Perry de Havilland, editor of Samizdata, has a robust attack on ID cards in today's Times. Venturing into the mainstream media to put his case, Perry points out that although ID cards were introduced as an anti-terrorist device, the government has now admitted that they would not have helped to stop any of the recent attacks.

Perry doesn't want new laws to force people underground; he wants the existing laws enforced.

I want to know exactly who my enemies are by reading their freely spoken words. And when they cross the line and incite people to terrorism, I want the Government to do the one thing with my tax money of which I approve: protect me from these nutters by throwing them in jail or out of the country.

"The Government does not need more powers," says Perry. "It can use existing laws to prosecute those who wish to harm us and undo a few of the more absurd changes to the law which prevent it from doing so (such as the bizarre Human Rights Act)."

He warns us, too, that laws brought to deal with one type of offender always end up being used against different types of people. Take warning.

Not many of us like the thought of being watched all the time, but those who live in cities face that prospect. CCTV cameras have been with us for two decades or more, but their numbers have greatly increased. Since the London bombings new ones have been sprouting up, so that a stroll around the block in central London can put you on 37 separate TVs.

Now the BBC reports on the development of eternal planes, lightweight and solar powered, which stay aloft permanently beaming down their pictures of what is going on below.

Unmanned surveillance vehicles are increasingly evident in a world that relies on knowing what people and places are doing. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) patrol innocuous-looking skies and silently report back streams of strategically important data, video, and images from locations around the world.

We are used to satellite surveillance, and this is only an extension which gives lower cost and higher definition coverage, with the potential to cover greater areas. It makes for a very different world from that in which people could go about their business without too much snooping from the authorities. People in Britain have largely accepted the changes, insofar as they are aware of them, as the price of their protection from criminals. It is debatable whether CCTV cameras cut street crime or move it elsewhere, but their role in solving crime has been evident, featuring many high profile cases. This included the Harrod's IRA bombers, the James Bulger child murder case, the Charing Cross gay murders, and the white racist hate bomber. Many less publicized crimes can be added.

In the recent London bombings the surveillance cameras enabled the bombers and attempted bombers to be identified, and the failed ones arrested before they could try again. This will probably lead to the bomb-makers and controllers being detained, preventing further terror strikes. Most people seem ready to credit the authorities for their swift detection work.

There has long been a tradition that those in authority should not know any more about our activities than is strictly necessary, and we have valued the right to keep them out of our lives. We have regarded the claim that "only the guilty have anything to fear" as the excuse of tyrants everywhere. It looks increasingly, though, that a combination of terrorism and new technology is changing that equation. People in Britain, at least, seem prepared to accept more intrusion as the price of their protection.

What Tim does not deal with (below) is that this man Brian Haw has claimed the right to monopolize public space and appropriate it for his own use. He was given the right to make his point, and did so. He put up his posters and pieces of cardboard without hindrance. He used his megaphone. He was given a reasonable opportunity to make his protest, which is as it should be. Since then he has made himself a public nuisance by claiming the right to occupy this space permanently. It is not his property.

Parliament Square, where this takes place, is quite pleasant. Some of the buildings are aesthetically pleasing, whatever one thinks of what goes on inside. After Tim's piece arrived, I went out and took photographs to show the appealing aspect the square has, giving pleasure both to residents such as myself and to tourists. The man has created an eyesore, and yes, part of the objection is aesthetic. He has trashed a view which gave pleasure to millions.

His cause is not the relevant factor, for we are concerned with deeds and their consequences, rather than with motives. If I scribble "Down with Blair" on a cigarette or chocolate wrapper before throwing it into the street, I am still guilty of littering. Mr Haw has spead litter onto Parliament Square, and kept it there for years. He has enjoyed his moment of protest and been allowed tro make his point. Most people will be cheering when his rubbish is evicted, and measures taken to stop other people appropriating and spoiling our spaces.

You might have seen the news about Brian Haw rather funny if the implications were not so serious.

In essence, Mr. Haw has been shouting at MPs through his megaphone from his encampment in Parliament Square for the past four years. This has made them a little tetchy so there was a small addition to the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, banning demonstrations in the area around Parliament without prior authorisation from the police. As the Guardian points out:

The new rules state that, from August 1, anyone wanting to demonstrate in the area must have authorisation from the police "when the demonstration starts". Mr Haw's lawyers pointed out that his demonstration had started four years ago and argued that he did not have to apply for authorisation, even though the law was targeted at him

The High Court agreed and now Mr Haw is the only person in the land allowed to demonstrate in that area of central London without going cap in hand to the Met.

Why is this an argument for libertarianism? The authorities use a sledgehammer to crack a nut (sorry, bad pun), remove a frequently used ancient liberty (that of any free citizen being allowed to turn up at random and shout abuse at those who rule) and manage not to deal with the original problem. They are, it appears, not actually very good at their job, that of passing laws.

Yet these are the people who determine how and where we build our houses, what medical treatment we may have, how our children shall be educated, the hours we work, what we may or may not buy and sell and in what measures we may or may not do so. If they're not actually capable of getting such a simple thing right how badly are they doing the more complex ones?

Libertarianism, the basis of which is that politicians should leave us mostly to our own devices, seems to be the only rational response to the British political class.

(Tim Worstall writes here).

On this day two hundred years ago, in Paris, Alexis de Tocqueville, was born. He is remembered today as a great historian, a leading exponent of liberal ideas, and the chronicler of democracy in America.

De Tocqueville (1805-1859), was born into an aristocratic family, but came to question the role of the aristocracy in the government of France. After the July Revolution of 1830, when power changed from the Bourbon to the Orleans family, de Tocqueville sensed the spirit of democracy that was rising in France, and set off to study how it worked in America.

In 1835 he published the first part of Democracy in America, a very positive account of American government. The second part, published in 1840, was much less positive, with strong warnings for France about the risks of centralized and despotic government.

De Tocqueville stood unsuccessfully for election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1837, but after being raised to the Legion of Honour for his book, he did win election, in 1839, and rose further through government, briefly serving as foreign minister.

His books are still read widely today, and stand out for his insights on freedom and democracy. Here's a sample:

Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty and disinclined to revolution.

Happy birthday, Alexis!

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

- Ayn Rand

A seminar about regulating advertising took place recently here in the UK. I'm not sure why the regulation of advertising should require a whole seminar, since I guess the general principles of honesty and decency could be scribbled on the back of a playing care; but there we are.

One of the speakers was a senior Eurocrat who was fussing about the "problem" that the electronic media were escaping from Brussels' control -- especially "viral advertising" (people talking to each other about a prodct or service, but inspired to do so by deliberate commercial instigation). A new Directive, we are told, will be devised to control this "problem".

Afterwards, a friend of mine was overheard suggesting to him that the sensible thing would be to extend this Directive to control all personal communications. The Eurocrat pondered the idea, explaining that he thought this might prove to be rather difficult to achieve. It seemed to take him quite a while to figure out that my friend was taking the Mickey!

