'Nother Solent

It comes too late

for Robert Symons, but the Conservatives have launched proposals to reform the law so as to give more rights to homeowners defending themselves against burglars. The Telegraph approves.

The law as it stands puts the home-owner defending his property and the burglar violating it on exactly the same footing: anyone who, in the course of defending his home, kills or injures the criminal invading it, is treated in the same way as the criminal.

The intruder can even sue the home-owner for damages if he injures himself climbing over the home-owner's fence, or if a punch from the home-owner leads to an injury. But if a home-owner kills a burglar the onus is on him to prove that his use of force was reasonable.

This is presposterous. Those who break the law - as John Locke, one of the earliest proponents of natural rights, pointed out - do not have the same rights as those who keep it.

Added later: Having started this post with the words "It comes too late", I got to wondering: how late is that? I believe that the number of burglaries that take place when the householder is present would decline to American levels if British laws resembled American laws on home defence. (Yes, I know laws vary between States. Generalise.) Let us assume that the Conservatives win the next election (Ha!), do not water down these proposals into uselessness (Ha-ha!), but rather make them make them into law as fast as the system allows (glass of water, please, someone, and note we're still not talking them being allowed pistols, just the right to actually use whatever weapon comes to hand.) How many years would it take for the effect to show? It took several decades for the criminal community to fully appreciate how determinedly the State would fight for their rights. On the other hand, a front-page photo of a dead burglar in the hall might be a more memorable lesson that the slow trickle of newspaper reports about householders being prosecuted by aggrieved burglars who grazed their knuckles gaining entry.

Can't - drag - myself - away.

I had promised myself that I would abstain from thinking about the US election, or the Guardian, for the entire weekend.

If promises could wear clothes this one would have a red shirt on. It would bear the rank of Ensign. It would regard an away mission on an unexplored planet with Captain Kirk, Dr McCoy and Mr Spock as a really great chance to impress the senior officers.

These lecture notes on Cognitive psychology mention a scientific version of the famous game wherein one has to stand in a corner for five minutes and not think of a white bear. As the notes say, "suppression of thought may lead to obsessive thinking over time."

Ensign Promise was sucked dry by the salt monster. Scott Burgess posted this.

Playground wisdom has it

that any lie told while your fingers are crossed behind your back doesn't count. The same view is shared by the Stop the War Coalition. They now claim that the notorious email to StWC supporters in which they said

"The StWC reaffirms its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and recognises once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends."

was a draft (it wasn't marked as such) and - get this - not really sent out to the public. Harry deals with that one at his place. "Firstly, the email was sent out to Stop the War supporters. Who do they think they are kidding? How else do they think the rest of us found out about it?"

Harry links to the original email which is still proudly posted up at a site called Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation. Follow the link and read it while you still can.

Read what Oliver Kamm has to say about who the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition are as well.

UPDATE: And another thing. The famous "draft" email was in the public domain by October 12 when Norman Geras blogged about it. Harry Barnes MP laid his Early Day Motion on the 14th. According to this Independent article the StWC "hit back" with their counter-accusations on the 19th. If the email was, as the Stop The War Coalition now says, merely a draft (a special sort of draft that is not marked as a draft) then why did they let comment about the wording bubble away in blogs, in newspapers, and in websites friendly and hostile for at least a week before bestirring themselves to correct it?

Not that the correction is exactly reassuring. "Not appropriate" indeed. The Stop the War leadership showed what kind of people they are by the original wording (draft or not, those words would never even have been considered for inclusion had they not represented opinions commonplace in the organisation); they show what they think of the public by the amended version, which implies that excuses for barbarism would be appropriate in some other forum, just not in this missive that the public saw.

Operation Clark County and the Murchison Letter.

I am sure someone must have suggested by now that Operation Clark County was actually a black op by Karl Rove. My regular correspondent ARC wrote to remind me of a Republican dirty trick of long ago:

In the hilarious and so-predictable collapse of operation Clark county, has anyone pointed out yet that if the Guardian staff had known their history they could have predicted the outcome. (O.K. they could also have predicted it with an atom of common sense or understanding of human nature, or just with a little less arrogance - but although we already knew they lacked those qualities, are intellectuals not supposed to be educated?)

