The balloon goes up: has Parliament cut its own string?

As Parliament continues to try ways to subvert the results of a Referendum it previously assured us would be binding, "Raedwald" detects what I call "a dangerous groundswell" in public opinion.

I go on to comment:

"I'm reading a potted history of the English Civil Wars and there are points of similarity between the 1630s/1640s and now: arrogant and slippery Government, discontent with the system of representation in Parliament, multiple ideological fracture lines in the populace. 

"Charles thought he could dodge round it all and carry on. Our current political establishment seems to think it can do so, also."

At this time we begin to hear calls for direct democracy, or at least closer ties between the people and their MPs in an age where travel and electronic communication have almost abolished our separation from Parliament. However, enthusiasts for direct control overlook how divisive voting can be, and how intemperate, prejudiced and ill-informed are many of the participants.

So, who is fit to decide?

We go back to the New Model Army's Putney Debates of October-November 1647. One of the issues was Parliamentary representation: the system was out of balance, constituency sizes varying from "around a dozen to several thousand."(1) The first demand of the Levellers faction, stated in their draft "Agreement of the People", was:

"1. That the people of England being at this day very unequally distributed by counties, cities and boroughs for the election of their deputies in parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned according to the number of the inhabitants: the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down before the end of this present parliament."

The word "inhabitants" needed clarification.

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, for the Levellers, argued that owning or renting property should not be a criterion. For him, the franchise should be universal for all adult men:

"Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under."

General Henry Ireton saw a potentially destabilising implication in this:

"In choosing those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by, no person has a right to this, who does not have a permanent fixed interest in the kingdom…if we take away this law, we shall plainly take away all property and interest that any man has."

Rainsborough was swift to deny that he was arguing for anarchy, but Cromwell intervening and attempting to take some of the heat out of the discussion, still noted that there was such a potential in the proposal:

"No man says that you have a mind to anarchy, but [that] the consequences of this rule tends to anarchy; for where is there any bound or limit set if you take away this [limit], that men that have no interest but the interest of breathing [shall have no voice in elections]?"(2)

When the property qualification was at last abolished in 1918, and women to some extent were also enfranchised, the size of the electorate tripled. Later, all adult women could vote; then (in 1969, and presumably because he thought young people would be more like to vote Labour) Harold Wilson dropped the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. In 2015, Labour's Ed Miliband was proposing to drop it further, to 16; last year, a Cambridge professor mooted a reduction to age 6.

Surely there must be some age below which people cannot be judged capable of mature understanding. But we don't have educational or IQ bars to voting, so why age?

And one could argue that the right to vote is not to do with having sufficient judgement to direct public affairs, but instead to register one's desires, since governments are now involved in almost every part of our lives.

Besides, isn't the exercise of skilled and well-informed judgement the role of the Parliamentary representative? Thus (htp: Michael St George) Edmund Burke in 1774:

"To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament."

In any case, how can an MP fairly represent a constituency deeply and almost equally divided on some great matter?

So for most of the time we may accept the argument that MPs have the good of the nation as a whole for their guiding star.

But what sharpens the contest over Brexit is the sense that politicians are acting neither in accordance with the manifestos on which they stood at the last General Election, in which undertakings were given to see the Brexit process through to its conclusion; nor in accordance with the will of the majority of the electorate in the Referendum; nor (as that majority judged) in the people's best long-term interests.

This raises questions about the status of party manifestos; about "First Past The Post"(3); about the power to reselect MPs; about the potential conflict of personal and career interests of MPs with their duty to the public; about whether it is or was ultra vires for Parliament to compromise or give away national sovereignty without a most serious, carefully balanced debate and plebiscite; about the authoritative status of that plebiscite.

For it was a plebiscite, not a referendum: leading politicians and the Referendum pamphlet itself made it clear that what the people decided would be the last word on the matter.

A fine and dangerously fractious mess.

As I said on Raedwald's:

"In 2016 the Government could have said, decision made; we shall implement it, negotiate a sensible settlement with the EU in the interests of the country as a whole, and assiduously seek to reunite the people as we go forward.

