Bishop Hill Apr 16, 2009 Children Education Home education Once upon a time, there was a Baroness. When surveying her kingdom of schools and teachers, she came across a small community of parents who had legally opted to retain their independence...
Bishop Hill Apr 15, 2009 BBC Full story at Harry's Place. If I remember correctly, Bowen was brought in precisely to deal with a perceived bias in the BBC's Middle East output.
This makes the Beeb look extraordinarily inept. Again.
Something to do with the unique way they are funded no doubt.
Bishop Hill Apr 15, 2009 Libertarianism Everyone knows the effect of making it easier to get hold of intoxicating substances - the country goes to hell in a handcart with the productive members of society sinking into a drug-fuelled haze, drug tourists descend en masse from every corner of the globe, bringing crime and corruption and disease, and civil society collapses into a general malaise from which it can never be extracted.
It's odd then that we haven't heard more about the Portuguese experiment: in 2001, Portugal decriminalised possession of drugs. All drugs: heroin, cocaine, cannabis, you name it. And the results of their experiment have been a trifle unexpected. The Cato Institute has the full story, but here are a few choice extracts:
The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.
Fears of "drug tourism” have turned out to be completely unfounded.
Prevalence rates for the 15–19 age group have actually decreased in absolute terms since decriminalization.
In almost every category of drug, and for drug usage overall, the lifetime prevalence rates in the predecriminalization era of the 1990s were higher than the postdecriminalization rates.
The number of newly reported cases of HIV and AIDS among drug addicts has declined substantially every year since 2001.
The total number of drug-related deaths has actually decreased from the redecriminalization
year of 1999 (when it totaled close to 400) to 2006 (when the total was 290).
Anyone who proclaims that they are in favour of legalisation of drugs is usually met with an incredulous reply of "What? All drugs?". It now seems that an unequivocal answer can now be given to this kind of disbelief.
"Yes. All drugs."
Bishop Hill Apr 12, 2009 EU Daniel Hannan on another another email scandal: Brussels officials are being told to disguise the extent to which they are being lobbied by corporate interests.
The memo is a grisly demonstration of how the Brussels system is designed to allow corporate interests to override the little man.
Bishop Hill Apr 10, 2009 Children Education Libertarianism Further to the previous posting, there's a story in the Times today of a mother who lost the plot and struck her child with a hairbrush. The boy, who is only 8, has now been taken into care. Without knowing the full details it's hard to be certain, but it sounds, well, mad.
And there does seem to be a bit of a dilemma for the mother here. If the boy doesn't get to school she's jailed for allowing him to truant. But if she uses physical force to make him go, she gets her child taken into care. I suppose there must be something short of hitting him that she could have tried, but at the end of the day it's still physical coercion.
Bishop Hill Apr 10, 2009 Children Education Libertarianism There's a brilliant post at renegade parent on the subject of violence and children in which Lisa takes libertarians to task for advocating traditional approaches to child-rearing (enforced schooling, traditional subjects, corporal punishment and so on) which are, on the face of it, not exactly in accordance with libertarian ideals of self-ownership and non-initiation of violence.
I'm sympathetic to many of Lisa's points. For example, she says that children should follow their own interests and we have certainly found that putting educational materials in the way of the kids has been an easy way to get them to learn things - they simply pick them up and absorb them when they are ready, with Spanish, Geography and History proving very popular. I agree that children are not inherently stupid, untrustworthy or lazy - they are highly intelligent on the whole. I think they just don't know very much. (See the difference?).
It's also worth pointing out, however, that just because someone advocates schools run along certain lines, doesn't mean that they support schooling per se. The decision to school children is effectively made for us by government when they tax us to support school-based education. Those who can afford to HE regardless (or are willing to make the personal financial sacrifice to do so, or who can bring themselves to live off benefits while doing so) are a minority. So if we are effectively forced into having schools, the question then becomes "how do we best get them to work", to which the answer might well be "traditional subjects, rote learning" and so on. I've written before about how coercion breeds coercion and this is another example of the same thing.
But Lisa's objection to corporal punishment is a mistake. There is nothing in libertarianism that says that harsh punishments are not permitted. Libertarians are against initiation of violence, but are quite comfortable with "giving as good as one gets", and then some. Corporal punishment in fact is probably the most liberal approach to retributive justice there is. So when it comes to child rearing, I would have thought that "physical chastisement" is quite appropriate in certain circumstances. For example, when little Jonny bashes little Jane, and particularly if the social niceties of bashing have already been explained to little him, it would convey an important lesson about the real world. After all if we accept that children are intelligent human beings (which we do) then surely we have to accept that they have to take responsibility for their actions?
