Reason Magazine - Topics > Great Britain

Queue Up

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Facing lengthening waits at hospitals, the British government has set a targeted turnaround time of four hours from arrival in an emergency room to treatment by a medical professional. Apparently this standard has proven too stringent for the National Health Service.

The Guardian reports that U.K. emergency rooms are meeting the four-hour goal through a simple, quintessentially British expedient: queuing. Thousands of seriously ill patients have been forced to wait outside of emergency departments in ambulances before they can be admitted, thus delaying the start of the four-hour timer. The practice is called “patient stacking,” and various investigations have found people with broken limbs or breathing problems stuck in ambulances for as long as five hours.

In U.S. emergency rooms, the average length of time it takes a patient to see a doctor has increased from 22 minutes to 30 minutes during the last decade. In nonurban hospitals, the wait averages just 15 minutes. And there’s no extra waiting in the ambulances outside.

Olympic Gag Order

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Prince Charles once referred to China’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks,” but the British Olympic Committee seems to find them intimidating enough.

“British athletes will have to sign a contract promising not to comment on any politically sensitive issues” during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, British Olympics Association spokesman Graham Nathan told CNN in February. They will be presented with the contract as soon as they qualify in Olympic trials, and athletes who violate the gag order by discussing, say, China’s dismal human rights record can be barred from competition and put on the next plane home.

Officials say they are merely trying to comply with Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, which “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” But critics note troubling parallels between this contract and a low point in British sporting history: The British soccer team, at the prodding of the British Foreign Office, lined up for a Nazi salute in the Berlin Olympic stadium before a friendly game with Germany in 1938.

China is hustling to put on its best face for the Olympic games in August, much as Germany did when it hosted the games shortly before World War II. While public persecution may be brought to a halt, dissidents such as the human rights campaigner Hu Jia are quietly being put under house arrest or otherwise taken out of circulation.

Many countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, have promised not to restrict their athletes’ political speech about China in the run-up to the games. In Britain, a public outcry has produced promises to “review” the U.K.’s policy, so the Brits may yet fall in line with their Anglosphere cousins.

The Center of Britain

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

To get a broad sense of what Britain once was, just what necessitated the rise of Margaret Thatcher, ignore the frequently referenced punk lyrics of the late 1970s, so full of manufactured rage at the ruling class (White riot! England’s dreaming! Guns before butter!). Instead, drop Yes, Minister, the classic early 1980’s television comedy of Whitehall perfidy and ministerial incompetence, into the Netflix queue. Or just find the episode “The Compassionate Society”—season two, episode one—in which the show’s protagonist, Minister Jim Hacker, attempts to halt a massive National Health Service (NHS) hospital project which bequeathed to London 500 full-time nurses and doctors but housed not a single patient. Arrayed in defense of the plan are the usual interests: the tub-thumping left-wing union leader (a send up of the militant socialist head of the mineworkers union, Arthur Scargill), Downing Street spinmeisters, and various members of Parliament shilling for self-interested constituents. An advisor defends the project, telling Hacker that one must “sort out the smooth running of the hospital. Having patients around would be no help at all.” It was, unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Thatcher’s favorite episode.

It isn’t hyperbolic to say that this was more or less the government the Iron Lady inherited—a bloated, free-spending state, full of make-work jobs jealously guarded by union toughs. It was a system that Thatcher would help delegitimize and then effectively destroy. The heavy lifting was done (thank you very much) by those heartless Tories, though by 1997 voters decided it was time to return government to the more compassionate hands of Labour.

And Tony Blair’s “New Labour” didn’t win the 1997 election so much as they pushed the Conservative Party to the edge of oblivion. The Tories retreated having lost a massive 178 seats, its biggest defeat in almost a century. For the Conservative Party leadership, it was an existential crisis.

Pop stars that, 10 years previous, excelled in writing songs about the forgotten British miner were now popping champagne corks at Number 10 Downing Street. These would be the years of “Cool Britannia”; Red Wedge was dead. But the honeymoon of pop and politics was mercifully—and predictably—short. Noel Gallagher, guitarist of the seminal 1990s Britpop band Oasis and early adherent of New Labour, soon grumbled that the prime minister was forgetting the working class and acting like an American president. This Tony talked god, was chummy with President Bush, and fancied himself a liberal internationalist. Indeed, the rebranding of Labour, according to Blair biographer Anthony Seldon, resulted in far more criticism from the traditional left than the Tory right. Blair would govern from the center.

Fast-forward to early 2008: Prime Minister Gordon Brown is wildly unpopular and local council elections resulted in Labour’s worst showing in 40 years. Barely a week after the catastrophic defeat, a YouGov poll put Conservative Party support at 49 percent and Labour at 23 percent, its lowest rating since polling records began in the 1930s. (Though it is tempting to blame an easy culprit like Iraq, Labour was 11 points ahead of the Tories just eight months ago, and this week’s Economist leader, which asks if “Gordon Brown is doomed,” doesn’t even reference the war.)

A certain amount of this Labour collapse is attributable to a palatable alternative: Conservative leader David Cameron, the Eton-and-Oxford party boss who professes a love of The Smiths and began a recent Times editorial with the cringe-inducing line “Radiohead are one of my favourite bands.”

