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Downfall and Giles Coren

Those of you who follow the Giles Coren controversy might want to catch up with the news:

Is the British electorate always right?

From my column this morning:

He [a friend] couldn't think of a single election since universal suffrage in 1928 where the voters had got the election wrong. And you know what? I think my friend has got a point.

The proposition is that in every contest in these last 80 years the party that was more fit to govern has been victorious. Sometimes both of the main offerings were weak and unappealing, often the winner wasn't much good, but always the winner was better able to conduct the business of government than was the loser.

Do you agree?

Fight Club: Richard Littlejohn vs. Polly Toynbee

From Libby's excellent column this morning:

Affluent lefties are an easy target: witness a recent glorious moment on Question Time. Polly Toynbee was soberly talking up green taxes and biofuels while the rightist rottweiler Richard Littlejohn cited the fuel and financial travails of ordinary people. Toynbee spoke disdainfully of his Daily Mail salary, as if that disqualified him from caring. Littlejohn shot straight back by asking whether she worries about poverty and the environment while flying to her private villa in Italy. The resulting facial expressions have been starring on YouTube ever since.

Here they are, for any Comment Central readers who have missed out.

Just in case...

Don't, for heaven's sake, miss this...

How much do you give? A new social norm

I don't normally post my column here but when you read this you'll see why I made an exception this time.

I want to introduce you to my plan. My latest wheeze. I am going to raise one billion pounds for charity. A year. Every year. For the rest of my life. Well, not exactly me, all by myself. That would take ages. I am going to do it with a mate.

And now I am going to tell you how.

Let's begin in Bridgend and the sad story of baffling teenage suicides. Can it really be true that these young people took their lives in order to imitate each other? Unbelievably, it could be. It is impossible to know exactly what motivated these particular individuals. Yet if these were copycat deaths it certainly wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened.

In his book The Copycat Effect, the suicide prevention expert Loren Coleman records numerous occasions over the past 300 years when the suicide of a prominent public figure has been followed by a bulge in the number of suicides. Coleman records, for instance, that there was a 12 per cent rise in suicides in the month after the death of Marilyn Monroe. And this was not followed by a matching decrease later. The total went up.

One other feature of this increase is particularly striking - the similarity of many of the deaths to Monroe's own. There were 197 suicides in that month in the US that corresponded closely to that of the film star. Here's the thing - mostly young blonde women.

This is the reason why in the internet age we might see more of this sort of behaviour. In the past, young people might imitate a celebrity suicide - Monroe or, say, Kurt Cobain - that they read about in the newspaper. That is because they relate to these public figures, feel they are just a little bit like them. But think how more powerful the impact might be when the death is of one of their peers, someone more like them. The internet allows peers to publish - it spreads information among members of the same social group. In these circumstances we are almost bound to see an increase in copycat behaviour.

Fortunately, people won't generally be copying each other's suicides. Much of the time we follow each other in small ways, and don't even realise we are doing it. In his interesting book Herd - a study of our behaviour as a group - Mark Earls notes the evolution of informal rules guiding where to

stand in the men's urinals. If a man is able to, for instance, he will always leave a one urinal space between himself and the next man. And he will stand one metre behind the stall while waiting to use them. Nobody has ever discussed this, we simply watch each other and do as others do.

The more we know about the behaviour of others, the more we are likely to follow it. A famous experiment conducted by the social psychologist Solomon Asch shows this clearly. Individually his subjects managed to answer a simple test question correctly. But when told that most others had given a different (and incorrect) answer more than one third of them changed their minds and copied the error.

It is always said that we love an underdog. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We love the favourite. We move over to be on the favourite's side as quickly as we can. Politicians are familiar with this. That's why they spend so much of their campaigning time saying that they are winning. The teams behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both tell journalists that they relish underdog status. But it's pretty impressive how much energy they devote to showing that they are really on top, now isn't it?

There are two implications of all of this for public policy. The first is to stop doing harm. What do you think happens when you announce that teens are all out on the street binge drinking? Asch gives you the answer. More binge drinking. You are normalising a behaviour you should be isolating.

What happens when you announce that there is an obesity epidemic and that everyone is getting fatter? That's right. People learn that if they put on weight they are far from alone. Jamie Oliver's school dinners television programme lambasted Turkey Twizzlers, making them infamous. Sales promptly rose by 32 per cent.

