Forget all this crap about the search for a ‘British identity’ - you’d be better served setting out on a Snark hunt - if you want to see the real meaning of what it is to be British then everything you need to know is this story…

Scotland set for first Asian MSP

The Scottish National Party says it is on course to have Scotland’s first Asian MSP sitting at Holyrood.

Glasgow councillor Bashir Ahmad is among the candidates the party has listed as those it most wants elected to the Scottish Parliament next year…

…Mr Ahmad, who came to Scotland from Pakistan at the age of 21, has been president of the Pakistan Welfare Association five times.

In 1995 he founded Scots Asians for Independence, which has aimed to build support for the SNP among the Scottish Asian community.

He was elected to represent the Pollokshields East ward on Glasgow City Council in the 2003 elections and he has been a member of the SNP’s national executive committee since 1998.

Mr Ahmad said party members had "righted the wrong" of Asians having no voice in the parliament.

He said: "The lack of any Asian or ethnic minority voice in the Scottish Parliament has been felt deeply in my community.

"But SNP members have righted that wrong.

"By doing so, they have proved that the SNP aspires to lead a Scottish Parliament that will represent all of Scotland - a truly national parliament.

"I firmly believe the SNP can now earn the trust of the Asian community throughout Scotland and that this will be a bond that endures for generations."

What a cracking story - the guy that may become the first Asian member of the Scottish Parliament is Pakistani by birth, Muslim by religion, a British citizen by naturalisation and Scottish by choice, so much so that he’s joined the nationalist party and campaigns for independence - just how fucking brilliant is that!

That’s what being British is all about - not one single homogeneous identity but multiple identities existing without coming  into conflict, all of which add up to an individual person.

Shame he’s a member of the SNP, but then you can’t have everything…

Last night’s defeat in Blaenau Gwent seems to have prompted Gareth Davies to revisit some old ground on the issue that caused a schism in the local party before the last election, the imposition on the local CLP of an all female shortlist during the selection of the party candidate - the resistance to which, as I recall, Gareth referred to at the time as ‘jobs for the boyos’…

I’ll get back to result in a minute but first I want to make a few observations on all-women shortlists and the myths that surround this particular practice.

In his piece Gareth states:

Some members of the CLP, including the man who stood to benefit most from the rebellion against the party, decided they didn’t want to accept a party policy that was designed to correct the gender imbalance in the Commons. That policy was only imposed as much as any democratically decided policy is imposed.

Peter Law’s decision that his personal desire to be MP overrode party policy designed to deliver equality has nothing to do with whatever laws were observed in medieval Blaenau Gwent, if any. Williams’s claim that there was a polity known as Gwent, observing Welsh law for seven centuries is a grandiose exaggeration of the kind that only the self deluded can make. Hywel Dda may have been cited as authority by someone in a row over land rights in a manorial court, but the law in medieval Wales was the sword, and the force with which a landlord could wield it.

Not being up on Welsh history, I’ll defer to Gareth on the finer points of the medieval Welsh legal system, although, looking at what he has to say on the subject, it may be better he let this drop so as not to give our Imperious Leader any more idea… but what I will take issue with the statement that all women shortlists are a ‘party policy designed to deliver equality’, because that precisely what they don’t do.

All women shortlists and, indeed, any other system of quotas based on gender, ethnicity or whatever you might want to apply them to, simply do not deliver equality - they create the facade of equality, it’s external appearance, but not equality itself.

It is certainly not wrong for the Labour Party to aspire to equality and to a position in which women have the same statistical chance of selection as a party candidate as men, nor is it wrong to suggest that the idela scenario, somewhere doewn the line, is a position in which the balance of male and female candidates (and MPs) reflects much more closely the gender balance in wider society.

But equally, lets not pretend that quota and all women shortlists, which are no more than crude social-engineering devices, actually create or deliver equality - that comes only when things such as gender, ethnicity, etc, entirely cease to be a factor in the selection process at all and we arrive at a situation where the balance of the party in terms ot gender, etc, exists without the need to cook the system in anyone’s favour.

The implied slur on the former members of Blaenau Gwent CLP who opposed the imposition of all woman shortlist last year is that there were motivated by sexism - a charge which, because of the circumstances in which the selection was conducted, simply cannot be substantiated simply because they were never given the choice in the first place - there is no more equity or equality in the imposition of an all female shortlist on an CLP than there is in one declining to consider selecting a female candidate purely because of her gender. two wrongs don’t make a right.

All women shortlists may superficially look like a solution to the issue of gender imbalance in the short-term, but in the long term they are counterproductive, simply because the fail to address the real issue here, which is not about the selection process but about attitudes amongst the party membership, and worse still, as with any exercise in tokenism, the real effect of imposing such shortlists is more often than to harden already entrenched attitudes and foster disaffection and dissention, leaving grass roots party members feeling even more disenfranchised than they do already.

Having worked in community development for more than ten years, I’ve seen this same phenonmenon time and time again in relation to the issues of race and ethnicity - pump money and resources into one community on the back of even the most obvious and justifiable needs and it won’t be long before the community next door is kicking up and the perceived ‘unfairness’ of it all. In areas like Sandwell, its precisely this kind of thing that feeds extremist parties like the BNP, whose pitch is always the ‘they’re getting something you’re not, and its not fair’.

Attitudes like that, once they become entrenched, are an absolute bastard to tackle and a constant source of frustration - and I suspect that’s the real backstory to last night’s result. The party pissed local people off with their high-handed attitude towards the CLP and its desire for a local candidate and still hasn’t forgiven and forgotten - sure it might parochialism at its worst, but simply because you disagree with it, it doesn’t mean you can ignore it or refuse to take it into account in your thinking.

At the root of this issue is another myth, that of statistical representation itself, which suggests that if half the population of the UK are women, then half the MPs in parliament should also be women in order to be properly representative of the people.

What a load of bollocks!

Can someone please explain to me precisely in what respect the likes of Patricia Hewitt, Tessa Jowell, Kitty Ussher and Ruth Kelly are in any way ‘representative’ of the needs, concerns and aspirations of the wider female population of the UK, anymore than Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Charlie ‘Minister for Shite’ Falconer are of the male population?

Exactly what common ground and shared-experiences are there between an upper-middle class barrister or a fucking former management consultant and a bricklayer, a Tesco checkout girl or a teenage single parent living on benefits?

Next to fuck all is what!

So what if we somehow do get to the stage where half the MPs in parliament are women, is that really going to make parliament ‘more representative’ of women as a whole?

Looking at the kind of people who are selected by the main politics parties and who do go on to be elected to parliament, the only possible answer as things stand is ‘like fuck it will!’.

Looking at the party over the last 20-30 years, and especially since the Kinnock reforms andf blair’s ascendancy to the top job, then one has to conclude that as party we’re getting less and less representative of the people over time, not more representative as more and more, the upper reaches of the party becomes stuffed to the gills with lawyers, middle class professionals and identikit clones who’ve worked their way up food chain via the now de rigeuer route of university followed a stint in nice safe London-based NGO or a fucking political think-tank.

It’s all very well slating Cameron for being a toff and a scion of the Aristocracy, but can anyone genuinely say that his life experiences are any more divorced from those of the majority of the population than those of the Fettes-educated Blair? Of course not.

Once again, the idea that being pushed here is not real representation, any more than all-women short lists provide real equality, its merely the creation of a facade, a false appearance, a veneer to hide the real truth, which is that parliament, today, is no more genuinely representative of the people today than it was back in days of the property qualification and rotten boroughs - all we’ve really done over the last couple of hundred years is succeeded in swapping land-owners for lawyers and merchants for management consultants - an unrepresentative elite is still an unrepresentative elite no matter from where it draws its membership.

 For what its worth, the party has decided that all women shortlists are the way to go and if people want to support than on the basis that it givens women a better shot at making it in to parliament, then fine. Go right ahead…

…but at least have the good grace to admit the truth, that such things are far from perfect and, in their own way, just and inequitable as the previous status quo, and for fuck’s sake lay off the whole business or wrapping everything up in sanctimonious lectures about ‘equality’ and ‘representation’ - there’s no moral high ground to be had when all you’re really doing is making the best of a bad job.

Buried deep down under Blair’s headlong rush to ‘rebalance’ the criminal justice system in favour of the ‘rights of the victim, one finds this salutory reminder that things aren’t always quite so simple and clear cut as them may appear.

Even if you don’t remember the name, you’ll remember the image of Shanni Naylor - she’s the South yorkshire schoolgirl who, last year, had her face slashed by a fellow pupil during an English lesson, leaving her with wounds that required 30 stitches.

Now as things do in the criminal justice system, this case has come to trial and her unnamed attacker has been found guilty of unlawful wounding and is, tonight, awaiting sentence.

However, as things also do in the criminal jsutice system, the evidence presented to the court gave rather a different account of the circumstances leading to the attack than was printed, at the time, in media, and so it is that we now learn the following:

A teacher, who has worked at the school for more than 30 years, said more than 100 children were watching the first incident between the two girls when the accused was attacked by Shanni.

She described the incident as "horrendous" and "vicious" and said Shanni was repeatedly punching the defendant’s head so it was banging against a wall.