But it’s not the pathetic hipster pose that has attracted so much positive attention from both voters and Fleet Street journos, but Cameron's bold (some say facile and opportunistic) attempt to rebrand conservatism in the style of New Labour: "I made changes to and with the Conservative Party over the last 18 months for a very clear purpose, to get us back into the centre ground, to get us into a position where people listen to what we were saying, where we are more in touch with Britain as it is today."

It’s getting crowded in the center of British politics.

Even after his stunning local election victory, Cameron continued to burnish his centrist credentials, writing this week in the lefty paper The Independent that "If you care about poverty, if you care about inequality, if you care about the environment—forget about the Labour Party…If you count yourself a progressive, a true progressive, only we can achieve real change."

Cameron didn’t always consider himself a “true progressive.” When running for Parliament in 2000, he repeatedly dealt the social conservative card, grumbling about legislation that was "anti-family" and warning that it would force the "teaching of homosexuality" into British schools. When he took over the party leadership, Cameron jettisoned the tradition talk and spoke of welcoming gays and lesbians into the party fold, admonishing the Tory old guard for not supporting domestic partnership arrangements. The perpetually peeved Thatcherite Norman Tebbit grumbled that he didn't think "Tory supporters have gone soft, but I think the Tory leadership believes the electors are too soft to take the hard decisions which the country is now facing."

Others argue that the dash to the center—the “modernization”—is vindicated by recent electoral success and recent polling data. "The modernisers were right,” Times columnist and former Tory policy wonk Daniel Finkelstein trumpeted after the election. “Their critics were wrong."

It’s hard to argue with success.

The days following the Conservative rout saw nearly every political columnist on the island considering the future of Gordon Brown. The Spectator wondered what Brown “could learn from Hillary Clinton.” In the 1990s, when Labour was emerging from its punishing wilderness period, it took on countless Clinton operatives as consultants to micromanage its Clintonian rightward drift. But perhaps it’s time for American politicos—i.e. Republicans—to tear a page from the British political playbook.

The political landscape in America is hardly analogous to that of England. Despite Blair’s public piousness, fealty unto God isn’t a prerequisite for a presumptive prime minister. Nor do issues like abortion, the death penalty, or stem-cell research dominate the political culture. British conservatism is in many important ways distinct from its American cousin. But as many American conservatives have noted—David Frum in his book Comeback and his National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg—America too is becoming more socially tolerant and, if the Republican Party is interested in a successful future, a Cameron-like shift to the center on issues such as gay marriage and the drug war is advisable.

As political scientist Morris Fiorina points out in his book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, both residents of red and blue states are “basically centrists”; American's aren't "red" or "blue" but various shades of purple. As conservative commenter David Brooks pointed out in 2001, "Although there are some real differences between Red and Blue America, there is no fundamental conflict."

Pat Buchanan's declaration at the 1992 Republican convention that there was a "religious war" raging in America, a "war for the soul" of the country, seems preposterous in retrospect. With a strong majority of Americans supporting Roe v. Wade, a clear majority supporting civil unions for gay couples, and the very real possibility of the country electing an African-American president, it's time for the Republican Party to borrow from the Tories if they want to recapture the center ground.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Drink Up Me Hearties, Yo Ho

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:24:00 EDT

The next time one of your English-born pals complains about America's impending collapse into fascism, tell her to try flying the Jolly Roger back in Merry Old England. From The Guardian:

A fireman has been threatened with legal action for flying a Jolly Roger outside his home for his daughter's pirate-themed birthday party.

[...]

"It's a £5 flag, not hurting anyone, and they're probably spending hundreds of pounds of our cash getting me to take it down," the father-of-four told the Evening Standard. "That could be spent on improving the local area—it's disgraceful."

Another neighbour erected a Jolly Roger in support but took it down after receiving the same warning letter from the council.

A spokeswoman for Mole Valley district council said they visited both properties flying the flags and wrote to the owners informing them of the regulations.

The letters stated that although any resident was entitled to fly national flags outside their properties, the Jolly Roger was not allowed under the Outdoor Advertisements & Signs Regulations.

Whole thing here.

I'm curious about just what the council thinks he's advertising? But here's the real issue for reason's UK fans: What the hell flag is an anarchist supposed to fly?

Via the indispensable Fortean Times.

UPDATE: Contributing Editor Charles Oliver chronicled the opening salvos of this battle in the November 2007 print edition.

London Calling to the Zombies of Death

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:59:00 EDT

The most interesting thing about Boris Johnson's victory in the London mayoral race might be what hasn't changed. The office has moved from the hard left to the hard right, but there's one issue where it is staying put:

London voters just voted out Ken Livingstone, the iconoclast left-wing antiwar mayor, and replaced him with the iconoclast right-wing antiwar Boris Johnson....

Johnson is not a neocon. In fact, he comes from the same sort of paleo-conservative roots as Pat Buchanan. He is opposed to British imperial dreams, and is in direct conflict with much of the UK Conservative Party.

In the last few years, he has been a strong opponent of the Iraq War, the rush to war with Iran, and Blair's crackdown on civil liberties.

Something else that hasn't changed: The mayor of Greater London does not, alas, have much influence on his country's foreign policy.

