Time for a cap on family size?

By Greg McDonald

The British mother of 13 who plans to keep having children should wake us all up to the over-population crisis in Britain and the greater calamity the planet faces.

In a society of finite social resources – from child benefit to working tax credits, and school sites to housing – we have a responsibility to monitor our own numbers.

And those numbers are shocking, with Government figures projecting a nation of 77 million by 2059, or 16 new Birminghams in our lifetime.

We simply don’t have room – either for more coming in, or for breeding 13-strong families – and both Britain’s political sleepwalk into a larger population than France’s on the one hand, and our benefits-led culture of social irresponsibility on the other, need revolutionising to cap our population at 65 million.

Yet a wider issue dwarfs Britain’s numbers game: global population growth, with the possible exception of nuclear arms, is the biggest threat to the planet, responsible in part for everything from global warming and territorial wars to poverty and starvation.

On a worldwide scale there’s no avoiding the crux of the matter: we need to stop increasing our numbers.
Closer to home, a British family of 13 should wake us up to our own home-grown population crisis and the need for a population cap.

Hail the people’s Gordon!

by Alan Tyers

It’s all hands to the pump for Gordon Brown as he attempts to save his sinking ship. Yesterday, we learned details of the forthcoming Queen’s Speech - a set of deliberately political, populist measures including putting the boot into bankers, snuggling up to the elderly, getting tough on knife crime and, for all we know, free jam for every reader and death squads for paedos.

Today, Brown is further playing to the gallery by suggesting that we might get the hell out of Afghanistan - something that the British public are polling very strongly in favour of.

It’s funny, now that this Government is in (presumably terminal) decline, it’s suddenly all about listening to what the punters want.

With British soldiers now dying in a hail of media attention, the PM reckons we should consider “a security handover” to the Afghans - i.e. sneak out of there as discretely as possible.

It was probably a bad idea to go to war there in the first place, but we decided to, and then we decided to stay. The situation does not appear to be getting any more, erm, secure - so why is it suddenly a good idea to get out?

There can be only one logical answer: Labour needs some quick political wins. What else can we expect between now and the general election? Anything populist and headline-grabbing, no matter the long-term implications, is my guess.

All full up?

by Greg McDonald

While the Prime Minister should have gone further in today’s landmark immigration speech and capped Britain’s population at 65 million, we should not confuse a balanced migration policy with racism.

Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain’s population will not be allowed to exceed 70 million by 2029 is long overdue. But it at least breaks fundamentally with the sleepwalking policy of an out-of-touch political elite - typified by Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s infamously drowsy nights spent dreaming of the arrival of Britain’s 65 millionth citizen.

The balanced migration argument is not about ethnicity but numbers. Simply, most Britons believe our overcrowded island doesn’t have the space to build another Birmingham.

The solution? Britain should adopt a one-in-one-out balanced migration policy of the kind long supported by Conservative MP Nicholas Soames and Labour’s Frank Field, co-chairmen of the Cross Party Group for Balanced Migration.

But as the Government finally joins the immigration debate, the rest of us should be crystal clear that - however racist elements like the BNP seek to exploit our fear of change to stir up division and hatred - the issues of immigration and racism are wholly separate.

Britain’s 61 million citizens are richer for our cultural and human diversity, our tolerance and our pluralism. We just don’t have the room for another nine million people.

Brown letter day

by Alan Tyers

The ignoble sport of bear-baiting is alive and well: Gordon Brown has lurched into yet another crisis and his enemies at The Sun are getting stuck in.

The PM hand-wrote a letter to Jacqui Janes offering his condolences for the death in Afghanistan of her Grenadier Guardsman son, Jamie.

Brown managed to spell her name incorrectly, and made several other spelling (or handwriting) mistakes in the letter. Then - cringe, cringe - he phoned her up to say sorry, she recorded the conversation and handed it to The Sun. Manna from heaven to the Tory-backing boys in Wapping.

Personally, I think it’s a low blow: he wrote to her and phoned her personally and privately. I couldn’t argue that it’s not a matter of public interest, but it still seems a bit mean to serve him up to the unlovely red-top attack dogs.

