Tobacco companies and open goals

Eid Mubarak.

That is the traditional greeting given at the end of Ramadan, despite having lived in an area with a substantial Turkish population for more years than I have lived anywhere else I only learned that this week. Saying it elicits the same smiley response as Merry Christmas in the middle weeks of December. Now that Ramadan is over I no longer have to abide by the dietary strictures I imposed upon myself a month ago, so tofu and cauliflower need be avoided only on the ground of their venal characteristics and not for any other reason.

Talking of venal characteristics, on Thursday I made the mistake of turning on the radio on my way to golf and was assaulted by an absurd anti-smoking zealot spouting forth on the Victoria Darbyshire show on BBC Radio 5. His name was Professor Gerard Hastings. The good Mr Puddlecote knows more about him than I do and has posted (here) on the very subject that lies behind today's missive.

I can summarise the background quickly. Professor Hastings leads a department at the University of Sterling (an establishment with a fine reputation he is doing his best to destroy). That department is funded by taxpayers and has the remit to identify every possible fact or inference that can possibly be used to argue against the consumption of tobacco products. One of his latest wheezes was a survey of teenagers with the view to ascertaining their opinions of smoking tobacco and the factors that influenced them or might influence them into taking up that particular hobby. The survey, as I understand it, comprised asking a series of questions and recording the answers.

If that is all that had been done, one might ask why it was done, but of course it is not all that was done. Once the answers were received they were "interpreted" by Professor Hastings and his merry men and conclusions were drawn. Conclusions which he is proud to contribute to public debate on the issue of what, if anything, government should add to its current panoply of anti-smoking legislation and regulation. I put it in those terms very deliberately because there is no possibility at all of Professor Hastings reaching any conclusion suggesting that anti-smoking laws or regulations should be relaxed in any way. He is paid specifically to find fault, something he is very happy to do and is perfectly entitled to do provided he does so honestly and is prepared to justify his position. His interview on the radio suggested that one result of his so-called research supported the argument for plain packaging for cigarettes - I know not what other contentions it contained but this is the one he pressed to Miss Darbyshire.

A tobacco company, which uses the trading name Philip Morris, asked for details of the facts behind the conclusions/inferences drawn by Professor Hastings and his team. The request was, of course, made to the University not to the Professor himself so I cannot ascribe the patently unlawful refusal to give any information to him, nonetheless he was keen to associate himself with it on national radio.

On this occasion the BBC also allowed time for Philip Morris to give its side of the story, and it is this that is the substance of my ramblings. A woman, whose name I cannot recall, answered the more absurd points put forward by the Professor. For example, he said the survey was conducted on the basis that the answers would be strictly confidential and that this means the answers could not be disclosed. Being a man with a fine title but no common sense, he failed to realise just how stupid a point he was making. If the answers could not be disclosed he could not publish any conclusions drawn from them because, by doing so, he was disclosing the answers. That might not be quite as stupid as his argument that his University should not have to disclose the findings of fact on which his "research" was based because it is just a university yet Philip Morris employs tens of thousands of people around the globe. Quite what that has to do with the Freedom of Information Act is beyond me. Were I a professor maybe I would understand, as things are it sounds like illogical nonsense.

Now, back to the Philip Morris woman. When asked to justify her company's request for the data behind Professor Hastings' tendentious conclusions she warbled on about a need to know "the basis of the research". This was Radio 5 in the morning. The audience could not reasonably be expected to know ins-and-outs of the way anti-tobacco "research" operates or, indeed, of how proper scientific research operates, still less can they be expected to know the heavily-nuanced phrase "the basis of the research". The good Professor provided her with the killer point but she did not grasp it and undermine his credibility as she should.

Professor Hastings wants all employees of Philip Morris to lose their jobs, he wants the company closed, he wants its business to cease to exist. He said as much when Miss Darbyshire prompted him to do so.

The Philip Morris lady's best point was to assert that her company's business is lawful, employs tens of thousands of people (some thing the Professor seems to consider an evil), contributes vast quantities of tax to the Treasury and is entitled to protect its business against unfounded attacks. So, if it is attacked, it is entitled to ask whether the attack is well-founded or not. The purpose of the request for disclosure of the data behind Professor Hastings' conclusions can only be to see whether it supports the conclusions he asserts. If it does, it does; if it doesn't it doesn't. No one can know unless they are able to see the data and analyse it for themselves. She didn't get within spitting distance of making this obvious and decisive point. It is a point that knocks all of Professor Hastings' smug self-justification into a cocked-hat.

