Third Avenue

Resurrecting the death penalty

Every now and then, a particularly heinous murder happens in Britain that brings the possibility of bringing back the death penalty to the columns of the national newspapers. Such is the case with the shooting of Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford last week.

In the Spectator, Simon Heffer joins the fray. His article is entitled 'The case for capital punishment', presumably so named by a sub-editor who hadn't read it, for the article contains nothing of the sort.

Heffer starts in the vein so beloved of right-wing columnists. Attending a conference some 15 years ago, stuffed full of those 'liberal elite' types that were so powerful in those days (when that arch-liberal-weeper Margaret Thatcher was in office), Heffer comes across a Professor of Ethics from the US who supports the death penalty but is too scared to say so. To me, this suggests that the pusillanimous academic might be need of some assertiveness training (he is, after all, an 'adviser retained by the police departments of several major cities' so should be able to hold his own in debate). To Heffer, of course, it is the ideal excuse for clothing himself and those who think like him in the vestments of the Victim. Unable to speak their minds because of the Terror of the Liberals. Diddums. With no apparent irony, Heffer continues his 'victim speak' by describing the exile of those supporting the death penalty from the 'offices of the sages of the quality press'. Nice to see Heffer admit that neither the Telegraph nor the Spectator, both of which he writes for, come under the title 'quality press'.

But what's the learned prof's killer fact? Well, that China has shot 6,000 drug dealers in the back of the head, thus solving its drug problem. Even Heffer has to dismiss this as a rational argument. But that's the best one his article has to offer.

The rest of the article is mostly taken up with the 'if we had the death penalty, life would be better' line of reasoning, with no attempt at backing this up. Heffer does not stop to consider that my current home town, which has reduced the murder rate to an unprecedented degree over the last 15 years or so, has done so without the death penalty or the threat thereof.

My favourite line from the article comes near the end when Heffer cannot resist blaming the satanic influence of Brussels for all the UK's ills. Our membership of the EU, he states (rightly), precludes us from re-introducing the death penalty. From this, he makes a gymnastic leap of Lewis Carroll logic:

Those who mourn WPc Behenivsky can add to the list of her murderers the high contracting powers of the EU

Wonderful stuff. Morally putrid, but wonderful. The ultimate in 'root cause' excusery. The murderers couldn't help themselves. They were simply acting on orders from Brussels.

If this is the best that those who favour the death penalty have to offer, their hope of its re-introduction will certainly prove to be empty.

Happy Thanksgiving

A rather drear winter's morning dawns in New York. Snow clouds lurk over the city, and the wind is picking up. I'm off to Connecticut to spend Thanksgiving with an American family. Happy holiday.

Learning from London

Fed up with taking 30 minutes to travel from 42nd Street to 53rd Street? More and more Manhattanites are. And they are looking with envious eyes across the Atlantic at the relatively smooth-running streets of London.

But things are not that simple. Mayor Bloomberg has spoken dismissively of the idea of congestion charging. And, although New York is one of the most pedestrian- and public-transport-friendly cities in the States, the car is still king. Whereas more and more streets and squares of European towns and cities are excluding motorised vehicles, here in the Big Apple the car can go pretty much anywhere it wants untrammelled. From the world's crossroads at Times Square to the winding lanes of Greenwich Village, automobiles have free access.

We will have to wait and see if the pain of increasing gridlock will prise the car-loving Americans out of their affection for unrestricted private travel.

The year is on the wane...

Some views of New Jersey and New York as autumn slowly slips away.

David Davis gets lost in West Lothian

Regular readers to The Sharpener will remember that back in the spring I dedicated numerous column inches to the arcane issue of the West Lothian question: How can it be justified that Scottish MPs have the right to vote on English issues that do not concern their constituents, while English MPs do not have the same right to vote on Scottish issues?

In my previous posting I argued that, personally, I did not think that the West Lothian question was so big an issue that it required further constitutional change. Very many disagreed with me. Some pointed to an English parliament as a workable (if, in my view, hugely expensive, complex and disruptive) option tied to UK-wide federalism.

A totally unworkable solution, one betraying a deep ignorance of and contempt for the British constitution, was the one chosen by the Tory party at the last general election. This is how I described it then:

The Tories’ proposal at the last election was to formally deprive Scottish MPs of the right to vote on English issues. The best adjective for this is bonkers. That it should issue from a party that describes itself as both ‘unionist’ and ‘conservative’ is beyond parody. At a stroke, this measure could make the UK ungovernable.

Say a Labour government were elected with a good UK majority but without a majority in England (as has happened in the past). Under the Tories’ ideas, that government would not be able to implement any of its health, crime, education, etc, proposals, as it would lack the necessary votes. Only Tory proposals could pass. But given that only the government has access to the Civil Service, Parliamentary draughtsmen, etc, this means that none of these areas could be touched. Of course, you could say that this would be a good thing, but it would transform the nature of the way Britain is governed.

If you did want things done, then you would need two separate governments acting in parallel, with two different prime ministers depending on the subject in question (Labour for defence, pensions and welfare payment, Tory for health, education and crime). It would not be a continental-style coalition, but some curious new animal for which I can think of no precedent around the world. Prime Minister’s Questions would be interesting, with the two party leaders having to run from one side of the dispatch box to the other depending on what the subject matter was.

And if you could solve it in parliament, what about executive decisions? Who would be the bona fide health minister, a Labour or Tory politician? Most laws give sweeping powers to the ‘Secretary of State’. The Secretary of State is appointed by the Prime Minister (in turn appointed by the Queen), ie, Labour in my scenario, or would it be Tory, or both or… It just gets too ludicrous once you start going down that path.

I had rather thought that, once the election was over, the Tories would drop this ridiculous and dangerous proposal having recognised it for the nonsense it so clearly is. But David Davis now seems determined to resurrect it.

Either Davis knows it will not work, which means he is simply being populist in a despicably cynical way, or he thinks it will work, which betrays an ignorance of the way Britain is governed that is frankly staggering in a man wishing to be Prime Minister.

Whichever is the truth, it does precious little to commend David Davis as a future leader of Her Majesty's Opposition.

The State and safety

Tony Blair is clearly an unhappy man. Having lost the confidence of his own MPs, he blames them for having lost touch with the British people. The 'anti-terror' measures are popular, therefore MPs were wrong to vote them down.

Of course, this is so much nonsense. Britain is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. Thank goodness. Public opinion plays a role, but cannot be the determinant of policy.

More insidious is Blair's clear view that the police and the security forces should be given any powers they ask for to prevent a terrorist attack. But Blair mistakes the role of the state.

The state's duty is to protect the nation or, in more old-fashioned terms, to defend the realm. It is not the duty of the state to protect every single individual within that nation. Once we start clamouring for the state to do this, or once the state starts saying that it wants to do this, we are on dangerous ground. CCTV in every living room? A chip implanted at birth to record every utterance an individual makes? Well, why not, if it saves so much as one life? This kind of thinking is truly disturbing. Democratic, free societies are risky places to live in. The terrorist threat is nowhere near great enough to threaten the life of the nation. The state, and those responsible for it, should learn to accept the limitations of their own powers and duties.

The Commons be praised

Finally, finally. My faith in British parliamentary democracy goes some way to being restored.

Election special

Last night saw a rash of elections breaking out over various parts of the US. And, for the most part, it was not good news for George W Bush. Not that it was necessarily disastrous news for him either.

Democrats took the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia - the latter being one of the key 'red' states that supported Bush in 2004. In California, Republican Governor Schwartzenegger lost all of the four referendum proposals he had thrown his weight behind.

Here in New York City, however, the Republican Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, was re-elected with a massive 20-point majority. A reason for Bush to be cheerful?

Not at all. For it is a dangerous thing to view electoral success in the US through the prism of British political thinking. Our two systems are polls apart, despite some superficial similarities. The two main political parties here are extraordinarily wide tents. Bloomberg flies the Republican flag of convenience, but his appeal is totally Democratic. To take one example: on the issue of gay marriage, Bloomberg and his rival, Fernando Ferrer, were fighting over which one was most likely to get it legalised. Hardly the red-state-blue-state culture war we hear so much about.

Some of the most heavily Bush-supporting southern states have long had local Democratic leadership. While ultra-liberal Massachusetts has a Republican governor.

Politics in the US is extremely local, and Democrats should be wary of seeing last night's results as a harbinger of good times to come at a national level. That said, they provide precious few crumbs of comfort for an increasingly embattled White House.

Serious documentary work

Via loads and loads of people, check out the very funny video at this link (wait a second for the link to load fully, there may be a short delay). US humour at its delightful, exuberant best. One of the many reasons I feel extremely pro-American.

Understanding British art

Tradition. The glue that holds societies together. That defines the change of the seasons, the ebb and flow of years. And is there a country on earth where tradition holds sway to a greater extent than Britain?

This time of the year sees one of my favourite British traditions. Like most traditions, it is highly ritualized and varies remarkably little from year to year. But small changes are allowed, as the British know instinctively that freezing a tradition will inevitably result in its atrophy and decline. For the benefit of any foreign readers to this site, here is how it works.

This tradition goes under the general title of the ‘Turner Prize’, and functions as follows:

Stage 1: Tate Britain, the world’s leading gallery of British art, holds a ‘contest’ (as the rite is known) each year named after the great British artist, Turner. The works of art submitted are always described as being ‘modern’ or ‘conceptual’. A compulsory component each year is the inclusion of animal or human excrement, a faulty bulb and a cow’s stomach entitled ‘Lack of Motherly Affection’. Apart from this, variations are allowed, although tradition dictates that the ‘competitors’, as the participants in this British ritual are called, do not stray too far from the above themes.

Stage 2: Once the works of art are on display and hordes of British subjects, young and old, flock to see them (another compulsory part of the tradition), it’s time for the next stage. This involves articles appearing in newspapers and, more recently, on the Internet denouncing the Turner Prize as yet another sure sign that the Liberal Elite is succeeding in destroying British Civilisation As We Know It. Again, the exact content of these articles is allowed to vary, but tradition stipulates that each must include at least one of the following phrases: ‘it’s not really art’, ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ and ‘my six-year old could have done it’. The last one is particularly popular.

Foreign visitors unaware of the intricacies of this great tradition may be alarmed at these confident predictions by eminent writers of the imminent demise of British civilisation. But there is no need for concern. It’s all just part of the tradition. Predicting the end of British Civilisation As We Know It at the hands of the Liberal Elite is in itself a great British tradition going back at least three centuries. British children are taught at an early age not to be frightened by it. It is a wonderful and cheering example of the British sense of humour, about which you have no doubt seen much written.

Stage 3: This is actually a new stage that has only emerged over the past few years, and shows the British genius at adapting old traditions to the demands of the modern age. We have all read much about the ‘victim culture’ that seems to run through contemporary society. Well, the British have, with a sense of irony surely unequalled by any other nation, incorporated the victim culture into the tradition of the Turner Prize. Who are the victims? Those who do not like the Turner Prize (shame on them, for scorning such a cornerstone of British life). The scene of their victimhood? That agent of terror, the dinner party. In most countries, a dinner party is a venue for friends to get together over good food and wine. I must admit that such dinner parties do occur in Britain. But they are complemented by truly terrifying dinner parties where uttering a throw-away derisory opinion about the Turner Prize can end careers and destroy marriages. How to recognise such a dinner party? Not an easy task. The British do it instinctively, usually by detecting the presence of the word ‘Islington’, ‘Hampstead’ or, increasingly often, ‘Clapham’ or ‘Shoreditch’ in the invitation. Never, ever attend a dinner party in one of these areas during Turner Prize season. Or you too could become a victim of this vicious aspect of an otherwise benign tradition. Although perhaps you shouldn’t be too scared – most victims survive to tell the tale quite lucratively in the columns of the Sunday newspapers.

Stage 4: Sometime early in December the ‘winner’ of the prize is announced. Tradition dictates two possible responses. You may express pride that British art leads the world (although this may mark you out as being a candidate for the Liberal Elite). Or you may express horror at the absolute decline in standards and bemoan that nobody paints like Rembrandt any more (but beware the aforementioned dinner parties). Both responses are quite acceptable according to the demands of tradition. The latter is far, far more common, so, just to be a bit more individual, I would recommend adopting the former.

Stage 5: Crucially, once it’s all over, you must forget, or pretend to forget that it ever happened. This way you can feign astonishment when the whole thing starts again next year. For, like all great traditions, it most certainly will.

Also posted at The Sharpener.