The Bewilderness

Data Protection Undermines Public Health

The Academy of Medical Sciences is a professional body that operates within the mainstream activities of government funding and science based medicine. The  group acts as a vehicle for professional researchers and their latest complaint focuses upon the difficulty they have to access  medical data.

They note that the onerous bureaucracy  of the data protection act , and  its variable interpretation by public bodies, has led to a swift decline in their access to date for epidemiological and other public health studies. It is not clear that the trend towards increased control over the use of personal data had to lead  to a   decline in the use of such data for a public good. With such laws. a simple exemption would have sufficed to maintain access to this data on an anonymous and aggregated basis, with voluntary 'opt-outs' for those who did not wish to participate in such programmes.

Instead, arbitrary interpretations of the data protection regulations, has prevented access to medical records just as databases are proving more useful at aggregating and mining data for public health purposes. This is another example of complicated regulation causing unintended and pernicious consequences.

Yet, there is one theme that can be teased out of this affair, apart from the larger narrative of poor regulation. The professional classes enjoyed a paternalistic relationship with state structures, acquiring funding, status and power over the poor bloody infantry, or as we know them, the consumer. They did not have to take account of individual concerns over data when they were conducting their programmes.

The report, Personal data for public good: using health information in medical research', can therefore be broadly welcomed, for arguing that public education and engagement are necessary in order to place such studies within an ethical context. The danger is that, just as regulation has caused the problem in the first place, faux consultation from designated self-identified consumer or patient groups will be used to justify public health programmes without ensuring that the final mile is achieved: the permission of an individual to  allow their data  to be used in  public health or other studies.

The danger, as future posts will map, is that  states will use  consultation exercises and focus groups as alternative  channels to representative institutions, in the name of deepening or widening democracy and popular participation. We should consider the Napoleonic joys that participatory or deliberative democracy may bring....
 

Basra 2007

The British Army may not be heading out to Afghanistan after all, or they may. It all depends upon the Dutch; if they vote for the deployment of their troops, then we may be able to withdraw from Basra.

Ministers must decide next week whether to take the risk of sending a larger force than was originally planned to Helmand province in south Afghanistan, putting even greater pressure on overstretched infantry battalions.

That decision will be influenced by whether the Dutch parliament agrees to send 1,200 troops to Afghanistan as Nato moves into territory previously patrolled by the US.

If the Dutch refuse, the alliance will have to look elsewhere and there is a distant possibility that Britain's spearhead battalion, which can be deployed at very short notice, could plug the gap for six months.

A spokesman for the Dutch defence ministry rated the chances of agreement on the deployment at "50-50".

Three para and those high maintenance Apaches are still based in Karachi, witing for permission to move. Three months and counting... Blair's pronouncements and hints of withdrawal for media approval count for nothing compared to the needs of the armed forces for long lead-in times. You cannot spin deployments and shame on the politician who tries. But then, did Blair ever view the armed forces as anything more than camera fodder.

Now they are on the front line, as an influential Iran, tests and baits Iraqi forces.  Local Iranian troops are  willing to  respond to Iraqi  actions with overwhelming force.

An Iraqi sailor was killed and nine were captured by an Iranian Navy vessel during a skirmish in the Persian Gulf near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, an Iraqi official said Tuesday.

The British Army remains in one of the most vulnerable locations in Iraq, as Iran endeavours to embed its proxies via the militias and probes the capabilities of the new government.

Chasing The Shadows

One of the unintended consequences of the Private Finance Initiative is the perverse incentives that it provides for skills transfer to private companies; skills which are then leased back to the requisite public body:

One reason the Apache-qualified pilots are leaving is money. Several private companies pay generously for army-trained pilots who are then effectively hired back to the military through Private Finance Initiative training contracts.

"Now why would some of the highest calibre pilots be leaving the army? The sum of £60,000 a year springs to mind," said one military insider.

This is exacerbated by a rigid career structure, low pay and the complex infrastructure of the Apache helicopter that keeps between 20% and 50% of the machines grounded for maintenance "at any one time". That proportions seems incredibly costly....

