State Rape #1

There is a campaign, mainly by the Left and New Atheists to try to discredit the Catholic church (and Christianity, by association) by accusing it of institutionalised paedophilia. While any act of child abuse is abhorrent, I suspect that the Left and New Atheists are exercising tactical blindness as child abuse is not endemic to the Catholic church.

For, it seems to me, that every other week in the papers there are stories about state school teachers abusing their pupils. I have begun to wonder whether abuses of children by state school teachers (and other employees of the state) are more frequent than those in the Catholic church. This is not to exonerate the Catholic church for its heinous crimes against children but to shine a light on the demagoguery of the Left and New Atheists who do not attempt to discredit the state by the same measure they attempt to discredit the Catholic church.

I will use this blog to, among other things, give examples of "State Rape" in an attempt to illuminate the worrying trend of state school teachers abusing their students.

My first instantiation of "State Rape" is of a 38 year old female teacher, Suzanne Harrison, who was charged with engaging in sexual activity with a thirteen year old student (and also a seventeen year old). The charges refer to a period of time when she worked at Philip Morant School, Colchester. 

Needless Needles, the drugs debate continues...

While Oliver Keyes & I agree that drugs contain inherently damaging pharmacological properties and have negative social consequences, I argue that the damage done by drug use can be ameliorated by punishment of drug use whereas Mr Keyes argues the opposite; that legalisation of drugs will reduce the harm caused by drug use...<read the full article and join the debate at Hackeryblog>

Politics On Toast

A new magazine for with a right wing editorial is launched: Politics On Toast.

Politics On Toast has a host of excellent, young writers who align themselves to the right of the political spectrum. It is edited by me. Our maiden articles include:

1. Is Obama playing games with security to win re-election?

2. Focusing on internships will not halt the decline of social mobility

3. Sweden: No gender in the classroom

4. Britain - A foreign aid superpower? 

5. A very British Greek tragedy

Please give it your patronage, debate with the authors and subscribe.

Oliver Keyes: Redux

Keys

Over on Twitter Oliver Keyes insinuates that I am like the AIDS virus, maybe because he thought that I wouldn't pay attention to his Twitter account. This is the kind of hyperbole I have come to expect from the Left who, I think, would sooner eradicate the conservative Right than the AIDS virus.

Ever since I began contributing to Hackeryblog, Oliver Keyes (who travels the Internet under the handle of Quominus) has established himself as my principal opponent. Although we have had exchanges about whether the Tories are left wing, most of our disagreements have been about drugs.

Along the way, we have had many diversions where Keyes tried to get the better of me. Maybe he thinks he's smarter than he really is, but like Coyote chasing Roadrunner he seems foredoomed to fail in his endeavours.

At the moment, he is trying to extract a withdrawal from me for my labelling of the drugs lobby as "druggies". I will return to this later. For now, I should explain the source of his demands for a withdrawal: In one of his vitriolic, abusive "Rights of Replies" to one of my anti-drugs articles, Keyes committed a stupid error (and failure of logic) by claiming that because I am against drug use, I am probably a "homophobe" and a "xenophobe" too. Such howlings of homophobia and waythithm are a typical left-wing diversion tactic.

They were also outrageous, defamatory smears. I am neither of those things and Keyes had no grounds to attribute homophobic or xenophobic beliefs to me. I asked that he withdrew these lies and he was, at the time, descent enough to withdraw these wicked comments and also apologise for them.

However, the decency did not  last long because he has begun a dogged pursuit of his own withdrawal, perhaps to even the balance.

As I say, more of this later. For now I'll deal with some other Keyes-isms that I have not yet dealt with (except the one on the EU which has already been resolved on Hackeryblog, but it's worth repeating here for sake of completion).


Constantly not getting it

I criticised Oliver Keyes for his semi-literacy. His writing is barely coherent.  In response to this, he wrote: "Garry follows his demand that debates be of high quality and free from personal strikes". Well, no, I never demanded this. What I demanded was not to be accused of holding beliefs that I do not hold (i.e., xenophobic and homophobic ones). I have repeatedly told him this. I have repeatedly told him that I don't care about ad hominem attacks only about false accusations. By now I'm beginning to think that Keyes is a bit thick because it just does not sink in.


Violence and crime


I once wrote that drug use can contribute to "crime, violence, squalor and degradation".

Sensing his opportunity to win a small victory, Keyes lashed back: "Quick writing pointer; violence is crime. There’s no need to repeat yourself".