'There Is No Reason for This Stuff'

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:01:00 EDT

A British law criminalizing the possession of "violent and extreme pornography" is expected to take effect next week. The bill, a response to the 2003 murder of Brighton schoolteacher Jane Longhurst by a man who liked violent pornography, would ban simulated sexual violence as well as images of the real thing. The prohibited material includes images of "an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life"; "an act which results in or appears to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts, or genitals"; "an act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse"; or "a person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal" (emphasis added). Critics worry that the definition is too broad and too vague and that the law will punish people for engaging in consensual activities that do not actually harm anyone. "If no sexual offense is being committed," one M.P. who opposed the bill told the BBC, "it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offense for having an image of something which was not an offense."

But the Justice Ministry insists that "pornographic material which depicts necrophilia, bestiality or violence that is life threatening or likely to result in serious injury to the anus, breasts or genitals has no place in a modern society and should not be tolerated." The M.P. who led the fight for the bill in the House of Lords promises the government will target only images that are "grossly offensive and disgusting." Jane Longhurst's mother, who campaigned for the ban, has little patience with the critics:

Speaking from her home in Berkshire, Mrs. Longhurst acknowledges that libertarians see her as "a horrible killjoy." "I'm not. I do not approve of this stuff, but there is room for all sorts of different people. But anything which is going to cause damage to other people needs to be stopped."
To those who fear the legislation might criminalise people who use violent pornography as a harmless sex aid, she responds with a blunt "hard luck."
"There is no reason for this stuff. I can't see why people need to see it. People say what about our human rights but where are Jane's human rights?"

[Thanks to Daniel Reeves for the tip.]

That Lethal British Marijuana

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:20:00 EDT

In 2004 the British government downgraded marijuana from a Class B to a Class C drug, making simple possession of small quantities a "non-arrestable offense." The current prime minister, Gordon Brown, seems bent on reversing that reform, saying "we really have got to send out a message to young people [that] this is not acceptable." Shortly after taking office, Brown asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to take another look at cannabis policy. Although the council reportedly has recommended that marijuana remain in Class C, Brown is expected to ignore its advice. On Tuesday he said:

I don't think that the previous studies took into account that so much of the cannabis on the streets is now of a lethal quality....I have always been very strongly of the view that cannabis is unacceptable and we have got to send a message.

According to Reuters, "Brown said he was particularly worried about the growing use of skunk cannabis, which he described as 'more lethal.'" There has never been a documented case of death by marijuana overdose. Based on extrapolations from animal studies, the ratio of marijuana's lethal dose to its effective dose is something like 40,000 to 1 (compared to between 10 and 20 to 1 for aspirin and between 4 and 10 to 1 for alcohol). So even if the average THC content of marijuana has increased as dramatically as drug warriors claim (and it hasn't), and even if pot smokers did not adjust their intake accordingly (and they do), there would be no practical effect on marijuana's toxicity. The chance of a lethal overdose remains, for all intents and purposes, zero. And no matter what kind of stoned logic Brown favors, zero is not more than zero.

[Thanks to NORML's Paul Armentano for the tip.]

In Defence of the 3,000 Calorie Breakfast

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:34:00 EDT

Well, not really. In the Times of London, Giles Cohen attacks the Brits' "national dish": its 3,000 calorie breakfast featuring eggs, various sorts of meat, and all sorts of grease:

We're drunk, we're underslept, we smell, we can't walk straight, it hurts to talk and all we want is something to make the blood rush to our stomach, and away from our brains.

He means this as a bad thing. Read "Why the Great English Breakfast is a Killer."

Hat tip: Alan Vanneman.

Fed Up, He Joined the IRA

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:48:00 EDT

The Daily Mail selects the 10 most unreasonable parking tickets of all time. A sample:

Lorry driver Michael Collins was on his way to collect a skip in London's Belsize Park when the road beneath him collapsed. A burst water main had created a deep hole where the front wheels of his 17-tonne lorry were now stuck.

While he was waiting for roadside assistance, a parking attendant appeared. To the astonishment of nearby residents - and despite Mr Collins' protests, she stood on tiptoe and plastered a parking ticket on his windscreen - while helpfully telling him: "You can appeal".

The Egalitarian Cruelty of the NHS

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:25:00 EST

Even if you're accustomed to hearing horror stories about Britain's National Health Service, this one is really appalling. Debbie Hirst, a woman with metastasized breast cancer, wanted to take Avastin, a drug that, per The New York Times, is "widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay." The NHS refused to pay for it, saying it was too expensive. That much is par for the course in a system that holds down costs by rationing care according to standards set by a single central authority. But then Hirst, with the support of her oncologist, decided to raise the $120,000 she'd need to pay for the drug on her own, mainly by selling her house. The NHS said she was perfectly free to do that, but then she would have to pay for all of her care out of pocket, a financial burden that was far beyond her means. The Times does its best to explain the rationale for this position:

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.
Patients "cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the N.H.S. and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs," the health secretary, Alan Johnson, told Parliament.
"That way lies the end of the founding principles of the N.H.S.," Mr. Johnson said.

