From tax and spend to tax and spin

The Ministry for Propaganda has been very busy today in advance of tomorrow's crisis budget. Following the leaking of the thoughts of poor Gordon and his friend Mr Darling over the last couple of days they appeared on television screens today to say nothing of substance but assure us all, under no probing questioning from the BBC at all, that only they can cure the country of its economic ills.

Having failed to say whether they would cut VAT, they then told the BBC off the record that this is indeed their plan and that it will fall from 17.5% to 15%. Others had already commented on the likely ineffectiveness of this. John Redwood pointed out that a small cut in prices through reducing this tax is unlikely to be noticed when many shops are discounting goods by far more already and that for those on low incomes much of their necessary expenditure is on items which are not subject to VAT at all. Via Mr Tyler I have been alerted to the insights of a real shopkeeper who explains the ability of stores to decide how to pass on the cut, and Mr Croydon highlights just how piffling the reduction is.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of cutting VAT, I just don't see how it can make a significant difference to the rate at which the UK economy goes down the plug hole. It makes me ask why they have chosen to follow this path. Perhaps I am being unfairly cynical but it seems to me that cutting VAT is the most easily spun option available to the government. It can be presented in all sorts of interesting ways, each of which makes the cut seem so much more than it really is.

Reducing a tax from 17.5% to 15% is a cut of one seventh, indeed the reduction is one sixth of the new rate, these are chunky proportions. Will we hear one of the more dishonest ministers, perhaps a Blears or a Harman or even poor Gordon himself make this sound like: "Government cuts prices by one seventh"? That it reduces the actual shelf price by only one forty-seventh is unlikely to figure in government announcements.

Another possible approach is: "Government cuts sales tax by 14%". This works rather nicely. The tax is 17.5% and it is being reduced by 14%, it makes it sound as though there is hardly any VAT being charged any more.

Try this one: "Hardworking families faced the threat of a bleak Christmas. Those little extras that make Christmas so special threatened to be out of their reach. We have taken a direct measure to make them affordable just when people need that help the most."

Or this: "Hardworking families now have greater choices over how to spend their money."

And we can be sure to be assaulted by this combination of half truths and three-card trickery: "International conditions have forced up prices, we are protecting hardworking families and shopkeepers by taking direct action to bring prices down."

There is just so much more they can do with a sales tax reduction than they could ever do with shaving a penny off income tax. None of it has any substance but we are in a pre-election period and appearance is everything. Every different angle of spin put on this inconsequential measure will buy them a few more votes.

Let's get back to real life. Imagine you own a shop. Your livelihood depends on you being able to buy goods at one price and sell them for a higher price. You have to pay the operating costs of the shop building and the wages of your staff. Recession hits and fewer people come through the door. What can you do? You could raise your prices and hope the reduced number of customers will be prepared to pay more, or you could reduce your prices to get more customers at a smaller profit margin. For the vast majority of shops only the latter is a realistic option. So you reduce your prices. Just a bit at first then a bit more. People return to your shop but not enough so you cut your profit margin further and then find sales increasing to a bearable level. You are just about able to stay in business. You know that the new price you are charging, let's call it the benchmark price, is one customers are prepared to pay so you then turn to reducing your costs. Out of the blue the Chancellor of the Exchequer says he is going to reduce sales tax from 17.5% to 15%. You know you can still sell at the benchmark price so the reduction in sales tax acts as a reduction in your costs. You might have to pass on some of that because your customers will expect it, but you will not have to pass on much because your new benchmark price has been established. There is no significant financial benefit for your customers but you get a little extra breathing space, a little extra time in which you hope trading conditions will not worsen.

All the spin about a reduction in VAT being a benefit to Mr and Mrs Ordinary is just guff. The reduction is of benefit to the economy, almost all tax cuts are, because it reduces the costs of businesses. For some it will make the difference between survival and folding, for others it will just delay the inevitable collapse and for the others it will allow a modest increase in profits above the deflated level the recession has caused. What it will not do is any of the populist, headline-grabbing things the government will claim.