The MOD was relaxed. They can do no wrong.

But the Ministry of Defence said there could be flexibility. "Apache crews may serve for longer than three years if their careers allow, and may of course return to flying after experiencing other roles," said a spokeswoman.

Now we are the heart of Europe

What should make one see red is when, without apology, the Treasury sucks money out of working people in this country, fucks their pensions up, taxes savings, and pisses it down the drain. In addition, this pisspoor government is so crap that it allows those with illegal cravings for underage sex to work in schools. Too busy working on their latest presentation and media image to think about the children who are endangered due to their negligence and incompetence.

So what is the latest symbol of their right honourable fuckwits in Downing Street. Well, the spendthrift and lipstick libertarian have managed to finally reverse all the hard gains of Thatcherite supply side reform. Now we are taxed more than the Germans - way to go:

BRITAIN’s tax burden is set to outstrip that of Germany this year for the first time in a generation, raising worries that Gordon Brown’s tax and spend policies could jeopardise the economy’s performance.

The rise in Britain’s overall burden of tax as a proportion of national income above that in Germany is highlighted by a Bank of America analysis that draws on authoritative data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The OECD’s figures show that Britain’s tax revenues are set to hit 42.4 per cent of GDP this year, up from 40.7 per cent in 1999. In contrast, Germany’s tax burden is set to fall to 42.1 per cent, from 46.7 per cent at the end of the Nineties.

And for all this, we have very little to show: failing schools, a failing health service, police that prefer to chase cars rather than criminals, negative productivity in the public sector and the biggest rise in non-jobs for a generation. And Labour's genius decides to set this path as we face greater competition than ever before. People can already see that their quality of life is bad, and it will probably get worse, as we are told what we mustn't do and why we must pay more and more. There is a point of no return.

On the upside, roll on recession, since it will expose the costs they have imposed very rapidly. Labour explaining mass unemployment will no doubt be the result of the last Tory administration. Which is a pity, because Cameron has just cut loose from the theme that might save him. Tough cuts and economic reform. The cycles of decline are shorter and more savage. They won't have time to posture as cod Blairites because the fat will all have been used up. What a stupid party, plagiarising  project failure.

Macroeconomic stability counts for nothing  if  the economy is stagnant and in decline. Blair has got his wish. He has placed Britain at the economic heart  of Europe.

Holger Schmieding, the Bank of America economist who analysed the OECD numbers, said that the figures suggested that Mr Brown’s policies had moved Britain “firmly into the European camp, and moved it away from the US”, which has a lower tax burden. Mr Schmieding argued that the trend would probably lead to weaker growth in the UK, with the Government putting at risk hard-won economic advantages secured under the Thatcher governments.

However, the Treasury said that government spending remained lower than the peaks reached under Mrs Thatcher.

Time for abolition of the Treasury, just for that fatuous response. This department is primarily responsible for wasting billions whilst undercutting defence. Useless bastards!

The "Sticky Fingers" Problem

This was originally the shorthand for the debate between Smelley and Drexler on the possibilities of a self-assembly architecture at the nano level. To my mind, the phrase is also applicable, with some justice, to the travails of mon ami Chirac, who has proved rather clumsy in the New Year. When he announced that he had new proposals to put forward for reviving the Constitution, one thought of various machinations and manoevrings to embarrass the British and bring other Member States onside. Surprisingly, Chirac made no effort to consult on his proposals about creating an 'avant garde' and cherrypicking the Constitution. In short order, he found that they were dismissed by his German counterparts, who had mooted their own plans for reviving the Constitution.

In a statement on Tuesday, Chirac showed support for an idea by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt to allow certain groups of countries to advance European integration more quickly.

Verhofstadt had mooted the idea after the French and Dutch rejection of the  European Constitution sparked fears of political paralysis in the 25-nation  bloc.

“The member countries of the eurozone have a natural calling to deepen their  political, economic, taxation and social integration,” said Chirac.

This offensive was picked up by Nicholas Sarkozy who advocated cherrypicking the Constitution in order to avoid another referendum.