Yet if you are wealthy enough to pay for all of your health care out of pocket, you are allowed to do so. Doesn't that also give richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones? Why isn't that equally offensive to the egalitarian sensibilities of NHS bureaucrats? The fact is, it's better to be rich than poor for many reasons, and fairness doesn't really enter into it (assuming the absence of force or fraud), unless you view all resources as the government's to distribute as it sees fit. And even a collectivist would have to admit that the NHS policy that Hirst ran into makes little sense:

In fact, patients, doctors and officials across the health care system widely acknowledge that patients suffering from every imaginable complaint regularly pay for some parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free.
"Of course it's going on in the N.H.S. all the time, but a lot of it is hidden—it's not explicit," said Dr. Paul Charlson, a general practitioner in Yorkshire and a member of Doctors for Reform, a group that is highly critical of the health service. Last year, he was a co-author of a paper laying out examples of how patients with the initiative and the money dip in and out of the system, in effect buying upgrades to their basic free medical care.
"People swap from public to private sector all the time, and they're topping up for virtually everything," Dr. Charlson said in an interview. For instance, he said, a patient put on a five-month waiting list to see an orthopedic surgeon may pay $250 for a private consultation, and then switch back to the health service for the actual operation from the same doctor.
"Or they'll buy an M.R.I. scan because the wait is so long, and then take the results back to the N.H.S.," Dr. Charlson said.
In his paper, he also wrote about a 46-year-old woman with breast cancer who paid $250 for a second opinion when the health service refused to provide her with one; an elderly man who spent thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid instead of enduring a yearlong wait on the health service; and a 29-year-old woman who, with her doctor's blessing, bought a three-month supply of Tarceva, a drug to treat pancreatic cancer, for more than $6,000 on the Internet because she could not get it through the N.H.S.

In the end, after Hirst's cancer spread even further, the NHS decided the balance of costs and benefits had shifted, and it agreed to pay for her Avastin:

Mrs. Hirst is pleased, but up to a point. Avastin is not a cure, but a way to extend her life, perhaps only by several months, and she has missed valuable time. "It may be too bloody late," she said.
"I'm a person who left school at 15 and I've worked all my life and I've paid into the system, and I'm not going to live long enough to get my old-age pension from this government," she added.
She also knows that the drug can have grave side effects. "I have campaigned for this drug, and if it goes wrong and kills me, c'est la vie," she said. But, she said, speaking of the government, "If the drug doesn't have a fair chance because the cancer has advanced so much, then they should be raked over the coals for it."

Hirst had no choice about paying the taxes that support the NHS, and when she tried to supplement the limited coverage it provided out of her own pocket, it reneged on its promise to take care of her. The Michael Moores of the world surely would see injustice in a decision by an HMO or insurer not to cover a cancer patient's Avastin. Why don't they see injustice in a case like this?

Michael Moynihan on Michael Moore and the NHS here, here, and here, among other places.

This is England

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:14:00 EST

From the AFP, a recent poll suggests that a frightening number of Britons think that fictional Sopwith Camel ace James "Biggles" Bigglesworth existed, and that Winston Churchill is a mythical, Nazi-slaying comic book character:

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth. And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

[...]
Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths. Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns' fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

Considering the source (British cable network UKTV Gold), I think a measure of skepticism is in order, though previous surveys have come to similar conclusions. As the BBC reported back in 2001, "Sir Edmund Blackadder was a real historical figure and Adolf Hitler was the prime minister who led Britain to victory in World War II, many schoolchildren in Britain believe."

Straw Bale Construction Camo

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:24:00 EST

An English farmer tries to avoid planning controls by concealing a mock-Tudor castle in a 40-foot haystack:

Once it was finished, he and his family moved in and lived there for four years before finally revealing the development -- complete with battlements and cannons -- in August 2006....

Problems began last April when Mr Fidler, thinking he had beaten the planning system, applied for a certificate of lawfulness which is given if a property is erected but nobody objects to it after four years.

But Reigate and Banstead Council says the four-year period after which the building would be allowed to stay is void -- because nobody had been given a chance to see it.

The matter will now be decided in February by the council's planning inspector, who could give the Fidlers as little as six months to tear the castle down.

I hate to say it, but I think Castle Fidler is doomed. Enjoy the view while you can:

I Just Don't Dig On Swine, That's All

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:20:00 EST

News from Great Britain:

A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned down by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.

The digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

I haven't read this version of The Three Little Pigs, but if it bears any resemblance to the story we all know then Muslims should love it. The villain attempts to adopt a haraam diet; he is foiled by structural integrity. Surely the Prophet (PBUH) would approve.

Granted, that's not the only problem the government had with the story:

The judges also attacked Three Little Cowboy Builders for offending builders.

But not, apparently, for offending cowboys. It's the last acceptable prejudice.

Bonus clip:

DIY NHS

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:33:00 EST

This year Britain's National Health Service (NHS), a single payer system worthy of emulation, say its American boosters, will celebrate 60 years of queues and DIY dentistry by introducing a new "patient constitution" that, according to reports, will refuse treatment to those who smoke or spend inordinate amounts of time on the couch time eating fried Mars bars and watching Eastenders. The Telegraph editorializes:

The inadequacy of our healthcare model has led us to a senseless (and heartless) contradictory position: the Department of Health states categorically that "co-payment" is unacceptable because it would result in an unequal system in which better-off patients would have advantages that poorer ones do not. But it now plans to refuse care to people whose unhealthy lifestyles are usually associated with poverty and deprivation. The extraordinary high-handedness of these proposals is symptomatic of all that is wrong with a tax-funded monopoly health system run by central government: ordinary people are encouraged to think of healthcare as a gift of the state.