The way the leaked VAT proposal was being analysed and reported clearly did not suit the government. Too many people were saying it would provide little benefit for the lowest paid whilst those with money to spend would gain the most. Something had to be done. The evening news programmes were approaching and then, as if by magic, it became known that Mr Darling would announce a proposal for the top rate of income tax to be increased to 45% for those earning £150,000 or more. Nick Robinson announced this in hushed and reverential tones on Radio 5 and one by one the usual suspects crept out from under a Stilton to spit venom at the wicked rich people. The more balanced commentators noted that the effect on tax receipts was likely to be so small as to be irrelevant but the government's paymasters in the unions and their core vote among the non-thinking love a bit of toff-bashing. Nothing distracts the BBC away from criticising a badly thought-out tax cut than a suggestion that evil fat cats will be screwed for more. A fine piece of news management by a government dedicated to announcing policies in Parliament first.

I await the year's second crisis budget (remember the 10p tax mess?) with interest.

Be gentle with me Darling

Over the last few weeks the dire state of the British economy has been exposed more and more every day. That really is a most extraordinary sentence. But it is true.

Recession was denied all through the summer now it is present and biting hard. We need go no further back than the budget in March to find the government boasting of low inflation, stabilised banks, government borrowing and debt at lower levels than predicted four months before in the 2007 pre-budget report and expected growth of the UK economy of between 1.75% and 2.25% in 2008 followed by 2.25-2.75% in 2009 and 2.5-3% in 2010. The full budget speech is reported here, today it seems utterly detached from reality. Every single prediction or forecast has been blown out of the water. Every criticism of the previous Conservative government for economic performance prior to 1997 looks like praise in light of the current situation. Mr Darling got everything wrong, absolutely everything, not a single figure he quoted about the state of the British economy between March 2008 and March 2009 bears any resemblance to the true position today.

On Monday he will make his second budget speech of the year, this one dressed in the sheep's clothing of a pre-budget report. Because poor Gordon announced with pride that under his stewardship the government will announce policies to Parliament rather than leak them to the press, we already know what Mr Darling is going to say on Monday. We know it because it has been leaked to the press. Neither Mr Darling nor poor Gordon knows what type of tax cut will go down best so they have leaked two in the hope that commentators will commend one over the other. Their first idea is to reduce income tax the other is to reduce VAT. Whichever is chosen they hope it will be enough to increase consumer spending in the run-up to Christmas and avert the loss of many thousands of jobs in retail businesses.

In one respect I can see how a tax reduction can help. As soon as "recession" is shouted from every newspaper and television news report people feel a need to retrench. They might be safe in their jobs but no one can be sure so attention switches from spending on optional items to saving in case the worst happens. Not only is the new television put on hold but the weekly supermarket shopping trip finds own-brand items being substituted for more expensive alternatives and the ham for Saturday lunch at £1.20 for 100g being replaced by luncheon meat at 53p. Lots of little savings occur at every level of the family budget so that an extra £50 can be found to reduce the credit card debt and an extra £100 to make an additional payment against the HP on the car. Reducing tax can encourage a loosening of retrenchment. Ham is again on the table and beanz still meanz Heinz.

Mr Darling's problem is that he cannot control what people do with the extra few pounds they no longer have to pay in tax. Some of it will undoubtedly be spent but not all, not by a long chalk. This is not just a consequence of the prevailing mood of retrenchment, it is also a consequence of increasing realisation of the reason for this recession. Despite government waffle about it all being caused by events in America, the message is getting through that the UK has been living a lie for many years. The increased wealth of which poor Gordon boasted throughout his time as Chancellor is being exposed as pretend money. "My house has gone up £10,000 in value, I'll borrow £5,000 for a new kitchen and still be better off" has turned into "my house has gone down £10,000 in value and I'm an extra £5,000 in hock". This hits people hard. What appeared to be a net gain of £5,000 now appears to be a net loss of £15,000. In fact the extra £10,000 added to the value of the house was just a pretence, it was bubble value not true value and losing it makes no difference to real wealth so all that has happened is that the householder has borrowed an extra £5,000. But that is not how it feels, it feels as though he has lost a lot more. He also worries about how much more his house will fall in value and how that will affect his future. It is these feeling which will dictate his spending patterns today.

