The Haldane Principle

Hello,

The Observer is reporting today that the Arts and Humanities Research Council will spend a 'significant amount' of its research budget on work into the 'Big Society'. The Government, its correspondent writes, has 'clarified' the Haldane Principle of 1918 which says that researchers should decide on research spending.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/27/academic-study-big-society).

Cue the outrage.

(See a number of entries when you type 'Haldane Principle clarification' into Google).

If this is true, then yes, it is outrageous. The amount that the AHRC has already been almost entirely slashed. To then refocus its priorities for political gain would be a fragrant abuse of Government's powers. However, matters are not as simple as the article first suggests.

For a start The Observer's case is quite hypocritical. This weekend they have also run a piece in their 'Review' section on the Anglo-German socialist intellectual Ernest Schumacher and the influence of his philosophies on the Coalition's 'Big Society' idea.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/27/schumacher-david-cameron-small-beautiful)

Even The Observer would admit therefore that there are quite strong philosophical routes to some of the main points that the Government is pursuing.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the initial article is not entirely accurate about the Haldane Principle. The idea that the Principle has been an inviolate part of British academic-scientific life since the 1910s is debatable at best. David Egerton, a British historian who concentrates on technocracy (the bureaucracy of technology), has argued that the Principle only really existed from the 1960s, as part of a Conservative attempt to upset Labour's 'White Heat of Technology' drive under Harold Wilson.

(http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-88.html).

Can I also refer you to the following:

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/science-technology/101220-Letter-from-David-Willetts-MP-Haldane.pdf

This is a letter from David Willets to Andrew Mitchell, chair of the Commons Science and Technologies Committee, dated 20th December 2010. In it Willets is responding to a previous letter from Mitchell, which admits that there is some ambiguity over existing Government policy. Willets argues that 'Ministers have a legitimate role' to play in the allocation of funding process. However:

'it is for the Councils to decide on specific projects and people to fund. In all of these decisions, Ministers should take account of advice from a wide variety of expert sources'.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2010-12-20a.138WS.0 is a written Hansard statement backing up the content of Willets' letter.

So what, you might ask. If a week is a long time in politics, four months must be an eternity. Well, this link is to a table of intended research spending the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) department put out last month:

http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/m/ministerial-statement-on-the-allocation-of-the-science-and-research-budget-201112-to-201415.pdf

I leave you to make your own judgement there (not least because I'm not very good with figures).

This meanwhile is a link to an article by Professor Peter Mandler, Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. Though critical of the new version of the Haldane Principle (with good reason for most of the cases he brings up), he notes that the Labour Party were not above 'bribing' Research Councils with extra funds

'if these bodies responded to the government agenda by themselves reserving some of their research funds for government priorities'.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150170942349951

As Professor Mandler argues, there are several reasons to be justifiably critical of the new proposals. Nevertheless I'd suggest that there's an argument to be made that in fact the new proposals are at the moment somewhat of an improvement on the older ones. They clarify the existing ambiguity between the Haldane and Excellence Principles, for instance, and move the Government's presence in this field onto a de facto footing.

There's a longer, and considerably more profound, argument that needs to be had about the relative balance of power between the bodies like the AHRC and central government. The one that The Observer is trying to spark off isn't it. It's taken me around an hour to research and write this blog post out in full, with nothing more than a laptop and a Google link as my resources. What appeared in the newspaper today is sensationalist, if for understandable reasons. We need to calm down, take a deep breath, and discuss what needs to be said with that sort of thing.

Defence #6: Tea and Unsympathy

Hello,

While I work out how to make those two posts on Gerry Adams into something worth reading, here's a very interesting article on Tea Party hostility to the US Defence Budget, and the subsequent disagreements within American Republicanism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/12/us-military-tea-party-movement

Adams and Northstead II: Just what is actually going on?

Hello again, 

[Ignore this for the moment. It'll be rewritten eventually as a piece on the British Constitution - David, 13th Feb 2011]

The Northern Irish blogger Slugger O'Toole has now suggested that it's illegal to appoint Adams as Steward against his will. He argues that the wording of the 1975 House of Commons Disqualification Act means that he cannot be appointed if he doesn't want the job. Namely:

'8.— (1) No person being a member of the House of Commons, or for the time being nominated as a candidate for election to that House, shall be required to accept any office or place by virtue of which he would be disqualified by this Act for membership of that House, or for membership of that House for the constituency for which he is sitting or is a candidate.'