Back in the 1890s [1888 - NS], a Republican who was more clever than scrupulous sent a letter to the British embassy in Washington. The letter purported to be from a British-born man, now resident in California, who wished to know how to cast his vote for presidential candidate so as best to aid his native land. In that more innocent age, the ambassador quite failed to smell a rat. After a very proper introduction about how her Majesty's government would be happy enough with either candidate, he suggested that perhaps Grover Cleveland (Democrat) would be marginally preferable for British interests. The Republican who sent the letter exploited this to good effect in the election and (probably not because of it) their candidate won.

It was Benjamin Harrison, and the letter was known to history as the Murchison Letter. Interestingly Harrison won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Although the Murchison Letter was an effective ploy, particularly with voters of Irish extraction, the issue that was probably decisive for the Republicans was their support for high tariffs. In those days the Democrats were the free trade party.

ARC made two more points. The first:

When Kipling asked Theodore Roosevelt how he would create public support for the massive naval expansion he planned, he replied, "out of you", explaining that Britain's large navy would have to be the 'threat' in public oratory. Kipling, who was far-sighted enough to see the need of American military involvement in the old world in the 20th century, took all this in good part - but then, he wasn't a Guardian reader.

Kipling himself tells the story in Something of Myself. One final point from ARC:

The phrase 'Guardian reader' occurs in 'The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy'; I remember wondering whether it was one of the British idioms they would have to translate for a transatlantic audience. If they didn't know what it meant then, I suspect they do now - in Clark county at least.

"Well up there in the water is wet category,"

says Tim Worstall, "comes today's news that NHS productivity is falling. Take the largest employer in western Europe, an already mind-bogglingly bureaucratic disaster, double the money you spend on it, reduce the number of beds, nurses and doctors, add more bureaucrats, raise everyone's pay and ignore the first lesson of economics, that incentives matter. Colour me surprised when productivity falls."

His blog is full of interest. Chesterton, UN inactivity at Darfur, and discussion of which is correct:

Ceterum censeo Unio Europaeum esse delendam

or

Ceterum censeo Consilium Europaeum esse delendam

UPDATE: There's more here. In fact this latest link is described as the final version. Mr Worstall actually wrote to the EU's own Latin translation help desk and got an authoritative version. Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam. (The Romans themselves, who did not use "u", would have spealt "Europaeam" as "Evropaeam" but I think we can make this little concession to modernity.)

Kudos to the un-named EU official who provided this information against his own inclinations. I hope he doesn't suffer for it.

Even the New York Times doesn't think much of the Guardian's Operation Clark County. In case this wasn't clear to you, neither do I (except in so far as it has results opposite to those intended) - but I've only just figured out why the competition angle annoyed me as much or more than the spamming simpliciter.

If the campaign were what it claimed to be, individuals writing to individuals, then it would be merely like being approached outside Woolworths by a collector for a charity. My reaction to street collectors is not quite "don't bug me." It's more like "I would really prefer not to be having this encounter but, since I admire your willingness to embarrass yourself for a cause, make your pitch. You have three seconds. Then, whatever my decision, be gone." (All this I express by assuming the facial expression of a rabbit determinedly trying to out-stare a lorry.)

But what would one think of a street collector who was making a recording of his pitch to win a competition or get his name in the paper? The very thing that made me willing to listen was my reluctance to snub a fellow-being who is in the process of doing something painful (approaching a stranger who may well deliver a put-down) because he or she believes, rightly or wrongly, that some cause is worth it. If I find out that this heartfelt "personal" appeal was, far from being a painful duty, an opportunity to get mild fame or polish fame already achieved then I am entitled to feel used.

Saving the British from themselves.

Eric the Unread publishes some responses to the Washington Times' recent big-hearted campaign.

(Via Harry's Place and, ultimately, the Guardian.)

You want vaccines? We ain't got vaccines.

There is a shortage of flu jabs in the US this year. The British angle is that the main reason for the shortage is that a batch of vaccine made in a British factory owned by a US company, Chiron, has turned out to be contaminated. The other British angle is, of course, that we in Britain also get flu and ought to have an interest in which systems work for preventing deaths from it and which don't.

