hospitals – and many schools – stayed open, Heathrow’s immigration queues actually got shorter. This was not the glorious day of action (or inaction) that the militants had hoped for. Nor did it fit into the BBC’s ongoing narrative that Osborne’s vicious cuts (what cuts, we ask) are causing such hardship and misery among the saintly frontline public sector workers who bravely rescue our cats from trees and smilingly change our bed pans that really a Labour government run by Ed Balls is the only option.

Not only were the strikes a failure in numbers terms, though, but more damagingly they were a failure in propaganda terms. As both Fraser Nelson and Jeremy Vine have noted, there really has been a shift in public mood. I remember not more than a year ago going on Vine’s show to state, somewhat provocatively that I’d rather toss my children out on the street than have them sponging off the taxpayer in the public sector, and of course the mainly left-leaning BBC audience went apoplectic. I think if I’d gone on and said the same thing today they would probably have been demanding a statue erected in my honour in Parliament Square.

September 4, 2011

James Delingpole forced to offer an apology

Filed under: Britain, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:45

Yes, it’s true. Delingpole made an error in a recent column and has to make a full apology for the error:

It has been brought to my attention that this blog owes Sir Reginald Sheffield, Bt. an apology. In a recent column entitled Green Jobs? Wot Green Jobs? (Pt 242), I carelessly suggested that Sir Reg — beloved dad of the famous environmentalist “Sam Cam”; distinguished father-in-law of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, no less — is making nearly £1000 a week from the wind turbines on his estates.

The correct figure is, of course, nearly £1000 a day.

In other words, Sir Reginald is making the equivalent of roughly 1000 looted widescreen plasma TV screens every year from the eight 400 foot wind turbines now enhancing the view for miles around on his 3,000 acre Normanby Hall estate, near Scunthorpe.

There will be those who suggest that my mistake is a resigning matter. I do share their concern. However it is my view that if a journalist is going to resign on a point of principle these days, it has to be over something immeasurably trivial, rather than over something merely quite trivial. What I do nevertheless agree is that I owe Sir Reginald Sheffield, Bt, an apology.

A big apology.

July 13, 2011

Calling the PM “a limp-wristed, tofu-eating, faux-Tory abomination”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:28

Oddly enough, he’s not talking about Stephen “Liberal-lite” Harper:

Today David Cameron finds himself in the “awkward” position of having to back a Labour motion calling for Murdoch’s News Corporation to drop its bid for BSKyB. Of course in the current climate of almost Death-of-Diana outrage (so brilliantly orchestrated by the BBC and the Guardian), there is probably not much wriggle room for doing otherwise. But in fact it all suits him very nicely for the very last thing our pathologically Heathite prime minister really wants is for the BSkyB to go through.

Why? Because the purpose of Murdoch’s BSkyB bid is essentially so that he can set up a UK version of America’s most popular news channel Fox News. Fox News acts as the conscience of the right in the US: it’s one of the things which made the Tea Party possible. A British version would achieve the same over here, destroying the crushing hegemony enjoyed by the BBC, restoring a balance to the political debate in Britain which for decades has been so sorely lacking – whatever the BBC’s supposed charter to commitment to fairness and balance might pretend.

[. . .]

If the BSkyB deal ever goes through, Cameron will no longer have that option available. Worse still, he will have a new TV news channel explaining to viewers every day of the week what a limp-wristed, tofu-eating, faux-Tory abomination their supposedly Conservative prime minister really is.

I don’t think he wants that. Do you?

June 17, 2011

Argentina: British PM “stupid” about the Falkland Islands

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Remember when the Royal Navy got gutted, reducing their ability to project force outside European waters? It appears that Argentina has drawn the obvious conclusion that the Falkland Islands are now back in play:

The Argentinian president has criticised David Cameron for insisting the Falkland Islands should remain a British territory.

Cristina Kirchner described the prime minister as “arrogant” and said his comments were an “expression of mediocrity and almost of stupidity”.

Cameron had been prompted by Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell during prime minister’s questions to remind Barack Obama that the British government would not accept any kind of negotiations over the south Atlantic islands, over which Argentina and Britain fought a 10-week war in 1982.

