THe BBC headline reads ‘Private firms to chase CSA debts‘ - it might as well read ‘Government try to polish turd’.

The report seems straight forward enough; the latest master plan to try and turn around the Child Support Agency looks set to be to try using private sector debt collectors to pull in the cash - and idea that the report states has been ‘agreed’ in principle.

The CSA was set up 1993 and after thirteen years not only does it not work - even Blair has had to admit that it is not fit for purpose - but it has never worked. In thirteen years it has consistantly failed to deliver on its objectives.

Doesn’t that tell you something straight away? That is not a case of a good idea badly done but that there is serious structural problems which run right back to the original concept of the CSA. In short, its been a fuck up from start to finish and needs to be put out of its misery - and everybody else’s misery.

What the CSA tells us is that the government, Whitehall and its legions of functionaries and overpaid consultants simply haven’t got a fucking clue what to do with the CSA or how to go about sorting it out - they just keep banging away with it because between them, not one of them has a single constructive idea to put forward. It is rank incompetence on the grossest possible scale, a blind and stubborn refusal to admit the truth that not only has it not worked but it never will work - it is an idea that, systemically, is incapable of working.

But, you might say, the principle that fathers should pay for, or towards, the upkeep of their kids is right - of course it is - but just because that is right in principle does not mean that the CSA is right in practice - patently it isn’t.

Why is it that the government should be near congenitally incapable of facing up to this situation and admitting the truth?

Because they either cannot understand or cannot comprehend the reason why the CSA has failed, which is simply that one cannot reduce the complexity of human relationships which are fundamental to this whole issue; to a series of simple systems, procedures and formulae that can be administered efficiently by a pen-pusher in an office - its not a systems problem, its a people problem and because its a people problem and people are inefficient, so any real solutions will also be, by their very nature, inefficient in the sense that outcomes have to be tailored to the individual circumstances of each case to the persons, and personalities involved in it.

Pushing the responsibility for debt collection on to the private sector will not solve the problem, merely delay the inevitable for another couple of years, which is by any measure a complete waste of time.

As the saying goes, and the CSA proves, you really can’t polish a turd.

Just a thought here, but is anyone else just a tad suspicious that this announcement comes on ther same day that the press is full of stories about F4J planning to kidnap Blair’s rugrat? Coincidence? Opportunism? Or just a timed event?

You decide.

Bookdrunk does a first rate job of pulling to pieces the gross abuse of statistics behind the Daily Mail’s latest hyperventilating headline which claims that:

Doctors ‘help’ 2 in 3 to die

Which is, of course, a complete load of bollocks.

Euthanasia is a difficult and emotive subject and one which must routinely task the consciences of those doctors who routinely find themselves responsible for the care of terminally ill patients. However one tries to look at it, it is an issue that is loaded with difficult moral and ethical choices - how does one reconcile the desire to save and preserve life with the feeling that must come to all doctors when dealing with patients in their final days/hours that the end, whenever it comes, will be a merciful release for the individual in question, from which it is but a small step to the conclusion that speeding them gently on their way is but an act of mercy.

One of the points the Mail makes in its coverage, in particular, needs to the picked up and challenged:

The study also revealed that an estimated one third of people who died in the year - 192,000 patients - had their deaths accelerated by doctors using pain relief, the so-called “double effect”.

All of which sound horrific on face value, but like everything else in the Mails’ report is actually a very long way from the truth.

By pain relief what the Mail are referring to is morphine - a very powerful and effective pain-killer/sedative which can often be the only effective means of providing a patient with any effective respite from excruciating pain. However, as can be the case with many drugs, the benefits of morphine come at a price.

Morphine relieves pain. It also depresses respiratory function, which when it comes to very ill or weak patients makes its use a matter of a very delicate balancing act: too little and any benefits to the patient in terms of pain relief may be marginal and very short-lived, too much - and we’re a long way from admistering a lethal dose here - may tip a particular patient over the edge and inadvertantly hasten their end. Factor in a capacity of the human body for developing a tolerance for some drugs which, over time, reduces their effectiveness and its doesn’t take a genius to figure out the equation that all too easily comes into operation.

For patients who experience the kind of protracted and severe chronic pain due to illness, and not always terminal illness, for which morphine offers the only effective pain relief, there is inevitably a point of equillibrium on the horizon beyond which their need for pain relief will tip the past the point at which the drug they’re given - morphine - acts to accelerate their death - the sole alternative to this scenario being to leave them to live in a near permanant state of chronic and often dehumanising pain.

To state simply that morphine accelerated the deaths of 192,000 patients is merely to state that for those people, morphine was the lesser of two ‘evils’ and nothing more.

This, in turn, calls into question the statistics which purport to show that in an estimated 1930 cases - remember these figures are extrapolated from an anonymous survey and are not, therefore, definitive - doctors took matters into their own hands and engaged in non-volutary euthanasia.

They is a distinct grey area in such a definition - how do you define, precisely, non-voluntary euthanasia? Does such a definition apply only where a doctor knowingly administered an overdose to a patient to bring about their end, or does this definition also encompass situations in which a doctor administers a clinically correct dosage, but does so in the knowledge that the patient’s condition is such that such a dosage will prove lethal?

The truth, as ever in reporting medical matters, is rather more complex and less clear-cut than newspaper reports suggest and blatant scare stories, such as this, are not only irresponsible but doing nothing whatsoever to contribute to what should be a clear and carefully reasoned moral and ethical debate on the complex issue of euthanasia.

In fact like so many other stories in which the media consciously stirs up a moral panic in a purely venal attempt to sell a few more copies, stories such as this serve only to cloud the issues and mitigate against reasoned argument and debate to the detriment of us all.

Or to put it another way, the journalist who wrote this sorry excuse for a scare story and, of course, the editor who approved its publication, deserve nothing more than to be handcuffed, tarred and feathered before being deposited, naked, in Hyde Park and then soundly whipped through the streets of London by the massed ranks of the medical profession, armed with rolled-up copies of ‘The Lancet’, until they expire from exhaustion or take the honourable way out and self-euthenase by throwing themselves bodily into the Thames from the nearest available bridge, or under a speeding Hackney Carriage, whichever they encounter first.

Well, we seem to be heading for a showdown between the Lord and the Commons on the matter of the Terrorism Bill and the proposed new offence of ‘glorifying’ terrorism, which was removed from the Bill by a Lords amendment only yesterday.

If, by any chance, you’ve been asleep these last few months the general gist of the argument is nicely encapsulated by the comments of Lib Dem Peer, Lord Goodhart, speaking on the Today programme this morning:

Lord Goodhart told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that the offence of glorification “goes beyond anything that is justified for the protection of national security”.

It was “the worst of both worlds”, as juries would find it difficult to convict and it would be “very restrictive of the media”, he added.

Lord Goodhart said the drafting of the Terror Bill was “confusing” and “turgid”, so much so that it “could apply” to the American War of Independence.

Against this are set the views of Lord Harris who:

said the purpose of the Lords was to “scrutinise” legislation passed by the Commons and that voting down manifesto commitments was “not appropriate”

Well isn’t that [scrutinise the legislation] exactly what the Lords have done? and having scrutinised it, a clear majority have reached the conclusion that it is illiberal, a disproportionate and unnecessary intrusion on the right to free speech and so badly drafted as to be unworkable in practice - but none of that matters to Lord Harris because voting down manifesto commitments is not ‘appropriate’.

What Lord Harris is referring to here is the ‘Salisbury Convention‘ - a constitutional convention put in place in 1945 by the then Tory Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Salisbury, which holds that during the first parliamentary session following a General Election, and sometimes beyond, the Lords should not vote down at second reading, or apply wrecking amendments, to government bills which seek to bring into law commitments in the manifesto upon which the government was elected.

