Money is like water on a carpet

 Money is like water on a carpet. It gets everywhere, as long as people let it. For a long time money, in the form of profit seeking, was kept out of systems that were hard or impossible to run competitively. But since the 1980s, when monetary policy began to win the battle for top people’s hearts and minds, money has sneaked – or been openly invited in – to almost every sphere of public life. They would privatise the air you breathe, if they could (it has been suggested).

For a while I’ve been watching one of the more recent manifestations of this phenomenon, the fact that big money, I mean really huge, vast, global money has embedded itself into the UK children’s care sector (where forced competitive tendering was introduced in the 1980s). Many, many homes for deprived children or difficult children are now run by investment funds and the like. The dogma of privatisation has soaked right through into the responsibilities of local authorities, and money is being allowed to run riot. It shows in the number of children’s home rated poorly by Ofsted, and also in other figures:

June 28th 2022 Serious incidents more common in for-profit children’s homes in England: Privately run homes have more police callouts and staff complaints than council ones, data shows (Private providers say that is because they deal with more difficult children. I have no evidence as to whether that is true, but if they do then they should have better systems to cope with the difficulties.)

April 18th 2022 English councils pay £1m per child for places in private children’s homes: Private providers accused of making ‘obscene’ profits out of some of society’s most vulnerable children

March 10th 2022 UK has ‘sleepwalked’ into dysfunctional children’s social care market, says regulator: CMA finds local authorities are being forced to pay excessive fees for substandard privately run services

October 22nd 2021 Private children’s home providers charging councils too much, report says: Market in England is broken and failing too many children, says chair of independent review

Huge fees are now being paid by local authorities for poor standards of care in essential services. Why and how did we get to this point? Money does not care. That is one of the key issues with using the market to solve any social issue. Funds have invested in children’s homes because they see an opportunity for profit. They get a decent profit because they do nto care about the morality of charging hard pressed public authorities through the nose, and neither do they care about the outcome for the children they make themselves responsible for. This should not be surprising. The only responsibility of fund managers is to make a profit for their funds.

The only way to make funds do a good job of running a children’s home is to have contracts with penalise them heavily for getting things wrong, and a regulator that has and is prepared to use robust tools for enforcement. (There is one, and only one, effective way to regulate funds that run children’s home – by fining them heavily so that they lose the one thing they care about – profit.)

We are in this situation because, for forty years, those in charge of this country have worked on the unsupported assumptions that the market works better than other forms of provision, and that the market only needs to be lightly regulated in order to keep it efficient. Those assumptions have been made in other countries too, but in the UK we have raised it to an art form. There are examples in almost every sphere – sewage in our bathing water, with a regulator that is just beginning to wake up, having previously done hardly anything to ensure the investment that the firms promised they would make, or to prevent profit extraction from customers who have quite literally nowhere else to turn. (see Filth for a local example); crushing costs of energy, with an energy regulator that has done hardly anything to ensure the companies pass profits back to consumers rather than to shareholders and overpaid executives. Childcare is just a more extreme form of this behaviour.

The mantra that regulation is bad still holds sway. That is despite the disaster of 2008 which demonstrated with the utmost clarity what happens when you under regulate. Over regulation is indeed a bad idea; under regulation is just as bad. But that is still what we are told – markets work, entrepreneurs need to be free to make bold decisions, (global Britain ha ha) blah, blah, blah.

It might make sense to have commercial companies running some of our systems, like parts of the NHS under contract, but only under strict regulatory control. (And regulation actually costs money – a lot of it. One of the most fundamental misconceptions about the market mantra is that regulation can be done on the cheap.) But in some fields it makes no sense. Childcare is one of them, but we are still stuck with a system in which all the key decision makers maintain their cruelly compromised faith in the effectiveness of the market, and their fealty to money.

In my view there is a deep connection between the obeisance that has been paid to money since the 1980s and the current political crises working their way out in the UK and the USA. The overwhelming temper of market decisions is that money and the market must rule. No space is left for humanity, for caring about anything. Forty years of reducing caring about anything to second class status in any high level decision making has seen both the USA in 2016 and the UK in 2019 elect leaders who quite literally cared for nothing beside themselves. It didn’t have to be like this but the tendency was always there and the tendency in the end won.

Hunting with hounds

 Hunting with hounds is back in the news. In a short space of time we have seen video footage of Beaufort Hunt staff killing dogs and we have seen Mark Hankinson, a director of the Master of Foxhounds Association, convicted of conspiring to break the law in a deliberate and systematic fashion.