You couldn't make it up. The Eurocrat mind is a strange thing. Worryingly so.

For those who want to sing about ID cards, you can download this number set to Modern Major-General from Gilbert & Sullivan, complete with cute pooch pianist. (Click the word PLAY on the poster).

[hat tip Andrew Ian Dodge]

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

( - Thomas Jefferson, in his last letter, on the 50th anniversary of US independence )

The online polling group YouGov reports that support for ID cards is plummeting - from 78% two years ago to just 45% today - mainly because people think the IT needed to capture biometrics and other details on 40m adults will cost far more than anticipated and won't work properly.

The public are right to be skeptical. Ross Clark reveals how inept government IT programmes usually are:

* The Department of Work and Pensions's computer system crashed during an attempt to upgrade it.
* The £50m Individual Learning Accounts system had to be scrapped in 2001 after it was found to be fatally open to fraud.
* The Passport Agency system went belly-up in 1999.
* The Home Office's system for handling asylum applications jammed up with a huge backlog.
* The Probation Office scrapped its IT system after spending £120m.
* In its first 20 months, the Child Support Agency’s £456m computer system sent the wrong payments to four out of every five claimants.
* Through mishandling, the Lord Chancellor's Department paid £390 for a system to link magistrates' courts that should have cost £146m.
* The NHS IT system is already costing three times its £6.2m estimate.

The government reckons the ID database will cost £7bn. And that it will work. On the basis of past performance, I think we can dismiss both of these assertions pretty robustly.

So, the Bill on ID cards gets through the House of Commons - albeit with the government's majority cut in half. It won't fare so well in the Lords (where promises of future peerages don't cut much ice). But let's remember, what the Bill proposes is not an Identity Card scheme. It's an Identity Database scheme. As long as the government has centralized records on all of us, who cares about cards?

Some people argue that we all carry identity, and lots of people have info on us: that if MI5 really wanted to know all about us, they could. Well, if the security forces can check us out so easily, why do we need a new, centralized database? That simply enables petty officials to check us out too. And they are open to corruption: leaving us open to blackmail - and identity theft, on an even bigger scale.

The Bill won't stop benefit fraud (only 5% of which involves identity fraud), nor terrorism (Madrid was bombed despite national IDs), nor illegal immigration (each year 26m people enter the UK for short visits which will not require an ID card).

The government say that only basic information will be kept on people's records. But they're leaving a few fields empty just in case they think of things to add in the future. And who will decide that? Some official, or Parliament?

Nor will it be compulsory to carry an ID card, they say. Oh yeah? How long will that idea last? It's because I know how governments work that I am donating £10 to the fighting fund being set up by No2ID. You should too.

The ID Cards legislation had its Second Reading rather narrowly yesterday. Not by coincidence my Alma Mater, the London School of Economics, released their study into the costs and benefits of the scheme. As the Telegraph reports there are some differences on cost estimates:

The Home Office predicts that the scheme will cost £7 billion but the LSE puts the minimum cost at £10.6 billion - without the technical problems or overruns that have dogged other Whitehall IT projects - and suggests that it could rise to £19.2 billion.

There are also certain differences on the likely benefits.

Most damning for the Government is the fact that the study does not believe the ID system as proposed will fulfil any of its intended functions such as curbing identity fraud or countering terrorism. If anything, the existence of such a large database and the assumption that the system is foolproof, when it is likely to give false readings, will make it vulnerable to hacking and fraud. Professor Ian Angell, of the LSE's IT department, said the scheme was a "one-stop shop for fraudsters". "It is a dog's dinner. I do not believe it is going to work."

One of the defenses of the scheme is that biometrics have to be added to passports anyway:

"The next few years are going to see effectively a visa and passport revolution across the EU and the developed world. We are going to be in a position where we have to make our passports here in the UK biometric if UK citizens are to continue to enjoy the right to travel freely around the world." -Tony Blair.

Indeed we do need to add biometrics to UK passports but this is very different from the legislation being proposed. Chris Lightfoot has the details:

The ICAO biometric passport programme requires only that passports be equipped with a `smart-card' style chip containing information about the bearer (the same stuff that's printed in the machine-readable zone on the bottom of the back page of your passport in and angular OCR font), plus a digitised photograph and a cryptographic signature.

The Australian Government is managing this at a cost of 8 pounds per passport. Expensive, won’t work and not required. Could someone remind me why this Bill has been re-introduced?

(Tim Worstall writes here)

Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking.

- William E. Simon

Getting rid of bad leaders is easy. The difficult bit is clearing up the mess afterwards. The Americans had a clear military plan to evict Saddam, for example, but their understanding of how to fill the power vacuum in a country with many conflicting religious and ethnic groups was obviously rather less precise.

Now we are urging African leaders to get tough with Robert Mugabe. His latest Marxist lunacies involve demolishing the homes of 200,000 people (in Opposition areas, of course). Not just 'illegal' shanties, but solid houses that have been there since it was Rhodesia, and whose owners' title deeds seem perfectly valid.

The excuse is that these folk run a 'damaging' black economy. There's Marxist logic for you: chuck out your best farmers, kill the rest of the economy with controls, and then blame your shortages on poor people trying to scrape an existence as best they can.

Quite how these displaced thousands will survive out on the plains without water or sanitation is a good question. Maybe this is another case of 'indirect' genocide like that in Burma.

Western powers may have too much on their plates to think about unseating the odious Mugabe. Before long, though, the grim reaper will do it for them. If we and the neighbouring African nations, had any sense, we'd already be laying down plans to help them restore order and assist the transition afterwards.

On this day in 1759, Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It is argubly his greatest book.

It was not the later Wealth of Nations, but this work on ethics and human nature, which made Adam Smith's career. The sensation of its age, it sold out in weeks. The prominent politician Charles Townshend was "so taken with the performance" (says David Hume) that he hired Smith as tutor to his stepson, the Duke of Buccleuch, luring Smith away from his professorship at Glasgow with the princely offer of £300 a year for life.

What is the basis on which we approve some actions and condemn others? The accepted wisdom was that our rulers should decide. But there was a growing view that moral principles could be worked out rationally, like the theorems of mathematics. Smith, however, took a completely new direction, holding that people are born with a moral sense, just as they have inborn ideas of beauty or harmony. Our conscience tells us what is right and wrong: and that is something innate, not something given us by kings or rationalists. And we also have a natural fellow-feeling, which Smith calls "sympathy". Between them, these natural senses ensure that human beings can and do live together in orderly and beneficial social orders.

So our morality is the product of our nature, not our reason. And Smith would go on to argue that the same 'invisible hand' created beneficial social patterns out of our economic actions too. The Theory of Moral Sentiments established a new liberalism, in which social organization is seen as the outcome of human action but not necessarily of human design – a point which socialists forget, to their cost.