The drive to revive the Constitution with the figleafs of additional verbiage like the Germans suggested will prove fruitless. Since full ratification will not be forthcoming, the only outcome will be a fudged showdown. Either the Noes will be finessed with opt-outs so that the structural changes will be implemented without too much distress, or the EU will move towards an avant-garde. more deeply integrated, a European state.

Andrew Duff and Johannes Voggenhuber are preparing to fill the breach, parliamentarians riding to the rescue of the forlorn constitution. The two pour scorn on the European Council, as a tool divided and unable to provide leadership.

“From Europe’s leaders we have had a display of a wide range of simplistic solutions to the crisis,” Duff said on Friday.

“From President Chirac we have had a proposal for a piecemeal approach to the constitution and from Nicolas Sarkozy we have had a proposal for a restructured version.”

From [the Dutch and UK foreign ministers] Bernard Bot and Jack Straw we have confirmation that the present treaty is finished; from Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel we have him disagreeing with all of these people and then we have the president of Finland disagreeing with Schuessel.”

“All their proposals are constitutionally improper or politically quite unrealistic. Some of them are both.”

These two believe that the institutional paralysis provides an  opportunity  for  the European Parliament to attain  its place in the sun:

Both MEPs want parliament to show a clear way forward on reviving the constitution debate in Strasbourg next Wednesday and Thursday.

“We have to decide as a parliament if we are to fill the political space or to be satisfied with being supine parrots of fashion; commentators of the paralysed and confused European council,” said Duff.

Voggenhuber argued that there didn’t appear to be any serious EU leadership on the constitution.

“The crisis seems to be getting worse,” he said adding, “The question now is who is going to be able to lead us out of this crisis.

“Someone has to take responsibility, someone has to take initiatives. If it’s not the parliament, then who is going to take the lead and stand up for the constitutional process?”

Why not leave it to the French and Dutch people? They stood up to the constitutional process, didn't they?

 

A Road Defined

Today, the Prime Minister was filmed spraying a wall in the hope of removing graffiti. As the Downing Street website illustrated, our dynamic leader had these words of wisdom for anti-social elements: "Don't do it!".  During his walkabout, local residents are quoted by the Downing Street website.

Mr Blair listened to local resident Brian Tildesley, who for the past twenty years has suffered from misbehaviour on his estate.

Mr Tildesley said of the government's plans: "Respect has to go some way to help. It's all going in the right direction. The tide is turning."

Would this Brian Tildesley be the same Brian Tildesley who was and maybe still is the secretary of the South-West Regional Council for the trade union, Amicus MSF. If this is the case, he is probably also a member of the Labour Party and more than just a "concerned resident".

Not an uncommon form of press management but one that failed to reach any newspapers. Nulab spin is atrophying as badly as its master.

Blair's speech echoed Hayek's warnings that  managerialism bypasses the checks and balances designed to prevent the erosion of liberty and miscarriages of justice. Like any good communitarian, the Prime Minister defined liberty as the balance between freedom and security, a political equation that is often on the lips of our tyrannous leaders. The fragile institutions of criminal justice and the common law were dismissed with disdain:

The theory is basically treating Britain as if it were in the 19th or early 20th centuries.  The practice however takes place in a post-war, modern, culturally and socially diverse, globalised society and economy at the beginning of the 21st century.  The old civic and family bonds have been loosened.  The scale, organisation, nature of modern crime makes the traditional processes simply too cumbersome, too remote from reality to be effective....

Yes, in theory, that is what is supposed to happen through the traditional court processes.  In practice it doesn't.  We are fighting 21st crime with 19th century methods.

Blair criticises the traditional court system for protecting the accused and takes great pride in "reversing the burden of proof". To deal with the communally defined 'anti-social behaviour', the tool of social engineering is summary justice with a right of appeal, presumably to the same inefficient, cumbersome courts that, according to our Prime Minister, do not work in the first place.