Still, it certainly reveals a lot about the Prime Minister and his current state of mind. A lack of attention to detail, the inability to admit a mistake - “I think I was trying to say Janes, as your right name” - a total failure to communicate.

A more gifted politician and manipulator than Brown - Tony Blair, say, or Bill Clinton - would have played the card that he too has lost a child; or maybe even alluded to his disability and failing eyesight. It’s arguably to Brown’s credit that he didn’t. About all you can say is that he shouldn’t have written the letter if he can’t write her name correctly. It seems a modest amount to ask from the leader of the country.

Instead of grovelling, Brown tried to debate her on issues that she obviously knows a fair bit about, but is never going to bend on. That her son died because of underfunding is fixed 100% in her mind.

It’s not an argument he could ever win, and even if he could - who wants to defeat a grieving mother with stats and policy detail?

Berlin should inspire us all

by Greg McDonald

As world leaders gather in Germany today to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the miracle of reunification should embolden us to believe that bold, peaceful, democratic progress is possible when we have the courage to act as if it’s so.

For Berlin owes much of its success to precisely that spirit: manifested in the bravery of ordinary Germans who faced down a seemingly unbeatable foe, and to sage German leaders who put long-term security ahead of short-term advantage.

In Berlin today, however, world leaders should recognise that peace and prosperity in a united Germany did not happen in a vacuum - but as part of the wider European miracle, which has given an otherwise historically bloody continent 64 years of relative peace.

And, reflecting on the iconic images of Berliners’ triumph over fear and division 20 years ago, we in Britain would do well to reflect on how fortunate we are to be a part of that Europe - and, for all the European project’s defects, how essential it is that our future is at its heart.

The German miracle is so inspiring because so little is easier in life than saying “I can’t” - and, when it seems that way, still acting as if “I can”. Or in Gandhi’s formulation, to “be the change you wish to see in the world”.

Recalling the fall of the Wall, we can take heart that humanity constantly produces seemingly miraculous triumph over unbeatable odds - as anyone who saw David Haye’s Goliathan boxing victory this weekend will testify - and feel emboldened that progress is always possible if we act like it’s so.

Who is David Cameron?

by Alan Tyers

PM-in-waiting David Cameron screwed Britain for the first time this morning: it probably will not be the last.

In September 2007, Cameron wrote in The Sun: “I will give this cast-iron guarantee: if I become PM a Conservative Government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.”

That seems pretty clear to me.

Today, he has backtracked from that referendum promise and is attempting to sugar the pill with some tough talk about how he won’t let those nasty Eurocrats tell us what to do.

In a cunning stroke, Cameron has managed to make himself look like a weasel and a windbag.

Handed the biggest open goal any politician could dream of - putting the hopeless, unelected Gordon Brown out of his misery - Cameron has today given an unpleasant snapshot of what life will be like under his Tories.

I’m sure I’m not alone in being unsure what Cameron stands for or what his policies are. Is he a Eurosceptic? What will he do about our national debt? Will he cut taxes? What will he do about crime? How will he extricate our forces from Afghanistan?

I think it’s fair to say that most people are not clear. He needs to let the electorate know what his plans are once he comes to power, and try and convince people that he will stick to those commitments.

At the moment, the impression is of an opportunist who will say what he needs to say at any given time - and this u-turn doesn’t do anything to dispel that.

The appliance of science

by Greg McDonald

Members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs are right to resign over the Home Secretary’s knee-jerk sacking of Government drug adviser Professor David Nutt, just as Nutt is right that it is not the role of scientists to “rubber stamp” pre-determined Government positions.

Alan Johnson’s disingenuous argument that the Professor’s views amount to a campaign against the Government no more chimes with the evidence than does the Home Secretary’s backward drugs policy.

For far from the ravings of a substance evangelist Nutt’s words are not personal views at all, but the findings of a scientific study. The Professor is no more guilty of campaigning against the Home Office line by stating them than a maths teacher is guilty of railing against straight lines when explaining the definition of a circle.

Yet there is a wider issue here. It’s little wonder Joe Public, fifth Stella in hand, is shocked to hear a scientist say that “ecstasy is safer than horse-riding” - because Joe’s view of drugs, as with so much of British politics, is based more on heated headline hysteria than cold evidence.