I responded with this: "Actually, violence and crime are not synonymous. There are violent acts that are not crimes and there are crimes that are non-violent."

Keyes' latest retort, garlanded in snooty superiority, is this: "‘Violence is crime’ as a statement is not the same as saying ‘all crimes are violent’, but rather means ‘all violent actions constitute a crime’, so I’m not sure what the purpose of his comment about there being non-violent crimes is (other than to informally perjure himself, given that he’s criticised me for putting words in his mouth). On the other point; if Garry would be kind enough to point out to the trained lawyer in the blue corner what violent acts aren’t crimes, I will be perfectly happy to put my name on a letter to the Lord Chancellor asking for the law to be reviewed."

Keyes' beating his chest about being a trained lawyer could be the contender for his biggest, most hilarious bungle so far. If Keyes regards his first response to me, he will see that he is giving me a "quick writing pointer" that violence and crime are not the same thing. That is, he is arguing on linguistic grounds. Otherwise he would have said "quick legal pointer."

Well, on linguistic grounds he is wrong and these are the grounds on which he was originally arguing. Violence and crime are not synonymous. But on his second response (because he lost the argument) he moves the goalposts by redefining the argument as a legal one by saying that, legally, all violence is crime. (Even on legal grounds I am not sure he is correct. Maybe I will check with a real legal expert the accuracy of his assertion).


Research

Keyes criticised me for not providing citations in my original article on drugs to back up my claims about the harmfulness of drugs. In my subsequent article on drugs I duly obliged. However, this wasn't enough for Keyes because, horror of horrors, none of my citations linked to Internet articles. If I remember correctly, he complained that to verify my citations he would have to pay to do so.

So we're only allowed to back up our arguments with things that are free on the Internet? Preposterous. What next? I am only allowed to cite evidence that Oliver Keyes agrees with? I would think that someone "trained in law" would understand perfectly well the importance of studying evidence published in respected journals. I would also imagine that Keyes still has access to his alma mater where he could presumably get hold of some of these references for free, if he really wanted.

Besides, I am sure Oliver Keyes could perform a search on Google Scholar to verify that the references I cite  actually exist. He would not have to pay a penny to do this.

Or maybe Oliver Keyes can "see no evil" if he dismisses all the research that inconveniences him by not being free and online. Maybe this is why he takes his lead from the druggies who are free to post their wacky ramblings online.

The European Union


Away from the drugs debate, I criticised Archbishop Rowan Williams for claiming that the coalition government is enacting radical, long term policies that no one had voted for. I said "Strange, I have no recollection of Rowan Williams piping up about other radical long term policies for which no one voted: Membership of the European Union, mass immigration and, for that matter, any of the significant changes to this country since the 1960s."

Oliver Keyes guffawed: "You mean the membership of the supranational body which was subject to a public referendum? That membership nobody voted for?"

I had to remind him that the referendum in 1975 was about staying in the Common Market not the European Union. The nature - as well as the name - of the beast has changed greatly in the last thirty five years from being an economic community to being a sinister, Soviet-style totalitarian regime.

On not apologising for calling the pro drugs lobby "druggies"

Keyes believes I owe him a withdrawal for referring to the drugs lobby as "druggies". He believes that I am smearing him because he aligns himself with the drugs lobby but is not a drugs user himself. He feels that I am attacking him personally. I don't see how. He is not the drugs lobby, just a small, barely significant part of it.

I suggested to Keyes that most of the drugs lobby are druggies, so the derogatory term is fitting. He demanded proof that the drugs lobby comprises mostly of drug users. I can't because I don't think any data on this subject has been produced. But it stands to reason that most people in a lobby that wishes to legalise drugs are those who are going to benefit from the legalisation of drugs, i.e., the druggies themselves. If a few misguided "libertarian" idiots like Keyes want to fly with the crows they should expect to be shot with the crows.

Anyway, can Keyes produce any data that shows the drugs lobby comprises a majority of non drug users? I doubt it.

He can whistle if he thinks he's getting a withdrawal. People who promote the legalisation of foul poisons deserve all the ridicule and opprobrium coming their way. But perhaps I can negotiate a compromise with Keyes: From  now on I shall refer to the drugs lobby as Druggies and Friends of Druggies (DAFOD).