So Adams is back to being an MP. Alex Massie meanwhile is arguing in The Spectator that in taking the Stewardship he could be disqualified from standing as an Irish MP. 

Article 40.2.2 of the Irish Constitution states that: 

'No title of nobility or of honour may be accepted by any citizen except with the prior approval of the Government.'

At which point I'm persuaded to go back to my thesis........ 

Sinn Fein and the 2011 Irish Election; a re-written post.

Hello,

This is a re-written version of a post I did earlier. Originally it was a briefly done, humorous piece. I thought it also raised an important point and so I wanted to re-do it properly.

Still though, anyone who gets bored easily by politics will probably want to skip this one.

Until recently Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, was the British MP for Belfast West. He resigned his post a few weeks ago in order to stand as a candidate in the forthcoming Irish Parliamentary elections.



At the last Irish General Election, the party lost one of its five seats in the Irish Parliament (the Dail). This time round though, things are different. Though The Economist was openly questioning its survival, in 2007 the long Irish economic boom that had transformed it into the 'Celtic Tiger' was still, just about, going.

How times change. Barely two years later (April 2009) the respected economist Paul Krugman wrote this article in the New York Times that the worst case scenario for the United States was that it could 'turn Irish'. Between December 2007 and May 2010 the unemployment rate in the Republic has trebled, according to the OECD.

Which is where Mr. Adams and his party come in. Witness this electoral broadcast:

Now admittedly the probable next Taioseach - Enda Kenney of the main opposition Fine Gael party - has publicly stated that he lead his party into coalition with Sinn Fein. However, in that report the Irish Times put Sinn Fein's poll ratings at 10%. Their political commentator, Deaglan De Breadun, has urged us to admit that Sinn Fein are not going away. 'It will be suprising' he wrote in an analysis piece on Friday 'if they don't make it to double-figures in this election'.

Why is any of this important? Firstly because SF are attempting, it seems, to make more of themselves than simply being the party of Irish unity. Secondly, because they have never stopped being the party of Irish unity. Witness this from their manifesto. 

Sinn Fein becoming a presence in the politics of Eire could have ramifications for a long time to come. 

Bankers' salaries #1; What to do about them

Hello,

Robert Peston, the BBC's Business Editor, offered us this interesting post last week in which he quoted Sir Philip Hampton (Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland) saying that:

"This explosive growth in financial services meant that thousands of people, arguably tens of thousands of people, are extraordinarily highly paid. The most peculiar thing about it all, actually, if you look at the last ten years of massive increases in pay is that the performance for shareholders has been pretty disastrous really across most banks. Some of them have gone out of business altogether and most banks have had a relatively poor performance for shareholders"

The BBC News report can be seen here.

Peston seems to be arguing that pay rates for members of the Financial Services industry have behaved broadly like pay rates for Premiership footballers. The outstanding members of the industry have earned that sort of levels of remuneration. However these levels of pay have subsequently been followed by the industry as a whole, meaning that many are now substantially overpaid given their relative performance.

How then can we encourage a culture of responsibility among the bankers? This would be worthwhile - we don't want to encourage a mentality of free and easy access to reserves of money among this class (ultimately). The problem comes in how to get one of the banks to take the first step. Why should you offer to pay your staff less when they can do the same work for a different bank and get the normal rate of pay?

Well here the Government may have to go back on its basic ideology and simply enforce a cap upon salaries at the banks it owns. In essence, introduce performance related pay to be decided upon in each case by an independent committee attached to each bank in which the state has a majority ownership.

On boundaries and making changes

I don't know whether or not you've ever seen knots flying along the banks of the Wash. I hadn't either until tonight's Countryfile. The knot is a type of bird (apparently), and as the tides come in so they 'take to the skies in search of food'. The end result looks like this:

On the TV it looks very much like those pictures of the schools of fish you see. The flight moves almost as one organism, reacting to the world around it even though you know that none of the birds within can be conscious of that fact. Instead, without realising what they're doing, each bird creates or has created for them their own boundaries. Within these they move and adjust - shaping and being shaped by the general whole. 

It's a jump, but not too large a one I like to think, between nature and society. After Countryfile, via some time spent with the Top Gear crowd, came Upstairs, Downstairs. In that show there was quite a pertinent line from the driver to the lady of the house's sister. 'There are rules Miss', he reminded her as she sought to flout them, 'And you have to obey them just like us'. 