Leaving aside the law breaking for the moment, let us consider the arguments for and against hunting with hounds. The key argument is ethical. A lot of other stuff gets mentioned, but none stands up to scrutiny. One argument is that hunting creates jobs. It does but they are very expensive jobs. Keeping hounds - feeding them, housing them, ensuring their wellbeing costs a lot of money. Horses are even more expensive. If the money used to support hunting were spent in other ways it would create more jobs, not fewer.

Another is that hunting helps with pest control. The contribution of hunts to pest control was never more than 10%, I understand, and should now be less than that. When foxes and deer need to be controlled, it is done more efficiently and more humanely by shooters who know what they're doing. In addition to that, it is far from clear that hunts do actually contribute to pest control as there is uncontrovertible evidence that they protect foxes and their cubs during much of the year in order to make sure that there are plenty for them to chase in the hunting season.

It's traditional. Yes, it is. So was bear baiting before we banned it. So was dog fighting. So was cock fighting. The fact that something is traditional does not mean that we should keep it if it is harmful.

So the key argument is ethical. Is hunting with hounds an ethical thing to do? To answer this question we need to consider three others:

1) are civil liberties involved?

2) is cruelty to animals involved?

3) if the answer to both 1) and 2) is yes, which should outweigh the other?

The answer to the first question is yes. People should be free to do whatever they want provided their freedom does not impinge other people's freedom, or result in cruelty. If it were only a question of civil liberties, then my view of hunting would be the same as my view of Morris dancing: it's not for me, but if you want to dress up in silly clothes and make an exhibition of yourself all over the countryside, then I will not only defend your right to do that, I will celebrate it.

The answer to the second question is also yes. Confusion is sown here by hunters quite deliberately. The foxes enjoy the chase. Yeah, sure. They have a sporting chance of getting away. Yeah, right. Animals don't feel fear. Wrong, just wrong. Hunting with hounds has not been designed to be purposefully cruel, but cruelty is built in as a feature. The point is to have a great afternoon out jumping over hedges and seeing animals get bitten to death. It wouldn't be nearly so much fun if it were over quickly, so hunting packs have been bred for stamina rather than speed and strength. The fox or the deer is chased and chased and chased and chased until exhausted and cornered. That is not compassionate.

So the answer to questions 1 and 2 is yes in both cases. Which should prevail? I accept that views on this will differ; I respect the right of other people to come to a different conclusion to mine. But in my view there is only one ethical conclusion. People have many ways of enjoying themselves. Nobody's life will be constrained or badly affected if they are no longer able to hunt with hounds. If killing vermin matters to them, then they can learn to shoot. If jumping over things on their horses matters to them, they can still do that without having a fox or a deer to chase. If running with dogs matters to them, they can do that without having a frightened fox in front of them. There is no ethical or civil liberties reason that I can think of that justifies killing wild animals in this particularly cruel manner.

So my conclusion is quite simple. Hunting wild animals with packs of hounds should not be allowed. Some will criticise my conclusion on the grounds that it is not liberal. But it is liberal. Liberalism means that everyone should be free to do whatever they like. But it also says there is a limit to that freedom if it impinges on others' liberty. An ultraliberal might say that animals don't count. I believe they do, and, even if they don't, my argument remains that protection of the natural world is a right that I and every other human holds. My right to protect the natural world is infringed if you hunt animals with such cruelty.

Our current position is complicated by the passing of the Hunting Act of 2004. This outlawed the deliberate pursuit of animals with hounds, but allowed for trail hunting, and made exceptions to the pursuit of wild animals if it happened by accident in the pursuit of trail hunting. The Act has been widely and systematically flouted by hunts and they have not been properly pursued by the police even when evidence has been supplied in many, many cases. Should we now seek to have the Hunting Act applied forcefully, or should we seek to amend it?

Law depends on consent to some degree; laws work when those subject to them consent at least to the extent of obeying them, albeit unwillingly. It is clear that hunters have systematically, deliberately and purposefully flouted the law of the Hunting Act ever since it came into force. Not only that, but enforcement by rural police forces has been at most lacklustre in the face of case after case of evidence being given them by hunt monitors all over the country. Hunters' evasion of the law has been persistent for fifteen years, and enforcement has been lax for that length of time. Even the occasional successful prosecution has not dented the hunters' determination. We know, in fact, that they have been law breaking for much longer - laws about blocking up setts, sending dogs into tunnels and such, have been ignored for many, many years. They have also always treated their own hounds as expendable, which is not necessarily illegal, but they have gone to great lengths to hide the truth from the public at large, knowing that the public would view their treatment of their hounds as unacceptable. In other words, law breaking and secrecy are routine for hunters. They do not respect or abide by the law, and I do not foresee that they will any time in the future. Some things really do not change.