The precise origins of this convention lies in the election of the 1945 Attlee government on a clear mandate to deliver its policies of nationalisation and the creation of the Welfare State - policies that Tory peers were inclined to, and could hypothetically have, opposed, forcing the Commons to invoke the 1911 Parliament Act in order pursue its legislative programme. Peers could not have actually prevented the implementation of either policy, but could have delayed their implementation for two years.

Salisbury, quite rightly, concluded at the time that as both policies were absolutely central to Labour’s manifesto and Labour had been handed a crushing 145 majority in the Commons and fell a mere 0.3% (around 72,000 votes) short of an absolute majority on the ballot - i.e. 50%+1 of all votes cast - it would be inappropriate for peers to openly defy the clear and democratically expressed will of the British people.

It’s this convention that the government is seeking to invoke to justify forcing through this legislation in the face of entirely well founded and reasoned opposition and without any recognition that the situation which gave rise to this convention in 1945 is fundamentally different to that which exists today and in relation to this specific bill.

The differences here are so obvious that you would have to be either blind or stupid [or a government minister] not to see them.

The Attlee government was elected on a landslide, both in terms of Commons majority and votes cast.

This government has a Commons majority [of 66] true but this came on the back of a far from clear victory - only 35% of the total votes cast amounting to a mere 21% of the total electorate voted Labour. Even as a member of the Labour Party I have to concede that that is far from being a clear mandate.

The policies that motivated Salisbury’s statement were absolutely central to the 1945 Labour manifesto - which you can read in full here - in the context of this debate, the list of some of the section headings from this manifesto is particularly instructive:

Jobs For All
Industry in the Service of the Nation
Agriculture and the People’s Food
Houses and the Building Programme
Health of the Nation and its Children
Social Insurance against the Rainy Day

One could hardly be mistaken, from those headings alone, as to the nature of Labour’s 1945 programme.

Against this, the government’s entire policy position on international terrorism in the 2005 manifesto is stated in a mere four paragraphs as the final item in a 16 page section entitled “Crime and Security: Safe communities, secure borders” in the middle of a 112 page manifesto that few but most committed activists - and the press, of course, will have bothered to read in full.

Somehow, the idea that badly drafted proposals for unworkable new offence should be accorded the same constitutional weight as the Attlee government’s entire programme for the creation of the welfare state, doesn’t quite wash. Nor, to my mind, does it fit the exact words by which Lord Salisbury stated his convention, during the House of Lords debate of the 1945 King’s Speech:

“it would be constitutionally wrong when the country has expressed its view, for this House to oppose proposals which have been definitely put before the electorate”

Yes, that is the actual Salisbury Convention, as first stated in the House of Lords - to those not used to the British way of constitutions, it is perfectly possible to create a constitutional convention merely by making a simple statement of principle, which everyone tacitly agrees to accept

Note that Salisbury refers to proposals that have been ‘definitely’ put before the electorate, by which I take him to have been using the term ‘definite’ to mean, ‘clearly defined’ and ‘explicitly precise’, neither of which seems applicable to the wording of the relevant manifesto statement, which reads:

… we will introduce new laws to help catch and convict those involved in helping to plan terrorist activity or who glorify or condone acts of terror

Remember, Lord Goodhart has described the Terrorism Bill as ‘confusing’ and ‘turgid’, the actual Bill which should clearly and precisely define the nature and scope of the new law and the new offence of glorifying terrorism - if the government cannot express itself clearly in drafting legislation, how can it expect to claim that a one manifesto statement has ‘definitely been put before the electorate’…

…and on a point of pedantry to gladden the heart of the Pedant-General in Ordinary, I should point out that the manifesto states that these new laws will relate only to those who ‘glorify or condone acts of terror‘ and not the generality of terrorism, which the Bill also seeks to cover. So again, if were being ‘definite’ here, the proposed framework for this new offence that this Bill creates actually deviates from the express manifesto commitment, taking it outside the confines of the Salisbury Convention.