Any reduction in tax has to battle against the increasing realisation that the whole country has been living beyond its means. Encouraged by a government that needed the additional tax arising from fictitious wealth to pay for its profligate spending plans, far too much was borrowed and far too little was saved. Today we find that the spending plans remain set in stone and the modest tax reductions announced on Monday will be said to be purely temporary, Mr Darling is taking a little less this year and is making clear that he will want it all back with interest in a year or two's time. That is not a sound foundation for sustained spending by Mr and Mrs Ordinary. It might make a little difference in the short term, by which I mean until Christmas, but thereafter retrenchment will continue and possibly deepen because of the threat of substantial extra tax in 2009-2010.

What Mr Darling cannot change is the need to remove billions of pounds of fictitious wealth from the British economy. Much of that will come from reductions in house values. Tell someone his £300,000 house has gone up 10% and he is happy, tell him his £330,000 house is now worth £300,000 and he starts to worry. That worry translates into action, cautious action, non-spending action, repaying debt action, saving not borrowing action. The one thing Mr Darling could do to maximise the benefit to the economy of modest reductions in tax is make them permanent by cutting government expenditure. Cull quangoes, garotte gimmicks, annihilate advisers, incinerate identity cards, reduce red tape, bin bureaucrats. Tell the people you are doing that and they can see light at the end of the tunnel because they have an extra £20 a week not just for a year but for the foreseeable future. The pressure to retrench will be reduced and retail businesses might see a benefit. Leave the massive waste of the state unaffected and the people will see the tax cuts for what they are, jam today paid for on a credit card with a very high rate of interest. And, more than that, leave in place an enormous state machine which grew to its present size on the back of perceived but non-existent wealth and taxes have to rise even further in the future to pay for the machine from a diminished pool of available money.

No doubt he will put a fine gloss on Monday's announcements. Many will be fooled into thinking he is doing the right thing. They are the same people who applauded his predictions in March. He and they were wrong then and they will be wrong on Monday.

Save the last dance for me

Thus far I have resisted the temptation to discuss the issue that divides the nation. No, not the recession, the mental health of the Prime Minister or the prospects for an early general election, I mean the real issue : John Sergeant and his uncooperative feet.

Anyone meeting me would probably be surprised to learn that I am a trained dancer with certificates and medals and, on one terrifying occasion, an appearance on the West End stage. Tap is my thing. Maxi-Fords, ripples, time-steps, pick-ups, cut-aways and wings hold no fear for this fat man although the gruesomely difficult step-over is, sadly, a thing of the past. I even invented a step once, a 16-beat turning riff, although I'm not sure I can still remember how to do it. Dancing requires you to move in ways you never thought possible but with practice even the most complex steps can be mastered by anyone possessing reasonable coordination. It is good exercise, provides endless new challenges and gives a lot of people a lot of fun. My dodgy ticker no longer allows me to dance with vigour for fear that a triple pick-up timestep with double-shuffle will result in a luggage label being attached to my big toe and a trip to the local crematorium. Nonetheless gentle jigging about is still possible from time to time and injects a little pleasure into my otherwise miserable existence.

When Strictly Come Dancing started in 2004 it was an early summer show running from May to July. A second series followed later that year and since then it has run from early October up to Christmas and been one of the BBC's most popular shows. The format has been sold overseas and the American version, Dancing with the Stars, is huge. I haven't watched "Strictly" regularly since the third series because I found it became rather formulaic, although the competitors changed the performances didn't and the judges' comments became entirely predictable. Now I watch the last two or three weeks by which time those who can't dance or don't care to try have usually been eliminated and the remaining competitors perform to a very good level. For me the entertainment value lies in the quality of the dancing not in the early rounds of scoffing at uncoordinated performing seals. When the continued presence of John Sergeant on the show started to cause a stink a couple of weeks ago I looked at his performances on the BBC website and had no difficulty in including him in the performing seal category.

Recent heavy voting for him has been criticised as making a mockery of the show as a dance contest. Last week the actress Cheri Lunghi was voted out despite being an excellent dancer and I suspect that spurred Mr Sergeant into withdrawing before further injustices were meted out to those of ability and dedication. I do not suggest he hasn't tried and his final waltz on tonight's show was a very passable effort for a 64 year-old and was performed with elegance and great dignity.