The Telegraph also uncovers an internal Department of Health memo advising doctors to steer some patients towards self-treatment, thus avoiding doctor and emergency room visits and saving the NHS billions in overhead costs

Millions of people with arthritis, asthma and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves as part of a Government plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget. Instead of going to hospital or consulting a doctor, patients will be encouraged to carry out "self care" as the Department of Health (DoH) tries to meet Treasury targets to curb spending.
[...]
The Prime Minister claimed the self-care agenda was about increasing patient choice and "personalised" services. But an internal Government document seen by The Daily Telegraph makes clear that the policy is a money-saving measure, a key plank of DoH plans to cut costs.

Full story. In other NHS news, Tory leader David Cameron has pledged that the conservatives will replace Labour as "the party of the NHS."

This Proactive Plot, This Synergistic Earth, This High-Impact Realm, This England

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:37:00 EST

The United Kingdom doesn't have a constitution, but it's working on a mission statement.

[Via Flip Chart Fairy Tales.]

He Should Have Hung the 'Please Don't Charge Into My Room and Have Me Arrested on a Ridiculous Sex Charge' Sign

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:44:00 EDT

The Telegraph reports that a Scottish man has to register as a sex offender after being caught trying to ride his bicycle at a hotel in Aur:

[A prosecutor] said: "They [two members of the cleaning staff] knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.
"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white T-shirt, naked from the waist down.
"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."
Both witnesses, who were extremely shocked, notified the hotel manager, who in turn alerted the police.

Although the incident occurred a year ago, the man pleaded guilty to "sexual breach of the peace" last week. "How do you have sex with a bicycle?" wonders the Telegraph's Bryony Gordon, and so do I. More than that, though, I wonder why it's the government's business what a man does with a bike in the privacy of his hotel room. I mean, as long as it's not a children's bike.

[Thanks to ChicagoTom for the tip.]

Mock Tudor

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:47:00 EDT

I hated the 1998 movie Elizabeth, and I don't expect to think much of the sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. So I'm pleased to report that Turner Classic Movies will be airing an antidote tonight: John Ford's Mary of Scotland, based on Maxwell Anderson's play of the same name. I'm not ordinarily a fan of Ford's Old World pictures, and I can't say this one is a particularly good film in itself. Nor is it very accurate as history. But it's the one Hollywood movie I'm aware of that presents Elizabeth I as a villain, an approach so rare that I'll recommend it on those grounds alone.

I figure that as an Irishman, Ford hated the English. Either that, or he decided deriding a beloved English heroine might make up for all the roles he would give to Victor McLaglen, the Steppin Fetchit of Irish America.

Mary of Scotland airs at 8:00 p.m., Eastern Time, when it kicks off 24 hours of historical biopics. But if you're a hard-core Elizabeth-hater, you should turn off TCM when the movie is done and rent the second season of Blackadder, with Miranda Richardson playing the queen as a ditsy twit.

French Wine and the Fable of Free-Trade Britain

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:30:00 EDT

If economics is often a dry and dusty affair, the new book War, Wine, and Taxes: The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900, is a wet and wild ride—and not simply because it's about alcohol.

John V.C. Nye debunks the conventional wisdom that Britain was a free-trade nation during the 19th century. If you look at actual trade policy rather than the self-aggrandizing pronouncements of politicians and ideologues, argues Nye, Britain remained a bastion of protectionism and mercantilism throughout the century. In comparison, France, often derided by contemporary free-marketers, was wide open to trade. In concise and eminently readable prose, he tells a story in which well-connected special interests and government officials joined forces to line their own pockets while reducing the choices available to consumers.

In answering the question, "Why do the British drink beer and not wine?," Nye not only advances our understanding of the past, he shows how economic policy can often have a major effect not just on trade but on national identity.

The 48-year-old Nye was born and raised in the Philippines and educated at Caltech and Northwestern. The married father of two sons, he and his family recently relocated to Northern Virginia, where he teaches at George Mason University and holds the Frederic Bastiat chair in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center.

In late September, he spoke with reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie via AOL Instant Messenger. What follows is an edited transcript of their interview. Comments can be sent to gillespie@reason.com.

reason: You open your book with this line: "The idea that Britain was the leading free trader of the nineteenth century is one of those rare stylized facts in economic history...." Your book is dedicated to proving this wrong. How is that conventional view wrong?

John V.C. Nye: No one had ever bothered to examine in detail what the overall tariff burden of British policy was in the 19th century. When you used standard measures to compare average tariffs in Britain with those of France—supposedly Britain's opposite number in trade—what you find is that the French were clearly much closer to being free traders than were the British for most of the 19th century. Most of the different ways we can slice the data make clear that the British had higher average tariffs than the French even after their supposed move to abolish all protection from the 1840s on. Britain had tariffs on fewer items than did France, but British tariffs were on items that were such a substantial part of British trade that the impact was more serious.

reason: Speaking of specific tariffs, explain the significance of the one part of your title everyone can get behind: Wine. You ask the question, "Why do the British drink beer and not wine?" Give the short version of your answer (hiccup) with regard to tariffs.