Of course rules are sometimes there to be broken. The 20th century, at the very least, is ripe with those who sought to overturn unfair and unjust regulation for the common good. Yet one fact remains. We keep on, no matter what, constructing rules for ourselves. Naturally many of these are necessary. Views on why it is important change and are disputed, but all the same most societies hold fast to some sort of generalised edict against wilful private killing. I still think though that given the option most prefer conservatism to radicalism. 

Know your audience

Now you may look at that, compare it to the injustices you see in society still, and argue that we are still too judgemental, too prejudicial. 'Viva la Revolution!' - and all that jazz. Perhaps you're right. In many ways you may just be. We are too inclined to consider that once a major change is made then that's it. Women have the vote, and a legal right to equal pay chaps. All the major demands of the suffragettes have been met on paper. Let's pack up the equality bandwagon and cart it off round the back. If calls for 'equality' mean anything (and I'm not entirely sure what they do mean), then surely it is an ongoing process. Much like conversion to religious faith, converting society to a new position takes time, effort and does not stop with the signing of the forms. It is an ongoing process, one that needs constant change and development and may involve some backsliding from time to time. When it does, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try all over again.

I forget who originated the phrase 'going with the grain of society', but it's one that I like to remember when thinking about things like this. Society is in need of change constantly. If nothing else it keeps it alive - a culture that ossifies dies. Given my faith this is something of a hypocritical point, but I doubt the ability of people to enact sudden, lasting change in society though. Eventually as far as I can see something will snap back. Forces will rise that insist that we keep on the old, known path. 

One of the points that gets overlooked quite often to my mind is that Christ was an artisan. Well, probably did carpentry at some time. In truth we know nothing much of his life between when he preached in the Temple aged 7 and when he began his Ministry aged 30. As I understand it though the Greek tekton - which is how Joseph is described in the Bible - indisputable means some form of artisan or builder. It seems fair enough to me to assume that at some point during those 23 years, he either joined Joseph or observed him doing some work. This seems a fair metaphor for enacting change. 

The picture to the left here is of the new Reading Room at the British Museum. The columns you can

see behind it, if memory serves, are made from marble mined on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. The marble here would be our social change - taken from its original place and adjusted, through constant, hard work to take up a new and important role. Trying to enact social change should be something we strive for. Churchill apparently once said that 'What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?' (though I got that from Wikiquote, so it needs to be checked). There is a reason though, I think, why a maxim often attributed to him is still repeated: 'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain'. We all shape, and in turn are all shaped, by the society in which we live and work. That is unavoidable, even if one does take inspiration and refuge elsewhere too. Societies though are big, cumbersome things that often take time to shift and alter. They can wobble when 'hit' strongly, but tend too often I find to reset not long afterwards. Our temporary revolutionaries meanwhile find that they too are ultimately forced to fit within the mould. Sometimes they 'mature' in their faith, sometimes they find that they prefer power, and sometimes simple family circumstances force them to settle rather than overthrow. Lasting revolutions are rare, and too often bloody. 

Well this has been a long rant, and I'm in need of sleep. A summation? Alright - it is easy to be a revolutionary with a song in your heart, a chant on your lips and a slogan on your posters. Often such people are necessary, but to my mind a necessary evil. By this I don't mean that they themselves are 'evil'. Sometimes people do just need to openly, and firmly, buck the system - Rosa Parks, for instance, or Ghandi. If this blog post is a rallying cry for anything, it is for the long-term, quiet revolutionary who tries to change the world not with a gun or a rallying cry, but with a phone book and a pencil. 

To conclude, then, Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year - and an example. 

In 1963 John Profumo was a rising star within a dying Government. Secretary of State for War, he was married to an actress, independently wealthy, and big things were spoken of his future. Then he went and had an affair with Christine Keeler, a model and essentially a high-class prostitute. Affairs during this period were reasonably common. Dorothy MacMillan, the Prime Minister's wife, had had a long-standing affair with the Conservative backbencher Robert Boothby. Profumo though had a particular problem. Keeler had not just been seeing him during this period. She had also been having a relationship with Yevgeni Ivanov, the senior Soviet Military Intelligence officer in London. 

Being a naughty boy was one thing. Being a naughty boy and endangering national and international security quite another. Profumo resigned in disgrace, leaving both the Government and Parliament. He was 47 at the time. 

John Profumo is widely judged nowadays (he died in 2005) to have had a very good retirement. A few months after his resignation he arrived at Toynbee Hall, a charity in London's East End devoted to solving social problems. He worked initially as a volunteer cleaning toilets. He was there for the rest of his life; ending up as the Hall's chief fund-raiser. He almost never spoke of his work, and resolutely refused to publicise the fact that he had by 1990 been at Toynbee Hall for longer than he'd been in Parliament. 

