The 100 Years War- On Drugs.

Apparently it is the 100th anniversary of the War on Drugs, not the actual slogan coined in the 1960s, but the founding of the International Opium Commission.

The Economist argues that the effort has failed and that drugs should be legalised, I am inclined to agree with them. Thankfully it avoids the utopianism associated with many advocates of legalisation.

To argue that the benefits will outweigh the costs does not mean that there won't be serious problems associated with legalising narcotics. In particular it will make drug use less costly and therefore more widespread. The people who chose to outlaw drugs a century ago didn't do it for its own sake, they were addressing a real problem, that a large proportion of the population was addling their minds on dope.

The costs of legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol are the increased rates of disease among users, addiction and in the case of alcohol an increased rate of violence. It is likely that similar effects would be seen if cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin were legal.

Having said all that, the effects of banning them are a lot worse, most of the harm caused by legal drugs is done to the users themselves, whilst it would be regrettable if more cannabis users developed schizophrenia, they have done it to themselves, however the hundreds of thousands of people gunned down in Latin America by drug cartels didn't choose to be killed. Inner city communities throughout the Western world didn't choose to have their neighbourhoods controlled by drug gangs. The children of drug addicts who contract hepatitis or Aids didn't choose to do so.

One thing I should add though is that legalisation is not the same as decriminalisation, which is a halfway house policy that encompasses the worst aspects of legalisation and criminalisation.

Quote Of The Day.

From a Guardian editorial, the closest you can get to the official voice of the left:

The EU can ill afford the luxury of amateur voices, let alone of populist, Eurosceptic neoliberals like Mr Klaus.

They don't just think that Vaclav Klaus is mistaken, they think that allowing him to speak is a 'luxery'.

Is Deflation Here?

Although I've long thought that the government made a mistake* in using the Consumer Price Index to measure inflation, rather than the Retail Price Index which includes house prices I haven't actually been following the RPI. Anyway looking it up now, it appears that with the collapse in house prices we may already have deflation:


Maybe 'printing money', is something to be welcomed.


* I say a mistake, but it was politically convenient because it allowed the government to claim that it had conquered inflation, whilst simultaneously allowing all those home owning swing voters to benefit from rising house prices.

Vietnamese Drug Gangs.

In my previous post about incarceration rates for different nationaliities, the Vietnamese were at the top of the list, which was somewhat surprising, to me at least. In the comments 'NW London Cynic' points out that it is because of the involvement of Vietnamese gangs in running cannabis farms. Doing a google news search on "Vietnamese" & "Cannabis" seems to confirm that with citizens of the country being sentenced for running cannabis factories in Bradford, Reading, Croydon, Ely, Norwich, and Keighly:

This cannabis factory — found in an upmarket Keighley suburb — was among several operated by a trio of Vietnamese drug producers.

Hard to believe isn't it- there is such a thing as an upmarkey Keighly suburb!

Reverting To Type.

I was going to post something about the murders perpetrated by the provisional, continuity, I can't believe it's not the, Real IRA but other people have pretty much said what I was going to say.

Can we stop flattering them with the term 'dissidents' though? It gives the impression that they are some kind of Ulster Solzhenitsyn's bravely standing up to oppression.

It's a shame that over the last decade the government, media and ultimately the public have already shown that they are willing to reward terrorism in Northern Ireland.

Incarceration Rates By Nationality In The UK

Following on from the government's spat with the ONS's population figures. I have decided to compare the number of foreign citizens from each country in the UK with the number of foreign citizens in prison in England & Wales.

Figures for for the incarceration and nationality are here, these refer to December 2006 so I'll use the 2006 population figures to compare them to.

Before I start I should note a few limitations of my comparison:

• The population figures are from the UK, whereas the prison figures are limited to England & Wales. This isn't a huge problem- except for the UK figure- because more than 90% of foreigners come to England & Wales
  
• I've made no allowance for the different age structures of the populations, older groups will have lower crime rates than younger ones.
• I've made no allowance for the sex ratio which will be different for each country. The low Filipino ranking is probably partly due to the fact that the most common reason for coming to the UK from there is to work in the, largely female, nursing profession.
  
• It only refers to adult prison, so youth crime isn't accounted for.
• Some countries are part of drug smuggling routes, as smugglers enter the country purely to commit a crime they are unrepresentative of their nation's citizens as a whole.
• Countries with whom we exchange prisoners will be under represented.
  
• The population figures only list the 60 most common nationalities in the UK. Some nationalities outside that top 60 would be at least in the top 10 if they were included, such as DR Congo, Serbia & Netherlands Antilles.
  
• There may be errors in the data. For example according to the prison stats there are no Ukrainian prisoners in England & Wales, which is obviously wrong. Others may also be suspect.