This first incident took place the day before the attack in which Naylor was wounded by her classmate, and yet it would seem that not only did the teacher witness the first incident, but it would also appear than no action was taken as a rresult of it - Naylor was back in class on the following day, on which she was wounded, after perpetrating the kind of attack - from the teacher’s description of the incident - that the vast majority of parents would consider merited an immediate suspension, if not serious consideration of exclusion.

Reporting on the outcome of the trial, we also learn from the Beeb that not only had Shanni’s assailant:

...been beaten up by Shanni the day before and "chronically bullied" during her time at the school.

But also that the girl is:

of Somalian origin

Call me suspicious but one cannot help but wonder just to what extent these two piece of information are related - of course it could be simple coincidence and of no relevance at all, but at the very least the circumstances of this case dictate that the question has to be asked and an answer found.

But there’s yet more to consider…

Later, educational psychologist Stuart Taylor told the court he tested the defendant’s intelligence and found it be at a level of 45. Mr Taylor said this figure put her at the lower end of the lowest one per cent of the population.

An IQ test score of 45, which I presume to be test referred to here - puts the assialant firmly in the category of having a learning disability.

Not unsurprisingly given this new information about the case:

Shanni was not in court to hear the verdicts and her father Lee and grandmother Kathleen refused to comment as they left the building.

Which one would expect might just have something to do with this report in the Yorkshire Post shortly after the attack…

The attack happened at 11.45am on Wednesday – a day after Shanni, of Arbourthorne, Sheffield, had intervened to stop her attacker bullying a vulnerable 12-year-old boy.

Her father, Lee Naylor, said: "The girl turned on Shanni, and they ended up fighting by the school buildings. She told me what had happened and I went to school the following day, to see one of her teachers about the incident.

"I had told Shanni to apologise to the bully, even though she was trying to do the right thing. The teacher told me not to worry, and that he would sort it out with the two girls. I thought it would be ok."

Funny how, when the matter hits court, there’s appears to have been no mention at all of this alleged bullying, by the assailant, of a ‘vulnerable 12-year old boy’ who Shanni had supposed intervened to help on the previous day, nor does it mention whether this boy was called to give evidence, which rather suggests that this part of the story may be somewhat lacking in veracity, and even at the age of 12 one wonder quite whether someone would protect such a boy by repeatedly punching the girl’s head in such a way that it was banging against a wall, particularly when reports describe the girl’s physical stature as ’slight’.

Of course, no one in their right mind would condone the attack in which Shanni Naylor was slashed across the face with a razor blade - revenge may, by repute, be both sweet and a dish best served cold, but its also morally wrong and, ultimately, counterproductive.

But let me ask you another question - how would you ‘rebalance’ this case in favour of the ‘victim’ when it appears for all the world that both girls are victims.

The Naylor family, having had access to the due process of law, look set to get their share of justice as their daughter’s assailant has been found guility adn will shortly be sentenced - although one suspects, and even hopes to some extent, that this new information about the events that triggered the attack will be taken into account in passing sentence.

But does that mean that justice actually been done here?

The police seem to be satisfied…

Speaking after the hearing, Det Insp Andrew Thompson, of South Yorkshire Police said they were pleased with the decision.

"It was a very serious assault on school premises during a lesson," he said. "We feel it is a fair verdict."

But having heard the evidence given in court as to the earlier, and potentially, racially aggravated incident which preceded the attack, one has to wonder quite what action the Police intend to take in relation to that attack, and equally what action the LEA will be taking to investigate what appears, from the Beeb’s report to be the failure of the school to address this first incident, about which nothing was publicly known until today.

But perhaps the pertinant question we should be asking is whether either Tony Blair or the editoral writers f the red top tabloids will be asking those same questions tomorrow - sadly I suspect not.

If, as Jay Leno suggested, politics is showbusiness for ugly people, then parliamentary conventions such as private members’ bill and early day motions must be something akin to Warhol’s oft-cited aphorism about everyone having ‘fifteen minutes of fame’.

The majority of EDMs and PMBs often seem to be little more than a convenient means for a back-bench nonentity to stick their head above the parliamentary parapet in the vain hope that someone might just notice their existence…

…and so it transpires that this week’s honourable meerkat is one Claire Curtis-Thomas MP, who appears to have been the MP for Crosby since 1997, not as if anyone outside Crosby appears to have noticed this, and her particular bete noir, which she’s currently hawking around the press after the fashion of a mendicant friar, truns out to be ‘Lad’s Mags’ and the Daily/Sunday Sport, which she thinks should be consider pornography and consigned to the retail purgatory that is the newsagent’s top shelf.

As to exactly why Claire has suddenly chosen to the let the outside know of her existence, one can only speculate, although one has to wonder whether the impending disappearance of her constituency in the next tranche of Boundary Commission changes might not just have a little something to with it, not least as the seat that will replace Crosby - Sefton Central - has all the appearances of being a Tory-Lib Dem marginal.

Other than that, it appears Claire’s most notable achievements since becoming an MP lie in her being one of the few engineers in parliament, and possible the only female engineer, coupled with stints on the Science and Technology, Home Affairs and, since the last election, Trade and Industry Select Committees and the unenviable record of being parliament’s most expensive MP in 2003/4 and second most expensive in 2002/3, much of which seems to come down to her racking up some pretty hefty postage bills. However, and to be scrupulously fair, a qucik look over her voting record at They Work For You turns up a few pleasant surprises, notably rebellions on ID cards, where she voting against the creeping compulsion aspects of designated documents, so she does have one or two things to recommend her.

All that, however is by the by as what I’m really interested in her is her ‘topshelf campaign‘, out of which, just this week, she’s scored herself a short op-ed piece in the Indy - which, amazingly, isn’t stuck behind their usual  pay-per-view - plus a piss-poor fluff piece by Zoe Williams over at the Graun, which prompted this nicely constructed evisceration by Matt at Fisking Central (via Antonia).

Now, as regulars might know, MoT is hardly a bastion of political correctness, not because your erstwhile commentator is a seething bundle of isms and ists but simply because I really can’t be doing with all the po-faced euphemisms and other mealy-mouthed bullshit that goes with being PC, even if it does sometimes get me into trouble as, from time to time, I get readers who can’t really tell is I’m for real or just being deliberately ironic in some of my comments.

So, for starters, if Claire is looking for an argument that’ll convince me that the likes of Zoo, Nuts and FHM should be consigned to the top-shelf she’d be much better served by playing on the natural sense of curmudgeonliness that all folks of my age begin to develop - in short, if teenage lads want something to wank over then I don’t see why they should have it any easier than I did at their age or be deprived of the opportunity to learn a valuable skill in the process; that of distracting the newsagent while one of your mates shop-lifts a copy of Fiesta.

Kids today, they just have it way too fucking easy.

That aside, the problem I have with Claire’s campaign is not that I object to here put forward the idea that some sort of age restriction on access to Lads Mags might not have some merit but rather that she doesn’t seem to entirely clear exactly what her campaign is really all about.

The obvious parallel to draw here is between this Claire and the other, rather more well-known Clare (Short) and her campaign to get the tits off page three of the Sun - although she might have been better served in trying to get the twats out of News International… but that’s another story.

The thing with Clare Short is that while I can’t say I agreed with her campaign, simply from the standpoint of not being comfortable with anything that smack of official censorship, at the very least I could respect where she was coming from. Clare’s objection to ‘page three’ was consistently based on her feminist beliefs and principles, so you knew exactly where she was coming from on this issue and why and you could, therefore, respect her views purely on that basis alone. The whole thing was commendable honest, clear and completely above board.

The problem I have with our latter day Claire is that it’s not possible to say the same - drill down into Indy article a little way and you find much the same feminist-inspired arguments about the ‘objectification as women’ that were the hallmark of the other’s Clare’s ruckus with the Sun over a decade ago, which is fair enough, if that’s what she really thinks.

Trouble is, when it gets to the sound-bites that’s not Claire’s line at all - no, when there’s a headline to written it’s stuff the feminist principles cos I’m really only doin’ it for the kids…

Now, again, if Claire, or anyone, genuinely thinks that the content of Lad’s Mags and the Daily Sport is a bit too strong for unrestricted public comsumption by minors then that’s fair enough - its a valid line of argument - but it’s not one that necessarily sits well with the whole principled feminist view of the whole situation.

The fact is that you don’t have to see what some people would consider to be ’soft porn’ as being exploititive or demeaning to women in order to take the view that it not really the kind of thing that you want to be seeing kids get hold of, so it really makes no sense at all to conflate that view of things with a more generalised objection to porn based on a view that:

Women in these publications are shown only as cheap, contemptible sexual commodities, fit to be subjected to a range of exploitative, violent and degrading activities.

Okay, so might reasonable for society to prefer teenage lads to grow up with a rather more positive view of women but I’ve still never quite seen the logic behind the contention that something that’s intolerable because its allegedly exploitative, violent and degrading suddenly becomes tolerable, or at least more tolerable, simply on account of a birthday.