The issue thrown up by these events is rather interesting. The BBC throws the vote out to the public and hopes that the votes cast will not result in perverse results yet it has no control over how people will vote. Some will vote purely on their assessment of the quality of dancing, some will vote for their favourite actor/actress/singer or whatever, some will vote for one person in the hope it will result in the elimination of someone they don't like, some will vote for a contestant who has been treated harshly by the judges and, no doubt, some will vote for a non-dancer who provides great entertainment value. Hundreds more reasons could lie behind decisions to phone in. Every reason is equally legitimate because the matter is open to all and when a vote is open to all you are stuck with what the voters choose to do, no matter how strongly you might feel they are doing the wrong thing.

In the second series of Strictly Come Dancing there were several contestants who had little control over their feet. Three were eliminated early on but one, Julian Clary, made it to the final. In doing so he got further than the athlete Roger Black and the singer Aled Jones, both of whom were very accomplished dancers. I do not recall many complaints at the time, presumably because Mr Clary was hugely entertaining both in his lacklustre dancing and in his observations about his own performances and the show in general. No dancer who witnessed his attempt at a jive could see it as anything other than an exhibition of comic mime and I had no difficulty in enjoying it for what it was.

I wonder whether the outrage about John Sergeant lasting so long is a sign that the show has outlived its usefulness as an entertainment. Perhaps Bruce Forsythe's retirement at the end of the current series would be a good opportunity for it to come off the air before it takes itself too seriously. I don't really care one way or the other, but one thing is essential for the good of the nation, Bruce must receive the knighthood he so richly deserves.

The danger of the telly tax

If there is one thing guaranteed to make an American laugh it is the British television licence. If you don't believe me try it next time you meet one. Generally they don't know about the telly tax and assume the BBC gets its money from advertising and from selling programmes, formats and DVDs. Just in case any Americans are reading this, I must advise you to sit down and keep all liquids well away from your mouth while I explain the BBC and the television licence.

The BBC is not allowed to carry advertising for anything other than its own products so it suffers a budgetry handicap compared to commercial broadcasters. To fill the gap the government hands it lots of money every year, this money is raised by a poll tax imposed on everyone in the UK who owns a television set. It doesn't matter whether they watch BBC programmes, indeed it doesn't matter whether they watch television at all, the mere possession of a set gives rise to a tax liability in the sum of £139.50 for the current year. A television set incapable of receiving colour pictures is taxed at a lower rate, currently £47. And here's the really good bit - it is a criminal offence to fail to pay this tax. Fail to pay £10,000 of income tax and you get charged a bit of interest and a modest lump sum penalty, fail to pay £139.50 in television tax and you get a criminal record. In both cases you still have to pay the tax.

The whole thing is completely barmy. There probably was a time when it made some sort of sense because television broadcasting was in its infancy and had to be paid for somehow. Only a few could afford television sets and only they benefitted from the new medium, so it was fair enough to require them to pay for the privilege. When commercial television stations became established in the 1960s they carried advertising but the television licence to pay for the BBC could still be justified on the ground that the output of the BBC was more wholesome and nourishing to mind and spirit than that of the vulgar people peddling tawdry goods between their shabby shows aimed at the working classes. None of that applies these days, not least because of the BBC's determination to aim its output at the lowest of brows.

I could moan about the compulsory telly tax (and I do), I could moan about the criminal law being used to enforce it (and I do), I could moan about the vast amount of BBC programming which adds nothing to that available from commercial broadcasters (and I do), I could moan about the amount of money the BBC wastes compared to commercial broadcasters (and I do), but none of those moans is my moan du jour. Soup of the day on the moaning menu is that funding anything by way of tax allows politicians to interfere. We saw a fine example of that this week when the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport questioned senior figures from the BBC about the recent incident in which two highly paid loudmouths left obscene and offensive messages on the telephone answering machine of an elderly actor and broadcast the whole sorry episode on a BBC radio show.