The idea that we need to understand social norms and stop doing harm formed the centrepiece of a recent speech by the Shadow Charities Minister, Greg Clark. And he is the mate with whom I intend to raise the billion pounds a year.

At a conference organised by the Centre for Policy Studies, Greg asked the audience how much they thought it appropriate to leave as a tip in a restaurant. Everyone had a view - answers ranged from 10 to 15 per cent. Leaving a tip in an eaterie to which we may never return is an odd thing to do really, but we all acknowledge the social norm and almost all abide by it, even when no one else is looking.

Then Greg asked this - what proportion of your salary should you give to charity? There was a confused silence. Nobody knew. There isn't a social norm.

Now estimates of how much we do give to charity vary. One survey suggests it is as low as 0.5 per cent on average. But the most widely accepted figure is that provided by the Charities Aid Foundation - 0.73 per cent. Greg provided the audience with the result of a simple calculation. If the average could be raised to 1 per cent it would bring £4 billion a year into the coffers of charities.

That would be far more useful to charities than anything that could be achieved through politics or changing the law.

So the idea, the wheeze, is this - to create a new social norm, in which people feel they should give at least 1 per cent of their income to charity. Even if it only partly succeeds, it could raise £1 billion a year at least.

This isn't about persuading people to give money in the usual way - through exhortation and so on. It is simply about spreading the idea from peer to peer that decent people, people like you, people in your circumstances, people you admire are all giving at least 1 per cent. And if you wondering how much you should be giving, that's roughly the right amount.

It could work, couldn't it?

What I say about What the Papers Say

My Times colleague and good friend Alice Miles has just been announced as the What the Papers Say columnist of the year.

And all of us on the Comment desk are thrilled.

Alice writes fabulous polemics laced with wit and insider analysis that somehow never loses sight of the outsider perspective.

She is a big star columnist now - and rightly so.

Here are just three of the many columns that won her the crown:

Chindamo stays – and I’m proud of it

What's in it for us middle classes, Gordon?

Natural birth! Hello? This is the 21st century

Phones for the future?

Michael Gove, softening his criticism with characteristically charming flattery, doesn't much like the Twofers.

Oh well.

Along the way he argues that the videophone is a technology that has passed by. I can't agree. I still doggedly maintain it's on its way.

And in my defence, I point out that the President of the United States and the Prime Minister employed the videophone to communicate just yesterday.

Something for the weekend

Peter Riddell notes this morning:

The Populus parliamentary panel of MPs in July showed that... well over four fifths of Labour and Lib Dem MPs were in favour of weekend rather than Thursday voting, but only a narrow majority of Tories.

Why on earth would anyone be against weekend voting?

The Daniel Finkelstein Bridge

A few months ago I told this story in The Times:

There is a bridge under construction spanning the Danube between Buda and Pest, and I think about it often, always with irritation. You see, it is going to be called the Megyeri Hid, just because it connects Káposztásmegyer and Békásmegye. But this name is an outrage, a fraud, a robbery. And before you walk away shrugging your shoulders, I must tell you that this fraud is about to be perpetrated on you.

In the summer Hungary’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Transport decided to hold a public vote on its website. The subject — what should the new bridge connecting Káposztásmegyer and Békásmegye be called?

Within days, fans of the US martial arts actor Chuck Norris had pushed his name to the top of the ballot. Now, Chuck Norris turned down a role in Karate Kid on a point of principle, so obviously he deserves to have a bridge named after him.

But, in the end, he didn’t win. The American satirist Stephen Colbert launched a campaign to have the structure named after him instead. And in a two-way fight with the Croatian-Hungarian national hero, Miklós Zrínyi, the comedian romped home. More people voted for him than the entire population of Hungary. The Stephen Colbert Hid it would be.

Oh no it wouldn’t. It was announced that Colbert had won but couldn’t have the bridge named after him unless he spoke fluent Hungarian and was deceased. The comedian felt unable to comply with the latter condition and the Hungarian Geographical Name Committee duly named the structure the Megyeri Hid.

And Dizzy was tempted to bother the Number 10 petition site with this:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to name the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge the Daniel Finkelstein Bridge.

The proposed bridge in the Thames Gateway connecting Beckton in the north with Thamesmead in the south should be named the "Daniel Finkelstein Bridge" after the eminent political commentator and columnist.

Sadly the petition failed. On account of having only 14 signatories. So no Daniel Finkelstein Bridge. Until now.