Professor Hastings "research" led to the assertion of conclusions designed to damage Philip Morris's lawful business and put all its employees out of work. Given that this might be the result of his conclusions being adopted in legislation, Philip Morris is entitled to ask whether his conclusions are sound. That can only be known by seeing the factual evidence from which he drew inferences. He can assert until the trump of doom that his conclusions are well-founded but no sensible person should be expected to accept that merely on the basis of his assertion. Unless the raw material from which he draws inferences is disclosed, he is asking for Philip Morris's business to be damaged purely because of his subjective interpretation of material no one else can examine.

Were we lucky enough to have independent-minded people of substance in Parliament, his conclusions could be challenged there. Instead we have far too many MPs who are constantly asking whether what they do will damage their hopes of re-election or advancement within their party. Going against current accepted wisdom can damage both, so they chicken out regardless of their personal views.

I do not know whether the Freedom of Information Act allows Philip Morris access to the anonymised answers given to Professor Hastings and his team (and Mr Puddlecote is wrong in suggesting that the Scottish Information Commissioner ruled that it has such a right, he ruled that the University must either disclose the information or give a good reason under the Act why it should not do so). Whether the Act does or does not allow access to the information deflects attention from the real issue. The real issue is whether a lawful business should be damaged because someone - in this case Professor Hastings - asserts that information he refuses to disclose supports the doing of harm to that business.

In the real world occupied by fair-minded people, substantiated reasons are required before government harms a lawful business. Fairness requires businesses to be able to ask why government proposes to do them harm. To rely on nothing more than the word of a fanatical academic whose salary and department are dependent on him giving the answers government wants to hear is to replace fairness with random bigotry.

It really is time the tobacco companies fought back and pointed out that a lot of people, something over one-fifth of the adult population of this country, choose to consume tobacco products and pay blistering amounts of tax for the privilege. Narrow-minded, bullying bigots might try to stop them by producing skewed analyses of data that is statistically insignificant in any event. Professor Hastings could fall into this category, he certainly doesn't approach the subject with an open mind as he admitted freely to the dozens of people listening to his irrational rantings on Thursday morning.

People like him are an open goal for any tobacco company with guts. Maybe the prevailing narrative is that smoking is an unmitigated evil with nothing in its favour, it certainly seems to be so from my perspective here at FatBigot Towers. When a prevailing narrative is based on a fundamental flaw, it takes someone with guts to stand up and say "hold on a minute, is that right?". It is an Emperor's new clothes scenario. Tobacco companies can afford guts and they can afford to face-down those who seek to attack their lawful business by publishing conclusions that are unsound. I know not whether Professor Hastings' conclusions are unsound, what I do know is that he cannot be trusted to be objective.

We cannot expect poor quality MPs to investigate whether his conclusions are correct, and nor should we. He is attacking lawful businesses who should fight their own corner. The first step in doing so is to put forward spokespeople on national broadcasts who avoid quasi-scientific jargon and get to the point.

This is an issue on which there is a chance of common sense replacing bigoted dogma. If the tobacco companies cannot grasp the lifeline provided by the truth we might well be destined to a future of having to accept falsehoods because they are "officially" decreed to be the truth.

Nationalise money - problem solved

I pity the governments of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (the PIIGS). They are doing their best to keep the wolf from the door but at every turn private investors pose impertinent questions and scupper their initiatives.

The truth is really very simple (what follows is a distillation of many research papers helpfully collected together - here - by a fellow blogger).

Governments print money. If they run short, perhaps because of the additional overtime paid to equality and diversity SWAT teams whenever a duskily hewed homosexualite has been refused promotion, all they need do is print another few million and the problem is solved. Or, to be exact, it would be solved if it weren't for those pesky private sector investors complaining that the additional tenners swishing through the system dilute the value of their cash reserves. And why would the problem be solved? Why does the printing of more ten pound notes not cause problems to anyone other than conspiratorial facist investors? For the answer to that question we need a short lesson in very modern economic history.