Nye: The core of British tariffs was directed against the French and specifically against French wine. This policy dated back to the late 1600s, when the two countries were at war for a quarter century. Tariffs designed to exclude all but the best French wine—and to a large extent depress imports from most other wine-exporting nations—were matched with policies targeted to assist brewers and domestic producers of spirits. Over time, the exclusion of cheaper French wine—especially during the Industrial Revolution—meant that lower- and middle-class drinkers had to settle almost exclusively for beer, gin, whiskey, and rum.

reason: My god! The horror!

Nye: We probably have no idea how bad some of that stuff actually was!

reason: That's speaking as someone who has obviously never drank anti-freeze. Your book is in many ways a primer on public choice economics and how officials respond to the demands of the very people they are supposed to be regulating in the name of the public good. Talk about the brewers in England as a special interest group and their relationship to the state.

Nye: During the quarter century (from 1689 to 1715) when French wine was excluded from the British market, the beer industry experienced what historian Peter Mathias refers to as the Brewing Industrial Revolution. Technology made it possible to produce beer (initially porter) in quantity. At the same time, protection meant these guys were earning money hand over fist.

When war ended, domestic beverage interests successfully lobbied to have very high tariffs placed on wine, and extra high tariffs on French wine. But a cynical public choice scholar would argue that the government would not be content with handing out goodies to the brewers. Now the state had the brewers over a barrel (so to speak). They were able to impose excise taxes on the industry and expect to collect them. The latter point is very important. In previous times, high excise taxes were not always accompanied by high revenues because of evasion.

Now the government had both a carrot and a stick...

reason: ...and access to beer! A dangerous combination, as the senators from Massachusetts and Connecticut could tell you. Or more precisely, as waitresses who have served them could tell you.

Nye: If the brewers didn't make sure that the government got their taxes, tariffs on competing drinks could be lowered. At the same time, the government wanted the brewers to be highly concentrated, because it made regulation and bargaining easier, so they worked to destroy competition in brewing.

reason: You posit that this, in some ways, is the beginning of big government. Or if not the beginning, a clear example of how big government and big business (for lack of better terms) conjure one another into existence, right?

Nye: It was the beginning of the growth spurt in the British state. Throughout the 18th century, British revenues grew four to five times faster than the growth of Gross Domestic Product. This was simply unprecedented in Europe and comes as a surprise to those who think of 18th-century Britain solely in terms of Adam Smith and David Hume.

reason: What was happening across the Channel in terms of government growth?

Nye: French officials were trying their best to grow revenues but their hands were mostly tied. Constraints on the way that the drown could raise revenue in France were part of the reason that Louis foolishly called the Estates General at the beginning of the French Revolution.

Studies of French taxation show that average taxes as a share of GDP were roughly constant or even declining prior to the Revolution. In contrast, they were rising steadily in Great Britain.

reason: The conventional story goes something like this: Adam Smith and others argued for free markets in the 18th century and then in 19th century, with the repeal of the Corn Laws especially, England became this free-market Mecca (or something). Your book demonstrates—concisely, though with too much math for this English major—just how wrong that story is. Why did it take your colleagues in economics so long to look at the data?

Nye: That's a difficult question. For one thing, I think that economists don't look at history very much. Economic history is a lively but very small subfield and digging through archives for statistics is not usually rewarded. There is a tendency to confuse the problem of intent with outcomes. Why were the British free traders? Because they told us so. I would also add that Britain did move to liberalize trade quite dramatically; it's just that they didn't do it as smoothly as the conventional wisdom claims.

reason: Politicians espousing free-market ideals while being protectionist? Zut! I've never heard of such a thing!

Nye: Finally, I would note that some people get hung up on the question as to whether British tariffs were "efficient" from the standpoint of fiscal policy. And that is a separate question altogether. It is possible that a [classically] liberal Britain might have had to impose some sorts of taxes, and the ones they chose were probably not too awful. However, this is entirely separate from the question of who was a free trader.

reason: Is part of the slowness in accepting Britain as protectionist that it messes up a very happy ideological picture of England=Good/France=Bad in many free-market circles?

Nye: Maybe. I've thought about this a lot but I don't have good answers. When I completed the first article on this stuff (the basis for the opening chapter in the book) almost two decades ago, I was taken aback by the response I got. Some people just said, "This result is preposterous, case closed." Others said, "Oh, this proves that free trade is a bad thing!" While still others said, "Who cares about wine? What matters are manufactures."

Most simply didn't want to engage me on the central point itself. From a factual/descriptive perspective, was Britain really a free trader, especially in comparison to France? If not, why? If so, what does this tell us about economics, history, politics, and the way in which countries successfully transition to liberal market economies in the real world?

reason: How had things changed by the end of the 19th century?

Nye: By the end of the 19th century, Britain was the most genuinely free trade nation in Europe and France had begun to revert to some protectionist policies. But all told, France's policies were still quite liberal and a fair reading would say that most of Europe was extremely open to trade and commerce of all sorts. If one takes labor and capital mobility into account, Europe was more liberal around 1900 than at any point since then.