Having said all that it isn't a useless comparison as big differences will reflect something real regardless of all the provisos. So here is the list with the figures representing prisoners per 100,000 citizens of that country resident in the UK:

1. Vietnam-3320
2. Jamaica- 2674
3. Nigeria- 1516
4. Albania- 1064
5. Romania- 829
6. Sierra Leonne- 871
7. Trinidad & Tobago- 777
8. Iraq- 756
9. Iran- 754
10. Colombia- 712
11. Russia- 616
12. Uganda- 607
13. Somalia- 573
14. Turkey- 502
15. Cyprus- 500
16. Pakistan- 414
17. Ghana- 404
18. Lithuania- 366
19. Kenya- 353
20. China- 341
21. Sri Lanka- 322
22. Netherlands- 296
23. Latvia- 261
24. Zimbabwe- 252
25. Libya- 250
    
26. Belgium- 229
27. Bangladesh- 201
28. Portugal- 198
29. Ireland- 195
30. Brazil- 187
31. Czech- 185
32. Hungary- 183
33. South Africa- 165
34. Zambia- 160
35. Germany- 151
36. Spain- 149
37. France- 139
38. UK- 124
    
39. Austria- 120
40. Italy- 115
41. Poland- 113
42. India- 105
43. USA- 83
44. Malaysia- 69
45. Greece- 69
46. Bulgaria- 64
47. Hong Kong- 60
48. Canada- 58
49. Sweden- 55
50. Denmark- 53
51. Norway- 50
52. Slovakia- 48
53. Philippines- 34
54. Korea- 33
55. Switzerland- 33
56. Australia- 28
57. Honduras- 21
58. New Zealand- 17
59. Finland- 14
60. Japan- 0
61. Ukraine- 0

The overall trends are harder to see, citizens from rich countries tend to be locked up less frequently than those from poor countries but there are major exceptions (India, Zambia, Bulgaria). The largest source of immigrants in the last few years- Poland- has a fairly low incarceration rate. Recently war torn countries seem to have fairly high rates.

Bargain

It's hard to turn down a bargain in the middle of a recession even if you don't really want it, so you can understand why this couple took advantage of the "buy one get one free" offer.

Cartoon Violence

High levels of violence in cartoons such as Scooby-Doo can make children more aggressive, researchers claimed yesterday.

They found that animated shows aimed at youngsters often have more brutality than programmes broadcast for general audiences.

It's true that cartoons can cause violence, just ask the Danes.

{via}

A Shameful Decision.

Britain is re-establishing links with Hezbollah and organisation whose leader as made it clear that he wishes to exterminate all Jews (not simply 'Zionists' although that would be despicable enough) , which includes many British citizens. An organisation that has carried out mass murder to accomplish this goal as far afield as Argentina.

Morally it is shameful to treat this organisation as anything other than pariahs, in some cases there may be a pragmatic reason to talk to bastards- say with Stalin during WW2- but Hezbollah isn't an all powerful organisation that we simply have to talk to. To open contacts with them is a choice and it is a shameful one.

Where Johnny Foreigner Is From.

Update: The ONS have actually published updated estimates for the population by country of origin here. I can't open zip folders right now, so if anyone wants to open it and see where the new immigration since the last census has come from. feel free to paste it into my comments.


Original Post:

In the comments to my previous it is pointed out that the government is claiming that the '1 in 9' statisitic is misleading because many of the foreign born are actually people born to British forces families stationed overseas.

This seems implausible to me. Here is a list of the top 25 countries of birth for residents of the UK according to the 2001 census (rounded to the nearest 1000):

Great Britain: 53,923,000
Ireland: 537,000
India: 468,000
Pakistan: 321,000
Germany: 266,000
USA: 158,000
Bangladesh: 154,000
Jamaica: 146,000
South Africa: 141,000
Kenya: 130,000
Australia: 108,000
Italy: 107,000
Hong Kong: 96,000
France: 96,000
Nigeria: 88,000
Cyprus: 78,000
Canada: 73,000
Sri Lanka: 68,000
Poland: 61,000
New Zealand: 58,000
Ghana: 56,000
Uganda: 55,000
Spain: 54,000
Turkey: 54,000
China: 51,000

Of those countries it is fair to say that a fairly large proportion of the German and Cypriot births are from British forces overseas, as may smaller proportions of those from Kenya, Hong Kong and Canada, but it is clear that they only make up a very small percentage of all those born overseas.

Mind you the raw statistics also show that a considerable number of those not born here are from other reasonably wealthy english speaking countries, some of which are cultural off shoots of Britain in the first place, which is probably worth emphasisising.

Labour Now Officially Pro-Ignorance.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has accused the Office for National Statistics of "playing politics" with population figures.

He said he was "appalled" at the release of figures showing one in nine British residents was born abroad.

Huh?