You see, it's Gordon Brown. He understood and we should all learn at his feet. More government spending means more economic activity. More economic activity is good, therefore more government spending is good. Got a town that's looking a bit crummy? Simple. Print 20 million tenners and spend them in that town building skate parks, healthy eating clinics and climate awareness centres, then print another 20 million to pay salaries. A crummy town? Not any more it isn't. It has skate parks, healthy eating clinics and climate awareness centres, it has a thousand people on good salaries manning these essential front-line public services. Misery has turned to universal joy and happiness. Crummytown is renamed Brownsville and all is right with the world. We know all this to be true because this was the basis of the economic miracle forged by Gordon Brown in his decade in the Treasury.

Only one group ever argued against Mr Brown as he stood triumphant before the World. That group was people and companies who forced Mr Brown to borrow money from them rather than just continually print more on the old hand platen that has been in the back bedroom at 11 Downing Street since 1805 (it proved a little inconvenient while the Blair family lived at Number 11 but Brown had a key and he was delighted to find the printing press was in the boys' bedroom).

One might think he should have just printed more, however that was fraught with political difficulties. If Gordon Brown is one thing, he is a man of the big tent. Not for him the marginalising or exclusion of any group, least of all those who might complain that he was acting out of small-minded, party-political spite. He simply had to keep the international financiers happy, to do otherwise would strike at the essential core of inclusive humanity that defines his moral compass. Much though he hated to do so, he knew his duty - that duty was to borrow hundreds of billions on the money markets in order to prove his fair-mindedness. It wasn't a problem because he only needed to spend a few more hours with the plates and ink in the back bedroom, a task that could be undertaken at any time once the usurous financiers had been repaid.

To complete this short history I must refer to what some have called "Brown's Bunker". The theory goes that Gordon Brown surrounded himself with a small group of yes-men, working out of one room at Number 10, insulated from and antipathetic to any voices of disagreement. Papers recently disclosed by an impeccable source prove beyond doubt that the only bunker in Downing Street during the Brown years was that specially created to house the enormous printing presses and stocks of "paper" required for Gordon to stimulate the economy after the wicked international bankers had made such a mess of their businesses they had to be bailed-out.

What cannot be ignored is that Gordon Brown's economic miracle would have continued unabated, and he would now be President for Life, were it not for the nasty private sector pretending its money was as pure as that produced in Downing Street. He was a victim of his own fairness and honesty because he could not bear the thought of a single banker's child losing their pony or being deprived of lacrosse coaching. In the circumstances of the time he was, of course, absolutely right, as he remains on every topic to this day. Nonetheless, his fairness created a bit of a pickle - a pickle for which he is not in any way to blame, we know this because he tells us so every time he is paid many thousands of pounds to give a speech.

It will be a matter of great regret until my dying day that the general election of 2010 came just before Gordon Brown had the chance to put into effect the final piece of his masterly jigsaw. Having, he thought, proved that all economic ills are caused by private sector businesses, the time was ripe for nationalisation of the funds held by these wicked shysters. No need for printing presses, a simple CHAPS transfer to HM Treasury would do the trick. There would no longer be any private sector investors involved in the UK economy, everything would be under the benevolent hand of the greatest economist the World has ever known - the man who knew that every hitch could be overcome by creating more bank notes.

All across the Eurozone we now see the greatness of his wisdom. Why is Greece in a mess? It's simple, private financiers are demanding repayment of their investments with interest. What an utterly absurd state of affairs it is. All Greece need do is nationalise the money it has been lent and its problems will be over. It will owe nothing. The slate will be wiped clean. What's more, it could then turn on the printing presses and boost its economy just as Gordon Brown did to the UK economy from 2003-7. So too for the rest of the PIIGS. They are foreigners so they would face no moral impediment as Mr Brown had with the bankers.

A country's credit rating cannot be downgraded if it never borrows, even more so if there are no credit rating agencies and there would not be once the vital step to economic harmony and perpetual glee was put in place. Mr Brown understood this. All you need do is nationalise all money and the problems not just of the PIIGS but also of every nation would disappear at a stroke.