And as one department after another backs a counterproductive policy to placate such prejudices, until the hysteria typified by Nutt’s sacking is challenged we’ll all keep paying the high price of knee jerk policy-making.

Members of the Advisory Council are right to make a stand - for until British governments are forced to confront reality, destructive policies will continue to be made not in the lab but in the pub.

High time for honesty

by Greg McDonald

The Government's chief drug adviser is right that illegal drugs like ecstasy and cannabis are less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes - and it's high time we had the sober-minded sense to legalise the lot.

Professor David Nutt attacks politicians for "distorting" the research evidence, and singles out disgraced former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for contradicting his statement that ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse.

Jacqui Smith misleading the public?! And pigs will walk!

Ranking Britain's drugs in a sort of Top 40 of harmfulness, Nutt produces an interesting chart - for while poppy-pickers won’t be surprised to find heroin and cocaine in the top spots, hardcore alcohol fans may be shocked to find their preferred hit keeping newer entries like cannabis and ecstasy out of the Top 10.

Dr Nutt’s brave honesty highlights a stark truth - the damage drugs do to our society is nothing compared to the carnage caused by criminalisation.

The tragedy of criminalisation is in transforming a curable sickness into an incurable cycle of crime, jail and despair - not to mention making out a £1bn annual cheque to crime syndicates.

But what’s really criminal about it is that the Jacqui Smiths of the world know this as well as the Professor Nutts - but their Governments are just too cowardly to confront the truth.

Self-censorship won’t help the BBC or its viewers

by Greg McDonald

Mock the Week’s cruel jibe about Becky Adlington’s appearance was the sort of cheap bullying the “character” propping up your local bar would be ashamed to call comedy – but that doesn’t justify outlawing things simply because they offend us.

Yet the BBC Trust’s new guidelines on comedy do precisely that.

And while the Trust is surely right to lance as "humiliating" Frankie Boyle's squalid line that Adlington resembles someone "looking at themselves in the back of a spoon", the regulatory body has a difficult balance to strike.

For while thick-skinned celebrities may graciously forgive being called a “Paki” and hardened political leaders may laugh at being called a “one-eyed idiot”, it’s not such a giggle when these lines are repeated in the playground.

Yet as cheap as Boyle’s line was, perhaps the greater danger is that banning “offensive” routines sets us on a slippery slope to censorship.

For at its irreverent best, as in BBC shows like The Office and Have I Got News For You, comedy can undermine prejudice, challenge ignorance and open eyes – indeed, it’s a shame Rory Bremner won’t be sitting opposite the BNP’s Nick Griffin on Thursday’s Question Time, for if we need a reminder of the dangers of censorship we need look no further than Nazism.

The BBC Trust is right that Frankie Boyle’s joke was offensive rubbish we could do without – but censorship remains the greater evil.

Hang the semantics - let the BNP hang itself

by Alan Tyers

Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, is the latest to have his say on the BNP Question Time debate.

Hain reckons that last week’s court ruling, in which the BNP was hilariously told that it was not a proper political party because it didn’t allow non-white people to join, means that the group is “now an unlawful body”.

As such, he reckons, it does not have the right to be treated like a proper political party and therefore shouldn’t be allowed on the BBC for Question Time.

“Now that the BNP have accepted they are at present an unlawful body, it would be perverse of you to maintain that they are just like any other democratically-elected party,” Hain wrote to BBC director general Mark Thompson. “On their own admission, at present, they are not.”

This is a decent but misguided stab by the Welsh Secretary, who was in his day a courageous and determined campaigner against apartheid.

Rather than attempting to muzzle the BNP, especially via this neat but essentially semantic piece of legal interpretation, would it not be better to let “party” leader Nick Griffin take his turn on Question Time - and let the public decide?

An unpleasant man of moderate intellect, a former member of the National Front, a holocaust denier and an on-record anti-Semite… and Griffin is supposedly the acceptable face of the BNP!

A bit of exposure to the loony policies of Griffin and his thug mates can do more to discredit the BNP than any amount of legal cleverness. Give him enough rope.