John Profumo did not change the world, except vicariously and in ways that he'd never wanted. He did however work quietly and conscientiously to change a corner of it. You may argue that he did so to appease his conscience. I prefer to think that he realised his mistake, and sought in a small way to make a difference as a result. 

Politics, American and British

I offer you this article, from the BBC on Jon Stewart's 'Restore Sanity' rally in Washington D.C, this blog post on the declining and aging membership of the Conservative Party and this question: what are political parties for nowadays?

Electoral Fraud and the 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna

The blog 'Gates of Vienna' appears quite Islamophobic, naming itself after the furthest point that the Ottoman Empire reached in mainland Europe (the gates of the Austrian city of Vienna during the second siege of that city in 1683). Yet this article about voter fraud among the Muslim community is disturbingly well-argued. I don't wish to suggest that I believe such practices to be commonplace, but the voting system in this country does seem constructed in such a way to easily allow them.

PS: Technically 'Gates of Vienna' should be 'Battle of Tours' - the furthest an Islamic army got into Europe was at the Battle of Tours (in north-central France) in 732 where Franko-Burgundian forces defeated an army invading from Muslim Spain. That and the blog seems to overestimated the degree to which the Second Siege of Vienna was an organised attempt to topple the then admittedly quite weak Austrian Hungary. See this episode of the Radio 4 series 'In Our Time' (always worth a listen) for further information on that.

(N.B: Declaration of Interest - yes, Jeremy Black pops up on this show too. He's an expert in quite a few areas!)

Back from Cornwall, so here's a post on David Cameron

Which was lovely, refreshing and revitalising.

I'm in danger of repeating myself here, as this is a point I've pressed elsewhere. However I'm listening to The News Quiz while tidying my room and have just heard Sue Perkins describe David Cameron as a 'sweaty-faced Old Etonian'. I can't comment on his sweaty face (only to say that I don't imagine he's the only person to ever have sweated). I've never understood why 'Old Etonian' is such a negative point though. Here's a list of some Old Etonians, from the Eton College website:

Hugh Laurie (actor, comedian, star of House)      
Eton and Selwyn College, Cambridge

Damian Lewis (actor, star of Band of Brothers)  
Eton and Guildhall School of Speech and Drama

Dominic West (actor, star of The Wire)              
Eton and Trinity College, Dublin

George Orwell (writer, 1984 and others)              
Eton and the Imperial Indian Police service

John M. Keynes (economist)                          
Eton and King's College, Cambridge

Humphrey Lyttelton (musician, radio presenter)  
Eton

Hugh Dalton (Labour Chancellor, 1945-47)          
Eton, King's College, Cantab and LSE.

Now you can of course make the argument that Cameron has maintained his upper-class prejudices while those men I've just highlighted shed theirs where they existed. Certainly Humphrey Lyttelton proclaimed himself a 'romantic socialist' after the experience of working in a mine in Wales after he left school. While I was an admirer of Humph's though (and believe me a devoted Clue fan), I'm not sure what makes his political views better grounded than the P.M's. Humph spent his life as a cartoonist, musician and radio presenter, while Cameron has spent his as a political operative and PR consultant before becoming a full-time politician.

Disagree with David Cameron all you want, you are perfectly entitled to and should always be able to. To dismiss him as simply an 'Old Etonian' though is, in my humble opinion, simply lazy.

A Research Trip, and a recommendation

Hello again.

Edinburgh went well. I was there to look through material in the Haldane Papers at the National Library of Scotland. Richard Haldane was a lawyer, politician and prestigious (and prodigious when he had the opportunity) amateur philosopher who was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912, and whose reforms to the Army between 1905 and 1908 form an integral part of my doctoral thesis. There was plenty of material to look through. I'm hoping that without overdoing it, at least one set of letters I looked at can provide a supporting structure to my general hypothesis.

Back now for a week or so before I head off to Cornwall for a week's holiday. Not much blogging to be done (v. busy), but can I point anyone who reads this to the 'Archbishop Cranmer' blog. 'Cranmer', whose identity is a semi-open secret among some I'm told, blogs on politics, religion (from a strongly Christian perspective) and the intersection between the two. Nowadays in the increasingly secular society we live ('secular' in the American constitutional rather than atheistic sense), the intersection and interaction between those two topics is often downplayed if not agitated against. However it is an area worth thinking about. Christ was clear that there should be a division between civil government and faith organisation. Matthew 22:21 is possibly the clearest example here. It's an interesting, occasionally provocative blog, and I would encourage people to read it.