That being the case, in my view, hunters have forfeited the right to have their view heard. I take into account that there are many law abiding hunters; but there are far too many who have routinely broken the law for far too long. And the law abiding hunters, many of them, knew of the law breaking and did nothing about it. They are not innocent bystanders.

So in my view the response of the law should be uncompromising. The 2004 Hunting Act should be amended so that no form of hunting with packs of hounds should be lawful. The caveats and permissions of the Hunting Act should be removed so that the law is simpler and clearer. Penalties for breaking it should be severe, and it must be made absolutely clear to rural police forces that they must enforce it.

No, they didn't! (Evolution and purpose)

 I've been dismayed over and over again at the way evolution is routinely misrepresented by people who ought to know better.

So I decided to keep a log of instances where I see it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

29th March 2023 Here's the New Scientist, which really ought to know better. The headline is OK: "Our attempts to kill cockroaches forced them to evolve new sex moves" It's just on the edge of acceptable, but, you know, even the New Scientist needs clickbait.

But it's the subheader that just gets evolution wrong. "Some male cockroaches have adapted their mating strategy to succeed with females that have developed a distaste for the sugar used in both poisonous baits and gifts from males"  This just didn't happen. No male cockroach had a think and decided to change his mating technique. What happened was that the ones that happened (via the random variation of evolution) to have a more varied mating game survived better than those that didn't.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

10th Sept 2021 from the BBC. This might not be an actual contender. I have not found more details than are available on this page about this year's IG Nobel prizes. But the way it is phrased is just plain wrong. 

"Peace Prize: Ethan Beseris and colleagues, for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face." Bushy beards may have spread, pardon the pun, because men who had them survived being punched better than those who didn't. But the beards did not strategically evolve themselves However, humans, of course, are capable of agency, so it might be that some deliberately chose to cultivate their beards as a defence mechanism. Hard to say how humans might have made their beards bushier than they naturally were, though, so it sounds a bit suspect to me. And in any case, why didn't women evolve bushy beards - presumably they got punched in the face just as much.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

First up: the Guardian's science correspondent Natalie Grover. 27th Aug 2021 "Female hummingbirds look like males to avoid attacks, study suggests". No, there is no intention in evolution. Female hummingbirds who look like males turned out to have an evolutionary advantage - more of them survived because they were attacked less.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

No #2: Simon Barnes in Tortoise 26th Aug 2021 "Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow". He states: "the growing bit – the place at which the cells divide and growth can take place, technically the meristem – is not at the tip, as it is in most plants. It’s near the bottom.

"That may not sound all that exciting, but it’s central to the way life on land operates. It means you can eat grass without killing it. You can munch away at it, but it keeps coming back for more. This strategy evolved as a defence against grazing animals: the plants get eaten but they go on growing."

The key bit is "This strategy evolved as a defence against grazing animals". No, grass does not have strategies; it cannot think its way to a defence. Grass whose meristem was closer to the bottom happened to survive better when munched than that with its meristem near the tip, so bottom meristemmed grass spread and top meristemmed grass didn't. Grass does not have intentions.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

Dave

Dave, my brother-in-law, has just died after living with Parkinson's for several decades. What follows below is not the whole story of Dave by any means, just the bits I remember best. (We're remembering him by suggesting donations to Parkinson's UK.)

I’ve known him for more than fifty years. It was a bit of a surprise when I worked that out; I hadn’t realised that I was so old. I was about 18 when he married my sister, the first occasion I’d ever been to in proper formal dress. My parents insisted on that sort of thing.

He was doing a PhD which our dad teased him about; our dad teased everyone about everything. Dave took it in good spirit; I wish I’d learned from him. But then he didn’t have to live with the old bugger.*

Once Dave had finished his PhD, he got a job at Portsmouth Poly as it was back then – I told you it was a long time ago – teaching maths and stats. Dave did everything with enthusiasm. I’ve worked with a few statisticians in my time. I’ve never known anyone get as enthusiastic about stats as him. He was equally enthusiastic as a teacher, and I am sure there are many hundreds of students who have reason to be grateful to him. He developed a lot of research projects in his time as well, and moved into the field of statistical modelling of chemical reactions. If you have any idea what than means, please let me know. Actually there is somebody in the family who does, his son, Ben, who inherited Dave’s way with numbers. Ben saw the light, however, and moved into an entirely different field when it came to making a living.