It is unlikely that this could have happened at all on commercial radio but if it had the likely outcome would have been immediate dismissal of the presenters, a full and genuine apology on air from the chairman of the radio company and a suitable act of atonement such as payment of a substantial sum to a charity nominated by the victim of the abuse. A line would have been drawn under it in clear and decisive terms so as to minimise damage to the business of the radio company. MPs might well have expressed their disapproval, they might even have called executives from the company before the Select Committee, but they would not have been able to claim any right to dictate editorial policy or tell the executives how they should deal with staff who made a mistake. Because the BBC is funded by tax and MPs vote on the level of that tax they feel they have the right to pontificate on how the BBC should be run. The maddening and saddening thing is that they are correct. Parliament has not only the right but the duty to scrutinise how taxes are spent and to insist on proper standards of management and accountability being present in organisations funded by tax. If only Parliament had the courage to exercise that right and perform that duty with regard to matters under the direct control of the government we might all have something to cheer about, but that is a topic for another day.

The question for today is how it can possibly be justified for politicians to have a legitimate role in editorial policy and internal management decisions of a broadcaster - just one broadcaster out of many in a Britain of hundreds if not thousands of television and radio channels. Many would suggest that the BBC is influenced in its editorial policies by a desire to keep the government of the day happy for fear of its income being cut. There might or might not be something to that although it does not really matter because the vice lies not in whether the BBC actually panders to the government, but in the fact that it could feel the need to do so by reason of the mechanism by which it is funded. In the same way that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, so the editorial policy of broadcasters should not only be independent of influence by government it should also be seen to be independent of such influence.

This point extends far beyond questions of the quality of BBC programming, whether it should run as many television and radio channels as it does and all the other matters raised whenever the position of the BBC is discussed. My point is over-arching, very simple and (I would suggest) unanswerable.

Don't take that attitude with me

One of the law's most important fictions is that every person is equally valuable. It is only by making this assumption that rights can be protected impartially. If you drive recklessly and kill a pedestrian the law will not impose a different punishment according to the "value" of your victim; nun or prostitute, policeman or professional criminal, Tom Hanks or unknown extra, each victim is worth the same. Similarly, however rich or poor we are, however successful or unsuccessful, well known or obscure, we all have the same legal rights which the courts will strive to enforce without regard to who or what we are.

The law's approach is, of course, a fiction just as it is a fiction in our individual lives to suggest that every life and every person is equally important. I learned recently that someone I know is in intensive care after falling and hitting his head. He has been in a coma for a week. I know him only because he is a builder I have employed recently. Ten weeks ago I had never heard of the man, eight weeks ago he was someone I had met once, six weeks ago I made a contract with him, four weeks ago he first impressed me with his work, two weeks ago I knew quite a lot about him and his family. Had his accident occurred ten weeks ago I would probably never even have heard of it and if I had my only reaction would have been "oh, how sad". As I got to know him better the impact of the news of his accident would have been greater and greater. But it would not be on the same level as hearing of a similar fate befalling an old friend and that would not be on a par with serious injury suffered by a close relative. For me, and for everyone, some people are more important and more valuable than others. I think that is a simple and incontrovertible fact.

When ranking the importance of people in our lives I think most of us would put ourselves first. There is nothing selfish and greedy about this, it merely reflects the fact that we have to be alive in order for anyone else to have any impact on us. It follows from this that we can expect everyone to value their own life more than they value the lives of others. There is, of course, a sound argument for parents putting the lives of their children before their own where one or other has to perish, but that is a rare and exceptional circumstance. In the normal run of things parents can provide best for their children by strengthening their own position. To my mind this is just human nature. We have a survival instinct because each of us only has one life and we engage in social interactions to further our lives. The more remote the people we engage with socially, the less important they are to us.

At the heart of all our lives is us. Me in my case and you in yours. If it is right to say that human nature compels and impels us to survive, why is it that some believe they cannot cope? I am not talking about those with mental illnesses or physical handicaps who require assistance by reason of their condition, but about those who see no prospect of providing for themselves despite having nothing other than their frame of mind to hold them back.