Not that that is ultimately of much consequence inasmuch as while bleating about the Lords failure to observe the Salisbury Convention, Ministers have seemingly forgotten about an older and far more venerated constitional convention - the supremacy of Parliament, which holds that no Parliament may be absolutely bound by a previous Parliament, a convention that the present government has had no problem using in expanding its use of summary justice contrary to the provisions of the 1689 Bill of Rights but which now gets conveniently forgotten when the Lords make de facto use of that convention to overturn the Salisbury Convention.

I suspect I’ve waffled on sufficiently for you to get the point that I see nothing eiter consitutionally or ethically wrong in the Lords taking a stand on this issue and voting down the proposals to criminalise the ‘glorification’ of terrorism, I will however leave you with one thought.

In addition to the comments of Lord Harris, Home Office Minister Hazel Blears also had this to say:

The government has made a commitment to the electorate to make the glorification of terrorist attacks an offence, and we intend to honour it

That statement is what it is, the point I want to make is that the dictionary definition of the word ‘blear’ - and therefore its plural ‘blears’ - includes both the entirely appropriate:

‘to make (the eyes) sore or watery’

and

make dim and indistinct

as verb uses, while as an adjective it means

tired to the point of exhaustion

Does anyone else think that Hazel’s looking tired lately.

On Monday, Charles Clarke gave yet another one of his absurd assurances to Parliament - as chronicled by Spy Blog, of which the most interesting comment was this:

Perhaps I can go even further. All of the many databases that are held about all of us in this House—whether they concern finances, health or passports, or are in the private or the public sector—are insecure to a degree while we do not have an ID cards system. The ID cards system will provide security not only for the identity database itself but for all the other databases that hold data about the whole of this country.

Let’s try a bit of very basic logic here.

According to Safety, the ID Cards system with provide security for the identity database…

But, and this is a massive but, the ID cards system is secured by and against the identity database. In other words it is self-referential system in which the system is only as secure as the database and the database is only as secure as the system - compromise one and you compromise both.

Then we get to next important point - the ID cards system will provide security, so Safety envisages, for all other databases, in the public and private sector that hold data about the whole of the country - this not only proves the contention I made in my first set of articles on the National Identity Register, that it will reach into and connect together information not only from government systems but almost literally any system which holds personal data about you. me and everyone else. That meams all the personal financial information held by banks, credit card companies, credit reference agencies, employers, supermarkets - everything.

There are two clear implications here.

First, any security breach in the ID cards system at all, compromises the security of every single database that relies on that system for security - all of them. Identity theft, while obviously distressing if it happens to you, is still relatively difficult to effect and limited in scope.

Simple frauds using credit cards, false benefit claims, etc can be carried out, but the simple fact that different systems work differently, operate differently and if they are well designed, require different things on top of basic information in order to establish identity makes it still relatively difficult to takeover someone’s life wholesale - if it happens to you your credit card or bank account may take a hammering or a false claim for benefits may be made in your name but rarely do such thefts extend beyond compromising two or three differnt systems at most because each new fraud requires new information to validate identity and increases the likelyhood that the fraud will be detected.

Compromise the ID cards system and your entirely life is laid bare in an instant - there is nothing that the thief cannot know, obtain or access once they have your identity.

Are you prepared to place your absolute faith in the security of a single system when things like this happen?

Incidentally, I love the comment from Revenue and Customs at the end of the article:

Like any other organisation that pays out money there will be some people intent on defrauding the system and we designed tax credits with that in mind.

I really don’t think that quite what the HMRC spokeswoman meant to say.

The second and far more disturbing implication - in terms of civil liberties - is that once all these various systems are connected together by the ID cards system, your entire life becomes an open book to anyone with the authority to examine information held in these systems - that means the Police and most certainly the Security Services, plus a whole raft of civilian investigators attached to Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions.