"It is not too late to do so, even now; but it is getting late."
_______________________________________________

(1) John Miller, "The English Civil Wars," Constable and Robinson (2009), p. 167
(2)  Keith Lindley, "The English Civil War and Revolution: A Sourcebook," Routledge (1998) pp. 152-155
(3) It's interesting to see that the Alternative Vote was already being used in the twentieth century:
"The universities constituencies which returned more than one Member used the single transferable vote system to elect the Members."
- "The History of the Parliamentary Franchise," House of Commons Research Paper 13/14 (1 March 2013), p. 43

Should we keep up the fight against drugs?

I've been pleasantly surprised to have a civilised discussion with someone on Facebook. He makes the points that the ban hasn't worked and illegal drugs aren't controlled for quality; if legalised they can be controlled and the tax used for education and medical treatment; drugs have always been around and shouldn't be in the hands of ruthless dealers who will sell to anybody; we should legalise, regulate, educate and tax.

Fair points, well made.

I reply:

"The PTB have quietly abandoned any serious attempt to tackle the trade over the last 40+ years, partly because they, their pals and sons and daughters indulged themselves, so we don't know what might have happened if they'd got a grip instead.

"And drugs used to be taken in a socially controlled context - e.g. the old men past work sitting under the Tree of Idleness in Kyrenia. Even here not so long ago, pub landlords were supposed to manage drunkenness.

"It's not just the physical harm aspect - alcohol is plenty bad too - though the way drugs get to us also involves harm (perhaps a phial of victim blood should be attached to every baggie, as a reminder?) - it's that with young people, it's like tying their legs together at the start of the hundred-yard dash, so that if and when they're ready to start a career they're years behind their contemporaries. There's lots of youngsters struggling against it - I've known at least one teenage Asian lad (re)turn to Islam in an attempt to get himself off what he called "bud, Bu-ddha"; unfortunately the meditation disc he was given to listen to segued into a Jew-hatred harangue once the trance was well on...

"But there's big money to be made in this, as well as tax, so I expect it can't be stopped.

"People cite Prohibition in the US as though it was a failure - it wasn't (and it didn't forbid drinking alcohol - only commercialising it.). It was repealed because the Depression had set in and the government needed money, plus the brewers and their workers saw an opportunity to better their fortunes."

And now that our government is strapped for cash, here we go. Please, not Mr Branson, though.

Grasping the nettle: sentencing for knife crime

I had given up hope of finding this - prompted by a reference in a reader's letter to The Spectator some years ago, I think - but Billy Connolly mentions Lord Carmont's action in his new autobiography.

Cruel to be kind? Needed again, now?

Note that Carmont gave fair warning before he started.
_______________________________

The judge who stopped knife crime

Lord Carmont rocked the underworld of Glasgow in the Fifties when he began handing out long sentences for knife crime. Judges should follow his example now, says ADAM EDWARDS

• Daily Express
• 24 Jul 2008

Picture: NEWSQUEST/AP

RUTHLESS: Carmont imposed lengthy sentences on those who used blades

ONE terrible fact leapt out of the crime figures published by the Government last week: a knife attack takes place in Britain once every four minutes on average. There were 129,840 violent attacks involving a knife last year – more than 350 a day. The stark numbers bring shock and surprise – surprise that the Government has little idea what to do about them.

But a dip into fairly recent British history suggests the solution to the knife-crime epidemic is obvious.

Back in the Fifties, Glasgow was in the grip of razor gangs when Lord John Carmont, one of its leading judges, decided to do something about it.

The hawk-faced adjudicator, who died more than 40 years ago, was ruthless in his determination to rid the city of its stabbers and slashers. His answer to the wave of knifings was simply to give long jail terms to anyone caught carrying an open “cut-throat” razor.

His tough stance became known as “copping a Carmont”. From 1952, he became so notorious for punitive sentences that even today the French language still contains the phrase “faire un carmont”. The message quickly reached the gangs and carrying razors fell out of fashion. He “rocked the underworld of Glasgow”, wrote a contemporary, and stopped knife crime in its tracks.

“When I was a teenager in Glasgow, I remember the sporadic terror wreaked in the city centre’s dance halls by gangs intent on recreational violence,” says Charlie Gordon, Labour member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Cathcart. “It took exemplary sentences issued by Lord Carmont to stop a razor-slashing culture that was growing in the city.”