Bliar? Memory and a former premier

Would you have your peace process
negotiated by this man?

This morning the text of Tony Blair's prime ministerial memoir, A Journey, was released for general consumption. If you're interested, The Guardian have had a man reading it all day. A live blog of that can be found here: 


The release of the memoir is (among the) lead story on the BBC, Independent, Sun, Telegraph, ITN and Sky News websites, alongside the Guardian. The main stories are his semi-endorsement of the Coalition's economic policy and his finally disclosing his side of the 'TB-GB' relationship. 


To be fair these two are interesting. Blair appears to be distancing himself from the Labour Party as it wonders whether or not to continue with the 'New Labour' project (are there echoes of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister from 1894-5, here?). On a personal level the tone what I've seen so far is amiable - at one point he writes of how nervous PMQs made him feel, saying that he would prefer going through 'that scene in Marathon Man where the evil Nazi doctor played by Laurence Olivier drills through Dustin Hoffman's teeth'


However, can I point you towards Radio 4's Book of the Week? 


Chris Mullin is a former Labour MP and government minister. This week Radio 4 have been broadcasting an abridged version of the the third volume of his diaries (entitled Decline and Fall). It details the transition period between the Blair and Brown premierships, and Mullin's view of that time from his position as a relatively senior Labour backbencher. Blair appears as 'The Man'. He moves among the high political stratosphere, from carefully-planned event to carefully-planned event. 


Mullin's view may be somewhat skewered, so here's a more sympathetic account from the Labour MP Tom Harris: '...there are still many, many Labour Party members who remember Blair as an election-winning genius who, in office, was popular for an awful lot longer than he was unpopular. For those who want us to return to government sooner rather than later, Blair’s book will be a reminder that opposition doesn’t have to be permanent, and that great things can be accomplished by a Labour government, but only if we have a leader capable of appealing to voters beyond our own party’s core'. 


That may be true, but in the end it still outlines the major problem that many have with Blair. Who is the real Tony Blair? He is undoubtedly one, if not the, finest political operators of his generation, a man who led Labour through its first full second, into its first third, terms of office. When one spends one's days projecting a carefully thought out image to the world though, eventually the world begins to lose track of who the original man was. We have a situation approaching that outlined by Jean Baudrillard in his 'The Gulf War did not take place'. Was what we comprehended of Tony Blair a man, a series of images, or a combination of both?

Someone, I forget who, once commented that 'Politicians never lie, because the first people they always convince of anything are themselves'. To an extent that holds true for all people; I would humbly submit that none of us remembers our own pasts completely. Interlaced with any honesty there is the human tendency to romanticise our own histories to make ourselves appear 'better'. With all national leaders though, this tendency assumes the dimensions of a job requirement. Tony Blair is a fascinating man and a deeply influential Prime Minister. It will be up to other people to decide to what extent this memoir reflects truth though. We are still to close to him to see the truth for the image.

From the desk of the good people at Scans_Daily

Very Bad Reasons for doing things #2 - another post on defence (Defence #2)

I was watching Sharpe the other night. If you're unfamiliar with the TV series, it's adapted from the books by Bernard Cornwell and tells the story of a working-class man in the Napoleonic-era British Army who, through dint of his soldering skills, honour and trustworthiness, rises from the ranks to end up at the Battle of Waterloo as a Lieutenant-Colonel.

In this particular episode however Sharpe is attempting to secure his promotion to Captain by trying to get command of  the Forlorn Hope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_Hope) during the Siege of Badajoz. The problem he faces is that as an officer promoted from the ranks he is too senior to be one among the men but too 'common' to be one among the officers. As such he finds himself constantly having to gain new rank by using suicidal acts of bravery to stake his claim. Here Sharpe, recently demoted from being a brevet Captain back down to Lieutenant, has been shunted off from his beloved Light Company to become the Regimental Quartermaster.

Needless to say that Sharpe, a killer by instinct, is less than happy. At one point he strains a friendship with one of Lord Wellington's staff officers to try and get command of the Forlorn Hope, arguing that he is not suited to sending out 'lists' (which he makes it clear he considers a task beneath him). He is sharply reminded that lists are what the Army runs on.

