The right to kill burglars

I'm a bit confused by this. While I can get gleefully behind the populist feel-good idea that some scumbag who burgles your home is fair game, I have a niggling feeling. Or rather several.

1. Isn't reasonable self defence already protected in law?
2. Define burglar. Would there have to be signs of forced entry? Is an unlocked door OK or does there have to be broken glass or something? Does the person have to be holding an item of your property at the time of the baseball bat hitting their head? Is there any threshold in value of said item?
   
3. What happens when someone gets killed by mistake?
4. How does this sit with the 80 or so reasons an empowered person can use to force entry against a homeowner's will? What reasonable measures must a homeowner take to check a 'burglar' isn't a perfectly legal gas engineer who has smelt gas at the property?
5. While I think that a bona fide burglar deserves everything that comes their way, let's just indulge the bleeding heart liberal bit first. They might have turned to crime to fund a drugs habit. These people need help before it gets to that point.
6. Once you've got druggies out of the equation, that probably does leave your despicable career criminal. But then, they probably shouldn't be able to commit the offence in the first place because they should still be in prison for their previous crime.
7. Then there's the timing. At the same time Ken Clarke wants to reduce the size of the prison population and the Tories are going on about Big Society.

Ken Clarke

You want to reduce the prison population? Legalise drugs.

HS2

Can't help thinking it's a monumental waste of money.

The economic benefit ratio must be weighed against the economic cost of that deferred taxation. That's once the optimistic assumptions have been adjusted, such as the demand for it, the assumption that time spent on trains is wasted, etc. Then this must be compared to the benefit of spending that £17bn on tax cuts.

Those jobs it will create? What about the jobs it will cost because the government has to (at some point) tax us all for an extra £17bn? As for bringing Britain into the 21st century, investing in our future, those are the kinds of vacuous truisms any dubious project can claim it will achieve.

That breakneck deficit-reduction plan

Coalition's spending plans simply don't add up, according to various left-wing economists, including

Richard Murphy, Director, Tax Research LLP.

It seems if there's an open letter going round that's vaguely critical of the government, the man will sign it.

Saab jet

From here:

Investment in the Gripen project "has generated an additional social return to society on the order of magnitude of at least 2.6 times the original development investment", according to Mr Eliasson.

What about the social cost of the taxation required to raise that capital? Besides, what is social return? I'm sure it's a very difficult thing to quantify.

Drugs Part III

As I said in this post, I had received a stock response from my MP outlining the government's drugs policy. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to indulge in a reply, which was mostly along the lines of what I wrote in the post.

I received another reply, this time very short, thanking me for my letter but saying we'll have to agree to disagree, and that her opinion has been formed after years of seeing the damage drugs do and her idea about what British society should be like. There was a nice typo about being against the 'legislation of drugs'.

I know my MP is extremely busy, but however I look at it, it's a pretty poor service. She hasn't justified her position, she hasn't engaged with my points, she hasn't made any comment about the calls for legalisation. She's just asserted her opinion, and offered nothing to back it up. This is an opinion which not only restricts people's freedoms, but in all probability makes things worse.

What would I like to happen? I'd like her to have a blog, and if someone sends her a thoughtful letter, she could ask permission to post it to the blog, then she should post her reply in the open, and let people critique the whole exchange in the comments section. With as little moderation as possible.

At the moment, she has a standard Tory template website, with a news section that hasn't been updated since March, a Twitter account that hasn't been updated since March, no user comments anywhere, and a few soundbites about being disgusted by MPs' abuse of expenses. It's all very on-message and it's quite depressing. She's quite probably just another cookie-cutter politician who represents the government to the constituents and not the other way around. After all, she's there because of the party machine, if she stands up to it she'll be betraying what got her there. All she has to do is not rock the boat and she'll be rewarded for it.

This seems like a good opportunity to post this. It's about the two party system but it could just as well be about the fact whoever you vote for, you get a self-serving politician who'll mess around with things and get paid handsomely in the process. Whoever you vote for, they win. Nothing except the periphery ever changes.



As for drugs, the war on drugs has failed. Each successive politician who promises to get tough on drugs should be reminded of Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". On the other hand, it all makes sense if the result they're expecting is we just lap it up...

Republicanism

If we have a head of state which we elect, what powers should they have? I'm quite in favour of a ceremonial head of state who should have no political power but should do all of the following: unite us in times of difficulty with good speeches, congratulate and encourage our sportsmen and women, reward and recognise people who contribute to charity, raise the profile of the plight of former servicemen and women, opening hospital wards, etc. If the head of state does the things in that list, then our political leaders have fewer media opportunities to make their images electoral assets. If a head of state is only going to do those things, what's wrong with a royal family? Once you start electing people, they're going to start offering reasons why they should be given more power over other people to make things better.