The Parkinson's was with him for several decades. It was a few years before it was properly diagnosed and he was able to get the appropriate treatment. He lived with it for many, many years. He had a life and he lived it well. He continued for many years to cycle into college. He went on working, researching, teaching, contributing and enjoying his food. He dabbled in many things. Well, when I say dabbled, he put a lot into it – a railway line in the garden, astronomy – proper astronomy with a telescope on wheels, sailing, a human mix of joy in nature with scientific precision. And the curiosity of the researcher never went away. After retirement and with his Parkinson's well advanced, he got interested in a problem somebody told him about to do with yachts, keels and sailing positions. There must be a mathematical model for this, he thought, and began to examine the problem with a computer programme. I never heard whether he solved it, but for him I don’t think solving it was ever the main motive. He just liked messing around with things and with numbers and seeing what they would do together.

He was always good for a chat, liberally sprinkled with dad jokes. We didn’t agree about everything. He supported Chelsea. I mean….

He also continued with his life the way he always had done, not letting the Parkinson's get in the way of that. There were meals out and holidays, even cruises. I would get pictures from time to time which I might have thought were designed to make me jealous if there was an ounce of malice in either Dave or Julia. Nearly every picture we have of him involves a sun hat. He would cook; and when I say cook, I mean cook, not just opening tins, but starting from scratch. I remember him, with a considerable tremble, cooking butternut squash soup, then sashaying across the kitchen with a pan full of boiling soup, everyone else diving for cover, and Dave filling the bowls from the pan without spilling a drop.

One of the treatments offered in later years was brain implants, which involved the head being screwed into a vice and then holes drilled in the skull to insert electrodes. The patient has to stay awake during the operation so that at the crucial time they can tell the surgeon what they feel when the electrodes are wiggled around. The patient is required to keep talking to the surgical team throughout so that they can tell he’s still OK. This was a situation tailor made for Dave, an opportunity to tell Dad jokes for four hours without anyone begging him to stop.** The operation worked, though not as well as it might have done. Moving on from it involved kicking rolled up socks around the house. I have no idea why, but Dave took to it with some gusto.

I was last able to see Dave a good couple of years ago. He was communicating then very slowly with an alphabet sheet, but with his mind fully sharp, and able to absorb and engage.

Covid changed the world for everybody, but particularly for people with any kind of disability or chronic condition. And their carers. With Dave worsening, Julia had to look after him largely unsupported, and with her own bodily issues, for many months. She had to do all the cooking and housework, see to his medication, pick him up when he fell, communicate with him with painful slowness whenever necessary. It was a very dispiriting and undeserved end period for a life lived with such verve. The final decline was mercifully brief, and a shock to all of us. We’d known for a long time that it was coming, but after living with Parkinson's and a gradually worsening body for thirty years, Dave seemed indestructible. He wasn’t, but our memories of him will be.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

*My sister reminds me, quite rightly, that Dad was actually liked by a lot of people, and that Dave and he got on very well. My relationship with him was not typical.

**A Dave joke

An American tourist eats at an Italian restaurant one day.  He tells the waiter, “I want a steak. Done just right. Not too well done. Not too rare. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “There’s a bigga Americana tourista. He wantsa a steak. Done notta too well, notta too rare, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef says, “OK, He can havea da steak, notta too well done, notta too rare, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The steak is delivered. The tourist wants vegetables. “Not too mushy, not too crunchy. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “Tha bigga Americana tourista wantsa vegetables. Notta too mushy, notta too crunchy, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef says, “OK, He can havea da vegetables. Notta too mushy, notta too crunchy, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The vegetables are delivered. The tourist asks for roast potatoes. “Not too soft, not too hard. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “Tha bigga Americana tourista wantsa roast potatoes. Notta too soft, notta too hard, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef says, “OK, He can havea da roast potatoes. Notta too soft, notta too hard, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The roast potatoes are delivered to the table. The tourist says, “OK, I’d like some gravy. Not too thick, not too thin. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “Tha bigga Americana tourista wantsa gravy. Notta too thick, notta too thin, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef finally loses patience. “You tella da big American tourist. He canna kissa my ass. Not onna da left cheek, not onna da right cheek, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

You don’t know ME

Today is ME Awareness Day. Many people have heard of ME, but the chances are that, unless you have ME, or are a carer for a person with ME (PWME), you do not really know it for the brutal debilitating effect it has. It wastes people’s bodies, fogs their minds and it can crush their spirits.