It’s probably more of a realistic line of argument to say that some of the stuff in Lad’s mags, definitely in to top-shelf stuff, tends to create a rather unrealistic set of expectations when it comes to sex, although probably no more so than the kind of strange expectations that school sex education is science lesson did back in my day, wherin the actual mechanics of intercourse tended to be decribed hurriedly in terms of the penis entering the vagina, following which ejaculation occurs - probably no to far from the truth for most lads the first couple of time, but you would have thought they might just have got around to mentioning the wiggling it about a bit stage in-between…

…which is the bit that most lads picked up courtesy of the traditional art of shop-lifting for ‘jazz’ mags, because the only time you’d hear any talk of thrust in the classroom was during a physics lesson.

Then again, the whole legal framework around sexuality and pornography is raddled with hypocrisy anyway. Sex is legal at sixteen - with consent, obviously - but porn, even of the old-school soft porn variety is a no-no until you hit eighteen, which seems to me to make no sense at all unless the period from 16 to 18 is supposed to be some sort of apprenticeship stage where you’re expected just to stick to the basics - I’m guessing that thrust gets a mention in school sex-ed classes these days - before moving on to the advanced stuff a bit later on.

The other slightly sureal aspect all this for me is the suggestion that there’s somehow an equivalence between the likes of FHM and the kind of mags you actually find on the top-shelf in newsagents. That may well be the case in relation to WH Smiths, which I can’t say I recall ever really carrying a significant range of top-shelf stuff - Playboy and Penthouse always seemed to be the limits for Smith’s - soft porn, sure, but also soft-focus and with a few ‘artistic’ pretentions. Rarely, if even, can I recall ever seeing Smith’s selling even the slightly stronger brit-porn mags like Fiesta or Mayfair… you had to shop-lift in John Menzies to pick up those.

Head down to your local independent newsagent, these days, and things look very different from when I was I was teenager.

Back then, pretty much as much as you could get away with in terms of pictorials was the classic ’solo girl giving the shagpile an airing’ look - to get hold of anything more explicit without a trip down to Soho in those meant you were limited to a strictly black and white magazine called forum, which was about the size of one those booklets that Reader’s Digest used to post out in obscence quanitiies, nver to be read by anyone with the merest shred of personality. If you taste’s ran to anything more exotic then either got lucky with the latest ‘Reader’s Wives’ or you could forget it.

These days the dividing line between legal and illegal in terms of what you can get away with on the top shelf seems to be a matter of couple of millimeters’ this being distance that the tongue is required to remain away from actually touching the stiffy, and the range of different material on offer in your average newsagent cum convenience store - straight, gay, fetish ,etc - seems to be enough to exhaust even the most dedicated consumer, and that’s without even touching on the whole realms of satellite porn channels and, of course, the internet.

These things are relative, of course, but even the most in-your-face Lad’s mag is still as far, if not farther from, the kind of stuff you find on the top-shelf, these days, than page three was from the average top-shelf mag of 20-25 years ago.

Let’s be frank here - and I don’t mean that twatty government-fiction of a Frank, either - if what you’re genuinely concerned about is kids getting hold of explicit material then you’d be better off legislating to ban the supply of internet connections to parents without a mandatory piece of net nanny software and the training to configure the fucking thing properly - getting all fired up over the nipple count in the current FHM is really just pissing in the wind on this one.

Somewhere off the back of all this there’s a sensible and adult debate to be had about pornography and its position in society, the kind of debate that looks at liberalising some of the present regulations on content while putting in place effective and sensible restrictions on access, and most importantly of all, as with what should be the approach to  prostitution, providing adequate protection in law for industry workers.

Somwhere is all that, there may well be room to consider whether anything can be done to channel society’s routine surfeit of overheated teenage testosterone in the direction of a somewhat more positive view and appreciation of women - but if there is something that can be done then I very much doubt that’s it going to revolve around sticking Lad’s mags on the top shelf - you’d think that by now we’d have all got the message that prohibition simply doesn’t work.

If anyone’s looking for an idea that might have some effect, then I’d suggest you think more in terms of the growing market for porn aimed primarily at women, much of which is being made by women producers and directors and which tends to offer an much more naturalistic and in most respects romantic/erotic view of sex and sexuality than the usual kind of ‘let’s see how many orifices we can fill and get the camera in real close’ kind of stuff that dominates much of the material that’s produced, directed and aimed at men.  As a good friend of mine noted a while back, when she’s watching porn with her girlfriend (and no, that’s not a typo) they can tell within the first few minutes of scene whether the director was male or female without checking the credits simply because, as she put in her usual forthright manner, ‘real dykes just don’t shag like they do in the movies’.

(I ought to say, in addition, that based on personal experience of the university I attended, there was no quicker or more effective means of getting well-rid of any illusions or pretensions of political correctness than a weekly drinking session in the SU bar with the girls of the LGB Soc, most of whom could, on their own, out un-PC a battallion of Royal Marines and who were all the best drinking buddies for it - so there…)

Who knows, maybe there a partial answer somewhere in that - keep the age restriction on the more extreme stuff at 18, maybe even up the restriction to 21 on really in-your-face material, but allow 16-17 year olds to have access to the kind of naturalistic, genuine, erotica that’s becoming increasingly popular amongst women, the kind that depicts sex as mutual, and dare I say, loving experience. If anything, its much more logical response than simple prohibition to the Claire’s question about:

what message does it send to boys and young men about the value that society places on women? 

Is it not better to give a postive message that values sex and sexuality than no message at all - especially if one believes that what teenagers see in magazines, on TV or on the internet has any significant influence on attitudes? Who know, given, a slight more enlightened view of such things and you might even end up, for the first time in British history, with a generation of young men who not only know what a clitoris is but where to find it and what to do with it when they get there - which has to be a improvement over the current situation.

Like it or not, porn is, these days, a bona fide industry - you may not like the product but you can’t pretend either that there isn’t a massive.and highly lucrative market for or it or that, these day, there aren’t a hell of lot of women making a damn good living out of it at all levels of the industry and not just from being the product itself - all of which makes the kind of obvious gesture politics of Claire’s top-shelf campaign look rather banal and futile, however well intentioned it may be.

Any credible list of the greatest films of all time must certainly include at least one by the great Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, and if one is forced to choose only one of his films for such a list then that film would almost certainly be his 1950 classic, Rashomon.

Rashomon’s central theme is compelling in its simple profundity, dealing, as it does, with the difficulty (even impossibility) of obtaining the truth about an event from the conflicting accounts of witness - so profound in fact that the term ‘Rashomon effect’ has entered the lexicon of psychology to describe the effect of the subjectivity of perception on memory by which observers of an event are able to produce very different but equally plausible description of that event.

The relevance of this to a primarily political blogger like myself - aside from my personal liking for Kurosawa’s work - rests in this particular story…

A high court judge last night demolished a central plank of the government’s anti-terror policy when he quashed "control orders" on six suspected terrorists, saying the home secretary "had no power to make them under human rights law".

John Reid launched a furious counter-attack last night, saying he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling by Mr Justice Sullivan, which overturns nearly half the 14 control orders currently in force. He will try to overturn it in the court of appeal next month. Mr Reid said the control order system was needed to deal with international terror suspects who could not be deported on human rights grounds to countries where there was risk of torture.

Or more precisely in the entirely predictable response to be found in today’s Sun…

ONCE again a judge has put the rights of dangerous fanatics ahead of the safety of the British people.

In an outrageous ruling, Mr Justice Sullivan quashed vital control orders against six terror suspects.

In the process he drove a gaping hole through our anti-terror laws, leaving Britain at risk from extremists.

This is the same judge who banned the deportation of nine ruthless Afghan hijackers on human rights grounds.

His ruling flies in the face of common sense. We must count on it being overturned at appeal.

But this is the inevitable consequence of attempts to appease the human rights lobby.

Tony Blair has tied himself in knots trying to square our security with the European Convention on Human Rights.

But the only human right that counts is the safety of the British people. After the carnage of 7/7, the PM vowed to scrap the law if it got in the way of national security.

As the anniversary looms, it’s time to stop talking and take action.

I doubt very much that we need go into too much detail in relation to the general of this editorial, although at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law one might note that its general tone would not have looked out of place in the pages of the Völkischer Beobachter circa 1934/5, otherwise its just the same old piss-poor polemic against the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights that we’ve been seeing for months.

What’s rather more interesting, however, is what happens if one seeks to deliberately apply the Rashomon effect to this case and how this might, in turn, alter perceptions of the Sun’s arguments about ECHR.

What actually happened yesterday, in terms of the ruling that was made by Mr Justice Sullivan, is summed up rather nicely in his own words:

Mr Justice Sullivan said: "The freedom to meet any person of one’s choice by prior arrangement is significant. As is the freedom to attend any temple, mosque, church as whatever you choose." He went on: "I am left in no doubt whatsoever that the cumulative effect of the order has been to deprive to respondents of their liberty, in breach of article 5. I do not consider that this is a borderline case." The judge said he had taken into account the importance of the needs of protecting the public from acts of terrorism, but "human rights or international law must not be infringed or compromised".

Article 5 of ECHR, for those unfamiliar with it, states that:

1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law:

a. the lawful detention of a person after conviction by a competent court;

b. the lawful arrest or detention of a person for non-compliance with the lawful order of a court or in order to secure the fulfilment of any obligation prescribed by law;

c. the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so;

d. the detention of a minor by lawful order for the purpose of educational supervision or his lawful detention for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority;
the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts or vagrants;

e. the lawful arrest or detention of a person to prevent his effecting an unauthorised entry into the country or of a person against whom action is being taken with a view to deportation or extradition.