A pincer movement of sheer lunacy - Part II

In Part I (here) I bemoaned the absurd overreaction by the professionally smug to the non-news that newspapers buy information obtained by illegal phone tapping. A week has now passed since a Parliamentary committee manned by incompetent cross-examiners conducted a kangaroo court trial of three people connected to a particular newspaper and failed to pin a tail anywhere near the donkey's anus. The only public outcry of which I am aware concerns the distasteful bugging (tapping, hacking, call it what you will) of telephonic communications involving the families of deceased people. Reprehensible though I consider such activity to be, there is no evidence that disclosure of any improperly obtained material has caused inconvenience, embarrassment or upset to any family members. In short the whole thing is a bit of a non-issue over which politicians - sniffing the chance to pass laws preventing their own sordid secrets being exposed - have whipped themselves into an unnecessary lather.

Part II is about the apparent intent of all our main political parties to make electricity oppressively expensive. I am not going to rehearse the unanswerable arguments against reliance on generating electricity from wind and waves, nor am I going to rail against those in rabid servility to every scare story promoted by those whose financial position rests on acceptance of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis. My concern is with something much more basic and, in my view, important.

As recently as twenty years ago I doubt many would have argued with the proposition that elected politicians in the UK had one duty above all other - to do what they considered to be in the best interests of the people they represent. Of course there can be honest disagreements about what is in the best interests of the little people but the focus of the exercise was unaltered by the outcome of the debate. MPs were in parliament to represent their constituents by acting in what they considered the best interests of their constituents. On local issues they would fight for what they felt was best for the constituency, on national and international issues they would broaden their remit to cover all the people living in the UK because the interests of their constituents were the same as the interests of every other person in the country.

Is it in the best interests of those living in a particular constituency and those living in all constituencies for electricity to be cheap or expensive? To my mind that is not a difficult question and should permit only one answer. Cheaper electricity eases pressure on household budgets and reduces the costs of doing business, as such it is a blindingly obvious desire for any right-thinking person whether or not he is a Member of Parliament. More expensive electricity hits the poorest hardest and hampers our businesses in their aim of selling goods and services to overseas customers. It takes a weirdly warped sense of priorities for any MP to promote a policy that impoverishes his own constituents and the country as a whole.

We all know why they continually pass laws making electricity ever more expensive. In part it is because they have fallen for the great global warming scam. In part it is because they hope it will bring in additional tax. In part it is because they want to set a pointless example to other countries in which politicians are not so craven to Saint Al of Gore and his distinctly unmerry fellow-travellers. In part it is because they have fallen for the "green jobs" scam. In part it is because they are scared of the party whips. In part it is because they think there might be votes in presenting themselves as "green". All these things explain why they support a particular line of policy, but none justifies voting for measures that hurt their constituents and damage the economy of the whole country.

Never let it be said I will miss an opportunity to state the obvious, and today is no exception. The reason we in the UK enjoy our current standard of living is that we have found ways of making physical comfort cheaper than it was before. Human beings have always been doing this and over the last two hundred years or so we have done it so successfully that we now measure material deprivation in the UK not in terms of basic housing, food and clean water but in terms of access to the internet, holidays and mobile telephones. Material comforts that are now taken for granted and deemed essential to subsistence living were either science fiction or oppressively expensive as recently as forty years ago. This happy state of affairs has been brought about by the amazing ability of human beings to invent new things and improve old things so that a luxury lifestyle of the 1950s is attainable on the minimum wage in 2011.

At the heart of all this improvement in the quality of everyday physical comfort is electricity. The cheaper it is, the better we all live. And do not ever forget that those earning good money will always be able to afford comfort, what really matters is allowing those of modest means the ability to get more comfort for their limited money. That is a fundamental part of the duty of MPs to act in the best interests of their constituents and of the country as a whole. However tempting it might be to satisfy international or party agendas, their duty is to their constituents and to the UK. Electricity costs are at the heart of all our lives, especially those of modest means, and any MP with his or her eye on the ball should be fighting against any government measure that increases its price.

A pointless Olympic junket

Apparently the start of the Olympic Games in London is now just a year away. Tickets have been sold and many eager sports fans left disappointed by not being able to gain access to even a first qualifying round of an obscure event. The very nature of an Olympic Games means that promotion, advertising and encouragement to either watch or participate are wholly unnecessary. Many more than the number that can be admitted to watch have applied for tickets already and all those with a realistic chance of competing have been well aware of next year's event for years.