You might not really know ME because it is very difficult to diagnose. Often people with other fatigue conditions may be lumped in as ME patients. The key criterion for ME, in my opinion (other opinions are available) is Post Exertional Malaise (PEM). In other words you have only a certain limited amount of energy. If you go beyond that, you suffer PEM, which is not just taking a bit longer to recover, it is a crash that can last for weeks or more.

You might not really know ME because you do not understand what it actually does. Making it synonymous with “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” is one of the worst misnomers ever. It is not just feeling a bit tired, it is not just feeling exhausted. Think of the worst flu you’ve ever had. Now think about feeling like that all the time. Think of constant stomach pain. Think of constant migraine. Think of headaches coming and going. Think of there never being an end in sight. Not everyone has these symptoms all the time; they are variable. But you never know when one is going to strike.

Another reason you might not really know ME is that you don’t see it. If people with ME are not stuck in bed (where you can’t see them) with their face fifty shades of ill, they might be sitting outside. And you don’t know that they can only walk ten yards. The illness is invisible, and PWME pay the same penalty as all the other people with invisible disabilities: people don’t believe they’re ill.

And you don’t really know ME if you think it is curable. It is not. Sometimes people get remission, which is fantastic for them. But many people never do, and all the cures that are touted as being 100% effective, well, they aren’t. Sometimes people get better after a “cure”. All the evidence suggests that it was random, or that they were one of those who had something other than ME in the first place. It also enables people to say that some cures have no side effects so it can’t hurt to try them. Wrong. One case among many: two sessions of acupuncture resulted in two weeks of deep illness. (And please don’t even think of saying, ah, that’s all the bad stuff coming out.)

The lack of robust scientific evidence for much of what happens in the ME world is a big problem, because it enables people to make all sorts of claims that cannot be challenged. If people claim something they really need to say what the evidence for it is rather than saying there is no evidence against it.

You really don’t know ME if you still think that the obvious things which work for other people work for people with ME. Just exercise your way out of it: recipe for disaster. What you think intuitively must work does not. It takes a good deal of attention to your own thinking process to accept that what seems like common sense to you just doesn’t work for people with ME. When they hit that wall that you cannot see, they crash, and there is no genuine way in which they can exercise their way past it.

Another reason you really don’t know ME is that nobody really knows ME (apart from those who have it). Scientific knowledge of ME is still in its very early stages. It is a complex and difficult condition to research. There is nowadays a great deal of work going on but it is like a giant jigsaw in which people are occasionally placing random pieces which don’t yet connect up in any meaningful way. There are many lines of research which look “promising”. No promise has yet borne fruit. It may well be that in ten years time, we will understand what causes ME and we will have cures for it. I have a hope, a desperate hope, that that is so. That will depend on scientists continuing to find more and more pieces of the jigsaw until patterns start to emerge, But we are only at the beginning of that process now. Going into detail about this is very difficult to do in a rational way. The research strands that are taking place are so disparate and disconnected at this stage that the simple way to summarise them is a list, a very long list. I will not do that here, but refer you for further information to Science for ME, which has a massive archive. 

Another reason that you don’t know ME may be that some people have a vested interest in not telling you the truth. This is contentious, and I will be clear here that I am giving you my opinion and that other opinions are available. But many very much better versed people than me share my opinion. Some people would have you believe that ME is a psychological condition and can be cured by strategies such as cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise. A subset of those people equate ME with false beliefs, and posit that people can be cured by changing their beliefs. This stems partly from what is called the biopsychosocial model of illness which originally attempted to combine biological, psychological and social environmental explanations of illness so that a holistic portrait of the subject could be constructed. It is not a very good model and, once it entered mainstream thinking, it suffered perversion from commercially vested interests. In other words it was used to emphasise the “psycho” bit so that the focus was put on the subject’s beliefs and thought patterns at the expense of both biological and environmental factors. This was too useful to insurance companies looking for ways to reduce their claims bills to be ignored. And to people like Iain Duncan Smith, looking to punish ill people for being ill.

