Quotes of the day...

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"One young person told us that ‘gang rape’ was a usual part of growing up in the area of Rotherham in which she lived."

"...fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene."

"One child who was being prepared to give evidence received a text saying the perpetrator had her younger sister and the choice of what happened next was up to her. She withdrew her statements."

"Within just a few months, Child B and her family were living in fear of their lives. The windows in their house were put in. She and her family received threats that she would be forced into prostitution."

"The social worker’s assessment was that Child C’s mother was not able to accept her growing up. In fact, she was displaying what are now known to be classic indicators of child sexual exploitation from the age of 11. By the age of 13, she was at risk from violent perpetrators, associating with other victims of sexual exploitation, misusing drugs, and at high risk."

 "An initial assessment accurately described the risks to Child D but appeared to blame her for ‘placing herself at risk of sexual exploitation and danger’."

"Notes from the children’s unit files at the time suggest there was a level of chaos surrounding the care of Child E and other children in the unit, with staff powerless as older children in the residential units introduced younger and more vulnerable children like Child E to predatory adult males who were targeting children’s homes."

"Her father provided Risky Business with all the information he had been able to obtain about the details of how and where his daughter had been exploited and abused, and who the perpetrators were...Three months later, the social care manager recorded on the file that Child H had been assessed as at no risk of sexual exploitation, and the case was closed."

"Time and again we read in the files and other documents of children being violently raped, beaten, forced to perform sex acts in taxis and cars when they were being trafficked between towns, and serially abused by large numbers of men. Many children repeatedly self-harmed and some became suicidal. They suffered family breakdown and some became homeless. Several years after they had been abused, a disproportionate number were victims of domestic violence, had developed long-standing drug and alcohol addiction, and had parenting difficulties with their own children, resulting in child protection/children in need interventions. Some suffered post-traumatic stress and other emotional and psychological problems, often undiagnosed and untreated. Some experienced mental health problems."

Most of the men who did this to these young girls are still walking the streets of Rotherham. Or rather crawling along in their cars looking for a new batch of girls to ply with drink and drugs before raping them with their mates. A civilized country?

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A major advance in human civilization...

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Hidden away beneath all the Mandela hagiography is this:

A BAKERY have come up with crust the job to beat the late-night munchies – a 24-hour hot pie vending machine.

Fisher & Donaldson, of St Andrews, have fitted the delicacy dispenser in the doorway of an empty shop next to them in the town centre.

It is proving to be a roaring success with revellers – and sold out of its products on its first night.

As well as hot pies, the machine sells sausage rolls and sweet treats such as fudge doughnuts, rhubarb pies and apple tarts.

Punters can choose from 15 options at the machine, with prices ranging from £1 to £2.

This is unquestionably a signifiant advance in human civilization - although there's always a nannying fussbucket to moan:

...one politician branded it “totally inappropriate”. Brian Thomson, Labour councillor for St Andrews, said: “I’m very surprised to see it located in such a prominent location. I’ve raised the matter with the council’s planners.”

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Perhaps we should make higher rates of tax voluntary?

Yesterday evening I made – via the wondrous medium of Twitter – an observation about tax. It was simply that, if someone had a choice between two tax environments – high tax and low tax, then they’d opt for lower tax.

Of course, it’s not a simple as all that – living in the glorious South Pennines may indeed be sufficient of an incentive to pay higher taxes. The set of choices – ‘choice architecture’ I believe the boffins call it – do not exclude remaining in a place where there are higher taxes.

However, the real lessons in all this are firstly that there remain many people who at least claim to be fans of progressive taxation and argue that they’ll joyfully hand over most of their income to the benevolent state – it is as one remarked “the price we pay for living in a civilised society.”

And this is fine – if somebody believes that it’s a spiffing idea for the government to have 75% of his earnings that who am I to stop them handing over this cash to the government? But these enthusiasts for progressive taxation don’t do this do they? We know they don’t because almost nobody  makes such payments to the British government (and I’m prepared to bet that the same applies in France, Germany and the USA – indeed more or less everywhere).