For some reason the prior anniversary of the start of the event has been deemed an appropriate reason to spend millions of pounds on promotional events around the world. The BBC reports (here) that yesterday London was subject to a rally in Trafalgar Square at which the head of the International Olympic Committee invited competitors to London and the design of the medals was unveiled, the Olympic swimming pool was opened and both the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister made speeches saying what a jolly good games London will host. And (here) it reports that promotional events were hosted at British tax payers' expense at "nearly 100" foreign venues "to encourage visitors, businesses, students and sports people to get involved".

Has there ever been a more fatuous waste of money? I know the competition is stiff but this really does stand out as a piss-up-wall venture of heroic proportions. It's the bloody Olympic games for crying out loud. No one needs encouragement to visit London during the games, or to use it as an advertising medium (which is its only relvance to businesses) and absolutely no sports people are unaware that the Olympics come round every four years wherever they are held. As for students - what on earth have they got to do with the price of fish? I can't help thinking that these events exemplify three worrying phenomena.

First, we have domestic politicians lending their names and time (and our taxes) to an occasion of no relevance to anything domestic other than the standing of those same politicians. Had there been no rally in Trafalgar Square, no formal unveiling of medals and no formal opening of the swimming pool the games would happen next year just the same. As it is, events were organised. That gave a fine opportunity for politicians to divert from their selfless path of public service in order to be there and look good in front of the cameras of the world. They had the option of doing something useful instead and allowing the IOC to spend its own money promoting its own event without assistance from the UK tax-payer. Sadly, there are few votes and no fame to be gained by staying in the office and getting on with work.

Secondly, we have an unaccountable supra-national organisation flying a delegation into town and being treated like visiting heads of state. Why? The games will be held here next year and never again in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone involved in the IOC. The venues will either be ready or they will not, the medals will either be pleasing to the eye or they will not, new rail and bus routes will either prove efficient or they will not, security measures will either prevent bombs being planted and/or detonated or they will not, visitors will either find hotels in their price range or they will not, everything else involved with the games will either work well or it will not, a visit by delegates of the IOC will make no difference to anything. All that will be achieved is the reinforcement of the concept that such people are special and are due special treatment. That, in turn, reinforces their unaccountability and the prospect of corruption.

Thirdly, we have an enormous waste of money with no one in power questioning a penny of the expense. It's only a few thousand, a few hundred thousand or a few million; chicken feed in the scale of government spending so it doesn't matter. To me it matters an awful lot. There are countless examples of local and national government throwing money at events of no value simply because the sum involved is minuscule compared to the total budget. I really don't care whether the total of all such sums would make a significant dent in the overall budget because they are a waste of money and should not happen regardless of their overall effect on a balance sheet.

I find myself asking why the Olympic Games is not treated like any other commercial venture. Be in no doubt, for the IOC it is a commercial venture just as the football World Cup is a commercial venture for Fifa. Those organisations rake in millions for their own use (and that of their officials) regardless of how much they then distribute to national sports associations. They operate like the EU. What comes first is the organisation at the top, everything lower down the pyramid of power is beholden to the, always unaccountable, Politburo.

In principle national governments are not beholden in the same way because they are not dependent on finance from the supra-national body, however the "ahem" in the woodpile is politicians. Politicians want votes and think, probably correctly, that associating themselves with those in charge of major sporting events is likely to gain more votes than it will lose. The unfortunate downside is that bribes have to be paid. I don't mean brown envelopes stuffed with folding cash (not in this country, anyway), what I mean is spending tax-payers' money to keep the international bureaucrats comfortable and to put on events that make them happy so they will heap praise on the hospitality given to and the respect paid by the Prime Minister to the august body they represent. There is no benefit to the people of the host country, all benefits land safely on the plates of the international bureaucrats and the domestic politicians who laud them.

The result is ever more power and influence being exercised by supranational sporting bodies. For so long as a national government wishes to gain prestige by securing the right to host a major sporting event it must butter-up the small coterie of bureaucrats at the top of the organising body. It would make economic sense for the Olympics to have a permanent venue because country after country that has spent many millions on stadia has found little demand for those facilities once the games ended. Well well, what a surprise. Were there a domestic demand for such facilities they would have been built and then paid for by the fees charged to the people who use them. As it is Olympic stadia for numerous sports are built in a closely defined geographical area which has never before witnessed any demand for such facilities.

Giving the Olympics a permanent home would remove the scope for the supranational body to exert influence, receive favours and bestow honour on incumbent politicians. That is why it will never happen.

