Book Recommendation

Captive State, George Monbiot.

George Monbiot talks about the incredible level of corporate power. If you were wondering why people protest against the WTO - this will answer your question.

It also demonstrates that the level or corruption in government is very high. Big business can essentially tell the government what to do, and the government obeys, despite it being counter to the best interests of the public - the people they are meant to represent. It makes me think lobbying should be made illegal!

It also explains why the NHS is in such a mess, money is being bled out of it to pay company profits. The PFI and later PPI are not cheaper it seems - but then that should hardly be a surprise. Instead it sells the future for the now. In some cases borrowing to invest in the future might be ok, but the terms companies have got are so good the public sector is the looser. And what's more the private sector has far too much power to decide what the projects are.

Essentially what PFI does is allow us to build something we don't need for a lower upfront cost than the thing we do need, but then we have to pay over the odds for the next few decades.

And complaints are met with "commercial confidentiality". Sorry, but that's no good. All contracts entered into by the government (at all levels) must be public knowledge - otherwise there is no accountability. And without that we might as well abandon the illusion that we're living in a democracy.

Party Whips Considered Harmful

For a long time I've had a serious issue with the concept of Party whips.

When we elect an MP we choose them to represent us. Their party alliegance gives us some indication as to what sorts of policies they support, and on the whole I would expect an MP to be more likely to vote with their party than against it. But when there's a conflict between representing their constituents and supporting their party it's the constituents who should win. It's the constituents who pay their wages after all through their taxes. But is that what happens? I don't think it is. Most of the time party loyalty wins.

There is an argument that the party often supports an MP's election campaign, and therefore should expect some loyalty. I think this is bogus though. That's a matter for the parties selection process to deal with. If they select a candidate who they know (and the public expects) will vote in a particular way on some issue then they have no cause to complain later. If an MP were to represent themselves one way to the party and then change their tune once in office then the party would have the option to deselect them at the next election. In other words MPs should behave honourably or expect deselection by their party.

Of course, that in itself is a form of coercion. And it's likely to get candidates standing who say they will support the party line even if that's not how they feel. Of course, they should then behave as they said they would during their campaign. But then changing their tune after getting into power is nothing new, although now it's done at a party level rather than an individual level.

What it boils down to is that right now we have a system where we effectively vote for the party we want. Not the person. Given the existance of parties it's very hard to unpick this, and no system is going to be perfect, but right now I feel that it's swung too far in the parties favour.

But what really is offensive about this is that the whip system is a major mechanism leading to the centralisation of power in the party executive. For the governing party that's typically pretty close the PM and cabinet. Centralisation of power is a bad thing. It is directly in conflict with the most basic principles of democracy. And this has been getting worse. It's a trend Thatcher started, but Blair has continued apace.

New Labour for example is a radical departure from Old Labour. Many Labour voters are voting for older Labour principles and Labour MPs who've been in office, or at least in politics since well before New Labour existed. But the party they have actually got now is getting more like the Tories every day. (So much so that Cameron almost seems to be trying to position the Conservatives to the left of Labour!). Without the whips this would have been virtually impossible, because the Labour MPs would have had more power.

So, what I'm essentially arguing for is that every vote in the house should be a free vote. The Lord's works more that way, and it does seem that generally it's more effective at engendering real debate. And that's ultimately what we want. When policy is suggested by Cabinet, we don't want Parliament to rubber stamp it. We want them to debate it. To tear the idea apart, to test it to destruction, and in doing so make sure it's a good idea and make sure it really will do what's wanted. Right now we have a system where debate is stifled, and any idiot idea dreamt up by cabinet gets forced through. And that's why we've had so many policy failures - because those policies haven't had to withstand the fire of debate first.

In the extreme this would mean the collapse of the party system. And it's interesting to note that this is not a new idea. In the early days of the US republic parties were banned. This was because they lead to exactly the problems we are seeing know, and that was considered corrupt. The Republican party was the first party the reemerge as a power block, and there the idea of a party-less system died.

I'm not convinced that a system entirely without parties would work - it would be too hard o keep track of, but getting rid of the whips would at least restore some honour to a tainted system.

Bloody Lawyers

There are too many lawyers in politics. Blair was a lawyer, a barrister in fact. Roughly a third of the cabinet are lawyers, or trained as such, and this distorts the way in which the cabinet functions.

Allow me to explain. Our legal system, in which lawyers are trained, is an adversarial one. Two advocates take opposing sides of the argument and each one tries to make their case in support of their side to the best of their ability. This is a reasonable where the question to be answered has a yes/no answer, such as in the case of guilty V not guilty, so long as both possible arguments have advocates. That's something our legal system guarantees.

But the risk with this approach is that when you choose your position too soon, you can become blind to other, better, alternatives. We've seen it with government policy over and over again, they propose some action, and then look for arguments to support the policy. When they are presented with evidence that doesn't support the policy, rather than reevaluating the policy, and looking for ways to improve it they instead try to discredit the evidence or frequently, to discredit the source of that evidence. This makes it impossible for them to move beyond their own prejudice, to find better solutions to the problems the country faces.

The alternative is the scientific process. Scientists work by developing a hypothesis, and then develop experiments which will reveal evidence to either support or disprove the hypothesis. The important point here is that there isn't a strong attachment to the hypothesis. It's the evidence that matters. So if the evidence says the hypothesis is wrong, then it's time to get a new one.