Last week I arrived at Beech Farm Cottages in Yorkshire for a week's holiday and in the playground my children found this:

Proprieter Rooney Massara, it turns out is a Comment Central reader.

It is a fine structure.

And, incidentally, Beech Farm Cottages were absolutely superb. I warmly recommend them to you.

The State doesn't kidnap children does it?

Well, yes it does.

We learnt in a news report today that a record number of children are being seized from their parents so that they can be adopted. It's not a surprise to me. Camilla Cavendish has devoted a number of columns to the scandalous behaviour and misdeeds of Britain's family courts. She wrote this recently:

Government figures show a significant jump in the number of babies being taken into care, from 1,600 in 1995 to 2,800 in 2005: a 75 per cent increase in ten years. While there has been an increase across all age groups, it is much, much greater for babies. More 10 to 15-year-olds are removed, but the rate of increase was only 21 per cent. One possible explanation is that the authorities are now monitoring pregnant women, especially teenagers and substance abusers. But there are also numerous examples of relatives being turned down by local authorities when they offer to take the children of a family member. Some of them may indeed be unsuitable. But the turning-down sometimes seems very peremptory. John Hemming, MP, who follows these issues closely, believes that "the (hard-to-place) children the targets were established to get adopted are not getting adopted; instead a completely new group of children are being taken into care, then adopted".

Looks like baby farming to me.

Robbie Millen

The Whyte stuff

If you enjoyed Jamie Whyte in The Times this morning (and if you didn't, it means you made the foolish mistake of failing to read it) you may want to get hold of more stuff by him.

In which case, I suggest you read his excellent book, Bad Thoughts.

A good example of the thrust of his thinking is this:

Type “I am entitled to my opinion” into a Google search and you will see that it is a standard riposte of the frustrated debater, on topics as diverse as politics, religion, music and football.

The idea that everyone is entitled to his opinion is one of those truisms so often repeated that it now goes without saying. Like many truisms, however, it is false.

His explanation is surprising and totally convincing.

Boris Johnson and the ChipOx club

Not long ago Stephen Pollard took sides in the great Boris debate and concluded:

I think he is a buffoon. I simply don't buy this idea that beneath the exterior lies a piercingly sharp interior.

Now being anti-Boris has become the latest cause of the ChipOx Club - the group of former Oxford students still furious about the posh person who covered them in shaving foam in the Trinity Quad in 1984, just outside the Mickelthwaite during Woosnam week.

The great Clive has joined in, as has Tim Hames (the Suslov of the movement).

Very well. A buffoon, you say.

Well, given that the guy went to Balliol on a scholarship, became President of the Union, built a successful career in national journalism, became an extremely popular newspaper columnist, became editor of the Spectator, was a wow in that job, achieved national name recognition and got elected to Parliament, I wish we could all be as big a buffoon as he.

Why smart people become suicide bombers

What worried many people in the wake of the recent attempted attacks in London and Glasgow, (including Alice Miles in this superb column) was that the alleged attackers were doctors. A tough point to come to terms with if, like me in the past, you argue that there’s a link between social deprivation and terrorism.

Tim Harford, the undercover economist, argues that we shouldn’t be surprised when the most audacious suicide bombings are carried out by highly educated people. For terrorist groups, it’s a matter of brutal efficiency:

All in all, the research that professor Krueger gathers together suggests that if there is a link between poverty, education, and terrorism, it is the opposite of the one popularly assumed. We should not be surprised to find that terrorists can add up, read, and even write prescriptions.

What is more surprising is that the attackers in London and Glasgow were so incompetent. Claude Berrebi and Harvard economist Efraim Benmelech studied —there's no nice way to put this — the human-resources policy of Palestinian terrorist groups. They found that older, better-educated terrorists secured more important suicide missions and killed more people. Having more than a high-school education doubles the chance of escaping capture, for example.

If the terrorists in this case do turn out to be the doctors and other professionals who are, as I write, suspected of the crime, it would demonstrate that even years of education and experience do not guarantee a successful attack. Blowing up innocent people is obviously harder than it looks, and for that we can all be grateful.

So intelligent, yes. But also out of their right minds.

Murad Ahmed

What have Quangos ever done for us?

Alice Miles' splendid dismissal of State of the Countryside 2007, an extended quango whine masquerading as an objective report, makes me wonder what is the point of the Commission for Rural Communities? If, heaven forbid, it was just abolished (saving us taxpayers, £7.6m a year) what would happen? No doubt hedges would stop growing in protest, combine-harvesters would rust away as farmers forgot what they were for, and Little Puddlington would accidentally become a megalopolis - I'm sure the CRC could back up this nightmare vision with one of its useful reports. Or more possibly nothing would happen, other than there would be no one around to give progress reports on the CRC's reports.

So here's a little quiz: which quangos could be abolished with no deleterious effects? Let's go for a big one: the Health and Safety Executive (budget: £228.6 million, staff: 3548). If it wasn't for the HSE would we all be limping around with missing limbs or swollen purple tongues? Doubt it. More likely if it ceased to exist we wouldn't have safety hand-rails up mountains or listen to ministers say conkers isn't actually a more lethal version of Russian roulette. Claims Direct and all the other personal injury lawyers/vultures whose advertising keeps daytime cable TV afloat, probably do more to ensure that wicked factory owners don't allow their workers to have hands ripped off by dangerous machines.

Of course, as any fool knows, the HSE's main purpose - other than telling us what it's doing (that's why it needs 58 press officers) - is to make sure that it sets up working parties to have strategy meetings about meeting the best practice as set down by other quangos about, let's say, employing disabled people or women. See here. While we're at it, the function of the Commission for Racial Equality, when it's not stopping race riots (personally, it's only knowing that Trevor Phillips is sitting in his office that stops me from attacking people with different pigmentation), is to monitor itself for signs of racism.  But who do you complain to if you're a CRE employee who's been the victim of workplace racial discrimination?

Okay, if you think that getting rid of the CRC and the HSE is a bit ambitious, this quango is ripe for mashing: The British Potato Council. Because the potato is such an unpopular vegetable, the BPC this Summer is campaigning to get us to eat potatoes. Oh yes.

Robbie Millen

The new hot debate in politics

The hot political debate of the next few years will concern what Blair adviser Matthew Taylor calls pro-social behaviour:

This is the need for a radical rethink about social change. Instead of a Government-centric model of change in which we assume our rulers should be given the blame for what goes wrong and the responsibility for making it right, we need a citizen-centric model in which we reinstate ourselves as the authors of our own collective destinies.

Or, as David Cameron calls it, social responsibility:

We've fallen into the dangerous trap of assuming that social progress is solely the responsibility of the state.

But social progress is not just a question of state control and government action.

It is a question of social responsibility - the attitudes, decisions and daily actions of every single person and every single organisation in society.

It's easy to regard this as a fairly soft area for policy making. But, if approached seriously, it isn't (as I argued not long ago in my Times column).

David Brooks gives a good example of the complexities in a piece for the New York Times (behind a subscription wall):

American schools are awash in moral instruction -- on sex, multiculturalism, environmental awareness and so on -- and basically none of it works. Sex ed doesn't change behavior. Birth control education doesn't produce measurable results. The fact is, schools are ineffectual when it comes to values education.

That's because all this is based on a false model of human nature. It's based on the idea that human beings are primarily deciders. If you pour them full of moral maxims, they will be more likely to decide properly when temptation arises.

We're not primarily deciders. We're primarily perceivers. The body receives huge amounts of information from the world, and what we primarily do is turn that data into a series of generalizations, stereotypes and theories that we can use to navigate our way through life. Once we've perceived a situation and construed it so that it fits one of the patterns we carry in our memory, we've pretty much rigged how we're going to react, even though we haven't consciously sat down to make a decision.

Construing is deciding.

Expect much debate about this sort of thing in the months to come. It's the emerging issue.

Darling's surprise attack on Blair

Anatole Kaletsky's column this morning describes the new Chancellor's interview with the Financial Times as a "genuine surprise" and an important one. He thinks it puts to rest the idea that Prime Minister is going to head off to the left.

So I thought I'd link to the full transcript of the encounter, which is now available online.

There is a spectacular attack on Tony Blair tucked away in the middle:

It is a pleasure that the Cabinet now is actually so much more businesslike today than what I’ve experienced for the last ten years.

Ouch.

Europe and the referendum question

A couple of days ago, in a post on Gordon Brown's decision not to hold a European referendum I concluded:

I've discovered in the past that issues are like films. William Goldman, the screenwriter once said of whether a movie would be a hit that "no one knows anything". So I suppose it is possible that the referendum issue won't go anywhere. It's also possible that Conservatives will look obsessive, chasing the issue again.

It's far more likely, I think, that it will be a big negative for Labour.

My esteemed colleague Peter Riddell reaches a different conclusion today. At the end of an admirable short survey of the issues involved he writes:

Mr Blair and Mr Brown believe that Mr Cameron is going through the motions, demanding a referendum to keep the sceptics happy but unlikely to carry on with a sustained, high-profile campaign.

This still leaves Mr Brown with awkward decisions of timing on when to push through the necessary legislation. My hunch is that, for all the public’s doubts, this treaty will not derail the Brown premiership.

I think that since the weekend the balance of probabilities has tilted in Peter's direction.

The Arctic Monkeys strategy

In her column this morning Mary Ann Sieghart notes that Gordon Brown's political strategy will follow the title of the first Arctic Monkeys album -  Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not:

Too Scottish? He blurs his burr. Too serious? He tries to smile. Anti-reform? He praises city academies and hospital autonomy. Too factional? He invites Jeremy Heywood, Tony Blair’s former principal private secretary, to join him in No 10. Too tribal? He coopts some Liberal Democrats into his government.

So what might be to come this week from Gordon Brown's Arctic Monkey' s strategy?

Here are some possibilities:

Andrew Adonis to stay an Education Minister. I should think that's a given.

Charles Clarke in the Cabinet. That's a given too.

John Hutton to stay. Yep.

Alan Milburn in the Cabinet. Bit more of a stretch, but possible.

Charlie Falconer? Stephen Byers? Frank Field? Whoever. Modernising names will turn up running committees and commissions.

Outreach to Blair and his advisers. Jobs or mere courtesies.

At least one big Tory name approached to do some Tsar-like stuff.

Announces referendum on Europe.

Lots more city academies.

Any more ideas anyone?

How best to respond to the Israel boycott

The fine piece by Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz on the Israel boycott in this morning's paper is even finer online.

We've produced a 3,500 word version of their oped which includes an excellent description of the circumstances in which an academic boycott could be justified.

But at the end of 3,500 words one is left with this question - how should one respond?

The boycott motions are the work of a handful of left activists. They are totally unrepresentative of their members and even their members aren't all that representative of their profession (at least in the NUJ's case). The motions won't actually do anything. So wouldn't the best thing be to ignore them?

No.

Tempting though it is just to yawn and turn the other way, the motions have to be fought. The boycotts are an attempt to anchor Israel in the minds of the public as similar to South Africa and an illegitimate state. Once this impression is allowed to take hold, the only argument one can have is how bad Israel is compared to South Africa, and the best one can hope for is to move it a little down the scale.

In other words the debate is lost before it begins.

The other day I interviewed the Leader of the Opposition David Cameron at a Conservative Friends of Israel lunch. "Are you a Zionist?" I asked him. It is a symbol of just how far we have come in this debate that his affirmative answer was considered brave and risky.

In Israel, some are considering retaliation. A boycott of a British touring party starring in the ABBA musical Mama Mia, for instance. Or putting a label on British goods reading "These goods come from a boycotting country".

This would be very foolish.

To treat every British person as if they were responsible for the boycott is deeply wrong. And dangerous. if you lump every British person together a solidarity with the boycotters might be created.

No, the only way forward is through careful argument and efficient organisation. A long slog, but the only alternative.

Getting it right on the BAE scandal

This morning Oliver Kamm got it right about BAE:

The SFO declared: “It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest.”

This rationalisation, and the Prime Minister’s vigorous defence of it, encapsulates the reasoning of the banana republic. There is a strictly pragmatic reason for insisting, as Theodore Roosevelt put it: “Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favour.” There is no agreed standard for judging the public interest apart from a system of rules, enshrined in statute and convention, that binds everyone – including government.

A system of rules makes policy more predictable, and thereby more efficient. It also makes a freer society, as citizens can live without fear of arbitrary authority.

Over on Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris Dillow explains why this is spot-on:

Now, in what circumstances could New Labour be right and Oliver... wrong?

It would a world in which the government had perfect foresight - so it could tell precisely when breaches of rules were welfare-enhancing.

This is another instance of that most important mistake - judging policy one incident at a time rather than trying to improve the average number of correct decisions.

The Great Moderation

Tony Blair's government has changed this country fundamentally. Mass immigration, gay rights, independence of the Bank of England, devolution, our interventionist foreign policy doctrine, an uncertain future for our relationship with the United States - Britain is very different as a result of this Prime Minister's tenure.

But is it right to assess Mr Blair by looking at what he changed? Perhaps his greatest achievement is what he didn't change.

It is often regarded as Mr Blair's failing that with such a large majority he altered so little. And I certainly concur that his reform, say, of public services was disappointing and that bureaucracy and regulation has grown due as much to sins of omission as to sins of commission.

Yet this failing has its good side, too. Tony Blair has been a moderate Prime Minister. He has presided over a period of stability. This morning Mary Ann Sieghart rather astutely compared him to Harold Macmillan.

Gerard Baker wrote a brilliant column earlier this year about the era we now live in. Forget Mr Blair's claims to have been a radical Prime minister. I think he will be forever associated with the Great Moderation.

Blunkett's wrong. Sarkozy is on the Right

David Blunkett had this to say this morning:

Those who see Nicolas Sarkozy as some kind of miniature Margaret Thatcher or a hardline right-winger, would be very wide of the mark.

His instincts are those of international capital but his understanding is, crucially, that globalisation means that France, like Britain, has to face the world as it really is. In other words he is a modernist, a pragmatist and, yes, a committed progressive.

No.

In his recent book, Testimony, Mr Sarkozy is very clear that he is on the Right and wishes to describe himself as on the Right. He goes so far as to take issue with his colleagues on the Right who shun the label.

Mr Sarkozy is a progressive if you think right-wing ideas are progressive. I do. It seems from his comments that Mr Blunkett does too. Mr Blunkett's statements about the French election are more eloquent about his own politics than about those of the new French President.

The economic case for an independent Scotland

Can an economic case be built for an independent Scotland? The BBC’s Economics editor Evan Davies says: yes, but it would be a big gamble.

Read his excellent post here. And while you're on the subject, it's also well worth reading Anatole Kaletsky's article from last week.

Murad Ahmed

What difference does "good" parenting make to kids? Not much

Magnus Linklater in his column this week referred to an article by Judith Rich Harris in Prospect magazine. She is a truly original thinker who in her books, The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike, has turned the prevailing wisdom about how children develop their personalities on its head.

Crudely put, she doesn't believe that parents, other than through the genes they endow their offspring with, have that much effect on their child's character and personality.

Whether the home is headed by one parent or two, whether the parents are happily married or constantly rowing, whether they believe in pushing their children to succeed or leaving them to find their own way in life, whether the home is filled with books or sports equipment, whether it is orderly or messy, a city flat or a farmhouse—the research shows, counterintuitively, that none of these things makes much difference. The child who grows up in the orderly, well-run home is, on average, no more conscientious as an adult than the one who grows up in the messy one. Or rather, he or she will be more conscientious only to the extent that this characteristic is inherited.

Her argument is compelling. It should cheer up parents that their ability to f*** up their children is pretty limited (the screwing up can be left to their peer group). Therapists wouldn't like it if her thesis became the prevailing wisdom; it's easy for them to coin money from saps who want to blame their own unhappiness and failings on Mum and Dad.

Robbie Millen   

Apathy rules OK?

I’m not voting. Why? I can’t be arsed.

I’ve made a conscious decision to be apathetic - a bit like keeping my hair unkempt on purpose. How yoof is that?

As I can’t be bothered to explain myself, I’ll let Alice Miles do the talking:

I find myself a bit jealous of the Scots and the French…. Differentiate between Labour and the SNP north of the Border? Easy. Scottish independence. Between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy? Of course: the Socialist and the rightwinger. And an 85 per cent turnout! We can only gasp in awe. Good for the French…

For the British, drifting into a potential two-year election campaign stuck in the ever-shrinking centre ground, our main parties dancing cautiously on pinheads, the sight of real politics is invigorating. It feels like you could breathe in Scotland and in France; debate serious issues, not whether a small percentage difference in a rise in GDP would “destroy the health service” or a twiddle to tax credits might shatter social progress.

As the main parties fight over the centre ground that I so comfortably straddle, and my vote effectively meaning less in my safe Labour constituency and ward, I’m happy in my complacency. Give me a choice, and I’ll give you a vote. In the meantime, I’ll check on the latest French and American opinion polls on elections that do matter. Or this addictively interactive site tracking the Scottish elections - it's ever so fancy. The Scots really care about this vote. I mean, 73 people have commented on the race for the Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale constituency. But then it is a four-way marginal - it'd be rude not to be excited.

Some might say, I should turn up and abstain. But would I really be sending a chilling message to my political masters? One American response to apathy is a bill trying to include another “choice” on the ballot that says: “I choose not to vote”. Who does that? You might as well vote for the Lib Dems. Same difference.

Murad Ahmed

From Columbine to Virginia Tech - the virus infecting America's susceptible young

One aspect of the Virginia Tech tragedy that makes me despair is the gruesome inevitability of it all. As Gerard Baker wrote in his superb piece on Tuesday:

It’s so familiar you could write the script yourself. Only the names change — Jonesboro, Columbine, Lancaster County and now Virginia Tech. And the numbers

Gerard believes, and it’s hard to disagree, that such slayings will keep happening again and again. But why? Maybe, Virginia Tech happened because the Lancaster County massacre happened before that and the Columbine massacre before that.

In the The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell points to a situation in Micronesia in the 1970s and 1980s where the islands had the highest rate of teen suicide in the world – ten times higher than anywhere else on the planet. Gladwell traced this rise back to the first ever teen suicide in Micronesia, which became romanticised and repeated by the islands's susceptible young.

In a now spookily prophetic post, he says:

Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug, and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances. We like to use words like contagiousness and infectiousness just to apply to the medical realm. But I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you'll be convinced that behaviour can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or the measles can. In fact, I don't think you have to go to Micronesia to see this pattern in action. Isn't this the explanation for the current epidemic of teen smoking in this country? And what about the rash of mass shootings we're facing at the moment - from Columbine through the Atlanta stockbroker through the neo-Nazi in Los Angeles?

Even the deranged learn their behaviour from somewhere – in this case, from each other.

So how does America deal with this deadly virus? Will gun control laws help? Maybe. But not if the controls are as half-hearted as they are now. Currently in Virginia, if you’re over the age of 18 you can buy an Uzi or an AK-47 assault rifle if you pass a background check into your suitability to hold such arms. Surely wanting an Uzi or an AK-47 in the first place is a bad sign? Limiting your quota to one gun a month, as Virginia does currently, is merely playing lip-service to gun control.

As Magnus Linklater concludes in his piece today:

Banning the use or possession of weapons may be a useful palliative, but it is not the solution. Any government that wants to be seen to be taking action after a violent event can reach for legislation, but it is likely to discover that the social malaise that led to the violence is more deep-seated and intractable. There are strong arguments to suggest that American states such as Virginia should begin copying the reforms adopted by, for instance, California, which has tightened up its gun laws; and they must move against the glorification of the gun, which encourages not only the ownership but the use of arms.

In the end, however, that will not be enough. What is needed is a wholesale shift in the national culture — and that will take rather longer than an arms ban.

Murad Ahmed

UPDATE: Making sense of the senseless - Why did Virginia Tech happen?

Tales of the unexpected

A wonderful letter to The Times this morning following my sceptical article about psychics and clairvoyants:

Sir, Daniel Finkelstein’s article (Comment, April 11) reminded me of an accident I had when a car shunted into mine from behind.

When exchanging addresses, the lady who had caused the accident gave me her business card, which read: “Clairvoyant”.

MARK SCHUCK, London N12

But in Sweden...

Yesterday I put forward this idea:

We are in a new political age. Voters have stopped believing altogether. They don’t believe manifestos, they don’t believe speeches, they don’t believe statistics, they don’t believe policy initiatives, they don’t believe Budgets. Yet politicians continue to behave as if voters do.

The great innovation of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton was to replace the Thatcher-Reagan politics of “or” with the Third Way politics of “and” — uniting political ideas that were previously kept separate. Posing as the advocates of both tough crime policy and an anti-poverty strategy, for instance. It has been incredibly successful at the ballot box. But now a new tack is needed.

The politics of “but” needs a champion. In an era where politicians lack credibility, why not try something unthinkable? Why not try the whole truth? Why not try saying that a new policy has a cost, that a fresh law may not work, that a reform has some risks? Why not share all the advice, the upside and the downside?

Talking to a senior Tory adviser I learn that on the Cameron team's recent visit to Sweden, the victorious Moderate Party leadership urged a very similar approach. Leader John Fredrick Reinfeldt was careful to stress the costs of their welfare policies and advise that there was no money to spend.

I want to go further than this. But I am relieved to be able to point to an example of "but" politics in action and show that it is politically successful.

The horrors in Zimbabwe

Jan Raath, The Times' man in Zimbabwe, is extraordinarily brave in telling us what is happening in that benighted country. You might also want to check out this blog, This is Zimbabwe, a witness to the brutality and thuggery of the Mugabe regime.

A new name for Hames!

I am also calling closing time on the Tim Hames middle name ballot. The Times columnist will shortly change his name by deed poll to Timothy Cromwell Hames. Thank you to all those who took part.

Anchoring and the Iraq War

Anjana Ahuja has done a terrific job unpicking the row over the Lancet's claim that there have been 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, a shocking number.

The Lancet research has taken quite a battering. But this doesn't mean that it isn't important work.

Why? Anchoring.

Once a figure is established in the public mind, there is room for some adjustment. But not all that much. Gordon Brown relies on anchoring to make Tory criticisms of his budget seem risky and inappropriate.

If the Lancet's critics are right and part of the motivation for publication was political, then the job has been well done.

Margaret Thatcher's Flying Circus

In his splendid piece on political humour this morning, Ben Macintyre tells this story:

Mrs Thatcher made a virtue out of not getting the joke. In 1990, her speech-writers encouraged her to dismiss the new Liberal Democrat bird logo as a “dead parrot”. They showed her the Monty Python sketch. Twice. She never smiled, and at the end remarked: “Are you sure people will laugh?”

There is a sequel to this story. And I promise you that it is true.

Just before Mrs Thatcher was due to make her conference speech, she took a final look at the script. Once again she alighted on the dead parrot joke and a new concern occurred to her.

She turned to her political adviser John Whittingdale and said:

Monty Python - is he one of us?

Sensing that the whole section of the speech could unravel, John swiftly replied:

Yes, Prime Minister.

The scourge of private equity

Labour politicians are in a tizz about all those nasty private-equity capitalists making too much dosh acting like hard-faced, erm, capitalists. Anatole Kaletsky this morning explained how excessive regulation helps to explain the rise of private equity. And Wat Tyler explains why those Labour politicians who are complaining that private equity firms aren't paying enough tax should blame Gordon Brown. It's as if Labour has never learnt about the laws of unintended consequences.

Robbie Millen

Vote on a new middle name for Tim Hames

It is time.

Time to give Tim Hames a new middle name.

Mr Hames, obviously having ingested too much Tabasco and ink, is offering Comment Central readers the chance to pick a middle name for him by ballot.

From an extensive list, Tim has selected 3 names suggested by readers. Now you have the chance to vote on the final one.

So, the names to choose from are...

• Cromwell
• Ford
• Stevenson

Email us at commentcentral@thetimes.co.uk with your vote.

Traffic lights and speed cameras actually make roads less safe

How do we make our roads less congested and safer? Well, obviously, we can't leave motorists to their own devices. We need to impose order: lots of traffic lights and signs to guide us, and for those naughty motorists who break the rules, cameras to catch them at their four-wheeled misdemeanours.

Well, that's a load of tosh.

Martin Cassini argued this week that traffic lights - and all the other sort of traffic controls - have the opposite effect. Traffic lights cause congestion and make the roads more difficult to use.

But surely all those speed cameras make the roads safer. I doubt it. Today's Times reports that we have a growing "motoring underclass"; there are now nearly 2.2 million owners out there who don't pay vehicle excise duty (or in the majority of cases buy car insurance). These drivers join this unruly underclass to evade the burgeoning numbers of congestion charges, parking fines, and, yes, you've guessed it, speeding fines. And because these drivers know that it is unlikely they will be caught breaking the laws of the road, they take more risks. So installing more speed cameras make the roads less safe.

Fewer controls and less surveillance means more smoothly-functioning order, and more controls and surveillance just breeds anarchy and idiocy. it's simple, isn't it?

And while I'm on the topic of speed cameras, this will make you snigger.  How do you protect speed cameras from being vandalised? Well, you stick up some security cameras. Doh. 

Robbie Millen

Michael Gove on the new anti-Islamist intelligentsia

The great Michael Gove has been lecturing about the new anti-Islamist intelligentsia and the Spectator provides an extract.

I agree with much that he has to say. He is right that there are some true heroes - Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens, David Aaronovitch and so on.

But I