Michael Gove plays with his organ

Looks like Michael Gove to me.

Bloody good playing anyway.

Here.

A pincer movement of sheer lunacy - Part I

In the curry house yesterday I was asked whether I had been out in the sun, apparently my forehead was bright red and deeply blistered. The reason is not exposure to sunlight, it is relentless frustration with the stupidity of current political debate that has caused the vigorous and repeated application of palm to head. At the moment our Parliament seems to be dominated by two topics - the activities of the press and the government's desire to make electricity prohibitively expensive. Both subjects seem to have a magical power over MPs such that they spout complete and total nonsense without any comprehension of the lack of common sense behind their analyses. I'll deal with the press today.

The basis of Parliamentary hysteria seems to be the "revelation" that a tabloid newspaper published information gleaned from illegal phone taps and computer hacks. Well, well, what a surprise, who'd have thought any such thing has occurred in this country? Everyone, that's who. Another, secondary, "revelation" is that journalists paid money in return for information the law requires to be kept confidential. Well, well, what a surprise, who'd have thought such a thing has occured in this country? Everyone, that's who.

There is only one sensible reaction to these "revelations". It is to get the police to investigate the matter and charge anyone against whom there is sufficient evidence. The activities complained of are already illegal under our law so there is no need for any more laws. The one and only thing that should be done is to enforce existing law.

Instead a Court of Appeal Judge is going to be kept out of court for a year or more so that he can conduct an inquiry which will be called a whitewash if he says current laws are fine and a witch hunt if he says new laws should be passed.

In Parliament we have witnessed the unedifying spectacle of buckets of sanctimonious hogwash being sprayed around by hundreds of MPs, each trying to out-outrage the previous speaker with the level of their ignorant and hypocritical humbug.

Everyone with a brain larger than a pea knows newspapers act in underhand and, sometimes, unlawful ways to get attention-grabbing information they can plaster across their front pages. They all do it. Locals, nationals, broadsheets, tabloids - they all do it.

How do you think the Yokel Local Chronicle learned about the intention of Big Supermarket PLC to buy farmer Giles's front field for a new shop? It's obvious, someone working for the company leaked the news, probably in return for a fee or favour. In that instance the person working for the supermarket company broke the terms of his contract of employment and risked summary dismissal. He had to balance the benefit he gained against the risk of losing his job. The newspaper knew he was breaching his contract but also knew there was no realistic chance of being sued, so it published anyway in order to have a good headline, a reputation for having it's finger on the local pulse and the chance of greater circulation in future and higher advertising revenues. The only question that would trouble the editor is whether the information was true.

Paying for information obtained in other unlawful ways is different only in degree from paying for leaked confidential information about the intentions of a supermarket chain. The degree might be higher or lower, but the substance is the same each time. That some information results from activities that amount to criminal offences and other "feeds" involve a breach of contract but not a crime is a distinction without a difference in this field. We have laws against this sort of activity. Those laws provide a penalty for anyone proved to have breached them. There is one reason and one reason only why those laws were broken - the people breaking them considered the benefit of the breach to outweigh the risk of being caught and/or the penalty for being caught and pursued to judgment. Making the activity doubly unlawful will not change this because it is a matter of human nature rather than of law.

Increasing the penalty can make a big difference to how people behave but it brings up a wholly different matter that makes serious penalties impossible. How does phone tapping or hacking emails compare to burglary, or stabbing someone or holding-up a bank with a shotgun? Obviously infringements of privacy are not in the same league, so what maximum penalty can be justified without the law becoming absurd? There is no certain answer to that question although the general answer is that the maximum penalty, and the penalty actually imposed in any particular case, is unlikely ever to be so severe that it would deter those offered a chunky financial inducement.

Members of Parliament can huff and puff all they want about how morally reprehensible it is to tap the phones of the families of deceased soldiers and victims of crime. I doubt that there are many in the country who have not huffed and puffed in disgust. Nothing MPs say and no amount of hot air they expel can change anything. Newspapers will still use whatever means they can get away with to obtain the information they think their readers want to read, because more readers means more advertisers and that is where the money is.

A theme that ran through contributions in the debate in the House of Commons was a call for regulation not just of how newspapers obtain information but of what they publish. This deserves to result in blistered foreheads across the nation. Do these people really think the interests of the people of this country as a whole are best served by newspapers being constricted in what they are permitted to print and how in buggery do they think such restrictions can be imposed?

Only two restrictions can ever be justified. First, they should not publish things that are untrue. The law covers that already (albeit imperfectly) through the law of libel. Secondly, they should not publish anything that causes them to lose business. This is nothing to do with the law, it is all about the little people voting with their feet. Editorial judgment must be exercised to decide whether a story will be good or bad for circulation. If it will be bad it should not be published, if good it should be published, if it appears good but turns out to be bad the paper can look for a new editor. No other restrictions can have any justification under any circumstances. I hear you cry: what about kiddy porn? Simple, advertisers will disappear overnight, only a few pathetic dribblers will buy the paper, the publisher and numerous editorial staff will face lengthy time behind bars and next week there will be no newspaper.

The very suggestion that there should be any sort of State control over the content of newspapers other than the law of libel is so absurd as to be obscene. Some might suggest it is part of a plot by politicians to protect themselves from criticism, I do not agree. I believe it to be nothing other than an irrational knee-jerk reaction to extremely distasteful newspaper activities that have been exposed recently. The politicians want to be heard expressing disgust so they can have their local paper report they have stood up to be counted. OK, fine, let them say it and get their favourable editorial, then they can return to the real world and acknowledge that what was done was unlawful so no new law is needed and that any attempt to censor the press is bound to fail.

The question they are really addressing is this: should Parliament legislate to prevent publication of the truth? Sadly, they do not seem to be willing or able to understand that this is what they are doing. In any event, how can Parliament legislate to prevent publication of the truth? The key here is "prevent publication". How can Parliament - which can only do anything through the laws it passes - prevent someone doing something? As the law now stands there are penalties for doing naughty things once you have done them, and only then if you are caught and there is sufficient evidence to prove you did them. It is the risk of penalty that is preventative. Short of physical restraint, all the law can do is threaten a penalty in the hope the threat will prevent naughtiness.

So, how do you prevent the truth being told? The simple answer is that you cannot, all you can do is pass laws imposing penalties for telling the truth and therein lies the fundamental flaw in all the guff spouted in Parliament. They can moan about invasions of privacy and the extreme distastefulness of some of those invasions until they are any colour in the face they choose, but they cannot produce a rational argument for the truth being suppressed. If that truth is not to the taste of a newspaper's readership there is a risk to advertising revenue, if it is to their taste the till will ring triumphantly. The little people will vote with their £1 coins. Parliament is an utter irrelevance on this issue. Honourable members should shut up and keep their fingers crossed that their peccadillos remain below the radar.

What is justice?

A nasty fat scrote was convicted last week of the murder of a thirteen year-old girl by the name of Amanda "Milly" Dowler (here). Her murderer, as he was eventually proved to be, pleaded "not guilty" when put on trial so the forensic process that has developed over centuries was put in train. English law, as it stands at present, requires the prosecution to prove the guilt of an accused person beyond reasonable doubt and has a complex system of procedural rules to try to ensure that no innocent person will be convicted of a crime. Only a fool would suggest that the system is perfect, nonetheless it is as it is as a result of thousands of minor adjustments over hundreds of years. Further adjustments will be made as time passes, I can only hope they all bear in mind the overriding consideration that the innocent should not be convicted.

The procedural rules cover four main areas. First, there are requirements for the police to conduct their investigation subject to certain limits, for example questioning suspects must not involve oppressive actions. Secondly there are limits to what can be put before a jury - this is the law of evidence that, for example, allows hearsay evidence only in certain circumstances. Thirdly there are limits to how a lawyer may put a case in court, these are imposed by the codes of conduct that apply to barristers and solicitors. Breach of the codes of conduct can, in extreme cases, lead to someone being disqualified from practising law and in less extreme instances there can be suspensions of practising certificates or fines. Fourthly, trials are presided over by judges who have a wide discretion to prevent lines of questioning if they consider them insufficiently relevant. It is not without reason that judges can only preside over serious cases if they have earned a "ticket" to do so.

Over the last few days the conduct of the lawyers defending Milly Dowler's murderer has been subject to a great deal of ill-informed criticism. I need not explain the errors of the critics because it has been done already by Ms Wig (here), to which I was alerted by the good Mr Paine. My comment today is not about the details of that case but about something much more troubling, namely a false definition of justice.