Blair and New Labour take pride in smashing the checks and balances which protect civil liberties in this country. If you have misunderstood the man and still believe that he is located in the  liberal tradition as some of the comrades do, think again. His first instinct is order, social and authoritarian,  covenanted  by the community and upheld through the state,  in a mantra of rights and responsibilities,  derived from Hobbes and cemented by Blair's favourite socialist, R H Tawney.

Respect is a way of describing the very possibility of life in a community. It is about the consideration that others are due. It is about the duty I have to respect the rights that you hold dear. And vice-versa. It is about our reciprocal belonging to a society, the covenant that we have with one another.

More grandly, it is the answer to the most fundamental question of all in politics which is: how do we live together? From the theorists of the Roman state to its fullest expression in Hobbes's Leviathan, the central question of political theory was just this: how do we ensure order? And what are the respective roles of individuals, communities and the state?

Legal stricture will never be enough. Respect cannot, in the end, be conjured through legislation. Government can provide resources and powers.  It can do its best to ensure that wrong-doing is detected, that its powers against offenders are suitable, that its systems are expeditious and its enforcement strong. And the British system, like others, in the modern world, has not been good enough against these standards.

Despite the loathsome outcome of this campaign and the manifold injustices that will result, one can pity Blair as an agent who follows the path laid out before him. The transition from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is a consequence of the welfare state and the expansion of moral dependency on the part of many individuals. The state lacks the tools to remedy and offset the pernicious consequences of its systems. It returns to the mindset that has served it so well: controls, shortcuts and arbitrary regulations designed to solve the defined problems. If existing systems like the courts are outside the executive control, they are bypassed for more malleable solutions. 

Blair treads the path that has been written for him.

 

A Toast To Basra, For Straw is now a' visiting

Let us return to that strange world of sunkissed foreignness and pulsating ululations that cry out to the British Army. Now our great panjundrum has visited and dispensed all of the influence possessed by aminor viceroy of a great power: accorded respect and attention for the while that his troops patrol the streets of Basra. Their mission is compromised: those who freed naturally seek revenge against the minority that have lorded over them. There will always be fanatics willing to reopen a centuries long war. Increased patrols will not cease this fight.

AMID growing fears about the length of time before British troops can be withdrawn from Iraq, defence chiefs have ordered a crackdown on locally trained police accused of torturing civilians.

British officials have decided that they must commit more resources to supervising the mainly Shiite commando units accused of conducting a 'dirty war' against the Sunni minority in the area around Basra.

They have handed the keys of the republic to the people and carved out a democracy. In a declaration of completion, Straw heralded a new government for a united Iraq, downplaying visions of partition or confederation. Yet, in an act of realism, acknowledged stability is awarded by withdrawal. Let these Shi'as take the hint and postpone their civil wars and Sunni bloodletting for better days when Tommy has returned to northern climes.

Sign of Maturity

The European Union has attained the symbolic maturity of a fully  fledged state. It happened a few days ago but EUFOR  managed to shoot someone. Yes, they were shooting back and the force had come under fire. However, the symbol counts, even if there may have been other occasions: The EU has killed, and like any animal, a state that tastes blood, savours more....

The wife and son of a Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive fired four clips from an AK-47 at Italian troops who came to arrest him before a soldier killed her and wounded the boy, the European Union peace force said on Friday. Far from being an innocent bystander mowed down in a crossfire by trigger-happy soldiers, as Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic angrily alleged, Rada Abazovic went down in Thursday's shoot-out with guns blazing, according to the EU's version.

Stung by criticism that assumed its troops were to blame, the EUFOR peacekeeping mission gave a detailed account of the action near Rogatica, stressing that the three members of the Abazovic family fired first and fired repeatedly.

The EU has arrived.

"30 Theses" to Start an Islamic Reformation?

Compare and contrast Blair's 12 point plan with one of the German Lander, Baden-Wurttemberg

From the Times:

OPPOSITION parties have claimed that Tony Blair has climbed down on many of the pledges in the 12-point plan to tackle terrorism that he announced after the 7/7 bombings in London.

The Prime Minister promised that “the rules were changing” to expel preachers of hate. But none has been thrown out of the country.

In contrast, the Germans are quietly defining allegiance to liberal democracy as a requirement for citizenship.

Die Zeit has a list of the questions in German, and this is the Babelfish translation.  Despite its flaws, the translation gives a pretty good idea of the concepts that are sought after in the modern German citizen.  I'll provide what I think is a summary (but be warned, I don't speak german, so there may be errors):

1. State monopoly of force, and equal rights for men and women.
2. Flaws of the democratic system.
3. Valid responses to perceived religious insult in the arts.
4. Response to criticism of religion.
5. Response to the banning of political parties under the german constitution.
6. Violence within marriage.
7. Confinement of female relatives to the home to protect family honour.
8. The banning of people from their own home to prevent domestic violence.
9. Equality of the sexes before the law.  What should the law do to those who do not accept this?
10. The rights of women to take "male" jobs.
11. Unsuitable jobs for women.
12. Would the candidate accept treatment from a doctor of the opposite sex in an emergency?
13. What is the stance of the candidate on the issue of parents forbidding a daughter a particular occupation or boyfriend?  How would the candidate respond to a daughter that chose a career or boyfriend/husband of which they disapproved?
14. Would the candidate approve of forced marriages?
15. Would the candidate allow their daughter to participate in sports and swimming at school?
16. Would the candidate allow their child to participate in school trips?
17. Would the candidate allow their wife to dress as german women or girls?
18. What would a female candidate do if their husband disapproved of a daughter dressing as german women or girls?
19. What would the candidate do if a sister or daughter was sexually harassed?
20. What would the candidate do if a son or brother was insulted?
21. What does the candidate believe should happen if someone changes religion or abandons religion?  Should this affect rights, such as inheritence?
22. What would the candidate do if they learned that friends or acquaintances planned a terrorist attack?
23. What are the views of the candidate on the perpetrators of the 9/11 and Madrid attacks?  Were they terrorists or freedom fighters?
24. What is the view of the candidate on honour kilings?
25. What is the view of the candidate on bigamy?
26. What does the candidate think of the view that the jews are responsible for most ofthe problems in the world, even including the 9/11 attacks?
27. What would the candidate think if their daughter applied for something in Germany, and was rejected, then a black somilian was found to be accepted?
28. What would the reaction of the candidate be if their son told them that they were homosexual, and wished to live with another man?
29. In Germany, many politicians are openly gay.  What is your view on openly gay people holding public office?

It isn't clear that the new policy will survive court challenge.  For one thing, only moslems will face these questions.  However, these questions could potentially act like "citizenship ASBOs".  As I understand it, the german constitution forbids the removal of citizenship.  However, since 2002, naturalised citizenship is considered void in Germany if a false statement is made in the application process.  Thus, if someone provided an "approved" answer to any these questions, and then acted in a different way (for example, by campaigning against gay or women's rights), they might be liable to removal of citizenship.

Like Luther's 95 theses, these 30 questions carefully explore the boundary between modern civil society, and traditional Islamic practices.  In an ideal world, an "Enlightenment Islam" would develop, which could co-exist peacefully with the Judeo-Christian tradition in Europe.  I'll be watching this space...

One Coalition Courting

There was a question mark over who the SNP would court for a potential coalition at Holyrood. The  'devil's alternative'  has never been mooted, leaving the  Greens  and the Scottish Socialist Party as natural partners for the nationalist statists ('civic' for the polite amongst us).

A detailed analysis of the possible combinations can be found at J MacNumpty, who lists the commonalities between the Greens and the Tartans, ideological, political and psephological.

I have to say that the SNP are probably the ones who gain the most from this: they have plenty of common ground with the Greens, on issues such as independence (the big issue, of course), nuclear power and rendition of terror suspects, so they have a good basis to start negotiations. This also makes discussions after the Election (if they're needed or even remotely useful) more productive. They're helped by the Greens' tactic of only standing on the Second Vote, preventing a challenge to the SNP in their target constituencies. Let's not forget that the SNP, as members of the European Free Alliance, sit with the Greens in the European Parliament.