Instead people who want to pay more taxes – for whatever reason – choose instead to clamour for higher taxes on “the rich”. What these people want is for everybody to pay more – including those like me who think the government takes way too much off us in taxes (certainly for the service we get in return).

If these progressive folk are so keen on paying more nothing is stopping them from doing so. And if such people believe that giving more is about securing “social benefit” then consider some alternatives:

• You want money to be spent on caring for people? Rather than give it to the government, how about paying the nursing home fee for an elderly neighbour or providing someone to clean her house, bath her and help get her shopping?
• Perhaps you want your money to go to housing the homeless? Here’s a suggestion, rather than giving it to the government how about paying the rent yourself or – here’s a thought – putting the homeless person up in your spare bedroom
• Maybe you want lots of lovely arts stuff from your taxes? Just an idea, pay the money to your local gallery, sponsor a struggling artist or cough up for music lessons at your local school.

I could go on but you get the point. What these progressives are saying to us selfish Neanderthals is that we should be made to pay more in taxes because they want to pay more taxes. And what we get is a load of chittering about ‘civilization’ and ‘fairness’ – as if this is of any real consequence.

We live in a society where morality is defined – for some people – as being a fan of government. A culture where our duty to look out for our neighbour is sub-contracted to some state official meaning that we don’t have to do anything. Indeed, that state official actively dissuades us from such activity since it does him out of a secure, tax-funded living.

I am not a worse person than you if I believe that government isn’t the solution to social problems. Indeed, as one reads through the history of government, we see that for much of its time that government acts in the interests of the governors rather than the governed. And those governors include the scribes, the bureaucrats and the administrators as well as the god emperors, kings, senators and prime ministers.

The point of the revolutions – if I might be a little bit Jacobin here – was to secure the end of this tyranny, to establish a world where the interests of the governed, as determined by the governed, were paramount. And, since those interests were not universal (my wants, needs and preferences are different from yours) such an establishment can only be achieved by granting sovereignty to the individual. And this means removing that sovereignty from those god emperors, kings, ministers and scribes.

There remains a role for collective action, for collaboration, cooperation and co-production. And this can be delivered through a ‘government’ (indeed is perhaps best organised in this manner). But this doesn’t give us the right to argue that we should remove money from Fred simply because there are 100 or us and only one Fred. Yet that is precisely the principle behind “progressive” taxation – not that it is more practical to take money in this way but that it is somehow more moral to do so.

It would be a delight if, rather than coercing higher rates of tax from people, we make those higher rates voluntary. We can then apply the arguments – “fairness”, “civilisation”, “social value” and so forth – to persuading people to sign up to that higher tax rate. And it would finally call out the “progressives” – put up or shut up we might say.  And – forgive me for my cynicism – I’d bet that a fair few of those currently heaping coals of fire on the heads of us sinners would be found wanting in the taxpaying stakes!

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Fabrice Muamba: a reminder of why we grant asylum...

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Quite rightly the airwaves, blogs, newspapers and twittersphere is filled with the terrible news of Fabrice Muamba's on-pitch heart attack. Like everyone else I hope he pulls through, just as Mervyn Davies - who died yesterday - did after his on-pitch brain haemorrhage in 1976 playing for Swansea against Pontypridd.

Reading Muamba's story brought out another aspect of his life, something other than that he was a successful premier league football player living in Cheshire and playing for Bolton Wanderers. Muamba was only here and playing football because Britain gave his parents political asylum.

...the only reason Muamba was in England is because his father, Marcel, was a political refugee, granted indefinite leave on the basis that his life would be in danger if he were made to return to Africa. Muamba talked of going to sleep at night amid the backdrop of gunfire. His uncle, Ilunga, was murdered. Friends and neighbours died, too. When it was safe, he and his friends would play football but, very often, they would be called back inside.

We give asylum because it is the right thing to do - forget about the fiddles and abuse, the false claims, the political football. We give asylum so youngsters like Fabrice Muamba can play football without being kidnapped or shot because their Dad's on the wrong side in politics or a civil war.  There are thousands of other stories - less high profile - that tell us the same thing, that we give sanctuary to those fleeing threats without fear or favour and give them the same chance we give our own people, our own children.

It's one of the things that make us a great nation and a great people.

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