ME is a perfect playground for the biopsychosocial model because so much about the illness cannot be proved. The most prominent example of this approach is the PACE trial of 2005-2010, a five million pound examination of the effectiveness of treatments such as CBT and graded exercise for PWME. The architects of the PACE trial were highly experienced, skilled academics and scientists with international reputations, or, as I prefer to call them, snake oil salesmen (they were mostly men). PACE’s purported results – that CBT and GE were effective - are still robustly defended by its champions. But their methods and their findings have been dismantled with varying degrees of elegance and destructiveness by statisticians, clinicians and other academics and practitioners from all over the world. The most comprehensive demolition has been by David Tuller: see his Virology blog. An account of the PACE trial and the controversies surrounding it can be found at Mepedia. I won’t go into detail here, but just to give a flavour of the quality of the trial and its amendments, it was possible to emerge from the trial in a worse condition than you went in, and still be deemed “cured” (not just “improved” but actually “cured”).

Why would people defend a trial with such obvious flaws? I cannot see inside the minds of those who do, but I suggest a combination of arrogance, defence of reputation, commercial interest in particular outcomes and professional closing of ranks.

(Note: I do not believe that CBT is useless. It can be an effective tool for managing the condition and getting the best one can out of life within the limits ME imposes. But it is not, and never will be, a cure. As long as powerful people tout it as a cure, it is very difficult to advocate its use for what it can be used for.)

More than that, so many professionals disbelieve it that they regularly investigate parents of children who have it for child abuse or neglect. I can only state in the strongest terms that that should not be.

In a nutshell, it is a condition that, whatever you see on the outside, ruins life for those who suffer from it. It causes pain and extreme lethargy. It is also limiting because of an extreme lack of energy combined with the possibility of post exertional malaise. There is not yet a clear scientific explanation, not even a reliable method of diagnosis, but there is much research going on. A condition misunderstood and disbelieved by ordinary healthy members of the public and, shamefully, by many clinicians and researchers. A condition that takes away people’s ability to live their lives, to follow their hobbies or their desires. A condition that leads to millions being missing from the everyday lives of their friends and peers, and missing in fact from their own lives. #millionsmissing

What should we do with the Palace of Westminster?

First published on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The Houses of Parliament currently function as the location in which Parliament expresses and exercises its sovereignty. It seems obvious that they no longer fit that function well: archaic logistics, terrible accessibility, lack of office and meeting space, and chambers designed perfectly for the cheap game show otherwise known as PMQs, but not for deliberation or wise governance.

Soon the buildings are to have a very expensive makeover during which time MPs and Lords will have to decamp. Perhaps we should make the decampment permanent. Build a site suitable to house the legislative body of a modern democracy.

Some argue that such a building should be outside London. That is a separate debate. But whether it is in London or not, it then leaves open the question of what we should do with the Palace of Westminster. My suggestion is that we should bear the cost of the refurbishment, and then turn them into the home of an Institute for Democracy.

One of the many lessons of Brexit, whichever way it goes, is that we desperately need a way of re-engaging the mass of citizens with the democratic process. People in every region and in every section of society feel, and are, disenfranchised. We can, and should, argue all we like for reform of the voting system and other formal and administrative tinkering, but it will take more than that to re-enfranchise many ordinary citizens.

An Institute for Democracy can have many functions and many forms. One of the possible forms is the holding of regular citizens’ assemblies, in which people from all over the country are randomly selected for invitation to an assembly which may last for several days, in which they learn about, discuss and debate one of the many issues about the way we are governed. Attendance at the assembly might be treated like jury duty, with the assemblees paid for their expenses and their time, and employers and others required to allow them to attend. The chambers of the two Houses can be retained for the purpose of holding plenary meetings of the assemblies.

This would be, in my mind, the main activity of the Institute, but I can envisage many others. It can hold seminars, conduct research, act as a library and a repository for material and data about democracy. It will still be a tourist attraction, and can also attract income from sponsors, sales and hosting events.

Given the catastrophic effect Brexit has had and is still having on our democratic processes, the Institute needs to be set up and to start to do its work well before the Palace is refurbished. It could start immediately, and hold assemblies in all of the different regions in whatever remains of the UK. I would hope that it would continue to do that, one of the biggest problems about the social and economic shape of
our country being the enormous weight attached to London and the south east. The Palace would form a magnificent centre piece for the Institute, but never its only home.

I suggest that this should become Liberal Democrat policy.

Glyndimandias

Seen near Glynde

Glyndimandias

I met a traveller from a Sussex land,
Who said—“Two vast and pointless trunks of stone
Stand by the road. . . . Near them, on the earth
Half sunk a ticket kiosk lies, whose shattered frown,
And wrinkled schedule, and lack of mirth,
Tell that its attendant well those coupons read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand Supreme that mocked them, and the Artwave that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Glyndymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Ticket Prices, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of those colossal Posts, boundless and bare
The lone and level downs stretch far away.

With apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley.