Police use child abuse tapes for PR

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Police have released interview tapes of child abuser Vanessa George. That should worry us all.

Justice is flouted so routinely these days that you may feel they can't do anything more to shock us. And then this happens. Nursery worker Vanessa George,39, has been found guilty of abusing young children at the nursery where she worked. Given that anyone who comes within 100 yards of a child these days has to go through Criminal Records Bureau checks, you might wonder how that can happen. Well, the system seems to be wrecking scout groups, schools and after-hours clubs, who have seen a bit drop in parents volunteering to help out – innocent parents who simply can't bear the intrusion of a CRB investigation – though it doesn't seem to stop the real abusers.

Maybe, as with the Soham murders, it was just police incompetence. But even that is not the real shocker. Really shocking is that the police interview tapes with Vanessa George have been released to the BBC and are now all over the internet.

Police interview tapes came in for one reason alone. There were so many cases of defendants pleading that they had been bullied into confessions by police questioning that, to protect the public against any possibility of police abuse, it was ruled that all police interviews should be taped. It would also ensure that what appeared as evidence in court was properly extracted and did actually correspond to what a defendant said.

Now interviews are conducted on video, not just audio. A relief to innocent people who are accused of things they didn't do, you might think. Until you find that the police are releasing your tapes to the BBC, as they did in this case – complete, of course, with their own commentary: "She clearly knows what she did was wrong..." and "She was still trying to manipulate the situation..." etc etc. Yes, she's guilty, yes, she's going to jail, and good thing too. But the duty of the police is to prosecute cases, not to put their own spin on them. Something brought in to protect the public is now being used for police PR.

It's truly amazing. How are the police going to get anyone to confess to anything if they imagine that edited snippets of their tapes are going to be splattered all over the BBC and the internet? I've often said that if you are arrested by the police, the best thing to do is to say absolutely nothing. Yes, they will hold you as long as they can out of spite, but at least you won't be set up, and the BBC won't be playing tapes of you saying something unfortunate for the next twenty years. Just because Vanessa George has been found guilty doesn't make it any better. Today it's tapes of guilty people. Soon it will be tapes of anyone they pull in, plus commentary, if they figure that a bit of public outrage might help the case against them. You might think the rules of natural justice mean that could not possibly happen. But seeing how far our liberties have been eroded, it's surely only a matter of time.

Dr Butler's book The Rotten State of Britain is now in paperback.

Charisma or control?

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A very insightful Times piece by Roger Mavity of Conran holdings observes that a successful business needs two types of person. There is the charismatic CEO, and the number-crunching Finance Officer. They have different roles, and are different personality types. The guy (or gal) with the imagination and drive that can fire people up is what drives creativity and innovation, whereas the more sober accounting type is there to cut the cloth and control costs.

"One of the classic mistakes in business," says Mavity, "is to promote the finance director to chief executive — leadership by charisma is exchanged for leadership by control." This is, he thinks, what has happened to the Labour government. The imaginative inspiring CEO (Tony Bair) has been replaced by the control-obsessed Finance Director (Gordon Brown), and the result is stagnation and lack of leadership.

On a wider scale, Mavity identifies a more general problem for Britain. We have become obsessed with numbers. Teachers waste their time filling in forms about targets, instead of inspiring children with a love of learning. Everywhere from hospitals to business offices we are driven by targets and numbers, the stuff of control. All too lacking, he says, are the imagination and flair which can lead to innovation and achievement.

"But all too often," he says, "our ingenuity and our sense of adventure gets slowed down by the box tickers, the people who can’t have an opinion until a focus group has had it for them, the people who won’t ever take a risk they don’t have to." He cites Charles Saatchi, James Dyson, Terence Conran and iPod designer Jonathan Ive as people who broke the mould and dared to take risks and let their imagination run. There are all too few of them, he says, and as the box-tickers take over, our world is the poorer for it.

Check out Dr Madsen Pirie's new book, "101 Great Philosophers."

Europe is lagging behind

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Europe is on the right track to becoming the largest re-agriculturialized region in the world. Whilst all other regions tend to use more and more resources on research and development (R&D), the European Union continues to subsidize wine production and agricultural export instead of making it profitable to invest in future wealth.

The OECD has recently publicized a report expressing concern about the investments made in the EU in the field of R&D. Likewise, the European Commission has also expressed concern that the EU region will not reach the goal of using 3 % of GDP on R&D in 2010. Both the US, China and Japan are currently investing more money in future development than the European countries, even though the EU countries make up the world’s largest economy.

The combined investments made in the EU region equals 1.8 % of total GDP, in comparison the expenses used on subsidizing wine and butter, adds up to 0.6 % of EU GDP. Right now every European Citizen is using about £90 a year to enable European farmers to sell goods in developing countries at prices that cannot be matched by local farmers, forcing them to rely on aid from European countries... The safe way of ensuring jobs for bureaucrats.

What could then be done to increase the wealth of EU citizens in the long as well as the short run? In the first place, the EU countries could choose to use the agriculture subsidies on corporate tax reliefs encouraging investments in R&D. This would leave the EU region using 2.4 % of total GDP on actual improvement. An increase like this would mean that the EU region would spend $298 billion on R&D compared to the US’s $344 billion. Secondly the EU could stop taxing agricultural import from developing countries, leaving these economies with a fair chance of self-propelled economic development as well as securing cheap agricultural goods to EU citizens. Last but not least we would save the costs of unnecessary bureaucracy, since we wouldn’t need to send nearly as much development aid to developing countries in view of the fact that they would be better off as a result of free markets.

What has Obama done for peace?

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Plenty has already been written on why Barack Obama didn't really deserve to win the Nobel peace prize, and in general I agree with it. But one thing that bothers me – and I'll confess here that my views on foreign policy are strongly non-interventionist – is that people seem to be labouring under the delusion that Obama is some kind of pacifist. He isn't. Sure, he rose to fame and political fortune as an opponent of the Iraq war. And yes, he did initially promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq and close Guantanamo Bay as soon as he became president. But he hasn't done those things.

As Cato's Jason Kuznicki points out, the withdrawal from Iraq has been delayed and partial, and is now described by the White House as "complicated". Meanwhile, the Bush administration's policies on detention and rendition have remained largely intact. Obama might have railed against the executive powers the Bush administration invented for itself when he was a presidential candidate, but now he's in the Oval Office he seems to like them. It is also worth noting that Obama is considering sending 60,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, to fight a war with unclear objectives and little real prospect of success. Again, that hardly strikes me as a peaceful act.

Of course, you can't really blame the Nobel prize committee for not realizing Obama wouldn't stick to his promises, can you? After all, he had only been president for 12 days when nominations closed.

The weakest link

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Britain’s political establishment is indeed its weakest link, with insufficient collective self-control to take decisions that are truly in the public interest. No wonder we are in such a mess. We should never forget that while capitalists and free markets are far from perfect, politicians and regulators tend to be much worse. Our self-interested and all too human political class is as far from the ideal of the Platonic Guardian as it is possible to imagine.

Allister Heath 'Expenses scandal latest blow for sterling' City AM.

Sweden's social welfare popularity

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Among the intellectual feast that was this summer's Stockholm meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society was a challenging and controversial paper on the popularity of Sweden's social welfare system [pdf here]. As Sweden has progressed from its outrider position on social democracy into a fairly mainstream OECD economy, the popularity of their generous and far-reaching welfare system has not diminished. Indeed, opinion poll evidence suggests it has increased.

The explanation was provocative. It is that Sweden is not a community paradise in which everyone accepts the state provision as fair and equal. Rather it is that changes to Swedish welfare have allowed people to tailor it to suit their own individual circumstances. The school reforms allow them to choose with state money the schools they would have chosen if they had had to pay fees direct to the school instead of via taxation. Similarly in areas like sickness and unemployment cover, people now routinely use private cover to top up the level of state provision to the degree of cover they prefer.

The rule is that it is easier for people to top up a modest state coverage than it is for them to sell off any surplus if the state coverage is more than they need. So topping up is now normal, allowing people to augment state cover to the level of welfare coverage they feel they need. The popularity of Sweden's system rests, it is suggested, on the fact that it provides through taxation something fairly close to what people would have chosen had they been spending their money directly.

The key to that is the scope for individual variation. In place of a one-size-fits-all blanket state coverage, there is opportunity throughout for it to be tailored to individual circumstances. It is a remarkable thesis, with lessons for the UK if it is borne out. Maybe we should be looking at ways that allow UK citizens to tweak and tailor our state services and welfare to suit their own individual needs?