Once such a system is in place, there is nothing that is known about you and recorded on a linked database that a State functionary with sufficient authority cannot uncover and cross-reference will other information in that same system. This opens the door not only to overt electronic surveillence but also to the use of sophisticated pattern analysis algorhythms to routinely scan data for any unusal patterns of behaviour.

To give an example of what this might mean, such a system could operate on benefit claimants, automatically scanning various systems from tax records, to vehicle registrations to bank records, searching for and flagging up any unusal patterns of activity - unusual in this case meaning anything which indicates that an individual has more income than their benefit records say they should have or even greater expenditure than such records can account for. Quite literally, you could win £100 on the lottery and go on a bit of splurge down your local supermarket, only to the find investigators from the DWP on your doorstep in a fortnight demanding to know where you got the money.

Yes, it has the potential to be that intrusive.

Moreover, once the key piece of information in the system - the National Identity Registration Number - gets out into the wild and into private sector systems that number, which is the ultimate key to linking all these systems together, will be completely outside any control, even that of the government. Even those who may be fairly sanguine about the idea of the Police and Security Services having near unlimited capacity to scrutinise their lives cannot be happy about the prospect of private companies developing similar capabilities.

Only the inadequate and poorly understood Data Protection Act stands between citizens and the creation of massive, overarching personal data systems within the private sector over which there is no effective statutory control - suddenly your bank could find out exactly what you’ve been buying down at you local Tesco store, although the real moneymaker in this from private sector companies is the sale of near 100% accurate marketing information to companies looking to sell you their products.

Ok, so it’s not quite the advertising frenzy depicted in the film ‘Minority Report’ but its the same principle - marketers could well come to know to within a few pounds exactly how much disposable income you have and, therefore, how good a target you might prove for their products.

Will this happen? Of course it will - there’s too much potential money tied up in such a scheme for it not to and every possibility, if the government’s sums are anything like as badly wrong as the LSE have suggested, that you may even the govenrment actively colluding in such activities and supplying the key data for them themselves - how else is that going to pay for it otherwise if it doesn turn out that the real cost of system is nearer the LSE’s estimates than the governments.

Of course the other big moneymaker riding on the back of this system is the use of private security firms to vet employees.

If you have spent criminal convictions on your records, you might think that is completely private matter between you and the State - if you don’t work in a profession where the disclosure of spent convictions is required by law then those convictions are of no consequence and your present, or prospective employer has no means of finding out about them anyway. Right?

Wrong? Reference to such convictions may still appear anywhere from public court records to newspaper articles, if your brush with the law was ever reported in the press - what prevents them cropping up is that they are, for the most part, difficult to track down and, in most cases, even more difficult to relate to a specific individual if the offence took place several years ago - unless, of course, you have a fairly uncommon name. If a conviction for an assault by Joe Jones was reported in a small local paper, twenty years ago, then the chances of definitively linking that report to a specific Joe Jones today are pretty slim and too time-consuming to make for a profitable exercise, unless the client paying for the check to be done is prepared to pay top dollar.

Add a universal ID card system linked to every substantive database in the UK and suddenly this become a different proposition - the newspaper article reporting the assault may still be fairly difficult to trace, but with the sheer weight of accurate data on hand to cross-reference that article with, the task of matching it to a specific and identifiable Joe Jones becomes much easier - the effort of compiling and cross-referencing the massive amounts of personal information that is already out there into accessible private data systems for security vetting suddenly becomes a much more attractive proposition.

With each retelling of the tale by government ministers, their argument in favour of ID cards not only become less plausible, but the full, horrific, extent to which this system will intrude upon the lives of citizens becomes more apparent - and by turn more frightening. Now do people see what those of us who have opposed this from outset means when we talk about the ‘database state’?

If we wish to continue to live in a free society, then we cannot permit the creation of this system. It is a simple as that.