That said, use of corporal punishment for non-violent transgressions such as "answering back" is probably wrong. Once though, I applied my hand to bottom of one of the offspring for running across a road without looking. Did I do wrong? There's a question here of legitimate authority and its transgression that I need to get my head around. In the meantime, there's plenty to talk about.
Bishop Hill Apr 10, 2009 Economics Bruno learns how aberrant bankers were dealt with in medieval Italy.
Bishop Hill Bishop Hill Apr 1, 2009 Children Liberalism Libertarianism There's an interesting post and a good comments thread over at Letters from a Tory. It will be of interest to my home educating readers.
Bishop Hill Mar 29, 2009 BBC Civil liberties Justin Webb takes a lot of stick from the commenters at Biased BBC, who see him as the identikit BBC socialist propaganda-monger. I've never been entirely sure about this, particularly since he took up the post of America editor.
Listen to him being interviewed on Excess Baggage, where he was punting his new book about America under Obama. He makes a very eloquent defence of the undiscovered middle of America and repeats the observation that he made some time ago that America is a very gentle place, at least outside of a few city centres. 
He tells the story of Virgin, Utah where there is a city ordinance decreeing that everyone must own a gun, and states that he thinks that Virgin is likely to be a very ordered and decent place (or something to that effect - I forget his exact words). In fact, throughout the interview he repeats the observation of the gentleness of American society. When you think about it, this is a remarkable thing for a BBC journalist to say - it is surely the antithesis of BBC-think to make a connection between gun ownership and peaceful coexistence, no matter whether you think he's right or not.
I can't help but wonder if Webb has gone to America and turned into a second amendment advocate - if so, he surely can't say so - it would surely be the end of his career - but he seems to feel able to point to places like Virgin and quietly point out that it's not quite like we have been lead to believe.
It's an interesting observation and a useful contribution to the debate on the shambles that is British society. Credit where credit's due.
Bishop Hill Mar 28, 2009 Blogs What do people use to track the comments they leave on other sites? Since the much-lamented demise of co.mments I haven't been able to find anything that has the same combination of ease of use and reliability.
There must be something out there.
Bishop Hill Mar 26, 2009 Conservatives Libertarianism This time interviewed on Fox News in the US.
This seems like the first time anyone has put forward the free market solution to the banking crisis. That's a damning indictment of the Conservatives, and it's interesting to hear Hannan speak about the "two main parties" as if he were not a member of one of them. This looks to me as if he is a Tory member in name only - his thinking is far more Whiggish or Libertarian and he confesses to being a Ron Paul fan too. How did someone like that ever get elected on a Conservative ticket?
Bishop Hill Mar 25, 2009 Conservatives Everyone is posting this speech by Daniel Hannan - even the American blogs think it's great. Just in case one or two of you haven't seen it, it's well worth a look...
Bishop Hill
Hannan's speech has had half a million views on YouTube and still not a word of it in the British media. Funny that.
Bishop Hill Mar 25, 2009 Nanny state I was struck by this comment in a thread at Heresy Corner on the subject of the NHS.
Of the many conversations I had with [NHS] staff, one in particular sticks in the mind. I asked a porter how he saw the future, and he said the drug scene was going to change dramatically in a decade or so. For now the grannies are holding the fort, caring for the grandchildren while the generation in between gets wasted. 10-15 years from now, those grannies will be gone, and the wasted mums of today will be the grannies, but grannies incapable of holding anything.
He said when that happens, the NHS in Scotland will either break down or would be forced to prioritise in ways now unimaginable. The one thing, in fact, everyone I spoke to there seemed to agree on was that the future is going to be very bleak.
Bishop Hill Mar 24, 2009 Civil liberties BBC:
The Metropolitan Police has seized £35m during an operation targeting safety deposit boxes used by criminal gangs.
Officers also recovered guns, drugs, child pornography and even illegal elephant tusks when 3,500 deposit boxes at three London centres were raided.
If 3500 boxes were raided, it's fair to say that this was a fishing trip rather than a targeted search. Ever woke up with a feeling that you were in a bad dream?