Tariffs were low. Capital moved freely and labor moved much more easily than today. Moreover, it was much harder to enforce restrictions on commerce and on the free movement of goods and labor than today as well. While no one has done a rigorous study of this, I am pretty certain that Europe today is far less open than it was from about 1870 to 1910.

reason: What's the relevance of your book to contemporary politics and economics?

Nye: The first and most obvious point is: Don't rely on what is politically significant to gauge what is economically significant. The debates on the front pages of newspapers are not reliable evidence of the thrust of policy or the relative importance of issues.

Second, small policy changes can have large unanticipated consequences. The British-French trade war began in the late 17th century out of very local conflicts. No one had any clue that it would have such far-reaching repercussions.

Third, I think it's very interesting how much of what we think of as tastes or culture are really manifestations of the prices and constraints that we and our parents have faced for awhile. I certainly think that economists have paid insufficient attention to culture, but those studying culture have paid insufficient attention to how relative prices shape what we think of as luxurious or beautiful or normal.

reason: I should ask, do you prefer wine or beer?

Nye: I guess I'm mostly a wine drinker, but I like beer on hot days and I like beer in preference to very low quality wine. I remember that the first time I traveled to France in the early 1980s, almost everyone seemed to drink wine all the time. By the 1990s, that seemed to have changed. Beer was much more common in the summer than the winter. On more than a few occasions, all the visiting American academics would drinking wine and all the French guys would be drinking beer.

reason: Where did your interest in this project come from? Who are your intellectual heroes in economics?

Nye: The project arose out of my research on the economic history of France in the mid-19th century. In the course of studying French trade I put out this graph of British and French average tariffs and was stunned to see the difference, a difference that no one had ever talked about. Fortunately for me, one of my colleagues was [Nobel Prize winner] Douglass North and I turned to Doug and said "Have you ever seen this before?" We got into a long discussion about this, I contacted several more people and as they say, the rest is my peculiar history.

As for intellectual heroes, I was strongly influenced by my advisors at Northwestern, Joel Mokyr and Jonathan Hughes, and by Doug North. They made me feel that economic history was perhaps the most undervalued and intellectually exciting area of economics. Because the payoff in econ was to do very abstruse and advanced mathematical theory in the 1980s and 1990s, we were also aware that you paid a price in terms of career prospects by doing history. That gave it a certain unconventional, risk-taking flavor.

reason: You recently moved from Washington University to George Mason University and the Mercatus Center. What prompted the move and how is it working out so far?

Nye: Well, as you say, I've just gotten here. But GMU has been doing very exciting and different sorts of things for quite some time. They have put together a group of scholars with a strong interest in political economy and development, very broadly speaking. More important is they have done something extremely rare—perhaps unprecedented in economics. At one shot they hired three senior-level economic historians. Aside from me, there are Werner Troesken and Gary Richardson, and we have the potential to make GMU one of the best places in the world to do economic history. Moreover, there are plans afoot to expand further in related areas.

I also get a kick out of talking to the non-historians here, especially Tyler Cowen, Pete Boettke, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, Russell Roberts, and Alex Tabarrok. Lunch can be more interesting than the best seminars in the world when we get going on the right topics.

reason: How did you come to be a professional economist?

Nye: I was born and raised in the Philippines. I was fortunate to get admitted with aid to study at Caltech as an undergrad where I majored in Physics. However, when I got to Caltech, I quickly found that I wasn't quite right for the most abstruse forms of theoretical physics. At the same time I admired the rigor and intensity of the Caltech way of looking at the world. There were some very exciting people at Caltech at that time doing work in areas of political economy and rational choice politics, including Bob Bates, Mo Fiorina, Bruce Cain, John Ferejohn, as well as Lance Davis, who was the main economic historian.

I had originally thought about doing a Ph.D. in political science, but all the Caltech guys thought I would be better off studying economics. This was complicated because I had basically studied no economics. But apparently a degree in physics and enough math will get you far, so I went to Northwestern University to do my Ph.D.

reason: Did growing up in the Philippines affect your take on economics?

Nye: Yes, I think it has. Corruption was/is much more common than the US and many things just don't work right. Also, despite growing up with a privileged middle class life, being constantly surrounded by poverty was a reminder of how important basic economic growth is. I'm always struck how fortunate we are in the West and how rare, historically speaking, prosperity is. Most of the people I meet here just have no conception of either bad government or poverty. I also grew up during the Marcos/martial law era and remember being worried on the one hand about the increase of authoritarianism and militarism versus the threat of a radical or communist takeover. Again, people I meet in rich countries seem to take stable, market-oriented democracies for granted.

reason: How do you define yourself politically or ideologically?

Nye: Hard to say. I am probably a conservative with very modest libertarian sensibilities especially on economic issues. But I doubt that I would be a good fit for reason magazine on foreign policy or social issues.

reason: We're not measuring you for a suit! So you're for the indiscriminate invasion and subjugation of foreign countries (and parts of the U.S.) and aren't going to be volunterring at Planned Parenthood anytime soon, right?

You do believe in equal rights for Baal worshippers, I hope, at least until they die and go to Hell. That's really the only litmus test we've got here. And the bit about "Free Minds and Free Markets."

Nye: FMAFM!!

reason: We're working on an emoticon for that. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Nye: Thanks for the opportunity to chat. And thanks to the two or three readers who actually made it to the end of this chat.

reason: Thanks very much for your time.