An Explanation

I have published this "Redux" on my own blog because the publication cycle has slowed down on Hackeryblog and I ought to respond to Keyes sooner rather than later in case he thinks I am avoiding him. (I am sure he will become aware of this Redux through my user of trackback links).

Now that I have responded to all of Keyes' nonsense I can focus exclusively on writing on Hackeryblog a rebuttal of his belief in reducing the harm of drugs through schemes such as needle-exchanges.

Burying the Pratchett: We must not legalise euthanasia

So, the iconoclastic Left redoubles its attack on the greatest injunction of them all: Do not murder. Predictably, the "impartial" BBC is at hand to coax and cheer for a change in the law to make assisted suicide legal. This was evidenced by the deeply partial documentary Choosing to Die originally broadcast on BBC2 at 21:00 on Monday the 13th of June.  The bien pensant who fronted the BBC's propagandist documentary was Sir Terry Pratchett, the novelist and Alzheimer's disease sufferer.

I was aware of Pratchett's novels; I was aware he dressed entirely in black as if to contrast himself with the strikingly garish covers of his books; I was aware of his campaigning for the legalisation of euthanasia.

I had never seen him before and it was hard to come away from the documentary not liking him. He seems to be a thoughtful, sensitive man. However, I think he is wrong. I think assisted suicide is wrong.

For a start the phrase "assisted suicide" is an abuse of language. Suicide means to kill oneself (sui- self, -cide killing). This is not an unimportant definition, nor a literary curiosity, because it reveals the paradox embedded in the concept of "assisted suicide"; because if death is caused by the hands of someone else then it is not suicide. It is murder. It has to be.

By calling it "assisted suicide" we make it sound more palatable, indeed we make it sound palliative. We are even told, by invocation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), that people should have the right to die. We live in an age where we are obsessed with our "rights", largely thanks to Human Rights Convention. But death is a fact, not a right.  (The same misconception occurs too at the other end of the life-cycle when infertile couples profess the right to have children. Childbirth is not a right, it is a fact).

Language is important in this debate. Note how article 8 of the ECHR was invoked to equate the right to self-determination with the right to self-termination. Only two small letters have disappeared but the meaning is completely altered.

I have read article 8 of the ECHR. There is nothing in it that could possibly justify assisted suicide:

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Can anyone tell me where there might be a scintilla of suggestion that a man should have the right to have himself killed? I doubt it. Article 8 prescribes a right to a private life free of state interference, not a private death. (Somewhat rich considering that the European Union is the most soviet-style state intrusion ever visited upon Britain).

It is significant that the ECHR is employed, however craftily. The ECHR (in particular its British redrafting as The Human Rights Act) is a weapon of the Left who wish to destroy conservative Britain, the left who want to raze its Christian foundations. That pesky injunction not to kill somewhat undermines their generalised support for abortion and, I expect, imminent generalised support for euthanasia.

Euthanasia is, in and of itself, morally wrong. I have had conversations with people on the Left who disagree with euthanasia but will not bring themselves to object to it on a moral basis. I suspect this is because it would require a concession to the conservative values they despise so much. Instead, they reject it on a practical basis: That legalising euthanasia will compel unscrupulous people to arrange the death of someone old and infirm because the old and infirm are inconvenient or it is profitable to do so.

Whether they care to admit it or not, this practical objection is ultimately a moral one.

I ask those who would impose yet another cultural revolution on us to consider this: Getting rid of the undesirable and inconvenient was a practice of the most atrocious left-wing regimes of the 20th century.

It is only because of this current left-wing milieu that legalisation of euthanasia is even possible.

Unless many of our cultural revolutions are undone and others, such as this drive to legalise euthanasia, are resisted, even the most ardent reformers, revolutionaries and atheists will hate Britain once it has fulfilled all of their prophecies.

I would also encourage the euthanasia lobby to acknowledge their own lack of confidence in their campaign. Terry Pratchett himself is a hypocrite. He confesses to changing his mind every two minutes. How can someone so undecided usher others down the corridor of death? Who gave him the right to advocate others taking a course of action that they cannot reverse when he still has the luxury of changing his mind?

Terry Pratchett prioritises the completion of his new novel above his will to die. His purpose trumps his disease. Seen in this light, it is obvious that electing to be murdered can never be right. Can never be a right. He could take a flight over to Switzerland and have a compelling idea for a new novel in mid-air. But once the one-way ticket to Switzerland is bought, once the chair in Dignitas is booked, there is pride and pressure to not change one's mind back.