One thing we must get clear right at the beginning is that the victim of a crime is the victim - not the victim's family and friends, not the readers of a newspaper, not people with children of the same age or bearing some physical resemblance to the victim, not people of the same racial or social grouping as the victim, but the victim and only the victim. Milly Dowler was the victim and only Milly Dowler was the victim, desperately distressing though her death was to her parents they were not the victim, Milly Dowler was the only victim in the murder of Milly Dowler.

Justice in the case of the murder of Milly Dowler could be delivered only by convicting her murderer of murder and having him sentenced according to current sentencing laws. That is an exercise between the State and the accused. It is absolutely not an exercise between the victim's family and the accused.

Far too often I read or hear references to a criminal trial bringing justice for the victim or the victim's family, that is utter nonsense. It will, no doubt, give them a degree of comfort that someone has been convicted; frankly they would receive the same degree of comfort whether the person convicted was the murderer or someone who was completely innocent. The administration of criminal justice is exercised by the State on behalf of the general populace and is intended to reach a true result whether or not the victim or victim's family is happy with the outcome. I say again, in serious cases the victim and/or victim's family often wants someone convicted, anyone, and they have no interest in whether the convicted person is guilty of the offence. The system of justice is designed, albeit not perfectly, to convict only those proved clearly to be guilty. If that means a family continues to mourn a murdered person and never discovers who committed the heinous crime, so be it.

The system must be unemotional and impersonal. The system must acquit anyone it cannot prove to be guilty. He or she might be guilty in fact but if we, as a general society, are to impose a penalty we would not volunteer for ourselves we must do so for good reason. A crime committed against a famous or popular person deserves no greater investigation and no lower standard of proof than one committed against a homeless crack addict with no family or friends to wail in public. Each requires the over-weaning powers of the State to result in a penalty against an individual only if the State can prove that a penalty is justified.

It is inevitable that some very serious crimes are never solved. No matter how thorough the police investigation, nothing can happen unless it turns-up evidence of sufficient weight to justify prosecuting a suspect. And even when the Crown Prosecution Service believes it has enough to justify a prosecution, that will only be enough to justify a conviction once a trial has been conducted, the defendant's lawyers have challenged the prosecution case as well as they can and a jury has returned a verdict of guilty. Unsolved cases involved victims and family of victims just as much as solved cases.

Criminal justice is about the defendant not the victim or the victim's family. There is no such thing as justice for the victim or the victim's family because, by definition the victim has already undergone his or her trauma, sometimes fatal trauma, and his or her family have suffered their consequential trauma. All that is left is the chance of identifying, convicting and sentencing the perpetrator. The only question is whether there is sufficient evidence to satisfy a jury that they should say "guilty" rather than "not guilty".

Pandering to victims and, in particular, to consequential or vicarious victims is no way to administer justice. If we give them any special protection in court from the questioning that would be relevant of a non-victim / non-victim family member, we risk placing their peace of mind above justice. I know it it will sound harsh to those of a certain mind, but it must be said loud and clear - no victim and no victim's family is entitled to see someone convicted and given a penalty. Whether someone is convicted and given a penalty depends not on the feelings and desires of anyone, it depends on cold, hard proof of guilt to the strict standard that is imposed to ensure (so far as possible) that only the guilty face the serious penalties resulting from conviction for criminal offences.

In this field, as in so many, meaningless feel-good concepts have been developed by psychologists with too little to do. One such concept is that of "closure" ( I occasionally comment on a "bad word", this is one). I watch little television but I do enjoy quasi-documentary programmes about real crimes, especially murders, a lot of which feature on a channel called Crime and Investigation. Time and again there is a police officer spouting words he has learned but never analysed, he says "we are pleased to have given the family closure" or some such twaddle. Anyone with half a brain understands that the death of a loved one is something that lives with you for ever. That someone is convicted of killing the late lamented loved one gives a degree of comfort but the pain continues and will continue until the end of your life. "Closure" is a concept designed to make victims or their families feel good but it has nothing to do with justice.

Criminal justice is not personal, it is not something delivered to victims, it is wholly and utterly about the State imposing a penalty against those proved to have broken laws. It is, so far as the system can ensure, impartial, impersonal, unbiased, unbigoted and aimed at only the defendant. Any attempt to change these principles will result in more innocent people being convicted, that is not something I would welcome.