Born in 1880 to a distinguished Catholic family, John Carmont was educated both in France and at the beautiful Abbey School in Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands. Called to the bar in 1906, he saw active service during the First World War both in the ranks and as an officer in the Black Watch.

He took silk in 1924 and established himself as one of the most formidable characters in the Scottish judiciary. He had an unusually retentive memory, could quote verbatim from legal texts and was admired for his sturdy independence of mind.

Though his sentences were harsh, he was personally “the gentlest and kindliest of men”, notes his 1965 obituary, adding that his sentences were “the logical outcome of his sense of priorities which demanded that the public was entitled to protection from the anti-social activities of the lawless”. Would that all judges had such views now.

With the constituency of Glasgow East voting in a by-election today, it is significant that the retiring MP, Labour’s David Marshall, has also spoken of the impact of Carmont’s crackdown.

In a speech on law and order, he told the Commons: “I feel sorry for the police. I give them my full support and they do splendid work but much of what they do is to some extent negated by the courts, which let down the law-abiding citizens of this country and its police force. If the courts were to make an example of some criminals, particularly those who commit acts of violence, crime would rapidly decrease.

“I cite an example from 40 or 50 years ago. Lord Carmont sentenced a few razor-slashers in Glasgow to 20 years’ imprisonment at a time when 20 years meant precisely that. Overnight, razor-slashing ceased.”

In fact, a standard Carmont sentence was one decade behind bars rather than two but Mr Marshall was on the right lines.

In the first half of the 20th century, Glasgow had an unenviable reputation for violence. The city took the brunt of the Depression in the Thirties with very high unemployment, substandard housing and poor levels of health.

The worst of the suffering was in the run-down district known as the Gorbals where, according to the writer Colin MacFarlane who was born there: “Human waste ran down the tenement stairs and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded.” A novel No Mean City by Alexander McArthur was published in 1935 about slum life in the Gorbals. Its anti-hero was “razor king” Johnnie Stark. The book was so grim that many libraries refused to stock it.

Glasgow and knives were inextricably linked in the public’s mind. The nickname for a slashing, for example, was known in some quarters as “a Glasgow smile”.

“By the early Fifties every gangster carried an open razor,” according to Danny Grant, a former policeman whose beat included Glasgow’s toughest districts.

When Lord Carmont, by then a senior high court judge, saw how many of Glasgow’s criminals were being sent to his court for knife crimes, he knew that the city was in the grip of a violent crime epidemic which had to be stopped.

“Carmont stated that in future anyone appearing in front of him who had been found in possession of an open razor would be sent to prison for 10 years,” says Grant. Back then, a 10-year sentence meant 10 years behind bars.

Carmont’s reputation for being tough was already well known to Glasgow criminals, as his treatment of John Ramensky attests.

Ramensky was the best-known safe blower in Scottish history, as famous for his prison breaks as for his crimes. During the Second World War, he was recruited by the military to blow up enemy buildings and steal important documents. He won the Military Medal and had been given a free pardon.

Shortly after the war, at the age of 50, Ramensky appeared before Carmont after being caught blowing a safe. He made an impassioned plea for clemency and cited his war record. He pleaded with Carmont that he had undergone more than his share of suffering. “Give me a chance, as only good can result from it,” he said in mitigation. But Carmont sentenced him to 10 years with the cold remark that “any sentence of less than 10 years would be useless”.

AS SOON as Carmont had decided to solve the blade problem, he was merciless. In one court sitting he passed sentences of up to 10 years on eight men – 52 years in all – simply for carrying razors and knives.

Those sentences had an immediate effect. For a brief period in Glasgow’s history, razors and knives vanished from its streets.

Today the plea for tougher sentences for knife crime echoes across the country.

In 2006, Charlie Gordon moved an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act going through the Scottish Parliament calling for mandatory jail sentences for possessing knives. His amendment failed.

But now he has renewed his call for automatic jail sentences for knife possession. “This is an idea whose time has come,” he said.

It is time for all MPs and judges to take note of the views of the public. It is time a new generation of violent hooligans got to know the meaning of “copping a Carmont”.

