Jailed for your jokes

The more I read about this story, the more horrifying I realise it is. We're now essentially barred from making any statement online which could be taken in a literal way. Say goodbye sarcasm and irony, you're illegal now.

This might not be the biggest story around right now, but I thought it was a horrendous and ridiculous story all at the same time, Paul Chambers today lost his appeal against a conviction and fine he received for a joke he made on Twitter. Apparently, the judge decided he was a 'menace' and was likely to be taken seriously.

Here's the offending tweet, sent to a friend whom he was meant to meet, about the fact that his nearby airport had closed due to heavy snow:


"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Now I'm sorry, but if anyone took that seriously, they're a moron. It was a message sent to a friend, and visible to a small number of people who 'followed' him, I would guess he assumed he could trust them to know him well enough to know that he wasn't a terrorist. A fairly safe assumption you would have thought.

Added to that, what kind of terrorist would pre-announce their plans in joke form via Twitter, surely they'd be the single most incompetent terrorist ever, and not being able to see a friend would hardly be the most solid motive would it.

Because of the judges over-zealous interpretation of the law and lack of basic common sense this man not only has to pay a £1000 fine, but more importantly for him has lost his job, and will find it harder to get one in the future.

The Crown Prosecution Service must have known that this really was a nothing case because when they bought it to court they used the 'Nuisance Calls' Law, (designed to protect female telephonists at the Post Office in the 1930's) rather than the actual bomb hoax legislation, precisely because to get a conviction with the bomb hoax legislation they would have needed significantly more evidence of intent.

If you can get arrested for jokes made on the internet then I'd suggest that right now 90% of the British population are criminals on the run, it's absurd to take something like this from a social networking site and pretend that it was meant with any real intent at all.

I suggest we all secretly follow the idiotic judge who rejected this appeal, and next time he says 'Man, I'd kill for a cup of tea' I will personally jump out and make a citizen's arrest for intent to murder.

Admission Impossible

You could hardly have missed it if you even just glanced at the news today, there was a major protest in London against the tripling of tuition fees, with up to 50,000 people marching. Of course, everyone will talk about the 'violence' at Millbank tower, but that misses the bigger point.

I also said before that it's good to admit when you're wrong, and earlier I was a bit too hyped up to see the damage done by a minority of people. I would never ever sympathise with people who choose to hit innocent policemen, or threaten innocent people. I think my natural instinct to protect the right to protest overrode common sense. Marching, sit-in's and blockade's are fine, but I draw the line at any violent behaviour. That said, I think the media coverage was ridiculously over keen to show Millbank rather than the 50,000 other people and that they are partly to blame for how this protest will be remembered.

I've already done to death the reasons why a rise in tuition fees is a ridiculous idea. It will lead to university once again becoming the preserve of the rich, it will mean the richest students pay less than those in the middle, and it ends up costing the government more, so you can't even say its needed to reduce the deficit. We are constantly told that we as a country can't build a future when we're burdened with massive debts, but expect students to do exactly that.

People say that this protest may even end up hurting the student cause, but I think that the next part of the protest, which hasn't been mentioned in the news much yet, will be the key part.

The NUS are now going to pursue a 'decapitation' route (which sounds cool enough already), aiming to take out high-ranking Lib Dems for their U-turn on tuition fees. Imagine how beautiful it would be if the coalition's own 'Right to recall' power was used to bring down Nick Clegg in Sheffield. I might have defended him a couple of months ago but the way he's acted since getting into power have been nothing short of disgusting.

They will use the 'Right to recall' to force a by-election in University seats where they can count on the student vote to punish Lib Dems who broke their pledges, pledges which were a big part of the reason why they got elected in the first place. Nick Clegg himself, before the General Election, lambasted politicians who broke their promises. Now he will reap what he has sown.

For too long people have accused students of not doing enough to get their voices heard like they once did, the peaceful part of today's protest (hijacked at the end by thugs) shows that they won't roll over on this one.

Legal Torture

It's well accepted among sane people that George Bush was a moron of the highest proportions, and that he should never have been able to hold the most powerful job in the world. But sometimes even morons can do something that surprises you in its stupidity, and he's decided to demonstrate this point in a beautiful way, and we should never misunderestimate old George's ability to do just that.

Today's big cover story in The Times proclaims that 'Waterboarding Saved London from Attacks', going with a story from George Bush that he allowed waterboarding to take place, and he thinks the information gleaned from this saved many lives from terrorist attacks.

Now in the much glamourised world of spies, the likes of Jack Bauer go running round all day chasing bad guys and it's only through the use of force that anything gets done, then all of a sudden the day is saved. Bush seems to subscribe to this view. That isn't how it works.