To ignore evidence which opposes your preconcieved ideas is foolish, arrogant, lazy, and leads, inevitably, to poor decisions. And the way lawyers are trained to work makes them more vulnerable to this way of thinking. Since in a trial someone else has the responsibility of taking the other point of view, it's less of a problem, but in defining policy there may not be a balancing voice, and even if there were, these are not simple yes/no questions, so it's not possible to represent all possible views. Given that, the scientific process is more appropriate and safer than the adversarial one.

We need leaders who have the intellectual honesty to see when the evidence tells them their ideas need to be revised, not leaders who hide the evidence and ignore it. We need leaders who can look at all the evidence and listen to what it is telling them. At the moment too few have these skills, we have too many lawyers and not enough scientists (or other rational thinkers).

Making things to last

I've just been watching a few videos, notably one about the recycling of electronic goods in India and China.

Electronic goods have valuable components and materials, such as copper, which can be extracted from dead or obsolete equipment, so recycling these products is a commercially viable occupation. The problem is that these products contain very toxic materials, and if not recycled with due care, these toxins get into the environment as well as poisoning the people who recycle them.

Greenpeace, quite rightly, are pushing manufacturers to stop using toxic materials in products where there are viable alternatives. But I think there is another option that could work in tandem - build things to last.

Many consumer electronic devices are designed to work for a few years, and then be thrown away and replaced. Devices which should last for decades, such as kettles, TVs, boilers, washing machines, and so on frequently don't last more than a few years. These devices are being designed badly in my view. They are not being designed to last, but what is just as bad, is that they are being designed in such a way that they are almost impossible to repair. Instead we just chuck them out. The tragedy here is that when most devices fail it's generally just some small component which could easily be replaced without having to replace the whole unit. I generally repair devices (just fixed my home phone for example) and 9 times out of 10 I don't need to replace any components at all.

All we need to do to force manufacturers to take this seriously is increase the statutory warrantee period on products. If manufacturers were penalised (by having to repair or replace broken devices) they would put more effort into making things last longer. This would be good for the consumer, good for the environment, and if we, in this country were wise enough to lead the way, it would be good for British industry - building a reputation for products that last.

Even devices such as computers which are obsolete quite quickly due to the rate of advance can be designed better. Many components of a computer don't need to be upgraded so often. Many PC users are familiar with the idea of upgrading part of their system, and some have machines which are many years old but still up to date. This philosophy of designing for upgradability needs to filter through to other markets. iPod's for example could in principle be upgradable by replacing the harddrive with a larger capacity one (or the Flash RAM in some models), and upgrading the software to add new functionality. Many components would not need to be replaced, but this is not the philosophy of the iPod. Instead it's a sealed unit, which has it's beauty, but that beauty has a price in pollution - and that price is too high. Upgradability should be mandatory for rapidly changing technologies. Making it mandatory for manufacturers to offer cut price upgrades to customers for a long period after a sale would again encourage manufacturers to see how they could upgrade devices rather than merely replace them, although clearly this problem is more complex than simply extending warrantee periods.

Why I'm a Pacifist

It's become pretty clear to almost everyone these days that wars are horrific, terrible things which cause huge suffering to all those who are unfortunate enough to become caught up in them. But despite accepting how destructive war is most people still seem to believe that there are cases where war in not only inevitable, but also the least bad option. I don't think this is ever the case. Here are my reasons.

First, what does it mean to be a pacifist? At the most basic level it is a refusal to take part in wars. If called upon to fight I would refuse because I have no desire to kill others and I see no reason why anyone else should ask me to put my life in jeopardy for something I disagree with.

That is the classic concept of pacifism, and it's rightly criticised because it offers no solution to war. Sure, if everyone refused to fight the world would be a wonderful place, but it would be naive to think that's likely to happen - I'm not that persuasive! (heck, I don't even know if anyone reads this stuff!).

So as a pacifist I need to offer a solution, an alternative, to war. My aim therefore is to prevent the conditions which lead to war. No war happens in a vacuum, in every case there are precursors, events which moved towards war, which if caught early enough, could have been dealt with without resort to violence.

The question that always eventually arises when I say I'm a pacifist is "so would you have not fought against the Nazis?". No, I wouldn't. The second world war in Europe was made inevitable after the end of WWI by the desire of the allies to extract reparations from Germany. The effect of this was to pave the way for Hitler. By subjecting the German people to suffering it was easy for someone to promise a way out. Hitler was sufficiently charismatic to take advantage of this, and he used the resentment of reparations to build his power base. Most people, who saw an improving economy didn't look any further until it was much too late.

Contrast this with the end of WWII. The Marshall plan ensured that Germany (and the rest of Europe) was rebuilt at great expense to the USA. Post WWII there was vastly less resentment by Germans and Germany has retaken it's rightful place in Europe and the world. Had reparations been repeated it is unlikely that the German people would have been so peaceful.

The answer then to war is not simply to refuse to fight, but to constantly look for the early warning signs of anger, resentment, injustice and unrest that are the precursors and to deal with those justly. We need to deal with other peoples with respect for their religions, legitimate governments and ways of life. If we do that then we will build friendships which will preclude the very possibility of war.

By contrast Western governments have been appallingly bad at doing this, taking an arrogant line which has infuriated many around the world. We have meddled in the internal affairs of other countries, sold arms to both sides of conflicts, and acted with ill-faith in all manner of ways. And then we ask why we are hated. It should be pretty obvious.

To be a pacifist is not easy. It's harder than the alternative. It requires a honesty and a strong sense of justice and eternal vigilance. You have to be a pacifist every day of your life. And ironically, it requires action to reduce conflict before it turns to war.