2. Everyone who is arrested shall be informed promptly, in a language which he understands, of the reasons for his arrest and of any charge against him.

3. Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1.c of this article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial. Release may be conditioned by guarantees to appear for trial.

4. Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful.

5. Everyone who has been the victim of arrest or detention in contravention of the provisions of this article shall have an enforceable right to compensation.

Just a trifle then, nothing more significant that the right to basic liberty, a fair trial, due legal and judicial process and the right to challenge the legality of arbitrary, extra-judicial detention by the state.

Possibly the most perncious fallacy currently being heavily promoted about the Human Right Acts and ECHR, not just by the Sun of the likes of Mad Mel but by both Tony Blair and David Cameron, is the idea that human rights is somehow a foreign imposition on British society and yet more malign influence from the continent.

This is patently untrue, as even Mad Mel has to acknowledge:

But the idea that this country had no human rights — like fair trials or freedom of speech —before the European Convention was drafted just after World War Two is clearly absurd. Our traditions of justice and liberty are ingrained in British history. Indeed, it was our lawyers who drafted the Convention.

If ECHR, which was drafted largely by British barristers and to which Britain was the first signatory, could be said to have had an architect then that architect was Winston Churchill, who, for all his faults, was hardly a man who would happily surrender British liberties to foreign authority…

…and so we come to the Rashomon effect and very simple question - is there another perspective on the actions of Mr Justice Sullivan, one rooted not in ECHR but in British, or at least English, Law, by which he could, in the faced of the Home Office’s actions, have arrived at much the same conclusions and, even, outcome.

Well, yes there is - and more to the point, one does not have to look very far at all to find it.

For starters, what actually happened yesterday was that the plaintiffs, who had been made subject to a control order, went to court to challenge the legality of their detention, thereby making use of Acts of Parliament that existed in British/English law long before the advent of ECHR and of which British jurist A C Dicey wrote they they:

declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty.

And what are these most marvellous Acts of Parliament? Quite simply the Habeas Corpus Acts.

The next thing that happened was that, after careful deliberation, Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that the use of control orders, by which the plaintiffs were held under what is effectively indefinite house arrest on the basis of a ministerial edict - such orders being signed by the Home Secretary without recourse to a court of law - is incompatible with ECHR and, by extension, that the Home Secretary has no valid legal authority to issue such orders.

Again, the question is simply whether there is, in British/English law, an alternative to ECHR that could have produced much the same outcome… and, again, the answer is yes. All one need do is refer to article 39 of the much venerated Magna Carta:

No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him except upon the lawful judgement of his peers or the law of the land.

Now, one could, I suppose, contend that as the Home Secretary’s power to issue control orders is enacted by Act of Parliament then there is no breach of Magna Carta as such orders are issued in accordance with ‘the law of the land’ but it has long been part of British justice that, but for times of emergency - when even habeas corpus has been temporarily suspended - that indefinite and arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unlawful.

Could Mr Justice Sullivan have, then, ruled as he did on the basis of Magna Carta - well, its certainly possible.

Article 39 is one of only four that remain in force having never been expressly repealed and as an article of constitutional law could certainly be given precedence over even powers granted by Act of Parliament as, by convention, ultimate jurisdiction in constitutional matters rests not with the Commons bit with the House of Lords. He could certainly have made the ruling on this basis, but whether that ruling would stand up would ultimately be a matter for the Law Lords who certainly could overrule the Common in this matter on the basis of control orders being ‘unconstitutional’.

Yesterday’s reports also made reference to an earlier case in the same judge struck down a separate control order for a different reason:

It is the second time in three months that Mr Justice Sullivan has criticised the orders. In April he overturned a seventh control order on a British terror suspect known only as "S", calling it an "affront to justice".

On that occasion, the issue was not the legal authority of the Home Secretary but the process by which the control order was issued. which was ruled incompatible with ECHR on the grounds that the individula in question was not afforded a fair hearing.

And again, Mr Justice Sullivan need not have relied on ECHR for his judgement in that case but could have turned, instead to the much older doctrine of natural justice and the legal maxim audi alteram partem (i.e. one must ‘hear the other side’). Natural justice is one of the central planks of the process of judicial review such that, irrespective of what statute law might say, a decision by a government minister or functionary may be challenged in court and quashed by a judge if such a decision is held to have been made without recourse to natural justice.

As should be obvious by now, one could quite easily rewrite the story of Mr Justice Sullivan’s rulling in very different legal terms and still arrive at, potentially, the same outcome by replacing ECHR with habeas corpus and Magna Carta, all of which rather destroys the idea that the government’s wishes are being overruled on the basis of principles that are somehow ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’ to British justice…

…and that being the case, one has to wonder just how the Sun’s editoral might have looked had this ruling been laid down in just such a fashion - after all, surely even the Sun could have no objection  to habeas corpus and Magna Carta - could it?

As spineless capitulations go the recent efforts of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor to reignite the debate on abortion on the back the technical arguments about foetal viability is up there with the best of them, whether that be the pseudo-science of the so-called ‘intelligent design theory – which manages to be neither intelligent nor a scientific theory – and the late Pope John Paul’s acceptance of Big Bang Theory, but only so long as cosmologists steer clear of investigating the actual Big Bang itself – he actually admonished a group of physicists, including Stephen Hawking, to that effect, as Hawking notes in ‘A Brief History of Time’.

The position of the Catholic Church on abortion, as with numerous other religious groups, is the same as it ever was. They oppose abortion outright on moral/doctrinal grounds, which makes their adoption of lines of argument based on the advance of medical science fundamentally disingenuous as their real aim is not to seek an appropriate balance between the rights of women and those nominally ascribed to a gestating embryo/foetus but rather to manipulate the public perception of medical technology in an effort to subject current abortion laws to an regime that amounts to no more than ‘death by a thousand cuts’. Such an approach, which is still, typically, based more on unscientific appeals to emotion/perception than actual hard scientific evidence, is perhaps best characterised as ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, subvert ‘em’, which makes it all the more gratifying that despite his having secured an audience with Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, Murphy-O’Connor seems to have largely failed, as yet, to spark off the kind of wide-ranging public debate he was, no doubt, hoping for and where discussions have sprung up, their general tone has been something less than that which the Catholic Prelate might have hoped for.

Before going too much further I should point you in the general direction of a couple of discussions that are well worth checking out – if you read nothing else then take a look at this debate between Owen Barder and Rob of Consider Phlebas, which is certainly a cut above the usual standard one finds whenever this issue crops up. Tim Worstall (and comments) also offers up much food for thought as does this article from the archives of Dr Crippen, which should also be considered required reading - even if I do take the Bill Hicks view of the term ‘pro-life’…

You know who ís really bugging me these days. These pro-lifers …

You ever look at their faces? "I’m pro-life!"

"I’m pro-life!"… Boy, they look it don’t they? They just exude joie de vie. You just want to hang with them and play Trivial Pursuit all night long.

You know what bugs me about them? If you’re so pro-life, do me a favour - don’t lock arms and block medical clinics. If you’re so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries… Let’s see how committed you are to this idea.

(Bill mimes the pursed lipped pro-lifers locking arms.)

Bill: (as pro-lifer) She can’t come in!

Bill: (as confused member of funeral procession) She was 98. She was hit by a bus!

Bill: (as pro-lifer) There’s options!

Bill: (as confused member of funeral procession) What else can we do? Have her stuffed?

I want to see pro-lifers with crowbars at funerals opening caskets - "get out!" Then I’d be really impressed by their mission.

Finally, on the links front, Emily,  who blogs at Second Child Syndrome, offers up a personal perspective which should also be considered essential reading in a post that will also be getting a nomination for the next of Tim’s Britblog Reviews.

Having said that, my own interest, like Tim’s, has been piqued by Roy Hattersley’s column for the Guardian, which makes some very good points and yet, for all that, remains deeply flawed in one of its central arguments, on the question of how one might define precisely when an embryo/foetus acquires the right to life in its own distinct right, in which Hattersley makes the grievous, if understandable, error of concentrating on the question of viability to the exclusion of other considerations…

The rules that should govern an ethically acceptable policy on abortion are not difficult to define. Metaphysics aside, it is reasonable to conclude that the new human being begins when the foetus is capable of independent life. Before that, an abortion is undesirable but tolerable. After that, it is only acceptable in the most extreme cases. They do not include the psychological trauma of the expectant mother. A civilised society does not kill one person in order to alleviate the distress of another, no matter how traumatic it may be.

This idea, that the moral and ethical value of the embryo/foetus is bound up in its capacity to exist independently of it’s mother’s womb is seductive, even compelling, in its simplicity – which is precisely why it is wrong, maybe not quite so wrong as the argument that life, and therefore the notional rights of the embryo, begins at conception, but wrong nonetheless.

Part of the problem here lies in the mutability of the notion of independence, as Dr Crippen notes in the comment on Tim’s piece is his usual forthright manner:

Dear me, no.