It was heart-wrenchingly clear, when the two main subjects of the documentary went to Dignitas to die, they wavered in their last moments. Death is too big a thing to be unsure of.

Those who embark upon a journey to Dignitas are selfish too. They love themselves more than their families. It was clear that neither family of either subject of the documentary wanted to lose their loved-one. They would have preferred to care for their loved-one up until the last moment. When marriage vows are involved, as I presume in some cases they are, then to arrange your own departure from this world and refuse to stay with your spouse is to trivialise the marriage vow.

And Dignitas - Where is the dignity there? Dignitas sounds like a party Robert Kilroy Silk would front. From the outside it looks like a Big Yellow Storage warehouse, except it in blue. And death itself is there, sweetened with cheap praline chocolates and washed down with water.

These druggy slebs can overdose and go to Hell. Or Portugal.

Two events were reported this week, both relatively under-circulated. The first is that a group of people unaffiliated in every way except for their "celebrity" signed a petition to Downing Street calling for the legalisation of the poisonous drugs they endorse; the second event was that a boy of sixteen, Joe Simons, died tragically after taking ecstasy at a club in Bristol last month.

Signatories of the petition include the singer "Sting", the acrtresses Dame Judi Dench and Kathy Burke, director of tedious films Mike Leigh, businessman Sir Richard Branson as well as a trio of dimwitted policemen who probably should have gone into social work than the law & order business.

The petition was sent by the charity Release and can be seen here in full. The gist of the Release letter is that drugs should be legalised because criminalisation stigmatises drug users and they cite The Portugal Experiment (where ostensibly many social evils have been reduced by the legalisation of all drugs in 2001) to support their appeal.

I hope the celebrities who call for legalisation of drugs realise that it is because of their aloof belief that all appetite must be sated, and all intoxicating fancy must be indulged, that a boy of sixteen is dead.  I hope they feel overwhelming, wrenching guilt.  Somehow I doubt it. Who knows how they process emotions seeing as many of them have warped and dulled their own brains with drugs.   (I don't know about Judi Dench and whether she's ever used drugs. I never had her down as a crack-whore. Perhaps she's just senile).

Sir Richard Branson, who has enjoyed the incestuous act of spliff-sharing with his own son, made the boring, hackneyed observation that the "war on drugs has failed." He thinks, bizarrely, that because prosecuting druggies has not reduced the number of drug users that legalisation of drugs is the way forward. Well, the next time a burglar ransacks the Branson mansion and Branson rings the police for assistance they should tell him: "Sorry, but the war on burglary has failed so we've legalised it."

Branson's wrong if he thinks there ever was a war on drugs.  Drug users have always been treated leniently. Possession of cannabis, for instance, is often met with a blind eye, a verbal warning or a caution from the police. Convictions are rare.

To give up on a form on criminal behaviour just because it still happens is nonsensical. There may be many criminals who continue to commit crime in spite of punishment. But if all forms of punishment for a crime were lifted then many other people, who would otherwise be deterred by punishment, would begin to practice that erstwhile crime.

The problem with the Release letter and the accompanying postulations of the signatory slebs is that they mistakenly think that the harm is caused by the law rather than by the psychopharmacological effects of drugs.

Drugs are illegal because they damage the user, his friends and family and society in general. To propose that harm is caused by the illegality of drugs is tautological reasoning: Drugs are illegal because they are illegal. Cannabis can cause psychosis, ecstasy can cause brain damage and death, crack cocaine paranoia and violence. Any drug you care to itemise has a terrible consequence. None of us a free from the consequence of the crime, violence, squalor and degradation of someone else's drug use. Ultimately, we pick up the tab when they end up in a vegetative state in hospital or are completely useless that we have our finances raided to provide for them their stipend.

The weird musician "Sting" choruses this sentiment: "Giving young people criminal records for minor drug possession serves little purpose – it is time to think of more imaginative ways of addressing drug use in our society."

And these imaginative ways are, Mr Sting? Nope. Thought not.

The drippy former police chief constable Tom Lloyd, also party to the Release petition, made several glib, stunted statements about drug legalisation in The Daily Mirror. Among them this peach: "So many of those caught up in drugs have been ­physically, mentally or sexually abused as children. Prosecuting them does more harm than good."