First of all Bush tries to claim that waterboarding isn't torture because it 'didn't leave any permanent damage'. I understand that George has his own dictionary, and a very 'special' way with words, but this has never been the definition of torture, and so it shouldn't be.

The real definition, if you're interested, is that torture is defined as "...any act by which severe suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person".

For those who don't know, waterboarding is essentially a way of slowly drowning someone, so that they are put in such pain that they will tell the people torturing them absolutely anything. Christopher Hitchens volunteered to be waterboarded to see what it was like, and to show just how horrifying it is. If that isn't torture, then nothing is.

As a country we should never participate or condone anything like this, or any form of torture whatsoever. There is the argument that the ends (getting information) justify the means, but I don't think that stands up at all. If you justify waterboarding then why not beating up the prisoner, or putting them on the rack? We realised long ago that torture is immoral and not helpful, justifying a new form of torture on the grounds that it doesn't cause 'physical damage' is abhorrent.

To use the ends justify the means argument you're making a lot of assumptions. You assume you have the right person. You assume that they know everything you need to know. You assume that they will tell you the right information in time. I think that's a lot of assumptions to make to justify inflicted horrendous suffering on someone, and indeed there's plenty of evidence which shows that torture is a terrible way of getting accurate information from people.

And on that other point, I said the prisoner would tell the torturer 'anything', and I meant exactly that. They will say absolutely anything to get out of that situation, not just the truth. You could end up with a whole load of false leads because someone is so understandably desperate to get out of that situation that they will say whatever they think the person wants to hear.

Torture doesn't work, and is indefensible morally. Whatever benefits George may now claim it bought (which are very dubious indeed) it cannot justify the means. I've said before, if security services need to break human rights laws to get their job done, then they should find another way to do their job.

How can we as a people criticise human rights issues in other countries when we are complicit in torture? We can't. It makes no difference whether it's a pensioner, a schoolchild or a terrorist, human rights apply to everyone. If human rights aren't universal, then they aren't worth a jot.

Like Franklin said, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security, will deserve neither and lose both."

Edit: A writer at ConservativeHome has applauded George Bush for his 'decisiveness' and claimed he will be seen positively in the future. I've said before why I think being decisive is a very overrated attribute, and would much rather have someone in power who occasionally changed their mind after seeing new evidence than a leader like Bush who went charging all guns blazing (quite literally in some cases) without any thought for consequences or changing situations.

Yes to AV, yes to fairer votes.

On 5th May 2011, there will be a referendum on changing the voting system in the UK, from the current First Past the Post, to the Alternative Vote. Here's why I think it's time for a change.

It seems bizarre to me that there is even a serious movement that would be opposed to the change in this referendum, but it seems as though there may be a serious fight on the cards to win a change in the voting system. So here's why I think the 'Yes' vote really has to win.

The first idea to quash is that we shouldn't have this referendum because people don't care, and there are other more important issues to deal with than the way we vote people into parliament. Quite how the No2AV campaign can use this as one of their main objections baffles me, we're having the referendum anyway, why would you vote 'No' just because you don't think it should be held? Surely your vote should reflect what you feel on the subject, the question on the paper won't be 'Do you like that we're having this referendum?' Just because there are other more important issues doesn't mean we shouldn't address it, I'm sure that the world won't implode into anarchy because for one day the people of Britain have to go out and put a cross on a piece of paper.

The system we have right now is broken, unfit for the size of the country and for multi-party politics. Whichever way you look at it First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) is unfair. Millions of people up and down the country didn't get a vote at this last election. They may have dutifully gone down to the polling station and filled in their slip, but it was a wasted effort. FPTP means wasted votes, any vote for a losing candidate counts for nothing.

Too many people couldn't even vote for the party that they wanted, because they knew there was no chance of that candidate winning in their seat, they might have been Labour in a Lib Dem-Tory seat or Tory in a Labour-Lib Dem seat, either way they were effectively kicked out of the whole process. They had to vote 'tactically' to try and block the other major party from winning, meaning their own candidate suffered even more. Never again should someone be told that to vote how they want to would be a wasted vote.

With AV you are guaranteed that the winning candidate has a majority of at least 50% of their constituents, something far too many failed to achieve in 2010. There is no need to break the constituency link and it eliminates tactical voting.

Because in AV you rank your candidates, it will often be second preference votes which allow a person to be elected. This will mean they have to appeal to a broad range of people outside their traditional base and rely on picking up second choice votes from them. We will be rid of some the disgusting negative tactics epitomised by Phil Woolas (though he isn't alone, all parties engage in it) because insulting another party will instantly mean losing all their second choice votes. Finally, votes will be cast for policy, not out of fear of the alternative.

So, what could people possibly object to? These are a few choice ones from the No2AV campaign, and are frankly laughable.