Capable of independent life?

If that is the criterion for abortion, it would be acceptable until the child is about 4 years old.

Sorry to be pedantic, but you (or Hattersley) cannot slip that one through.

Even if one is not quite so deliberately literal in interpreting the phrase ‘capable of independent life’ and confines one’s view only to that point at which the foetus, as it would be at that stage, is capable of survival on the basis only of that care which the mother might reasonably provide then the boundaries of ‘independent life’ are still to be found at a very late stage in gestation, considerably later than the current 24-week legal limit on abortions other than where there is evidence of foetal abnormality.

What Hattersley is, in fact, doing here is defining the parameters of ‘independent life’ not in terms of the actual capacity of the foetus for independent life but in terms of the capacity of medical technology to sustain the life of the foetus outside the mother’s womb until such time as it becomes capable of independent life, which is altogether a very different thing as, by extension, what he is doing is ascribing moral value to the foetus on the basis of the present state of medical technology not on the inherent qualities of the foetus itself. Superficially this may appear to provide a rational and objective basis for making such a determination but, in truth, such decisions are entirely mechanistic and give no consideration to what must the central moral and ethical question that underpins this debate, that of when the foetus becomes sufficiently human in nature to acquire a notional set of rights distinct from those of its mother.

That one question is, for most people, the crux of the matter – when does life begin – or rather when does human life begin, as for all but the strictest adherents to certain religions (Jainism and some strands of Buddhism, in the main) and the most ardent supporters of animal rights, such a question simply does not arise in respect of other species.

To accept that life begins at the point of conception requires, first, that one accepts some notional concept of the existence of a soul or similar life-force whose existence cannot be verified in scientific terms – the starting point for this is therefore a matter of belief (or superstition, depending on your personal view of the nature of religion). Moreover, and in much more mundane terms, such a view ignores a simple and extremely inconvenient biological fact; a large proportion, if not the majority, of conceptions do not result in pregnancy; for various reasons, many not always apparent, fertilised eggs simply fail to implant in the womb and are, consequently, expelled from the body during the normal course of menstruation with the woman being none the wiser as to the fact that a conception occurred. The believer may attempt to rationalise this by the usual, some might say obligatory, appeal to ‘God’s Will’ but, logically, if one does believe that a notional soul is present from the point of conception then one must also except that god, in whatever form you believe such an entity (or entities) to exist, also has a hell of discard pile, a view which flies in the face of the orthodox position in monotheistic religions, although if one’s beliefs also encompass reincarnation you position is rather more secure as your deity at least has the option of recycling to cover such a scenario.

And as noted earlier, the humanist view, in which judgements are based on the notions of viability, fails to address the underlying moral/ethical questions as to the nature of humanity and where, in the biological process of life, such a concept become meaningful and, in effect, places a value of human life that is based on its own characteristics but, more or less, on the capabilities of medical science.

Neither view, therefore, really addresses, in any meaningful sense, the central question of what is human life and when does it actually begin - the answer to which, I would certainly contend, is the only genuinely meaningful basis upon which one can rationally begin to consider the wider moral and ethical questions raised by abortion.

- - -

I gave this piece the title ‘Schrödinger’s Baby’ because while thinking things through I stated to see parallels between some of the moral and ethical question posed by abortion and Erwin Schrödinger’s classic thought experiment, which is usually referred to as the ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ experiment, in which the eponymous (and entirely hypothetical) cat is used an analogy to explore the paradoxical nature of quantum indeterminacy predicted by Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle.

The experiment, itself, is described as follows:

A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive atomic nucleus and a canister of poison gas. This apparatus is separated from the cat in such a way that the cat can in no way interfere with it. The experiment is set up so that there is exactly a 50% chance of the nucleus decaying in one hour. If the nucleus decays, it will emit a particle that triggers the apparatus, which opens the canister and kills the cat. If the nucleus does not decay, then the cat remains alive. According to quantum mechanics, the unobserved nucleus is described as a superposition (meaning it exists partly as each simultaneously) of "decayed nucleus" and "undecayed nucleus". However, when the box is opened the experimenter sees only a "decayed nucleus/dead cat" or an "undecayed nucleus/living cat.

The question that Schrödinger posed was simply that of when does the system cease to be a mixture of states and become either one or the other, his intent being to illustrate the view that quantum mechanics, at the time, was incomplete as it lacked the rules necessary to relate the quantum description of events to those described in terms of classical physics.

The relevance of this to abortion lies in what has become the mainstream view of how the paradox set out by Schrödinger should be interpreted, which takes the view that the act of observation (i.e. opening the box to see if the cat is dead or alive) which serves to determine its state – while the box remains closed, the state of the cat is considered to be indeterminate.

To some extent, this also describes the historical status of the embryo/foetus, certainly up to the point in time where medical science began both to understand the process of foetal development and to develop the various tools necessary to monitor that development as it took place. The parallel has, of course, never been exact, in the sense from 15-18 weeks gestation right up to the point of birth a women can feel the foetus moving inside her and therefore has a means of measuring the ’state’ of the foetus that does not rely on the equivalent of actually opening the box – i.e. birth and has become less exact as medical technology, such as ultrasound scanning, has developed.

What we have, therefore, is an analogy based on variation of a theme by Schrödinger, one in which the cat is still in the box, except that now the lid is made of semi-transparent perspex, but the box is also subject to a time-switch which prevents it being opened until a fixed point in time, one which is randomly set within a range around a median point (analogous to the full gestation period of forty week in pregnancy) with which the observer cannot tamper would there being some measurable risk that trying to open the box at any time up to and including the time at which the box is due to open might trigger the poison gas and kill the cat before it can be safely removed from the box.

The question posed by this variation is also slightly different from that proposed by Schrödinger in the sense that what we are concern with, primarily, is not the state of the cat at a defined point in time, buts it likely state at the conclusion of the experiment – knowing that there is a 50% chance that the trigger particle will decay and release the poison gas at any given time can we make any definite prediction as to the state of the cat at the conclusion of the experiment based on an observation of its state and a particular point in time?

In fact, if one thinks logically, we can – but only if the poison gas has been triggered and the cat is dead. If however, the cat is still alive at the point the observation is made, the best we can say given that there is a fixed probability of particle decay of 50% at any given moment is that the cat as a 50% chance of still being alive at the conclusion of the experiment – the cat’s state at a particular time may be determined by observation but its state at the conclusion of the experiment remains indeterminate right to the very end.

What I am trying to illustrate here is one of the more complex moral and ethical conundrums of abortion, that of seeking to balance the rights of the pregnant women with those accorded to the foetus.

Unless one takes an absolutist view that holds that the rights of the woman remain pre-eminent throughout pregnancy, irrespective of any notional rights accorded to the foetus then as some point in the gestational process it is assumed that foetus becomes sufficiently human, by whatever means one chooses to make a determination, to be accorded certain rights, particularly the right to life, independently of the right of the woman. From that point onwards, the decisions as to whether an abortion may be morally and ethically justified, tolerated and, in law, permissible, entails a value judgement in which one takes into account and seek to balance the presumed rights of both parties.

To complicate matters further, in reaching such a judgement one must take into account both the relative merits of each parties claim to certain rights - i.e. should both the woman and the foetus be considered equal in overall status or do rights accorded to one take precedence over those accorded to the other? - and the relative merits of the specific right (or rights) at issue - i.e. does the foetus’s right to life override the woman’s right to choice?

Depending on one’s general perspective on abortion, one which place a different emphasis on the importance of these two questions. The religious view is that the right to life trumps almost any other consideration, such that with the occasional exemption (i.e. that usually included in relation to conceptions arising out an act of rape) one need consider the balance of rights only where there is significant risk of the woman dying should she continue with the pregnancy, and therefore only where conflict exists between the right to life accorded to both parties. By complete contrast, the strongest form of pro-choice view hold that the rights of the woman are pre-eminent over those of the foetus, irrespective of which particular right (or rights) might be at stake.

By and large, the mainstream view is somewhere in between these two positions and will seek to balance both elements of the equation, however, the is a strong general tendency to take the view that once the foetus has developed to the point at which rights are conferred upon it, those rights should be considered to generally equal to those of the woman, leaving only the balance of specific rights to be considered.

But is this necessarily a rational view to take? Not, if one considers the implications raised by the analogy with Schrödinger’s Cat, in its variant form, that I set out earlier.

Assuming one is dealing with circumstances in which both woman and foetus are considered to have rights independent of the other, the question arises as to whether those rights should be though, in general, to be equal in status, i.e. should both the woman and the foetus be thought to be equal is status as human beings?

Conventional wisdom might appear suggest that the answer is yes, and yet the fact remains that until such time as the foetus exists independently of its mother, i.e. outside the womb, it’s actual status is more akin to that of Schrödinger’s hypothetical cat in the sense that even with modern medical technology giving us the ability to assess and determine the status of the foetus at a given time point in time, its overall status remains to some degree indeterminate until such time as it is born and exists independently of its mother’s womb. In the case of the women we are dealing with an individual who is unmistakeably a human being, however in the case of the foetus, until such time as it is born, its status remains open to question and we are dealing not in absolute certainties but in probabilities, not least of which being the probability of the foetus surviving until (and past) the point of birth.

Unlike the hypothetical cat, however, these probabilities are not fixed by vary over time – all things being equal, the probability of survival increases over the period of gestation such that, logically, the status of the foetus become less indeterminate as time progresses, and this remains valid whether gestation proceeds in the womb as normal or interrupted before the foetus reaches full term and superseded by artificial incubation and until such time as the, by then, baby, is capable to sustaining its existence without intensive medical intervention.

When it comes to premature births, matters become even more complicated because while the fact of the foetus/baby’s existence outside the womb would be considered by near enough all to conclusively determine its status as a human being and therefore its right to be accorded rights independently of its mother, this affects only its metaphysical status and not its probability of survival, which, depending on exactly when birth occurs, may easily be substantially reduced in the process.

Here we have the uncomfortable paradox that lies at the heart of the question of foetal viability as a basis for judgements are to the moral, ethical and legal permissibility of abortion. While the foetus remains in the mother’s womb, its existence as a human being can only rationally (and scientifically) be measured in terms of its potential for survival and one is, therefore, dealing not in absolutes but in probabilities.

In seeking to set an upper limit on the time at which abortions may be permitted by law from such a reference point one must both assess the general probability of a foetus surviving premature birth at a particular stage in gestation and also, critically, whether that probability is sufficiently high to justify placing a restriction or prohibition on abortions beyond that point.

Should one reduce the upper limit for abortions to 20 or 22 weeks simply because a single foetus has survived successfully outside its mother’s womb from that point – is that sufficient proof of life to justify a limit on abortions at that point. Or does the survival rate need to be 1%, or 10%, or the 30-40% rate (at 24 weeks) currently being quoted by those who either oppose abortion outright or favour further restrictions – or maybe we should be ‘democratic’ about this and insist on at least a simple majority.

How does one rationally assess questions of this kind?

What I’ve tried to achieve here is to demonstrate that for all that arguments based on notions of ‘viability’ appear both persuasive, rational, and, crucially for many people, founded on medical science, in reality the concept of viability fails more or less entirely to provide a coherent and rational framework from which one can arrive at a rational judgement on setting an upper limit on access to abortions even without considering some of the many other ethical dilemmas that advances medical technology may eventually raise, not least of which is the possibility of developing an artificial womb that would allow gestation to take place entirely outside the human body or the development of foetal transplantation - both of which have explored at length by science fiction authors. It is a fundamentally flawed approach, as flawed, subjective and, in its own way, irrational as that which believes that life begins at conception on the back of the presumed but unverifiable existence of the human soul.

- - -

Getting back to the question of life, itself, or rather human life – as distinct from other species – if one is seeking a rational approach to questions raised by the issue of abortion then it would seem that one’s starting point must lie in the question of precisely when, and how, a foetus becomes definably human in nature and, therefore, acquires rights as an individual as distinct from its mother.

Perhaps the clearest possible indication of the failure of the anti-abortion lobby to sway public opinion by means of a purely moral argument based on the belief that life begins at conception is to found in the the extent to which anti-abortion campaigners have sought to use both shock tactics, i.e. images of aborted foetuses, in their campaign literature, while at the same time making assiduous use of any and all medical evidence that appears in any way to suggest that the embryo/foetus, even at an early stage in development, possesses identifiably human characteristics.

Hattersley, in his article, picks up one fairly typical example of such tactics, in noting that:

…the Most Reverend Peter Smith, Archbishop of Cardiff, claimed that pictures of a foetus apparently "walking in the womb" had "touched people’s hearts".

Propaganda of this kind invariably follows the same basic form, in which some physical characteristic present in foetus is held up as evidence of its ‘humanity’ in an effort to elicit a purely subjective and emotional response – albeit that the underlying science rarely, if ever, backs up such claims.

So it is with the apparent ‘walking’ foetus – at 15-18 weeks gestation a foetus certainly moves in the womb and may well move in a fashion which suggests ‘walking’, yet the fact remains that the foetus is actually walking – to walk implies conscious effort on the part of the foetus, effort which is entirely impossible at that stage of development as the foetus’s brain has not developed any actual capacity for higher cognitive functions at that point. The movements that the Archbishop of Cardiff is pointing to as evidence of the humanity of the foetus are, in fact, entirely automatic and without the merest shred of conscious intent.

Much the same problem – bad science – arises in another common myth promoted by the anti-abortion lobby, which claims that at around 12 weeks gestation, by which point the core central nervous system has developed, the foetus is then capable of ‘feeling’ pain. While it may certainly be true that once the central nervous system is in place, a foetus may experience and even physically respond to such stimuli, such responses are, again, entirely automatic. To actual ‘feel’ pain, in the sense understood by most people, again requires a degree of consciousness and higher cognitive function that is simply not present at such an early stage of development, such capacity does not, in fact, begin to develop until the third trimester (from 24 -26 weeks gestation) 24 weeks being the current upper limit on the general availability of abortion.

Central to these, and other related, issues is that most basic of all questions – what is the nature of humanity and how and when does it manifest itself during foetal development.

This is a more complicated question than might first be apparent as to be human, in a physical/biological sense does not necessarily equate to humanity in the metaphysical sense – a corpse is physically, biologically and genetically human and yet, being dead, could not be said to possess those qualities that, collectively, we would consider to be the defining characteristics of humanity. Other than a notional right to a decent and undisturbed burial/cremation, a corpse is accorded no particular rights at all, quite rationally, and even the right to burial/cremation has more to do with the sensibilities of living family and friends than the status of the corpse itself – which is entirely beyond caring what happens to it.

As sentient beings, our sense of humanity is not bound up in physical characteristics or even in the human genome. As a matter of routine we anthropomorphisise animals and even inanimate objects, vesting in them notional human qualities, and yet most of us would not even think of according them anything approaching human rights. Conversely as a society, for the most part, we have come to look beyond disability and deformity, physical differences from the norm that, historically, have often been held to compromise the status of the individual as a human being, and recognise that, at the very least, there is more to being human than appearance or physical capacity. Humanity – that which makes us definably human – if it rests anywhere rests in the mind, in cognition and consciousness, in our capacity to think, to reason, to feel, to communicate and in whole host of other abstract qualities…

…none of which are even capable of being present in a foetus before 24 weeks gestation, simply because that portion of the brain in which such higher functions ‘reside’ does not being to develop and function until that point in time.

This, in turn, raises another interesting metaphysical question – in ascribing to human beings a package of notional rights, to what element or aspect of being human do those rights attach?

Does one acquire these notional rights by virtue of one’s physical (i.e. genetic) characteristics or is the acquisition of rights based on more abstract notions of ‘humanity’, of the sum total of cognition and consciousness, of thought and emotion?

The answer to such a question has massive bearing on how one approaches the question of abortion as if one attaches right to the abstract rather than the physical notion of being human then the idea that a foetus possesses certain rights independent of and, at least, equal to that of its mother becomes, to a significant degree, moot until such time as the foetus begins to develop the physical capacity to ‘host’ those abstract qualities. While it is certainly not the case that one would argue that foetus does not become human until it starts to develop the capacity for higher cognitive functions, one can legitimately argue that until such point its capacity for humanity is sufficient indeterminate and undefined so as not to give rise to any notional right that might conflict with the rights accorded to the mother, including the right to undergo an abortion.

Viewed from this perspective, access to abortion up to the present 24 week limit on general availability is not only eminently reasonable but also in no way contingent on the capacity of medical science to sustain the life of a foetus ‘born’ prior to this point in gestation by artificial means – a rational, scientifically-founded argument in favour of reducing this upper limit would have to be based not on the perceived ‘viability’ of the foetus prior to this point or its presumed ‘capacity for independent life’ but on science demonstrating that basic cognition, and therefore, the clear capacity to develop those abstract qualities that we consider to constitute ‘humanity’, starts before this point.

Such an existentialist perspective on abortion – which incidentally also happens to be pretty much the way I see things – is not without it moral and ethical complexities both in terms of the question of what value one places on the potential that exists in the foetus prior to 24 weeks gestation, nor indeed does it resolve the complex issues arising out of late abortions on grounds of disability, although it does give added weight in support of permitting such abortions where the disability would impact significantly on cognitive function.

It does, however, have the twin virtues of being pretty much consistent with the established scientific understanding of foetal development and of seeking to establish parameters for debate that remain rooted in considerations of the nature of humanity and the moral value one ascribes to human beings and not in considerations of the technical prowess of medical science.

If it were genuinely as simple a matter as Hattersley suggests in stating that:

That incontrovertible imperative leaves parliament and government with only one task to perform: discovering when independent life is viable.

…then what need is there for parliament to investigate and consider this matter – if viability is genuinely to be the sole measure upon which legal access to abortion is founded, then parliament need only enact whatever recommendations may be put forward from time to time by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence or an ethics committee operating under the aegis of the General Medical Council, either of which would be far better qualified to make such assessments in terms of clinical evidence than the vast majority of parliamentarians.

But then there’s much more to be considered here than simply the matter of foetal viability, which is precisely why there must be an open public debate, if and when the current abortion laws are to be reviewed, why this is very much a matter for parliament and why, as has been the case certainly since the original Abortion Act of 1967, this remains and must remain subject to a free vote in parliament.

Discovering when ‘independent life is viable’ is most definitely not the sole task of parliament and government in this matter, it is not even its most important task, which is to ensure that full consideration is given to the multiplicity of views and opinions that exist in British society on the subject of abortion before make a determination on whether there is, indeed, a case for changes in existing law.

A national ‘respect squad’ is being launched by John Reid to help in the battle against anti-social behaviour.

Local councils, MPs and police chiefs will be able to call in the squad to help tackle cases of "yobbishness".

The squad, which will work across Wales and England, consists of 10 frontline local authority and police staff.

The home secretary said: "The government’s new respect squad will ensure there is no let up in tackling anti-social behaviour."

The squad will be led by the assistant director of the government’s respect task force, Alex Rhind.

Mr Reid said it would offer the chance of swift resolution to challenging problems where other means appeared to have been exhausted.

Oh fucking hell… we’re in the shit, aren’t we?

Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me here, my comments are really meant for my fellow Labour Party members because, but let’s face facts here, if this the best that that the Home Office can come up with then we really haven’t got a fucking clue have we.

Let me translate here - ‘We are launching a national ‘respect squad’ actually means ‘we haven’t got the first fucking idea what we’re doing but we think this might play well in the Daily Mail’.

This is not a policy - it doesn’t even qualify as an initiative. This is one of those half-arsed, spur of the moment ideas, like Hazel Blears’ orange jumpsuits and Blair’s frogmarching yobs down the cashpoint, the kind that gets announced in time for Breakfast TV but turns into ‘the Minister was just thinking out loud’ by tea-time in the face of the ensuing howls of derision with which the announcement is met - only this time they’ve actually gone and set the fucking thing up before giving us the chance to laugh it out of existence.

Mind you, in the hands of John Reid, it doesn’t take long for things to get even worse.

Mr Reid said: "Anti-social behaviour ruins lives and fragments communities - particularly those in some of the most deprived areas of our country.

"We should and will be unremitting in our efforts to drive up standards of behaviour and enforce a culture of respect, for the benefit of all."

Fuck me, it’s like being back at school and sitting in one of those interminable assemblies where the headmaster is determined to lecture the entire school off the back of find a couple of fifth-year’s smoking behind the bike sheds. I’m sure you all remember the lecture vividly; its the one where where you’ve given a litany of things that the school will not accept, almost all of which have got absolutely fuck all to do with whatever it was set the twat off in the first place, coupled with all manner of vague but dire warning about anyone who doesn’t toe the line facing the consequences - whatever those were, because no one ever fucking said.

And let me ask you honestly - did you even walk out of that kind of assembly knowing deep down that you were going to make every effor to mend you ways..?

Did you fuck!

Just like everyone else who ever had to sit through that kind of lecture, no soon as you got out the hall you’d turn to your mates and say, ‘what a fucking tosser!’ and start speculating on just what it would take to wind the headmaster up enough so that the vein you noticed throbbing away at his temple during the whole charade might swell up enough to burst.

You simply cannot ‘enforce a culture of respect’ - respect is something that you earn and something than can be taught, but its not something you can simply force on people - that’s not respect, that’s fear, and fear only breeds resentment, disaffection and, eventually, hatred.

This isn’t about respect at all, this is about bullying people into submission.

Oh, the irony of it all - twenty years on and now Gripper Stebson has become the new Home Secretary…

From yesterday’s Observer…

The home secretary’s decision to move scores of paedophiles out of hostels next to schools backfired spectacularly last night amid concerns many were now under less stringent supervision than before John Reid’s unprecedented intervention.

A Home Office source told The Observer that many of the 70 sex offenders moved out of 11 hostels near to schools and nurseries were now being housed either in voluntary hostels run by church groups or in bed and breakfast accommodation. ‘There’s little option because of a shortage of specialist accommodation units,’ the source said.

Now do people understand why knee-jerk policy reactions to moral panics driven by the media are a fucking bad idea!

Abortion is back in the news, courtesy of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor - excellent commentary here by Owen Barder, by the way -  so it should come as no particular surprise to note that while researching the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship’s campaign on the draft Sexual Equality Regulations, I discovered that one of the other group’s supported by its Public Policy Officer, Andrea Minichiello Williams, Christian Concern for Our Nation has a few things to say on this subject as well.

In fact, only this week is published a press release on behalf of what looks to be another spin-off group ‘Choose Life’ with the following headline:

VAST MAJORITY OF WOMEN BELIEVE ABORTION IS CRUEL AND LAW SHOULD BE CHANGED

The press release, which I’ll analyse in a moment, trumpets the results of an opinion poll carried out by CommunicateResearch on their behalf into attitures towards abortion, the results of which, so this group claim, support their calls for changes in the present abortion law - but does it really do that and does the spin put on these results by this group genuine match up with the results of the poll?

The problems with Choose Life’s interpretation of the results of this opinion poll begin right from the very headling of the press release which makes two clear statements, that the ‘vast majority’ of women believe that abortion is cruel (full stop) and also beleive that the law should be changed.

In actual fact, the poll does not ask whether women believe abortion is cruel, in general, what is asks, instead, is whether respondents (not all of whom were women) agree or disagree with the statement that ‘aborting a baby at six month is cruel’ - to which 76% of all respondents agreed.

Not only does this group misrepresent the actual question asked in the poll but the question, itself, if both unreliable and biased, if the objective of the poll is to assess the level of support for current abortion laws. The question of whether one perceives abortion at six months is cruel is entirely subjective and limited in scope; the poll does not ask whether respondents consider an abortion to be ‘cruel’ to the foetus; to the pregnant mother or both, nor are respondents asked to consider whether, even if they perceive abortion at this stage to be cruel, whether it could also be justified or even considered necessary in certain circumstances.

As such, it is not possible to make any assertions as to the degree of public support for current abortion laws or changes in the current law based on this one question, not least as nowhere in the poll are respondents asked explicit whether they would wish to see or support changes in existing law - the headline states that women believe the law should be changed, but nowhere in the poll is that actual question asked.

The full text of the press release is given below with my own annotations, based on the actual results of the poll as published by CommunicateResearch, including a number of questions/responses that the Choose Life group have chosen to omit from their press release for what you will see are very obvious reasons.

The vast majority of women believe that abortion is “cruel” and that the existing law should be changed, according to the biggest ever professional survey of female opinion.

The assertions made int he press releases headlines, and restated here, I’ve already dealt with and shown to be unreliable. As for the ‘biggest ever professional survey of female opinion’, the research results show a total sample size of 1503, of whom 1046 were women, which means it is certainly not the biggest ever professional survey of female opinion on this subject, a 2002 survey into women’s’ perceptions of abortion law and practice (pdf) conducted by Marie Stopes International, used a sample size of 1,222 women aged 16-49 and included attitudinal data.

I’m pretty sure if one looks around, you’ll find even larger studies have been carried out in the past - a sample size of 1046 women is not that big and nothing in particular to crow about.

The survey also shows that most people – men and women – believe that too many abortions are being carried out each year and want to see the 200,000 a year toll reduced.

The survey does indeed show that ‘most people’ agreed with the proposition that 200,000 abortions a year is too many in total and should be reduced, although the actual figure for those who agreed with this statement was only 53% - 29% disagreed with the proposition (the survey did not ask why) and 18% chose ‘don’t know’ or refused to comment.

The survey does not, however, ask respondents to indicate by what methods they would prefer to see the number of abortions reduced and the simple fact is that any reasonable individual, even the most ardent pro-choice supporters, would prefer to see fewer abortions being carried out, albeit that their preferred means of achieving such a goal - better sex education and access to contraception - differs fundamentally from Pro-Lifers who favour a complete ot near complete ban on abortion.

The mere fact that a majority of people would like to see fewer abortions carried out each year, again, tells us nothing about attitudes toward current abortion law or any denabd for change.

Another key finding is that women overwhelmingly want Government money spent on charities offering alternatives to abortion, such as adoption. Eighty five per cent want to see more help given to women who want to keep their baby rather than further moves to make abortion easier.

This is, again, wholly misleading.

The actual questions asked in the survey were:

If you were forced to choose between the following outcomes, which ONE would you select?

Easier Access to Abortion – 10%

More support for women who wish to keep their baby – 84%

And

It has been argued that since the government funds abortions in private clinics, it should also make funds available to organisations offering women alternatives to abortion such as adoption. Would you support or oppose this proposal?

Support - 85%

Oppose - 11%

In neither case do these questions demonstrate a lack of support for the current abortion laws or servie provision - one can easily reach the conclusion that the government should prioritise greater support for alternatives to abortion simply on the basis of believeing that existing provision is already adequate and that women should have every available option open to them when choosing what’s best for them.

Pro-choice means exactly that, enabling women to choose according to their needs and their personal circumstances, whether than means abortion, adoption or motherhood.

The poll, carried out by CommunicateResearch for the campaigning group Choose Life, will add to the mounting pressure for a change in the abortion law and a reduction in the current upper limit.

But the poll suggests that women will not be satisfied with a simple reduction in the upper time limit of 24 weeks if that simply results in an increase in early abortions. Most want to see fewer terminations overall and wider availability of alternatives to abortion.

The poll, in actual fact, does nothing of the sort as none of conclusions cited so far in anyway conclusively supports this group’s claims - what they giving here are the results they wanted to see, not the results they actually obtained.

It comes shortly before a major public debate in London between doctors and lawyers on opposing sides of the abortion argument. Barrister Charles Foster and Professor Patricia Casey will declare that the the number of UK abortions is too high and that the Abortion Act, last revised in 1990, should be reviewed. They will be opposed by barrister Nick Toms and Dr Wendy Savage.

As noted previously, it does not follow that the perception that there are currently too many abortions being carried out should necessarily lead to either a review of the Abortion Act or greater restrictions on access to abortion, nor that such such restrictions would even reduce the total number of abortions carried out each year on UK citizens. As the experience of the Irish Republic clearly demonstrates, prohibitive restrictions on access to abortion, these days, only lead to those seeking abortion going elsewhere - mainly the UK.

The net effect of restricting access to abortion in the UK would be simply to encourage women seeking an abortion to go abroad, most likely to Eastern Europe to get the procedure done.

Tory leader David Cameron and his predecessor Michael Howard have both backed calls for a lower limit and the leader of Britain’s Roman Catholics Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor is to meet Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt next week to press for a tightening of the law.

Professor Casey said: “For years abortion has been cast as a central tenet of feminism and as essential to women’s empowerment. But recent developments in pro-life feminism give the lie to this thesis and abortion has devastating effects on the psychological well-being of many women.

"There have been several influential studies published recently that show an increased risk for psychiatric disorder and psychiatric hospitalisation among women who have abortions.

“So, contrary to the early feminist rhetoric promoting abortion as a positive choice for women with crisis pregnancies, women deserve better and we cannot and should not act as oppressors of our unborn children as we were once oppressed by the structures within society.“

Professor Casey, quoted here, is Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin and Consultant Psychiatrist in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, and from what little biographical information I can find appears to something akin to the Irish equivalent of Raj Persaud.

Abortion is undoubtedly a traumatic experience for any woman and in some case may result in psychiatric problems, but the same can be said for both adoption and motherhood. In talking about ‘pro-life feminism’, Prof. Casey is talking about abortion in a political and a professional context, one which I would certain hope would not carry through in her work as a consultant psychiatrist as such a biased view of this issue, if applied in therapy, would create severe ethical problems and compromise her objectivity within the doctor/client relationship.

Andrea Williams, public policy officer for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, which is organising Monday’s debate, said: “This poll confirms that women in this country are deeply unhappy with the existing abortion laws and want them tightened up. It also suggests many women fear that too often abortions are carried out because of social pressures and not because the women concerned want a termination. Above all women want to see fewer abortions in this country. It would be disastrous if the move towards a lower time limit for abortion were to lead to more early abortions. That would achieve very little”

Again, it is worth restating that the questions asked in the survey and the response received do not support the view put forward here - in fact the single most telling question in the survey is one that the press release omits from consideration, thus far:

Q5 Do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements about abortion?

A woman’s right to choose always outweighs the rights of the unborn

Agree – 65%, Disagree – 26%

In fact the survey also include this question, for which the response is equally revealing:

Q.4 If a candidate in a general election in your constituency publicly said they believed that abortion should be made less easily available would yoube more likely or less likely to vote for them, or would it make no difference?

More Likely – 19%

No Difference – 56%

Less Likely – 22%

65% of those surveyed consider a woman’s right to choice in the matter of abortion to be paramount, which is altogether a kick in the teeth for the pro-life lobby as is the abject their failure to find any evidence support for greater restrictions on abortion has a significant impact on voting intentions.

The latest survey reveals mounting disquiet among women at the scale of abortions in Britain and the laxity of the existing law. It is based on interviews with 1046 women and 457 men.

Having read the survey results that’s not, as you might have already gathered, the impression I’ve gained, but then as a trained psychologist what do I know about attitude surveys… still, lets take a closer look at the evidence.

The key findings are:

More than eight in ten women believe that aborting a baby at the current upper age limit is cruel.

That’s the third occasion that this statistic is quoted - see my earlier comments and contrast with the 65% support for the pre-eminence of a women’s right to choice.

A massive 95 per cent of Britons agree that the abortion law should be kept under regular review and fewer than one in twenty disagrees.

It’s only reasonable for any law to be kept under periodic review, so support for this proposition tells us nothing at all about any level of support for actual change, it just means that people think it prudent to keep an eye on how the law is working in practice.

Two-thirds of Britons believe that abortion law hasn’t kept pace with our knowledge of early development in the womb. Only one-quarter disagree.

Does this indicate actual support for a reduction in the time limit for elective abortion on grounds other than disability or not? The one question that the survey avoids asking is whether the current time limit should actually be reduced - quite why is unclear as it’s a simple enough question.

The most one can legitimately infer from this statement is a belief that abortion law should take into account current medical practice and clinical evidence on the viability of the foetus at certain stages of development and nothing more - it indicates support for evidence-based law-making not necessarily for further restrictions in access to abortion.

The survey also finds widespread dissatisfaction with the way the current law operates.

78 per cent of women want a compulsory cooling-off period between diagnosis of pregnancy and any abortion.

So what? Women want time to think things through properly before making a major decision about their life - nothing unreasonable in that.

That the law does not explicitly provide for a ‘cooling-off period’ between diagnosis of pregnancy and abortion is not a deficiency in law - most pregnancies, today, are self-diagnosed using home tests, follwing which, even if a women’s immediate view is that she wants abortion, she still has to obtain an appointment with a medical practitioner, which takes a couple of days at least, then undergo a counselling session and then be given an appointment for the actual procedure. Unless someone is badly ‘on the clock’, having discovered their pregnancy or decided on a termination at a very late stage in relation to the current 24 week limit, even going private with result in a delay of about a week between the initial decision to have a termination and the actual procedure, allowing time to think things over.

Why is there no statutory cooling off period - most likely because giving a patient time to think things through adn come to an informed decision is simple matter of medical ethics and, therefore, one that does not require legislation. If anyone feels that a doctor has rushed or pushed them into a decision on abortion without giving them time to reach an informed decision then their recourse is a complaint of professional misconduct to the GMC.

A massive 96 per cent of women want a right to be fully informed of the medical risks associated with abortion.

Well who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be fully informed of the medical risks before any medical procedure, If a doctor prescribes medication you’re not familar with then the second question you ask is generally going to be whether there are any side-effect - the first is always, "is this going to help?", obviously.

Again, the right to be fully informed of medical risks is a matter of medical ethics and not one that requires legislation.

The most common reason for abortion is perceived to be on grounds of disability (66 per cent), and this proportion is even higher among women than among men. But this is far from correct. In 2004 only one per cent of abortions in England & Wales took place for this reason.

Public understanding of the grounds on which abortion is sought is certainly out of kilter with reality in the matter of disability, however this was not the only thing that this particular question looked at - the actual question was:

Q6 As far as you can tell, what would you say are the most common reasons for abortion?

And the full results were:

The baby’s father is unsupportive - 45%

A girl’s parents don’t agree with her having a baby - 55%

It would be difficult to combine a baby with a full time job - 48%

Having a baby would interfere with education - 52%

The unborn baby has a disability - 66%

Note the obvious bias here, in so far as the answers given seem to relate primarily to abortions in teenagers, particularly those who are still living with parents and in full-time education.

In actual fact, one the most recent complete statistics (2004) only 2% of abortions were carried out on under 16s and teenagers, in total, account for only 20% of all abortions. The largest number of abortions by single age group - 27% - occurs in the 20-24 age group, while women over 30 account, in total, for nearly 29% of all abortions.

The vast majority of women seeking abortions in the UK are mature adults - more that half of all abortions occur in women over the age of 24 - so its not just in the matter of disability that there is a degree if general ignorance about abortion, but equally a significant degree of ignorance as to just who might be having all these abortions and, in fact, the majority of women who do seek an abortion or more than capable of making and informed adult decision as to what they believe to be in their best interests.

Two-thirds of Britons support, and one-quarter oppose, a right for healthcare workers not to have to sign abortion forms or assist abortions where this would conflict with their ethical views.

As far as I’m aware, medical practioners are under no legal requirement to sign abortion forms or assist in abortion procedures if they have a personal moral objection to abortion - should this arise the would simply be under a duty to refer the individual to medical practioner who will deal with them.

Okay, I could be wrong, in which case I would expect a fellow blogger such as the excellent Dr Crippen to correct any misconceptions I might have on this matter…

84 per cent of Britons, including the same proportion of women, believe parents of girls under 16 have the right to know if their daughter has been referred for abortion. This rises to 90 per cent among women in social groups DE, often regarded as the most prolific client group for abortion.

Again, this is a matter of natural parental concern - of course parents of girls under 16 want to know if their child is considering having an abortion. Whether some parents should know is a very different matter and I suspect that a majority of people, if asked, would take the view that it is only right to withhold such information from parents where, at the very least, it may put the teenager in question at risk of harm.

Once parent’s get over the initial shock of finding out that their teenage daughter is pregnant, many and probably most are supportive and concerned only with the best interests and well