What a cynical piece of propaganda. How low. Using our compassion for the victims of childhood abuse to try to convince us that his selfish pleasures ought to be legalised. Or maybe he genuinely believes that drug abuse is some sort of escape from real, physical trauma. Such a belief is typical of the modern police who are slaves to the liberal-left's ologising (sociologising or psychologising) about crime. Why bother arresting anyone at all when all crime could be reduced to some psychological or social stimulus?

In other, related news we have the omnipresent polymath Stephen Fry seeking attention in public about his suicidal urges and "bipolar" disorder. Strange that such a supposedly clever man does not attribute the chemical imbalances of his brain to the cocaine he unashamedly dices and snorts up his proboscis. He claims he took cocaine to help him with difficult crosswords. At least he is honest. He does it for fun. While I do accept that some people take drugs to escape painful experiences, many others do it as a hedonistic pursuit. Most people I have known to take drugs did so for their own pleasure, to make them less inhibited dancers at nightclubs, or to appear "cool".

The Release letter also emphasises, as if significant to their cause, that the majority of convicted drug users are "young, black or poor". So what? Should we stop prosecuting for crimes with a particular social profile? The perpetrators of most crimes are from poorer backgrounds. Should we stop prosecuting burglars because they are from poor backgrounds? Should we excuse joyriders because they are young? Why not exonerate Islamic terrorists because they are mostly brown(!)

As for the Portugal experiment that the drugs lobby is keen to add to its ordnance: I'm sick of hearing it. Every druggy I debate with parrots the Portugal line. Maybe this is evidence of the circumscription of their addled brains.

I wonder at the extent to which young Joe Simon's decision to take that fatal ecstasy tablet were informed by a false belief that drugs are safe? I wish these celebrity druggies and this cranky Release charity would realise that calling for the legalisation of drugs conveys the message that they are safe.

I find them so wicked that I wish they would all overdose on their beloved drugs, die and go to hell. Or go to their own paradise which is probably present-day Portugal.  I would not mourn the loss of these celebrities if their drug-inspired demises could save the life of the next Joe Simons.

Oringally published by Hackeryblog, 05.06.11

The NHS should charge for some of its services

You think the Tories are going to administer to the NHS a cut so profound that the blade will screech against the bone? They'll barely give it a pin prick. When they say they're not going to privatise the NHS they mean it. The Conservatives do not have the brain or the backbone to play the iconoclast to the left's most cherished inventions.  Cameron, in his eye-wateringly airbrushed pre-election billboard posters, promised not the cut the NHS. This is the one promise he will keep.

The fact is, the only change to the NHS that the Conservatives have remained wedded to is the change in management structure: transferring 80% of the NHS budget from Primary Care Trusts to GPs. This is just an act of shifting managerial bureaucracy from one consortium to another. There will be no less bureaucracy. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley hopes that GPs can use their medical expertise to commission NHS services more efficiently than groups of dour, insipid management-types.

Well, they may be able to make savings by this virtue, but that doesn't alter the fact that its the same old NHS with someone else pulling the purse strings. And what about the bad consequences of this? Will we have to wait longer - even longer - for an appointment with our GPs because the local practise is understaffed as its partners are holed up in the meeting room of a Hilton Hotel discussing the quantity of swine-flu vaccine to buy up at the sound of the first sneeze of winter?

*

I don't believe in an absolutely free market economy. I am not a Thatcherite. If business is tendered our to competing suppliers then it will benefit the buyer of a product/service up until a point. The buyer will get their product/service cheaper and money is saved. Once that point is passed then competing suppliers will cut corners and compromise on the quality of their product/service in order to be cheaper than their rivals.

I don't think, therefore, that wholesale privatisation of healthcare should ever be an option. Despite what Andrew Lansley's critics say - including rapping bin men - Lansley is not opening the back door to wholesale privatisation.

However, the NHS should only use tax-payer's money when it is our time to be born, when it is our time to die and, also, when it is not our time to die.  That is, the State's free care should be limited to delivering babies, preventing major illnesses and caring when the time comes to pass away.

Where the NHS must provide a non-essential service it should charge for it.  If some insensible youth gets blind drunk on a Friday night and keels over in a town centre and requires an ambulance to cart them off to A&E then they should be treated and sent home. And expect an invoice from the NHS in the post a couple of days later.

When these louts realise how much money the tax-payer wastes on them - and more importantly that they can barely afford to pay their own medical bill - they will reconsider marinating their livers in tanks of Barcadi breezers.

Related articles

• Q&A: Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms explained (telegraph.co.uk)