• It will let extremist party supporters (i.e. BNP) have more than one vote - It will give everyone a choice to vote in ranking, yes, but will actually make it harder for extremist parties to get support because it's unlikely that they'll be many people's second choice. Their appeal is very narrow. Score one for an own goal to the 'No' campaign there then.
• It will 'muddy the debate' in marginal seats - No, what it will mean is that in marginal seats you won't be able to bash the other candidate in a desperate grab for power, you'll have to set out policies which appeal to a broad spectrum of the constituents. 
• AV is a compromise no-one wants - I know that there are plenty of people (myself included) who think that AV is not enough, we should reform the voting to be much more proportional. But AV is a step in the right direction, and crucially, whilst its not as far as some want, it's infinitely better than what we have right now. A 'No' vote won't be interpreted as a vote for 'AV doesn't go far enough'. It will be seen as a vote for 'we like things how they are'.

But, for the pièce de résistance, this is by far the most condescending, ridiculous and insulting objection of all:

The AV system (i.e. putting numbers from 1 to 5 in a box rather than a cross) is too confusing for people.

Now I'm not sure who exactly many of my readers are, but I'd like to hedge a bet here. I'm willing to put a significant amount of money on the fact that pretty much everyone reading this is capable of not only counting to 5 (in order as well!), but of writing those numbers down in a box.

Vote 'Yes' for AV, yes for fairer votes.

Maybe I give people too much credit, but it doesn't seem like much of a jump from a cross, to numbers.

The No2AV campaign has nothing positive to say because there is nothing positive about the FPTP system they try to defend. So instead, they resort to this condescending negative attack which doesn't even look at the real issue of which is the better voting system, and they end up suggesting that most people would find counting to 5 far too difficult. Utter buffoons.

There are many more reasons to vote for AV than I could mention in one blog, some of which can be found here and here. And there are many more reasons why FPTP is dead, which you can find here. In six months time everyone gets a vote, and for the sake of a fair democracy I pray to whichever God/s you might or might not believe in that you vote Yes.

Letting emotion rule the roost.

Sometimes in Medicine people let their hearts overrule their heads, and it inevitably ends up hurting patients. I have a feeling that this is exactly what's happened with the decision to take away the power from NICE to decide which drugs should be paid for on the NHS. Instead we'll have a postcode lottery, with a real probability of money being wasted on popularist treatments that aren't actually as effective at what they do and drain money away from where it is really needed.

I've written before about how NICE gets undeserved scorn from some areas of the press, and perhaps that's inevitable given that their job involves denying the funding of drugs to patients. But the fact of the matter that while people might not think it in good taste to look at aspects of health care from a cost-effectiveness point of view, that is what you have to do when there isn't a limitless budget. You have to prioritise treatments, and that means that some people will inevitably lose out. All you can do is make sure the smallest amount of people lose the smallest amount possible. In fact, despite it's reputation for negative decisions, NICE has approved 83% of all new treatments it's had to consider funding.

You don't have to look far to see that people won't always be able to see what the best treatments will be for themselves. The very fact that the NHS spends £4 million a year on Homeopathy, a treatment which has been thoroughly debunked and shown to have no positive effect beyond that of a placebo, is proof enough that people will happily shell out hard cash for worthless treatments.

That is why NICE is so essential, it takes out the political and business influence from something that should be purely based on rigorous clinical assessment of its cost/benefit. Of course government's are going to want to provide the drugs that give the most positive headlines, and the pharmaceutical companies are going to want to claim every drug they produce is worth spending fortunes on, but we can't let those vested interests get in the way of giving patients the best care we can with the funds available.

We shouldn't give in to the powerful lobbying of the big pharma companies, who will benefit massively from this new supposed 'value-based pricing' which will take out the ability of an independent body to just say no to these companies. When you have a body that can simply say no, this isn't worth the price you're charging, it forces pharma to up their game and provide value for money.

Of course, this isn't the only time I've suggested reform of pharmaceutical companies, and it's not that I want to damage them, but I think reform is needed so that they serve he patients interests before they serve their stockholders.

If you want to see what happens when pharma holds all the cards and claims that this is in the interests of the patients, then look to the USA. Admittedly, their problems run deeper than simply the drugs companies, but they are a major reason why their health care costs have increased exponentially since the 1980's, to the point they pay the most per capita anywhere in the world. Yet, for all this money being spent on the top drugs, they have some of the worst health outcomes of any developed country. Lots of money spent on health care is only beneficial if it's targeted in the right areas.

Andrew Lansley is playing political games with the NHS, and so far its fallen on unsympathetic ears from all areas of health care. This is the latest in a long line of failures. Let's keep providing money for treatments that are shown to work, and provide the best care possible. Let's keep NICE.