Cameron told the Commons: “I would say this: as long as the Falkland Islands want to be sovereign British territory, they should remain sovereign British territory — full stop, end of story.”

In her criticism of his comments, Kirchner said Britain “continues to be a crude colonial power in decline”.

Well, Mr. Cameron, you’ve given Argentina a ten-year window of opportunity here between your (in my opinion stupid) scrapping your last carriers and getting rid of their Harrier aircraft and the time that your next carrier comes into service. By the time you have HMS Queen Elizabeth in commission and with a full complement of aircraft, the Falkland Islands will likely be under Argentinian control.

If the government of Ronald Reagan had to be pushed into supporting Britain in 1982, there’s absolutely no chance that Barack Obama will lift a finger to help Britain in 2012 — in fact, it’s much more likely that Obama will decide that Argentina is more deserving of American help anyway.

May 11, 2011

Brendan O’Neill: “The moralising Lib-Cons are New Labour in disguise”

Filed under: Britain, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:38

Brendan O’Neill pronounces his verdict on the first year of the British coalition government:

For all the claims that the Lib-Cons are Thatcher in disguise, with the wicked Bullingdon-braised David Cameron only pretending to be touchy-feely and a friend of Nick, in fact the most striking thing about this government one year in is how similar it has been to its ugly predecessor New Labour. The moralisation of everyday life, including people’s parenting styles and their drinking and smoking habits? Check. A promise to create a new kind of society (Dave calls it the Big Society; Blair called it the Stakeholders’ Society) while actually increasing the role of the state in economic, political and personal affairs? Check. Blather about environmentalism and nervousness about pursuing nuclear power? Check. The bombing of a foreign country in the name of all that is morally pure and right? Check. The New-Labour-Lib-Con eras have shown that Britain is no longer fought over by clashingly opposing parties but rather is dominated by a samey, conformist and vision-lite political class: samey both in terms of its members’ social origins and their political obsessions.

February 15, 2011

QotD: Don’t trust your government

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

Last week’s civil liberties bill was hardly perfect but it’s still a step in the right direction. And, frankly, it’s bonny and startling in equal measure to have a Deputy Prime Minister who says things like this:

“I need to say this — you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government — full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.”

I’m quite happy to oblige Mr Clegg. I don’t trust this government either. I think it’s intentions are often fine but I doubt whether it has the courage of those convictions. Government necessitates trimming and compromising but the troubling ease with which this crew can be blown off course does not bode well for stormier times ahead. It needs to make a proper — muscular, you might say — defence of its liberalism. Thus far it has been too wimpy by far and, for that matter, too content to try and blame everything on its predecessor. That dog won’t hunt anymore.

Cameron, Clegg, Clarke, Grieve, Gove, Alexander, IDS and so on are, on the whole, decent men with decent ideas. Their government still has a surprising amount of potential and the ability to do some good. But that doesn’t mean they can be trusted.

Alex Massie, “Nick Clegg is Right. Again.”, The Spectator, 2011-02-14

May 12, 2010

Welcome to the new British PM: “Dick Clameron”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

The Register‘s guide to the new British government:

The people have spoken — and party leaders Nick Clegg and David Cameron, henceforth to be known as Dick Clameron, have filled in the details.

A document released this afternoon reveals what Lib Dems and Tories have been talking about for the last four days, and what our new coalition overlords have in store for us over the next four years.

As with every political stitch-up, it’s going to be a Curate’s Egg, but there are some positive things being promised:

On civil liberties, there is much to please (most) Reg readers, including

A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill

* The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database
* Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission
* The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act
* Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database
* A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech
* Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation
* Further regulation of CCTV
* An end to storing internet and email records without good reason
* A mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences

As with any coalition, there’s no guarantee that any of their announced plans will be carried through, but this list of improvements would be a very good thing.

The full text of the agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is at The Times. On reading through the document I’m actually rather pleasantly surprised: more of the sensible policies from each party appears to have slipped into the mix and rather fewer of the authoritarian (Tory) or redistributionist (Lib-Dem) ideas. Yes, it’s only a temporary agreement, but it’s better than I expected.

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