Check out Dr Madsen Pirie's new book, "101 Great Philosophers."

Home education vs. the bully-boy state

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The presumption of guilt is eating it`s way into our lives: Home Education is the latest victim.

As a parent you are a suspect in the crusade against child abuse. That is the message to Home Education from this government.Through a staged Review and now onto a Select Committee, the drive has been to find ways to justify an assault on Home Ed., taking away parental rights, enforcing child interviews alone and invading the family in a way that singles out Home Ed. as a "prime suspect".

Yet the very idea that Home Education could be harbouring child abuse is one manipulated from Local Authorities because the Government wanted to hear something that would enable it to invade Home Ed. Certainly, cases like Baby P. have made the system determined to seek out and stamp-out child abuse whatever the cost, but such cases have not been anything to do with Home Ed., so why single out one group for inspection?

The drive to stamp out child abuse should not cause abuse of children, or their parents, yet this is what compulsory interviewing of childen will achieve. Home Ed. is a sanctuary of love and good education, it nurtures children and allows them to learn and develop at their own speed. Many children are bullied in school and parents deregister their kids to protect them from further harm. We can only imagine what harm will be done to these kids when they are forced into interview alone, not to mention the damage if the National Curriculum is imposed along with government educational standards.

Currently, Local Authorities are widely acting ultra vires in regard to Home Ed. They are lying to parents, purporting to have powers under the law that they do not have, trying to bully children into returning to school. This really is a bully-boy State.

101 Great Philosophers launch party

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On the 19th October the official London book launch of Dr Madsen Pirie’s latest work will take place. We are delighted to confirm that the Matthew Parris will be along to say a few words at the event.

101 Great Philosophers is a concise and accessible guide to 101 of the greatest minds that contributed to the legacy of western philosophy. From the ancient Greeks to present-day thinkers, Dr Pirie employs concise entries, each limited to about 400 words, to give an overview of the contribution made by 101 key philosophers to the development of this fascinating subject.

Dr Pirie deliberately takes a broad view, including some from other disciplines who also have changed the way we think about ourselves, our society or our world. This book provides a sparkling insight into the lives and times of each philosopher covered - explaining just why what they had to say was so innovative and important.

If you are interested in attending the book launch, please contact Philip at philip@old.adamsmith.org.

Obama's acceptance speech

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"Before I go any further I just have to thank Barrack Obama for nominating me for this award. Without him I wouldn't have put my own name forward. Thank me. I am deeply humbled that the Norwegians have proudly seen fit to award me this prize for peace on the day we attempted to blow up the moon. Alas that proved to be unsuccessful, but we'll use the prize money to fund another shot at it. During the past 8 months, since my nomination, I've actively encouraged peace around the world. My fellow President Ahmadinejad has chosen to test fire rockets and continue with his work on nuclear physics. In the Pacific region my favourite little movie buff Kim Jong-il has been attempting to throw his rockets over Japan, luckily for us he throws like a girl. But he's continued with his pursuit of nuclear weapons. Allowable under my idea for a peaceful world where we are all armed equally, either with broken bottles or nuclear weapons. Or maybe even we can just play rock paper scissors at the future UN meetings, whatever we do we have to do it quietly. It's not just overseas where my work has been blessed with healing hands. You could say that back in the United States I've gone down like Nobel's most famous invention and blown everyone away with how good I am at organizing this once great community. Peace is definitely the watch word of my administration and we will continue to promote that in America. Over the next few months we will be looking to replace everyone's car with a donkey and ending our dependence on oil as well as road rage. Guns will be exchanged for hot dog buns and free speech outlawed so no one can anything nasty to anyone else ever again. Leaving those facts aside. It is fair to say that this award would not none have been possible without the good work of George. I owe him everything. I am indebted to him for the rest of my life and I dedicate this prize to him. Dubya! Thanks man."

The extraordinary efforts of Obama

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Obama took office on January 20. Gosh, it’s so long ago now. What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy" did he make in those first twelve days? Bowing to the Saudi King? Giving the British prime minister the Wal-Mart discount box of Twenty Classic Movies You’ve Seen A Thousand Times? “Er, Barack, I’ve already seen these." “That’s okay. They won’t work in your DVD player anyway.

Mark Steyn 'Who Really Won?' NRO.