Nowadays, thankfully, we have lost that class-based prejudice in the Army. The first man to rise from Private to Field Marshal did so in 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robertson). Today the British Army specifically encourages its Non-Commissioned Officers, where thought wise, to try and become officers.

Nor is there a prejudice against logistical work within the Army. For a start, Napoleon's maxim that an 'Army marches on its stomach' is well appreciated. The fighting power of an Army now is also very technologically based, while the end of the British Empire has not rid us of our desire to operate globally (though without now having the bases that used to support such operations).

One of the interesting things in studying turn of the last century politics is the similarities to modern politics. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal War Secretary Richard Haldane enacted a substantial series of Army reforms (the 'Haldane Reforms'). As it turns out, very few people could oversee the entirety of what he was doing because few MPs really knew much about the inner workings of the British Army. Plus ca change. In the modern age, where military operations are equally as if not more complicated, defence procurement has nevertheless taken the lead as the truly incomprehensible military topic of our times.I'm not saying that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea, for instance, what the Defence Industrial Strategy is* (http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1550). My point though is that to my mind the British public and its body politic are the modern equivalents of Lt. Richard Sharpe. True, we express genuine concern when we think of our soldiers and servicemen heading over to Afghanistan and Iraq without the proper kit and that our military is being 'overstretched'. Yet we're too often minded to think of the 'sharp end' of the British Army, without being reminded that a lot of careful, and tedious, work has to go in to making sure it is well supplied and well equipped. Unless more people, especially MPs and Lords, take an active long-term interest in the Armed Forces (above all else, in Defence Procurement), then we will continue being the 'Borrowers' that the US Armed Forces know us as.

* A few PSs

PS #1: What I didn't make clear in the above is that a lot of the increased cost of our military is due to the increasing reliance on technology, and to simple inflation ('defence inflation', I'm told, constantly runs over the normal level).

PS#2: While I'm not sure what the DIS is, I'd imagine that the words 'marginal constituency' are involved in some capacity.

Some brief thoughts on the Park51/Cordoba building situation

As I understand it, this building will serve as an Islamic community centre, include worship rooms. It is not at the Ground Zero site, but two blocks away - such was the force of the impact on 11th September that some parts of one of the planes managed to do serious damage to the building that day.

Under the auspices and spirit of the US Constitution, the owners of Park51 have full right to build a community centre on the site they have chosen, which can include as prominent and large an Islamic worship area as they like. Freedom of expression including religious expression is plainly allowed within the US Constitution. That goes for those supporting and those opposing the project. Let's face it too, I doubt whether or not real estate in Manhatten is that cheap. This is probably the best place they have available to build if they're going to.

There are some questions about the funding involved, but that is beyond my ability to comment upon. Apart from that the reasons for not putting a site including Islamic worship rooms on a site that close to Ground Zero are fairly similar to my not founding a British cultural centre on the Garvagh Road in Belfast. I would have every legal right to, it would not be a centre designed to throw the history of The Troubles in the faces of the locals, and possibly it would be beneficial when it came to healing the divisions between Nationalists and the British state. I still wouldn't volunteer to lay the foundation stone.

I'm not going to start dictating who people can worship. I am a Christian, but I believe that the argument is best won by persuasion and prayer rather than plain shouting. The builders of this project can have the best of intentions, but that still doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.

A quick one on defence (Defence #1)

Afternoon all,

It will be brief this one, as I really should be writing, but can I point people towards the debate raging at John Redwood's blog (http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/) over defence spending?

The Government tells us that serious cuts are going to have to be made to public spending. Now, I think I'm right in saying that the largest single outlay for any administration nowadays is health and social services. There are substantial costs involved in defence spending though. At the moment the Government is committed to renewing Trident and building two aircraft carriers that will be considerably bigger than the ones we currently operate, along with multiple other defence procurement projects (not counting the questions over our withdrawal from Afghanistan).

I don't agree with elements of what Redwood writes (I think he's wrong on why we might need to keep troops in Germany), but at least there's a debate occurring there. In my humble opinion, the announcement the other day that the renewal of Trident will have to come out of the MoD's budget was one of the most important defence decisions this country has made for some time*, and I can't remember it being comprehensively discussed.

* Not all defence spending comes out of the MoD budget; a large amount of our spending on Afghanistan for instance is paid for out of Treasury contingency funds. Now if the Treasury is going to insist on the MoD paying for Trident, that's going to create huge financial waves within that department - the cost of renewing our nuclear defence runs into the billions of pounds.