Another prominent politician of the age, James Oswald, reported that he did not know whether he had "reaped more instruction or entertainment" from The Theory of Moral Sentiments. So open it up. You might well be instructed... but immerse yourself into Smith's elegant prose and you will certainly be entertained.

The introduction of "heroin clinics" in Switzerland and the Netherlands during the 1990s significantly reduced drug-related crime and other social problems. Now Britain too is considering giving long-term addicts injectable heroin – again.

Back in the 1970s, Britain controlled its heroin problem by registering addicts and allowing doctors to prescribe the drug. But some doctors started prescribing it for cash to unregistered users, and the practice was stopped. The preferred route then became oral methadone, which has its own problems and often does not work.

Meanwhile illicit heroin use grew hugely: Britain had about 400 registered addicts in the 1970s, getting the drug in controlled circumstances: today it has 56,000 registered addicts, on various attempts at treatment (only half a percent are prescribed the drug itself). Meanwhile the total number of users may be 200,000, and of those, many lead chaotic lives, the cost of their habit fuelled by crime.

Today there are fewer than 100 doctors who hold the special Home Office licence required to prescribe heroin. Of these, there are 20 each in the South-East, London and the North-West but only a handful in other regions. Two cheers, then, for the fact that Britain is now to create pilot projects elsewhere – accepting the evidence of Switzerland and the Netherlands, and acknowledging that, while there will always be some bent doctors, driving heroin users to crime just makes matters worse.

The Bastiat Prize for Journalism encourages and rewards writers whose published works promote the institutions of a free
society - limited government, the rule of law, property rights, free markets, and free speech. Past winners include Amity Shlaes of the Financial Times, Brian Carney of the Wall Street Journal Europe, and Robert Guest of The Economist.

Last year the contest attracted 150 submissions from over 40 countries, and now the International Policy Network, which organizes it, is inviting submissions for the 2005 Prize, which is a useful $10,000. Get a move on, though, because entries close on 30 June.

Entries may be submitted via email, post, or through the website submission form, and there is more information about the rules here.

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended" – Frederic Bastiat

The right to a fair trial is one of the defining attributes of Britain. Yet at every opportunity, the British government comes up with an excuse to oppose trial by jury and the presumption of innocence - and was even doing this before 9/11.

The government says the police and intelligence services need extra powers - because the police and intelligence services say so. But who opposes being given more power?

Britain's Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, says the House of Lords should give in to the will of the House of Commons over new anti-terrorism legislation. He (incorrectly) says it is "unconstitutional" to not give in. Yet it is precisely the purpose of the House of Lords to stop elected governments from rushing through bad legislation.

The government has fortunately conceeded that judges - rather than politicians - should decide who should be put under house arrest or control orders. That is an important improvement. And it is a massive improvement over keeping people permanently in Belmarsh Prison without trial. Now the debate is about what the burden of proof should be, and whether the legislation should have a sunset clause. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, claims the security forces have advised against a sunset clause.

The former head of London's police force, Sir John Stevens, recently said: "The main opposition to the Bill, it seems to me, is from people who simply haven't understood the brutal reality of the world we live in." He is wrong. The main opposition comes from people who understand the dangers of throwing away hundreds of years of civil liberties. The House of Lords is right to be sick over draconian legislation.

After the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland in October 1939, Churchill described its future policy "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". Well, after a humiliating roasting in the UK Parliament, the policy on house arrest proposed by Charles Clarke MP could be described as a fiasco wrapped in a farce inside a shambles.

The bombastic Home Secretary originally wanted a new law to allow him to imprison terror suspects in their own home, without any judicial process at all. But as the Bill was going through the House of Commons, he gave in to mounting pressure and wrote to the party leaders to say that he would, after all, amend it in the Lords so as to involve a judge. The Commons found themselves debating a measure that they knew would then be changed anyway: and they weren't pleased, nearly overturning the government's 100-plus majority.

But the Bill is still no good. It would leave the Home Secretary - a mere politician - with the right to say who people should talk to, where they should work, and what phones and internet access they should have. All without charges being levelled, evidence being produced, witnesses being questioned, or judges being involved. More like an outrage wrapped in a brownshirt inside a jackboot.

Michael Howard, the leader of the UK's Conservative Party, has withdrawn his party's support for identity cards. According to ePolitix:

[The Conservative Party] insisted it still backed the scheme in principle, even though it was not voting in favour of it during third reading in the Commons.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said ministers had failed to answer "serious questions about practical issues to make this ID system work".

"They have not even answered the questions of the all party joint committee on human rights who described their failure to respond as 'deeply unsatisfactory'.

The cards have come under considerable criticism from the more libertarian members of the Conservative Party, including Peter Lilley, a prominent former Secretary of State. When the House of Commons voted on a previous reading of the bill, Bill Cash, a prominent Tory, brandished a copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and said ID cards would bring a "sea change" in the relationship between state and citizens. 70 Conservative MPs were absent or voted against the bill. Campaign group no2id says 41 of those have gone on record to express their hostility toward ID cards.

"Britons are lucky people, and complacent ones. The liberties they take for granted have evolved over a thousand years or so. The idea that any one government should seriously undermine them seems implausible. It isn't."

- The Economist

Soon after 9/11, Britain introduced draconian anti-terrorist legislation that included the power to imprison suspected terrorists without trial. It required an abrogation of human rights laws, and was a denial of habeas corpus: but the argument was that in some cases, producing evidence in a trial might expose secret sources or prejudice the lives and safety of the security services and their informers.

Not surprisingly, the High Court objected. So last week, Britain's Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, replied that instead of detaining suspects in prison, he would keep them under house arrest, bar them using the internet and mobile phones, and so on.

Home Office ministers said we shouldn't worry about this, because nice Mr Clarke would keep all such detentions under constant review. And because it only applies to international terrorists. But then other ministers said it might apply to animal rights campaigners too, since they were pretty dangerous characters. Err...where is this going to end?

Sure, a liberal order must protect itself from those who would destroy liberalism itself. And maybe, at times, you have to act illiberally to do that. But you should still act according to the rule of law. If there is evidence, it should be produced in court. If the evidence is too sensitive to be made public, then it should be heard in private before qualified judges. At the moment we are jailing people, and soon we will be imprisoning them in their homes, on the say-so of a politician. That is scary.

The cities of York, Oxford and Norwich have all recently passed protest motions against against identity cards. Councillor Andrew Aalders-Dunthorne, a Labour member of Norwich City Council, said:

Finger printing ordinary people and making them feel like criminals, then charging them for the pleasure, has no place in a supposedly free and liberal society. New Labour is becoming alarmingly authoritarian, to the point where even their own Council Groups cannot support them.

ID cards are an expensive white elephant designed to pander to the Daily Mail. Once people realise what the scheme actually entails and the charge they will have to pay personally, opposition will grow.

Apparently, Norwich and York City Councils - which have also affiliated to the campaign group NO2ID - have stated that ID cards will not be required for access to council services, and that the cities will refuse to cooperate with the scheme as far as possible within the law.

For minor illness people have often resorted to self-medication, preferring an over-the-counter service at their pharmacist to the time-consuming visit to a doctor. Remedies are advertised which help us to cope with assorted aches and pains and coughs and colds. Many people use products which contain vitamin and mineral ingredients. Not for much longer, though.

The EU Food Supplements Directive which comes in on 1st August knocks 5,000 health products off our shelves. 300 vitamin and mineral ingredients out of 420 will be banned. They may be harmless, and may have been so for centuries, but now they have to be proved harmless before they can be sold. To get on the approved 'positive' list involves a very expensive testing process, estimated at £80,000-£250,000 per ingredient, beyond most small suppliers.

It's that old difference again. The Continental European tradition is that the law lists what you are allowed to do: in the English tradition you can do anything not specifically prohibited. It's rather akin to a presumption of innocence. Now this mighty EU hammer is poised over the tiny walnut of vitamin and herbal remedies. All is not lost yet, in that a coalition of those involved in complementary medicine (the Alliance for Natural Health) has put up a strong case. The ruling could be overturned in the courts before it reaches us, although the UK government is supporting the ban, which it railroaded through the Commons, according to Mary Ann Seighart.

This is just part of a daily encroachment on freedom from the EU bureaucrats. If you remit your watch for a moment you are lost. Unfortunately the remedy against loss of freedom is not some easy thing with vitamins and minerals in it. It might involve major surgery.

In the 1983 movie War Games, a young Matthew Broderick hacks into the US nuclear weapons system. The movie represented the fear - popularized at the time - that computerization brought with it a serious security threat.

Hacking is great headache for IT departments, especially in the political world where strong political views at work. In 2003, the Labour Party website was hacked by people opposing the war in Iraq. In 1999, several US government websites were hacked. Databases and information sources are hacked all the time.

In Californian universities last year, university ID card systems were hacked, resulting in the details of over 1,000,000 students being released. George Mason University recently had 30,000 student records nicked from their ID card database. Similarly, the ID card database at the Georgia Institute of Technology suffered from 57,000 people's details being stolen, and the University of Texas at Austin had 55,000 records stolen.

The reason identity card databases are attractive to hackers is because the information on them is valuable. The UK's proposed national identity card database is supposed to make us feel safer. But the possibility that a copy of the database could end up being sold to Al Qaeda does not give me a great deal of comfort.

The cheque from the EU might come to farmers in the mail, but the spy comes from overhead. To guard against those cheating on the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU has pioneered a satellite surveillance system which can watch what farmers are doing. The Times reports that "the camera is so powerful it can even pick out a farmer ploughing the land. It can see the furrows in a field, measure field margins and even check on the state of hedgerows and footpaths." Farmer Jeremy Cooper was shown trial images of his Essex farm.

[He] was shocked to learn that his farm has been inspected by the satellite as part of a trial. He looked at the image and immediately recognised every slope and corner of his land, his five-bedroomed brick farmhouse and outbuildings…..He was amazed by the detail, especially the tractor lines and the ponds in his fields. "I had no idea we had been spied on like this," he said. "I'm more than surprised and can honestly say I'm shocked by what you have shown me. I'm rather an easygoing kind of person but other farmers will definitely think this is Big Brother."

With the subsidy comes the spy. If public money is going to farmers, the authorities try to ensure it is for the purposes intended. A story, probably apocryphal, had it that when the late communist government of Hungary subsidized bread, a whole new police branch had to be set up to prevent its misuse. It was now so cheap that people were feeding it to pigs and building barns out of it. The subsidy was reportedly scrapped when the policing costs exceeded its benefits.

Today it is farms which are inspected. Tomorrow it might be planning authorities watching for unauthorized conservatories or greenhouses. Maybe after that, hunters in pursuit of foxes. Of course technology would have to advance before they could spot and identify individual smokers. But they'll try.

J D Wetherspoon, the UK pub chain, has announced that it is to ban smoking in its pubs. Initially the ban will apply to 10% of pubs starting in May, but a complete ban is planned for 2006. The company believes that its customers would prefer to not have smoking in its pubs. The move seems consistent with the sort of ethos Wetherspoons is trying to achieve - it doesn't play music, for example, wanting to encourage people to go there to talk. It presumably wants to attract customers who don't like smoke. Offering a smokeless pub environment will be a selling point.

On the other hand, the company's shares fell 3 per cent after the announcement. So there's some disagreement as to whether the move is a good one. Fortunately, in a market, experiments about what consumers want can take place. If the ban on smoking is good for Wetherspoons, good for them. If not, they'll soon get the message. Do we really need the clumsy foot of big government to interfere?

It seems Cuba is emulating one of the "progressive" policies from our part of the world, banning smoking in public places.

However this act begs the question: what is a public place? In this BBC article, it mentions "theatres, buses, taxis, trains, schools, food preparation areas and sports arenas". These are all public places in Cuba, being a socialist island as it is.

In the UK thankfully we have much less communal property. Taxis are the property of the driver (or the company that employs him), likewise restaurants and pubs. What are the implications of this? Well since these areas are privately owned, surely it means the owner is in control of their property? For the majority of events and functions, "management reserves the right to refuse admission" for people who do not meet the dress code, or are too intoxicated. The final decision is with the owner.

Smoking is surely no different from this. Shouldn't owners be free to allow, or similarly not allow, smoking on their property? Consumers equally should be free to accept or reject particular establishments based on their smoking policies. The result of this market process is that many restaurants have already banned smoking. They believe people prefer not to have smoke contaminate their food. Others have separate sections - smoking and non-smoking.

In short, government intervention is not needed. The desires of consumers will be attended to so long as we respect free markets and private property.

Identity cards are a very controvertial government policy, but public debate on the subject has been pretty small. The campaign group no2id complains that the government has "consistently failed to show up and defend its position at public meetings". So we felt it was time we helped readdress the balance, and last night the Insitute held a seminar on compulsory identity cards. Kali Mountford, a Labour MP, came to support the scheme on behalf of the Home Office.

On the other side of the fence was Peter Lilley MP, a Conservative MP who is a former Secretary of State for Social Security (in Britain, social security includes welfare generally, like benefits to unemployed people, not just pensions). He argued that the TV series Yes Minister is remarkably true, and that civil servants really do interact with politicians in the way they are portrayed in the series. Every time a new Minister is appointed, they are pursuaded of the virtues of the ID scheme. This has gone on for decades. It is portrayed as a solution to all of our problems. But the fact that no government departments are willing to put up money from their existing budgets suggests that they really don't think it will be a huge help to them.

Sarah Arnott of the IT industry newspaper Computing said that ID cards could have benefits to ordinary people, but not as the scheme is currenty designed. Currently all the benefits go to government. But most of us are willing to give up some privacy if we gain from it - such as with supermarket loyalty cards.

Finally, Seamus Heffernan pointed out that the reasons for introducing identity cards keep on changing. We should be suspicious of government policies when the government itself doesn't seem to be clear about their purpose.

"And instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in our local communities."

- Tony Blair MP, 1995 (from no2id.com)

This morning I appeared on BBC Asian Network, speaking against ID cards. One caller said that when she goes out on the town she often forgets to bring her mobile phone, and that it is entirely possible, therefore, to assume that she will forget her ID card. By 2012, when ID cards are made compulsory, she could be taken to court and fined, simply because she didn't have her ID card on her. The new legislation will turn law-abiding citizens into criminals, with the potential for bringing fear and resentment towards the police.

Many perpetrators of serious crimes will, of course, have forged ID cards. In Israel, where they have biometric identity cards, the government estimates that there are "hundreds of thousands" of fake ones. If stopped by the police, terrorists in the UK will be able to simply show their ID and be cleared of suspicion.

Today's Guardian has an article calling for ID cards to rejected. The author, Henry Porter, writes:

To be anonymous, to go privately, to move residence without telling the authorities is a fundamental liberty which is about to be taken from us. People may not choose to exercise this entitlement to privacy, or see the point of it, but once it's gone and a vast database is built, eventually to be accessed by every tentacle of the government machine, we will never be able to claw it back. We are about to surrender a right which is precious... and profoundly emblematic of our culture and civilisation...

We must not imagine that respect for individual liberty is innate to the British establishment. With this bill, the government is attempting to change for ever the relationship between the individual and the state in the state's favour. Those who treasure liberty must not let it pass.

The Tory MP Boris Johnson rightly opposes the government's squandering of taxpayers' money on identity cards, and is annoyed at conservatives who are in favour of them. In a Daily Telegraph article, he entertainingly explains what he would do if asked to show the proposed card:

If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God's fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.

If I am incapable of consuming it whole, I will masticate the card to the point of illegibility. And if that fails, or if my teeth break with the effort, I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned.

I say all this in the knowledge that so many good, gentle, kindly readers will think I have taken leave of my senses, and to all of you I can only apologise and add, in the words of Barry Goldwater, that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice.

It's worth reading the full article.

Unmarried couples who live together are being advised to get things in writing. They have very few legal rights and if they split up, face the potential prospect of very nasty arguments about who should get what. An online contract is now available to help sort such things out.

Of course, marriage is a perfectly good contract that does guarantee things like being able to transfer property between you tax-free, that your widow's pension entitlements come to you, or that assets are split fairly on divorce. But for many people, it's just too heavy-handed.

And prescriptive: you have to take the whole package, or none. Which is entirely typical of state institutions. No choice. Take it or leave it.

But why not choice? Why should the state be involved in these things any more than it is involved in a service agreement between me and the gas company? And even if we need state backing to enforce partnership contracts, why can't we have a choice about what we agree to? Why not a menu of items that you can tick or not tick, as the two of you decide? And then the courts enforce that agreement, whatever your ticks leave you with?

Of course, you would still get problems about tax, social benefits, free rail passes and all the rest. But these are problems of the bureaucratic rules surrounding state programmes, not problems caused by how people choose to live. Nevertheless, a more flexible array of partnership contracts would solve most of the real problems that cause unmarried partners real distress, particularly on death or break-up.

Britain records about 1000 homicides each year. Nevertheless, the doorstep murder in London of City financier John Monckton has shocked the nation because of its particular arbitrariness - and the feeling that not just drug dealers, but any of us could become a victim.

It has provoked yet more calls for the return of capital punishment - calls no longer restricted to the splendidly thuggish Daily Mail, but even now in The Times too. I wonder if that view is right?

Many homicides are of course domestic and capital punishment may not make much impact on them. But there is a feeling that criminals are now much more likely to carry and use guns or knives, because the law's only sanction is now a few years in jail, and not the gallows.

On purely libertarian principles, I find it hard to justify the state's right to take a life. And of course, you might subsequently find that the person you executed was in fact perfectly innocent.

The trouble is, as the Monckton case shows, the nature of homicide has changed, and innocent people are now being killed all the time. In strictly numerical terms, a death penalty is likely to kill fewer innocent people than are now stabbed and shot as a result of criminals feeling able to carry weapons without really fearing the consequences.

It is hard for a liberal to say these things, just as it is hard for others to admit that government attempts to save people from poverty, ignorance, disease, squalour and unemployment have in fact done exactly the reverse. But it is maybe time that we should all face the realities.

An ICM poll for Reform suggests that four-fifths (81 per cent) of UK voters support the introduction of compulsory identity cards, even if this means the government setting up a national database containing the fingerprints and/or eye scan of everyone.

Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) agree that the police should have the power to make anyone produce their identity card at any time. Over half (56 per cent) thing that ID cards will help fight terrorism, and more say it will help combat benefit fraud and illegal immigration. Some 64 per cent agree that the Government is capable of running a national ID database.

I find this all very depressing. First, government IT procurement seems incapable of building a system to run a laundry list, never mind a national ID service. Second, when on penalty of a £1000 fine we all have to offer up our personal details to government officials, they are likely to become even more overbearing, officious and incompetent than they are now.

Third, what do you need to produce in order to get one of these whizzo 'biometric' cards -- a telephone bill and a birth certificate, no doubt, papers that can be easily forged (even if the card itself if harder to fake). Fourth, ID cards only help you fight terrorists/fraudsters when people are actually stopped and their card is checked: more stop and search planned? Fifth, if you are a terrorist and you are indeed asked to produce your ID, what do you do? (Answer: either hand over your fake one, or say you'll bring it in to the police station tomorrow, and then scarper.)

Let's face it, ID cards are just a way for politicians to show us that they are getting to grips with the problems of terrorism, fraud, and immigration. Even though they will actually make not the slightest bit of difference. All that will change is the relationship between the governors and the governed.

Paternalism is more acceptable, I suppose, if you get to be the parent. Because children are immature and deemed incapable of making responsible decisions, parents sometimes make decisions for them. Most of us accept this as a way of protecting children as they grow up, make mistakes, and acquire responsibility themselves.

Her Majesty's Government, sometimes referred to as 'nanny,' has been taking wider powers to assume that parent-child relationship with many of its adult citizens. It either regulates or wishes to regulate the circumstances and the degree to which they can eat high-sugar and high-fat foods, smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, and engage in risky activities ranging from boarding buses to adventure sports.

Its argument is that it knows better than we do the extent to which we should indulge in these things and, further, that it has the rights of a parent to over-rule our judgment in favour of its own. A parent has this authority as guardian and custodian of the child because it is assumed to be more mature, knowledgeable and responsible. For some reason the state seems to think itself more mature, knowledgeable and responsible than its citizens, but it is by no means obvious that it is.

There used to be a class in Britain which thought that those who used cutlery the right way and pronounced 'awf' correctly possessed a natural superiority and leadership which entitled them to dictate how others should live. It did this in their interest, of course, thinking it knew what was good for people better than they did themselves. Its influence and self-confidence did not survive the extension of choices and opportunities which Lady Thatcher introduced. But its replacement as lifestyle custodian by elected governments has not removed the fundamental weakness of paternalism.

When people's decisions are taken for them, they never learn to take responsibility for their own actions, and to accept the consequences accordingly. They remain, in effect, children. Ministers say that people are unaware of the facts about healthy diet and lifestyle, or, when they are aware, are 'insensitive' to those facts.

Some of these facts are contentious, and in some cases a refusal to conform to them can represent a trade-off. The donuts might be bad for us, but they taste good. A stern nanny might take the decision out of the hands of a child, but many might question how the state acquires the nanny's authority to dictate the donut consumption level of adults. If people never acquire responsibility themselves, they never acquire the independence which accompanies it. They expect to be protected at every turn, as children are, and feel indignant when things go wrong. They look for people to blame, rather than being ready to acknowledge a mistake and to learn from it.

In a free society adult citizens should learn wisdom as they make their choices. Sheep, on the other hand, should eat the pasture chosen for them and return obediently to the fold at the summons of the tinkling bell.

Tyler Brûlé in Saturday's Financial Times suggests a hypothetical Liberteria as an alternative to the current UK. He writes:

This month has seen the UK all but infantilized by a wave of bans and curbs which will render it a more bland, less edgy nation.

He suggests there should be no highway speed limits, no planning restrictions on architectural innovation, a banking system 'sans frontières,' and "freaky and fabulous hotel and resort properties."

…smoking would still be tolerated in clubs, bars and restaurants and drinking would occur round the clock. Gambling, strip clubs and prostitution would all be legal. Add to this a tolerant line on soft drugs..

He wants a return to the hop on, hop off London buses which were deemed unsafe, and cyclists free to ride with the wind in their hair, rather than having to wear helmets. He sees a brand niche for a Liberteria which welcomes "all kinds of lifestyles and most manner of trade."

It's quite an agenda, and would certainly mark a break from the trend towards the ever heavier hand of the nanny state. Would it work? Indeed, would it be enough? Surely this state should be a tax haven, too?

The key question is whether this is all pure fantasy, or whether such a state might ever come about. And if it did, what would it be like to live in?

An ICM poll released today shows that the UK population overwhelmingly rejects the Nanny State, preferring individual freedom instead. According to Reform, who commissioned the poll:

Asked in general about "legislation on things like hunting, smoking and parents' ability to smack their children", 71 per cent of voters agreed that "Too many infringements on personal liberty are being proposed on matters that should be for individuals to decide for themselves", while only 27 per cent agreed that "The Government should legislate on such things even if they mean restrictions on personal liberty."...

Opposition to legislation is consistent across all age groups and social classes. It is particularly high amongst Conservative voters (82 per cent) but remains high amongst Labour voters (62 per cent) and Liberal Democrats (66 per cent).

Which just goes to show that the UK population doesn't know what's good for them...

This article, on the government's retreat over liberalizing the UK gambling laws, shows just how weak and mindless our politicians are. Bowing to pressure from small slot-machine operators and moralists, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell decided that we can't be trusted to gamble sensibly and only eight new big casinos would be licensed.

Bizarre. Since there are already 130 small casinos in Britain, plus 8,500 betting shops (where you can gamble on the horses, the dogs, on virtual roulette wheels and one-arm bandits), not to mention the national lottery and thousands of internet poker sites, what difference will a few big new casinos make? The answer is that middle-class people go to Las Vegas and think it looks tawdry and vulgar. So it's about taste, not argument.

The small casino operators blatantly pressured the government to protect their own interests, demanding curbs on their new competitors. Fears of gambling addiction were stoked up (despite the fact that research shows low-payout machines are just as addictive is big-payout ones).

So eventually the government caved in, ignoring the evidence, ignoring the public's desire to liberalize things, ignoring the importance of open competition. Worried that gambling leads to crime? Wow, I'd kill to get my hands on one of those eight new super-monopoly licences, wouldn't you?

Junk-food, smoking, casinos - Britain's super-nanny government has really excelled itself recently. On Sunday we learnt that TV would be banned from advertising salty or fatty foods until after 9pm. On Monday we discovered that smoking would be banned in public places (except, mysteriously, in pubs that do not sell 'prepared food'). Today we hear that the planned relaxation of gambling laws would be scaled back, with only 8 new casinos allowed (nice little monopoly earner there, if you can get a licence).

I've no problem with people being told that an excess of fat or salt might be bad for you. In fact, we all know that. We still consume these things because we enjoy them. So there's an upside too, let's not forget. But it's no business of the elite groups in power to force us all to conform.

Nor do we need it. Pubs and restaurants already have no-smoking sections, others have highly effective air conditioning, others have chosen to be smoke-free. Drinks firms are marking their bottles with the number of units of alcohol they contain, so we can see if we're overdoing it. Food packaging contains information about fat and salt.

People invariably think they know what is best for everyone else. But now, government has sprawled so far over the human landscape that politicians now think it is not just their responsibility, but their duty, to make the rest of us conform to their world-view. Well it isn't. Butt out, please, and let us make our own lifestyle choices. Don't tell us how to live.

Twenty years ago I helped Mensa to produce what a newspaper might look like in 2020. Our first mistake was to call it The Daily Faxe, but there were others. It was lighthearted stuff, with the headline "New Royal Clone Activated."

One story I did was about several streets in South London being cleared by police after sensors detected someone smoking there. A story in this week’s Big Issue tells us:

An NHS trust in south London has taken to using Big Brother-style technology to stop staff and visitors from clustering around the entrance to smoke. A sensor has been installed outside the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, which bellows if anyone lights up, reminding them it is a non-smoking area and asking them to move away.

The difference is that I was joking.

Many politicians believe they know how to run our lives better than we do. They think that they are better able to spend our money than we are. They think it is their duty to decide who may marry. They believe it is their duty to ban us from doing things we enjoy but which may be harmful to us. They feel justified in stopping us buying alcohol after 11pm or gambling. And they heavily tax anything they disapprove of.

On Samizdata.net I recently wrote: "Is it just me, or are taxes which attempt to change my preferences the most offensive? I really don't see why the state has any legitimacy in encouraging me to switch from gin to, say, orange juice. Should the tax system not try and be as neutral as possible, avoiding attempts to change my behaviour? Or are politicians really just better people than me, more competent in deciding my choices than I am? The government certainly appears to believe it is justified in subordinating my choices to its wisdom. Yet when I think about the nannies, two words come to mind: sod 'em."

So I'm pleased to see a new blog called Nanny Knows Best, which pokes fun at the nanny state. It describes itself as a "site dedicated to exposing, and resisting, the all pervasive nanny state that is corroding the way of life and the freedom of the people of Britain." Check it out.

An engaging debate on liberty has been started by the UK's proposed new gambling bill. ASI President Dr Madsen Pirie was on BBC2's Newsnight on Tuesday October 19th, saying that a minority might be unable to handle the new opportunities, but that this is part of the social price we pay for freedom.

Lord Hattersley, former Labour minister, wrote an article in Monday's Guardian to oppose Madsen and claim that "John Stuart Mill would never have endorsed the gaming bill." Today's Guardian letters feature a reply from Madsen, and one from Eli Randolph which points out that "Mill, in On Liberty, explicitly allows individuals to gamble, be idle or drunk, if they wish."

The discussion on liberty and society transfers tonight to BBC Radio 3, in Nightwaves from 9.30pm to 10.15pm, with Madsen discussing with others the broad issues at stake. The proposed new gambling laws have raised public awareness once again of John Stuart Mill's landmark essay On Liberty.

If you go out in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go out in the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.

No longer is this a nursery rhyme but police advice to Alun Michael MP, the Minister of State for Rural Affairs, before his planned trip to the countryside at the weekend. We now have the absurd situation where the Minister whose brief is the countryside will not be visiting the countryside in the foreseeable future. He's being hounded.

Wednesday's House of Commons debate on foxhunting will not be forgotten any time soon. The 10,000-strong protest outside, which led to violence between some protesters and the police, and the invasion inside the Commons itself are not everyday occurances. Anatole Kaletsky, writing in Thursday's Times of London argues that Labour will regret reigniting a class divide, and many people do indeed take the view that the anti-foxhunting vote was about hatred towards countryside toffs in their tweeds.

But there was a more important issue at stake on Wednesday. It was the question of whether democracy or liberty has the higher legitimacy. The Commons took the view that democracy is a higher principle - that it is legitimate for foxhunting to be banned because a majority of MPs say so. But those of us who believe that the democratic system should acknowledge the principle of liberty do not think that politicians should be taking decisions about foxhunting's future.

We do not have a codified constitution in the UK, but documents like the Magna Carta have recognised that we have rights which the state has no authority to remove. Yet the vote in the Commons showed contempt for the principle of liberty. They allowed themselves to engage in what John Stuart Mill described as 'the tyranny of the majority'.

Labour MP Barry Sheerman said during the debate, "I don't like communities that have a way of life and different values to me losing those rights and those values." The government talks about supporting communities, but time and time again the Commons seems to do the opposite.

I've just been speaking at the Mont Pelerin Society here in Salt Lake City, on the subject of immigration and diversity and how free societies should handle them.

Many people, of course, see large-scale immigration as a problem. But don't let's forget what causes so much immigration - governments. Governments over-taxing, oppressing, or brutally treating their own people. If we want to solve the 'problems' of immigration, let's spread freedom, democracy, and the wealth that they generate to the whole planet, then people wouldn't be forced to migrate.

The trouble is, people who believe in freedom don't want to be accused of imposing it on others. But frankly, unless they stand up for the values of freedom, the free society won't last long. There are too many people in the world - not just in other countries but groups within free societies themselves - who think that free choice is pure evil. Sure, we believe in free speech, but if you allow people to put up bounties and issue death threats for anyone who disagrees with some extremist views, you pretty soon won't have any free speech left anyway.

If minority groups want multiple marriage (this is Salt Lake City) or something, that's up to them. If they want to force their young girls into arranged marriages, I think we need to stand up to this coercion. And we definitely need to stand up against people, at home and abroad, who want to destroy the whole fabric of freedom.

Freedom-minded people need to stand up for freedom. If that's being culturally imperialist, well, so be it.

The government's Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has spoken out against government's attitude to information collection. According to today's Times of London, he is particularly worried about the identity card scheme, a separate Office for National Statistics population register and a database of every child.

"My anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society where much more information is collected about people, accessible to far more people shared across many more boundaries than British society would comfortable."

According to The Times, Mr Thomas highlights his concerns by pointing to the former communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Franco's Spain.

"I don't want to start talking paranoia language, but data protection has a strong continental flavour," he says. "Some of my counterparts in Eastern Europe, in Spain, have experience in the last century what can happen when government gets too powerful and has too much information."

I wonder if the government is regretting Mr Thomas's appointment.

To appreciate the beauty of the Isle of Arran, you have to leave it. Rio, Hong Kong and Sydney may have greater scale, but the northern light on those craggy peaks and the Victorian gothic castle peeking over the forests sweeping down to the silver sea of Brodick Bay are truly romantic.

Twenty-four hours of travel later and I'm in Salt Lake City, about as far from that as you can be. I'm here for the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by the liberal (in the European sense) scholar F A Hayek in 1947. I'm speaking on the theme of how liberal societies should deal with immigration, benefit tourism, and groups who oppose - indeed, want to destroy - liberalism itself.

I'm beginning to think that we need to be more robust in defending liberalism from those who want to destroy it. A liberal order is supposed to welcome diversity. But can it really coexist with those who oppose everything it stands for, who want to kill its leaders, and re-impose autocracy back on the planet? A liberal is also supposed to believe in limited government, and to reject arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. At the same time, how far can we give the customary rights of the accused to those who wouldn't give them to others, were they in charge, and who are quite happy to use our tolerant system to bounce back and overthrow it?

These are difficult issues for a liberal. Thoughts are welcome before I have to speak on these subjects!

Many of the people who oppose the use of British troops overseas claim that it is unfair for government to commit our land forces because it put our soldiers' lives at risk, especially the reserves.

This may be the case, but it is a risk they are willing to take. I know some serving soldiers of the Territorial Army, and I find that almost all of them are willing if not eager to go to war. They joined in the full knowledge that they would, at some time or other have to put their lives at risk, and this was emphasised by the training staff. They are trained to go to war from the first day, and it is for this purpose that they joined the army.

For many of these reserves, action means more pay and also excitement and an opportunity to travel. It also means they can do in practice what they have been trained to do, and what they volunteered to do. Whenever we are told that our young men and women should be spared from some conflict or other, we should remember that they were not conscripted. This is what they chose to do.

Computing, the newspaper for IT professionals, is skeptical of the government's ID card proposals. In its editorial in this week's issue, under the headline Government is data obsessed, it says:

The government - and particularly Home Secretary David Blunkett - have become dangerously obsessive about data-centric solutions to any social issue.

In the same publication, Michael Gubbins writes:

What, how, why and when we collect data is one of society's biggest issues but we're all too busy staying afloat in the floods of emails and bloody texts to see it.

The difficulties will become apparent when they touch our lives. My prediction is that we will all eventually have reason to rue the obsessive policies of our dataholic Home Secretary Mr Blunkett.

Every time the Daily Mail writes a headline, he sees a database.

I don't believe that anyone has a clue how the data will be effectively managed or accessed, what the political and legal implications might be, how much money we will have to spend feeding the beast, or how many ghastly cock-ups will occur.

What I can see is a clear image of an unkempt, overweight burned out Big Brother shovelling in the Prozac.

The Social Affairs Unit Blog makes an interesting argument about AIDS in Africa. It says that the principal force against AIDS in Africa is not African leaders, but the lobbying of homosexuals in the West. Their work means "sufficient funding has been provided to make the development, by Western pharmaceutical companies, of a vaccine to fight the spread of Aids a real possibility."

The government says that identity cards will:

help protect people from identity theft - it can take the average victim 300 hours to put their records straight.

It is a real pain for people when criminals go through their rubbish and find out personal information - which helps them take control of bank accounts etc. But if you want to stop this from happening, there's a low-cost option: buy a shredder. On the high street, you can buy a shredder for £5.99. That's a hell of a lot cheaper - and rather more convenient - than the government ID scheme.

"What we need to sort out today's youth is compulsory military service," said an elderly woman, striking up a conversion with me on a train a couple of years ago. It was a five hour trip - from St Andrews to London - so I didn't argue with her, preferring a quiet read on the train. But thank goodness, I thought, that her views aren't exactly conventional wisdom in the UK.

But in America I do find rather more people advocating conscription - or the draft as they call it. In a large part, it's due to Afghanistan and Iraq wars. As journo Julian Sanchez writes, even some who opposed those wars support conscription as a way of discouraging war. He quotes Jim Spencer of the The Denver Post saying:

Conscription would force all Americans to bear the risks of Iraq. That's not happening now. While the few and the proud put it on the line for most of us, we sit around watching un-reality TV and wondering who's going to survive on "Survivor."

But Sanchez says:

The notion that a conscript army would make us more cautious about undertaking far-flung military adventures is plausible on face, but doesn't find terribly robust support in polling data on support for the war. The idea is that elites will be too willing to send the children of poor citizens off to battle for poor reasons, confident that their own sons and daughters won't bear the burden of war. But was there a class gap in support for intervention in Iraq? Among those with household incomes above $75,000, support for the war ran at about 56 percent in polls Gallup conducted in late 2002 and early 2003. But among respondents with household incomes below $30,000, support plummeted to... 55 percent. Gallup Senior Poll Editor David W. Moore later wrote: "While there are major differences in war support among partisan groups, there are relatively modest differences by age, gender, and income."

If anything, having a military made up of those who choose to be in the military is better for a more cautious approach to war. After all, if a government has to get its population to freely choose to join the military, it acts as a check-and-balance. Furthermore, amateur, conscripted armies lack the professionalism, training, commitment and loyalty of armies who have chosen to be there.

But the most important objection is that conscription is incompatible with the ideas of a free society. Communists dictate what job a person must do; free countries do not.

In the words of Ronald Reagan: "[T]he most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral... a draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending."

As the Guardian reports, a ban on smoking in public places will form part of Labour's third term manifesto, according to draft policy documents to be presented to the party's policy forum.

The third term agenda, due to be published later in the summer, focuses on restrictions on binge drinking, irresponsible pubs and unscrupulous food marketing.

There is a new Puritanism about. The original Puritans, you will recall, opposed bear-baiting not because it was cruel to the bears but because it gave pleasure to the people. And today, anything you might do to enjoy yourself - smoking, boozing, and now even eating - incurs a similar injunction from the politicians. Their idea of a perfect society seems to be one in which we all walk sheepishly to work and back, consume a bowl of thin gruel, and then go quietly to bed at nine o'clock.

We can't blame this on Tony Blair's own religion, though it may be a factor. More significant, I think, is our highly competitive media, which - to sell papers and airtime - makes temporary mountains out of molehills. Then it moves on to some other 'sensation', which most of us pay just as little mind as the last one. The trouble is that during each temporary frenzy, politicians are interviewed and asked what they propose to do about it. So they say it should be stopped. Then, over the course of a year of media stories, they're committed to stopping just about everything. Not much fun.

The Independent's front page reports some bizarre government proposals to reform prostitution.

The first idea is to establish toleration zones. These have been tried in various UK cities, though with mixed success. They make health checks easier, but they're usually in seedy, unsafe areas. And women working outside the zones face even more police intimidation than today.

The next idea is that in-zone prostitutes are offered careers counselling and financial advice. Bizarre: working girls probably know a lot more about money than any financial adviser. And what about non-zone prostitutes?

Lastly, men paying for sex outside these seedy red-light areas would face six months' jail. This is the government's usual solution to any problem: create a new criminal offence. We'll need a lot of new prisons.

Instead of trying to force prostitution into a few nasty places, we should bring it into the light. Today's problems (crime, trafficking, drug-use, disease) arise precisely because we try to force prostitution underground. Forcing it into nasty 'zones' won't improve things much.

Holland and Germany have licensed brothels. Germany and Greece require regular health checks. These seem like mature ways of dealing with the issues that surround what should be an entirely legal transaction between adults.

John Blundell of the Institute of Economic Affairs has a letter in today's Telegraph addressing whether the government should decide on whether to let smoking take place in pubs.

Charles Kennedy makes at least two serious errors in his call for smoking to be banned on health grounds in "public places" (News, May 31).

First, the whole point of liberalism is that society is better off if we restrain ourselves from undermining personal liberty in particular cases, even if we believe some good might come from our intervention.

Second, pubs and the like have become defined in Charles Kennedy's mind (and also in the minds of people who should know better) as "public places". They are not. They are private places, to which patrons are invited on freely agreed terms – just like Charles Kennedy's house.

The 'sue the bastards' campaigners say that companies should be responsible when people abuse their products. Overweight? Nothing to do with you being a slob: sue McDonald's for not telling you fries were fattening. Fall off a ladder? Sue the makers for not telling you ladders can be dangerous.

The film Super Size Me will increase demands on fast-food chains to put the calorie count up on the menu board. (But campaigners might have a shock: you can eat three times a day at McDonald's and consume a weight-losing 1800 calories - try that at your local English Fish & Chip shop.) And the calls to force burger bars to offer healthier options like salads or baked potatoes (again, try that at the local chipper).

There are 1001 kinds of cafe, takeaway and restaurant. They don't all have to offer veggie delights, because there are plenty of others that do. Using the law to force everyone to conform to some campaigner's ideal is just intellectual terrorism.

The core problem is much more alarming. State education manages to teach us less and less about health, diet, or even the elementary physics involved in erecting ladders; and when we do injure ourselves, we know the free state health service will pick up the pieces. So why bother to learn common sense?

But stupidity causes costly problems. Which is why big government and its fans are trying to pass the buck onto business. And why are they going after the big chains? Well, that's where the money is. No point in suing the local chipper, is there?

Before long, even bottles of water will come with a 99-page safety guide. Perhaps it's time we started suing governments for leaving us incapable of looking after ourselves?

The smoking-come-good-life mag, Cigar Aficionado, reports that cigar sales are up in the US despite the introduction of several smoking bans. They are happy to see that Arnie has introduced an ouside smoking space by his office, signalling his liberal attitud