Surely the problem with the immigration debate is that it largely takes place in the absence of sufficient factual evidence to support the assertions of either side. If even a dry statistic like this- which doesn't really tell us much in terms of the costs and benefits of immigration - is considered too appalling to reveal then you have to wonder whether more controversial topics surrounding immigration can even be researched, let alone be made public so they can be considered when it comes to setting government policy.

{via Mark Wadsworth}

They've Found A Way To Make Cricket Exciting!

Apparently the attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Pakistan proves:

• The war on terror is a bad thing because it has destabilised Pakistan.
• Pushing Pakistan to restore democracy was a bad thing because it has weakened control of the country. (I heard this argument being put by someone or other on Newsnight last night)
  

Neither of these arguments are convincing, Pakistan found itself involved in the Afghanistan war because it had supported the Taliban in the 1990s, who in turn gave Al Qaeda a free hand to run terrorist training camps which ultimately resulted in the 9/11 attacks (not to mention dozens of other attacks prior to that). Pakistan's involvement with terrorism caused the war in Afghanistan not the other wat round.

Similarly it doesn't make much sense to blame the instability on the return of civilian rule (even if the Pakistani leader is a thief of epic proportions), seeing as these terrorists appear to have been trained in camps set up by the Pakistani army to train terrorists to attack India in Kashmir.

Ultimately Pakistan's problems are caused largely by the Pakistani army and intelligence services trying to meddle in its neighbouring countries.

Rubbish Escapologist.

Look I'm glad she didn't die but I hope she wasn't paid in advance for her services:

Clown Shortage

Sometimes it takes more effort not to make a quip than to take shots at the open goal:

Britain is suffering a shortage of home grown clowns

No comment.

Ed Balls: Genius.

Of school selection, Ed Balls says:

“I have sympathy with the view that a lottery system can feel arbitrary, random and hard to explain to children in years five and six who don’t know what’s going to happen and don’t know which children in their class they’re going to be going on to secondary school with,”

Yes Ed, the whole point of a lottery is that it is arbitrary and random. That is why it is a lottery. If it's hard to explain to chidren in years 5 and 6 that just shows how crap our schools really are.

Anyway there is a reason why there are waiting lists for the best state schools- because the supply is essentially fixed. If good schools could expand or spread out and poor ones close then demand could equal supply.

Insert Title Here

Tim Montgomerie has a post up about the Conservative Party's internet strategy, which includes this amusing fact:

Before Eric Pickles became Chairman £500,000 was spent by the Conservative Party on newspaper advertising to recruit online supporters!

Is the internet likely to be as prominent in the UK as it has been in the US political system? I doubt it because I don't think our political system really encourages popular participation in the political process. The parties want you to vote for them every 4 or 5 years and then shut up in the mean time. There is no sense that by getting involved in grassroots politics you can really influence the highly centralised political parties.

Quote Of The Day.

Letter from a Tory has a piece up on the government's explicitly racialised education policies, which is noteworthy given the chief inspector of schools' recent comments about the low educational accomplishments of white working class pupils, which is well worth reading:

Unknown to almost every voter, the ‘Standards Fund’ contains a huge sum of money that is given to local authorities through the ’Ethnic Minority Achievement’ grant. Notice that it is not called the ‘Underachievement’ grant or the ‘Supporting weaker pupils ‘grant - it’s labelled the ‘Ethnic Minority Achievement’ grant because not a single British child with white skin gets a penny from it. This grant is ring-fenced so that every local authority is forced to use it on non-white children, even if they have very high percentages of white children in their schools.

I have to admit I was somewhat surprised to realise how explicit the racial aspect of school funding was.

Junk Science & Political Ideology.

The search for the pathological conservative is one of the great missions among a certain part of academia. James Q Wilson comments on a certain aspect of it:

Another challenge is politicized assessment of the genetic evidence. Ever since 1950, when Theodor Adorno and his colleagues published The Authoritarian Personality, scholars have studied right-wing authoritarianism but neglected its counterpart on the left. In his study of identical twins reared apart, Bouchard concludes that right-wing authoritarianism is, to a large degree, inherited—but he says nothing about the Left. This omission is puzzling, since as Bouchard was studying twins at the University of Minnesota, he was regularly attacked by left-wing students outraged by the idea that any traits might be inherited. A few students even threatened to kill him. When I pointed this out to him, he suggested, in good humor, that I was a troublemaker.

Indeed.

In more 'pathological conservatives' news the New Scientist reports- "Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers". This is based on a study which find that some of the more conservative states (based on voting) have higher rates of porn channel subscription, using this logic you could conclude that blacks in the US are overwhelmingly Republican because the states with the highest proportion of African-Americans are overwhelmingly Republican (ie Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana etc).

Furthermore it isn't as if more detailed evidence on porn consumption and political preference isn't available and the evidence from the US shows that 32% of Democrats have watched a X-rated movie in the past year compared to 26% of Republicans (and this is before carrying out any correction for the sex of respondents) confirming that the biggest wankers are indeed on the left.

(via)