______________________________________________________

Found via https://www.pressreader.com/

FRIDAY MUSIC: Robert Crumb, by JD

https://www.galeriecollin.com/images/photos/crumb_9359.jpg

Robert Crumb. Where to start? In his own words, he was born weird. So that is as good a place as any. He was and is a prolific artist and in the sixties became a favourite of the 'counterculture' with his cartoon images in comics and album covers etc. His most famous creations were Mr Natural and Fritz the Cat. But he was also a musician of sorts with a taste for old style 20s music. I would describe him as a radical traditionalist!

Below is a selection of his music and a wonderful cartoon of Mr Natural.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Crumb

UPDATED: who DID NOT VOTE on yesterday's EU Withdrawal Bill?

(Post rewritten following further investigation!)

This morning the Daily Express had a shouty headline:

DEMOCRACY BETRAYED: Did YOUR MP ignore your Brexit vote? Find out here

I had a look myself. At first I thought 8 MPs had played hooky, but not so...

The 634 MPs who did part in the vote are listed here by They Work For You:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2019-01-15a.1020.0#g1121.0

That leaves 16 who didn't:

The Speaker, John Bercow, who is expected to remain neutral

Four Deputy Speakers, who are also expected to remain neutral:

Paul Flynn (Lab)
Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Lab)
Dame Eleanor Laing (Con)
Dame Rosie Winterton (Lab)

Four Tellers for the division (two from each of the major two parties, for balance, so not counted):

Iain Stewart (Con)
Wendy Morton (Con)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lab)
Nick Smith (Lab)

And seven Sinn Fein MPs who do not take their seats in Parliament, on principle:

Órfhlaith Begley
Mickey Brady
Michelle Gildernew
Chris Hazzard
Elisha McCallion
Paul Maskey
Francie Molloy


... so nobody failed to vote without good reason.

It's not often the whole House participates in a division.

Britain's Tragic Waste of Talent

Thus (wryly) John Birch, giving a reader response in The Conservative Woman:

"Allowing and even encouraging (by lack of effective punishment) crime to take place at the levels that it is today makes me highly suspicious. Has anyone ever read a study on the positive effect of crime on the economy? After all the huge number of people necessary to clear up behind criminals, all those middle-class jobs in the prison service, judiciary, probation, welfare, hospitals, paramedics. They all create turnover in the economy in one way or another linked to crime. Then we have security services, cctv, locksmiths, insurance companies, all those replacements for items stolen. And so it goes on. It makes me wonder if going soft on crime is being used to boost the economy."

- https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/weekend-readers-roundup/

John Mortimer's fictional barrister Horace Rumpole often reflects how the Timson family of criminals keeps him in claret - and indirectly, also helps employ judges and all the rest.

But what might all those resources have been used for instead, if crimes were severely reduced?

And what could we do with all the first-class brains engaged in the complexities of taxation and its avoidance?

And the geniuses using their mathematical nous to play in the great casinos of stocks and bonds?

The waste! The opportunities!

This Man Dahna Pub, Right? 'E Knows More Than The B****ing Experts!

Through the door, the usual circulars - and an unusual circular:

Tim Wetherspoon makes his case against the scare stories about food prices post-Brexit, but unlike the usual news media he follows this double page with six third-party articles about the in/out issues, three from each side. How different!

https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/tims-viewpoint - click on "The EU Debate and the Circle of Deceit"

But what I'd like to focus on here are two points from above, on the flawed expertise of the experts:

Wetherspoon is substantially correct, though he overlooks retention of the costs of collection:

http://ec.europa.eu/budget/explained/budg_system/financing/fin_en.cfm#own_res

But how can the experts not know this?

Fabrice Montagné is the Chief UK and Senior European Economist at Barclays Investment Bank. Previously he worked at the French Treasury, then at FFR (the French Pensions Reserve Fund, managing funds for public authorities), and then the Dutch Central Bank.

Mark Brumby has a degree in "Economics Macro & Micro Trends" from Cambridge and is the Principal of Langton Capital. According to his profile on LinkedIn he "has occupied positions in both corporate finance and in fund management when he ran the US$100m Global Leisure Fund for Banque Pictet in Geneva. He returned to the UK in 2002 in order to co-found Oriel Securities and has since worked at Blue Oar Securities before founding Langton Capital in 2010."


Anyone else for a subscription to Wetherspoon News?