Now one vaccine manufacturer slipping up would not be a major problem if there were lots more manufacturers ready to step into the breach. In fact there are now only two left in the US, though there used to be loads more. Why is this?

Instapundit linked to a post covering the current shortage written by generally left-leaning blogger Kevin Drum. Lawsuits and Food & Drug Administration regulations are the two factors Drum identifies as explaining why the US in particular has so few manufacturers.

Though I agree with many points he makes - especially about lawsuits - it looks to me as if he is wrong to discount price controls as a factor. Jim Miller covered the same topic a few days ago. He quotes this Weekly Standard article by William Tucker. If I have understood correctly then before 1993 US doctors purchased vaccine themselves. After 1993 the US government made itself into a monopsony customer. As such it was able to enforce price controls.

The price controls have a pretty name, "The Vaccine for Children Act." Aaaah. It would be better called the "Ten Years Down The Line No Vaccine for Children But We Lawmakers Look Caring Today So Who Cares About The Future Act."

Later, in an update to his post Jim Miller links to what he correctly calls a piece of economic illiteracy from the New York Times.

The heart of the problem, experts say, may be that no one person or agency is in charge of making sure the United States has an adequate vaccine supply. The production, sale and distribution of vaccines, particularly those for flu, are handled almost entirely by pharmaceutical companies.

Would that they were! A bunch of competing companies would mean that not all the eggs were in one basket. In real life the unnamed experts very nearly have their wish for central control already - and looks where it gets them. I quote from the Weekly Standard article:

Each year in February, the Centers for Disease Control meets with the vaccine-makers--all two of them--and decides which strain of the virus to anticipate for next year. Then they both make the same vaccine. Last year the committee bet on the Panama strain, but a rogue "Fujian" strain suddenly emerged as a surprise invader. A mini-epidemic resulted and 93 children died, only two of them properly vaccinated.

So what do I think

about the notorious leading article in the Spectator that got Boris Johnson into such trouble?

I think it was fine, except for the part about the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Any tendency I might have had to sentimentalise Liverpool football fans as Liverpool football fans was pre-emptively suppressed by events at the Heysel stadium, but it is not sentimentality for a city to grieve at the horrible deaths of so many of its citizens. I doubt whether Johnson knows any more than I do about what part, if any, drunkeness played in the death toll. The Taylor enquiry said very little part. Every decent point Johnson had to make could have been made without that.

This post from Drake at The Edge of England's Sword and the accompanying angry comments from "Alex" present both sides of the debate.

What strikes me about the whole idea of Boris going to Liverpool to engage in "sincere self-criticism" in the Chinese fashion is that nobody gets what they want out of it. The people of Liverpool do not get either an apology they can believe or a net increase of respect, since half the country is now saying, "true with knobs on, you Scouse whingers." Michael Howard looks less like a potential Prime Minister than he did yesterday. So would Boris Johnson if that were possible. More to the point is that he looks less like a credible MP or a credible journalist. A weathervane is not admired in either profession.

Betcha Prince Harry did

get help on his coursework. Not so fast with the chopper, Mr Headsman! So does everybody, as Mr White of the Telegraph sagely observes. Not quite everybody, actually. Last year Jenny Sweetham-Klewlesse (18) of The Old Vicarage, Pootlington Parva, did a Social Studies project completely unaided. Interested reporters can contact Miss Sweetham-Klewlesse behind the counter of her local Little Chef.

It can't go on, you know. We need think outside the envelope and find a better way. Surely it is not beyond the bounds of human cunning to devise some sort of system which would actually make it difficult to cheat. Something like, um, gottit, getting all the A-Level candidates to do their coursework in school with no mummies and daddies allowed. No, that wouldn't work - what about the teachers? They have a stronger motive to cheat than anyone. Except the pupils, of course. I know! All the pupils would have to do the coursework the same day. All together in one room. And - and - and no talking to each other. Yes! It's a crazy idea but it might just work - so long as we took away their mobile phones.

Don't look at me like that. We'd give them back afterwards.

Okay, not the mobile phones. They'd have to put them under the desk.

Sorry. Sorry. I've calmed down now. I now see clearly that my idea was ill-judged, not to say intemperate. And contrary to human rights. My party leader has sent me to a local sixth-form college to apologise.