I am sure this is a new circumstance in human history. When our predecessors were living in caves and went hunting it seems unlikely anyone thought themselves incapable of knocking a small animal on the head and sticking it on a fire. It might well be that George in the big cave had a particular skill at killing sheep and enjoyed a daily crown roast with a medley of seasonal vegetables and blackberry jus while Gilbert in the shabby cave made do with stewed rodent and a few boiled twigs, but sitting at home painting on the walls and starving to death was not an option. So why is it that we have a persistent underclass today for whom work and self-reliance are alien concepts?

The easy answer is to blame the welfare state. There is certainly logic behind this approach because an absence of welfare handouts would force people to provide for themselves. But it cannot be the whole explanation because for every person with no qualifications and limited skills who sits at home waiting for a benefit giro to come through the door there are several with no qualifications and limited skills who sweep the streets or push a handcart of meat around a wholesale market or sit on a production line taking things off a conveyor belt and plopping them into cardboard trays. The wages for these thankless and uninspiring occupations are modest and might not exceed to any significant degree the amount of money these workers could receive by sitting at home, yet they choose to work whereas others do not. The true differential between the idlers and the workers is a state of mind.

I have no doubt that state of mind develops and becomes institutionalised by a combination of (i) the availability of benefits, (ii) being told by tree-hugging do-gooders that they are victims of capitalist oppression and (iii) the small difference between what they could earn and what they receive from the state. Pulling the plug on benefits, as some suggest should happen, would only address the first point. It would reinforce the second and the third would only become relevant if there is a job available for them. We cannot assume that there are sufficient employment opportunities to provide for all those who would be left penniless by the withdrawal of benefits. It is not just a matter of how many "menial" jobs exist but where they are and whether those who would need them could get where they would need to go, Tebbitt bicycles are not necessarily available.

In saying this I do not mean to suggest that the country should just carry on with things as they are. In the same way that the stultified state of mind developed, so can it change; but it can only change by undoing all strands of the rope that ties people to a life on the dole. The aim should be to change the state of mind, to change the attitude that is so contrary to human nature. One necessary step is to broaden the financial gap between welfare and work. Welfare must return to its roots as a safety net providing subsistence rather than being a viable career choice. Work must be rewarded by a massive rise in the income tax threshold. And a central task of social workers and benefit offices must be to encourage self-reliance rather than the victim culture. There might still be a shortfall between the number seeking work and the work available and it might be necessary to provide assistance for those who need to move to find work, but the first task is to change the "it isn't worth it / I can't be bothered" attitude.

If we do not value ourselves sufficiently highly to want to provide for our needs through our own efforts there can be no hope that we will act positively towards other people. A deflated sense of self-worth does not carry with it an inflated sense of the worth of others. I believe the only way to rid the country of the underclass is to change the attitude of those in it. Many an asocial yob has been turned into a hard working man by being shown that he can cope, that he can hold down a job, that he can learn a trade, that his fate is in his own hands and, most importantly of all, that being trapped in welfare dependency is more a state of mind than anything else. There might be some for whom there is simply no hope, but they are very few and far between. The problem is with those who are persuaded they have no hope when in fact they are perfectly capable of coping with life and standing on their own two feet. Human nature gives us a survival instinct, the system should encourage that instinct not suppress it.

The BNP and vegan butchers

News that a list of members of the British National Party has been published on the internet has met with a mixed reaction. For those who don't know, the British National Party has a rather narrow approach to matters political. It argues for the UK to be self-governing in every respect. In that it is not unique, a great many members of the Labour and Conservative parties are adamantly opposed to the UK being ruled by the Eurocracy of Brussels and the UK Independence Party has self-governance as its main policy. Where the BNP differs is in its approach to immigration and race. Although it tries to hide the fact with weasel words, the BNP is opposed to persons of dark pigmentation living in the UK. It supports forcible expulsion of those whose skin is other than blotchy pink. If you don't burn at the first flicker of sunlight in March you aren't welcome here.

It is always amusing listening to members of the BNP being interviewed. They have a stock line to put: "the BNP is not a racist party", which always elicits the question: "so would you welcome black or asian members in the BNP?" to which the answer is always stony silence followed but some deep throat clearance and a pathetic attempt to evade answering the question. Because the question is so simply any evasion gives the game away and more often than not the evasive answer provides a more damning indictment of the BNP than a simple "no". They just cannot stop themselves using such terms as "indigenous population", "established culture" and "true British people". At least they would appear honest if they said "no nig nogs here thank you, whiteys only, that's what we want". They could then be dismissed as the comic fringe they are. Instead their prevarication makes them appear not just narrow minded but sinister and positively dangerous, thereby giving partial justification to the other extremist elements that want their party banned and the individual members to be treated like syphilitic paedophiles at a children's naturist convention.

The current fuss has reminded me that membership of the BNP is considered officially incompatible with certain types of employment such as being a policeman or a prison warder. The justification claimed for this is that someone holding discriminatory opinions cannot be trusted to act impartially towards those who are the object of his bigotry. This is a rather strange concept. Anarchists can become police officers, policemen who support Arsenal can patrol at Spurs' matches, greenie policemen can give tickets to drivers; indeed policemen with any opinions at all are expected and trusted to leave those opinions to one side when performing their duties except where their opinions are against those of dark pigmentation AND they join a particular political party. Holding such opinions without being a member of the BNP is no bar yet once they've paid their subscriptions they can no longer be trusted. It's all rather flimsy. I wonder whether there is any evidence that policemen who are members of the BNP have in fact acted with bias against our dusky bretheren. If they have it is their conduct and not their opinions which should be the subject of disciplinary proceedings. My guess is that the arbitrary ban is nothing more than a political gesture, devoid of any factual basis and designed to do nothing other than grab headlines.

I am not opposed to the holding of certain beliefs being a bar to employment where the beliefs make it impossible for someone to do the job properly. Employing a vegan as spokesman for an "eat more meat" campaign would seem likely to fall into that category, but employing him as a butcher would not. If he is prepared to work as a butcher and has the skills required for the job the mere fact that he believes eating meat to be a thoroughly bad idea is neither here nor there. One cannot assume he would turn customers away or put arsenic in the sausages and there is no logical basis for assuming that a policeman's political beliefs would cause him to fail in the duties his work entails.

This is not just a matter of freedom of speech. That aspect of it is being covered by many other bloggers and I have nothing new to say on the subject. My concern is that loose thinking is preventing able people doing jobs they want to do and which they could do well. I can see no justification for such an arbitrary disqualification. Give them the job if they are qualified to do it, if they do not perform their duties impartially they won't be doing it for long.

Much ado about hanky-panky

I can understand why those who work as pimps should be targeted by the law. Some of them are pretty harmless and give their girls a bit of protection in case a punter gets threatening or refuses to pay, but many extort a large percentage of the girls' earnings under threat of violence. Making it illegal to traffic people for prostitution is also a nasty business, often involving coercion of girls into a trade they had no intention or desire to engage in. Quite rightly both activities are unlawful already. Today our hapless Home Secretary announced plans to make it illegal to use the services of a prostitute if she is operated by a pimp or has been trafficked into the UK for the purpose of prostitution. To make matters worse, the offence is committed whether or not the punter knows of the pimp or the trafficking. It is a most bizarre proposal. To make it all the more bizarre, the maximum penalty will be a fine of £1,000 thereby putting it on a par with other serious crimes such as failing to pay the television tax and smoking in a pub.

What intrigues me is how the offence can be proved. At the moment paying for consensual sexual services is not illegal, if the proposed new law is brought in that will still be the case but there will be an exception where the prostitute is managed by a pimp or has been trafficked. On the face of it, therefore, it will be necessary for the prosecution to prove three things: (i) that sexual services were provided, (ii) that money changed hands or was due to change hands in return for those services and (iii) the provider of those services has a pimp or has been trafficked. In theory the law could be framed so as to presume that every person selling sex falls into the special categories, in which case only points (i) and (ii) will have to be proved and the defence will then have to disprove the third point, but that is unlikely to survive a challenge under the Human Rights Act because it imposes an impossible burden of proof on a defendant.

Undoubtedly a small number of cases will be easy for the prosecution because the girl will give evidence herself about how she operated, although I wouldn't put any money on an appreciable number of pimped girls doing this. The very nature of most pimps is severely discouraging towards anyone attempting to ruin their business. Furthermore, many of the girls need the money even if they don't like the way their pimp treats them and will prefer to keep earning a living rather than give evidence against a punter they don't know and will probably never see again and thereby run the risk of exposing their pimp who, in turn, will expose them to a right good smacking.

Perhaps the most obvious situation in which the proposed new law will be used is when a brothel is raided and a number of illegal immigrants are found in close proximity to pale and sweaty middle managers in a state of undress save for a small intimate rubber item. It might well be possible to persuade a court to infer that the girls have been trafficked if no other explanation for their presence in the country is forthcoming, but I doubt that it will be as easy as the Home Secretary might wish.

The biggest problem the prosecution will have if it seeks to rely on inference rather than direct proof is that the offence is one to which ignorance of the true facts is no defence. In other words, the punter only commits an offence if the girl was pimped or trafficked and then he cannot excuse himself by saying he did not know she was pimped or trafficked. Since the evil being legislated against is the pimping or trafficking and the punter would be innocent of any crime if the girl is not pimped or trafficked, establishing this element of the offence is particularly important. It is all the more important where the defendant will be condemned even where he has no knowledge and no means of establishing whether the girl is pimped or trafficked. For the prosecution to say "it is no excuse that he does not know" is not very appealing when the case they present shows they do not know either.

On another practical note there must be doubt whether the police would be prepared to devote substantial resources to investigating the background of a prostitute where only her punter is charged and the maximum penalty is a £1,000 fine. It would be rather different where an alleged pimp or trafficker is in the dock, but to target resources at a middle aged saddo just to keep Jacqui Smith and simple Harriet happy does not seem at all sensible.

To secure a conviction for a criminal offence usually requires proof both that the accused person did something and that he had a particular state of mind when he did it. To be guilty of theft you must have the intention to deprive someone of property permanently, to be guilty of murder you must have the intention to cause serious harm, to be guilty of handling stolen goods you must know or believe them to be stolen, and so the list goes on. Merely doing something without having a guilty mind is not usually enough. There are exceptions, many exceptions, but I cannot think of one in which the thing which makes conduct illegal is outside the control of the defendant. For example, driving in excess of the speed limit or with more than the permitted level of alcohol in your system both involve criminalising something entirely within the control of the defendant even if he had no intention to speed or to be over the limit. Before killing an animal of a protected species someone can find out whether the object of his brutal desire is indeed of a protected species. I might be wrong (it is many years since I practised in the criminal courts except on planning and regulatory matters) but I cannot think of any example of the law criminalising conduct because of a state of background facts which the defendant neither knows nor has any reasonable prospect of being able to discover.

A very obvious situation comes to mind which illustrates just how bizarre this proposal is. Assume two pasty middle managers visit Madame Fifi's Sauna and Hanky-Panky Parlour. Two girls are available, one middle manager goes to Room 1 with Chantelle the other takes Tatiana to Room 2. In burst the police and both men are arrested. It turns out that Chantelle is an illegal immigrant from Russia and was forced into prostitution after being smuggled to the UK by the Russian Mafia. Tatiana is actually Joyce Stubbins from Canvey Island and works two days a week to save for a new caravan. Each man has done exactly the same thing. Neither of them has any means of knowing the background of the girl who was to be the temporary object of his fleshy lusts. Yet one is guilty and the other is not. It really is a complete nonsense, an absolute lottery, arbitrary and ill thought out law at its very worst.

And what will it achieve? How many more pimps and traffickers will be identified and prosecuted as a result? Of course there is no need even to waste time asking that question because the answer is a big fat zero. If the desire is to stop men using prostitutes for fear of losing out in the lottery draw it might have some effect, but it will only do so at the expense of imposing a ridiculous, unfair and random law.

Making the criminal law used to be a serious business involving careful consideration of the consequences the proposed law might be expected to have. These days we have Jacqui Smith and simple Harriet thrusting the contents of their combined half-brain on the populace without regard to anything other than the desire to prove just how very shallow they are.