Brits' Stiff Upper Lip in Iraq Goes a Bit Limp

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 06:36:00 EDT

Britain will halve its remaining troop contingent in Iraq next spring, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Monday. A British official later said they could not guarantee that any troops would remain in Iraq by the end of 2008.
Brown, under fire over his decision not to call an election for this year, said Britain would lower troop levels to 2,500 by mid-2008 and redeploy logistics staff to neighboring states. The British leader was clearly hoping the announcement would help boost his popularity among a public weary of the war....
Brown told lawmakers Monday his Iraq plan follows the success of the U.S. troop increase this summer and efforts by Iraqis to drive suspected al-Qaida militants from havens in Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

More here.

Jon Rauch on the surge.

One surge that really, really worked.

NHS to Smoker With Fractured Ankle: Walk It Off

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:41:00 EDT

Here's a story for anyone who imagines that government-run medicine will somehow do away with gatekeepers who deny suffering patients the treatment they need based on cold-hearted financial calculations: British doctors are refusing to perform surgery on a man with a multiply fractured ankle because he's a smoker. "Doctors at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro have refused to operate," reports the Daily Mail, "because they say his heavy smoking would reduce the chance of healing, and there is a risk of complications which could lead to amputation." But at least they're willing to give him morphine for the agonizing pain caused by the injury they refuse to fix.

Michael Siegel explains the reasoning behind such decisions, quoting a commentary that appeared in the British Medical Journal:

Increased use of hospital beds and associated costs mean less opportunity to treat other patients. Based on these data, five non-smokers could be operated on for the cost and bed use of four smokers and the non-smokers' surgical outcomes would be better. A well informed smoker, unwilling or unable to quit, might assume an increased risk for himself, but the decision is not his alone when it can indirectly affect others. Then, the community must involve itself.

Siegel worries about the consequences of "community" involvement in every medical decision, and so do I. But while he calls for more compassionate, tolerant, and enlightened policies by health-care-dispensing bureaucrats, I'd like to avoid the centralization of such decisions, which inevitably leads to situations like this. Last April I attended a conference at Harvard that was supposed to explore the theme of "responsibility for health," and much of the discussion revolved around the question of how central planners should allocate scarce medical resources, including the issue of how much should be spent on fat people and smokers when the government can get more bang for its buck by focusing on skinny nonsmokers.

Scarce resources always have to be allocated one way or another, of course, and Michael Moore did not have to invent stories about getting screwed over by HMO gatekeepers. But there is an important difference when patients have some choice of providers and health plans. Some might deign to repair a smoker's fractured ankle, for example. There need not be one policy for the whole country regarding what is covered for whom. Giving the government a monopoly on dispensing health care only exacerbates the problems created by medical gatekeepers.

More fundamentally, if people pay for medical care out of their own pockets, they are less likely to be viewed as public enemies when they fail to be as healthy as they can be. Those concerned about the totalitarian implications of treating every health-related decision as a matter of public policy should look for ways to expand competition and consumer choice in health care, not restrict it.

My T-Shirt Went to Peterborough and All I Got Was an Â£80 Fine

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:18:00 EDT

The BBC’s “WHO, WHAT, WHY?” magazine section brings us the story of Mr. Pratt, of Peterborough, England, fined for his "offensive" t-shirt:

He thought it was a bit of a laugh, but Peterborough City Council failed to see the funny side of David Pratt's T-shirt. He has been threatened with a £80 penalty notice after wearing a top with the slogan: "Don't piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies.” After an official complaint was made to the council, street wardens told Mr Pratt his T-shirt could cause offence or incite violence. He faces an on-the-spot fine from the police if he wears it again.

And he’s not the only one. The article goes on to list a bunch of objects that were censored by police, mostly after complaints by nosy members of the public: A toddler’s t-shirt with the word “sperm” on it; a pub sign featuring the word “faggot;” and an fcuk (French Connection U.K.) t-shirt picturing a copulating couple:

Using threatening, abusive, or insulting language is a criminal offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, even if it's printed on a T-shirt. This applies in England and Wales, in Scotland such an incident would be classed as breach of the peace, says the Law Society of Scotland.
It is not necessary for someone to have made an official complaint for the police to act, they just have to think it might offend a hypothetical third party, says criminal solicitor Louise Christian.

Boris v. Red Ken

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:45:00 EDT

It's official. Britain's favorite tousle-haired cad, the Tory MP and television personality Boris Johnson, has tossed his bowler into the ring. The former Spectator editor officially announced yesterday his intention to run against Labour mayor Ken Livingstone.

Livingstone, who recently called Castro's dictatorship "one of the high points of the 20th century'' and is planning a $4 million tribute to "50 years of justice in Cuba" in London's Trafalgar Square, openly challenged Johnson to run, though, as the Telegraph explains, if there is anyone whose celebrity can eclipse that of "Red Ken," it's the MP from Henley:

Mr. Johnson, a columnist on The Daily Telegraph, is the party's best known MP. His appeal extends across party lines and he has become a regular on television panel games, such as Have I Got News For You.

Predictably, the (London) Times and Telegraph are rather excited by the prospect of Mayor Johnson. Even more predictably, The Guardian's class-obsessed killjoy Polly Toynbee—the real-life version of "modern parent" Cressida Wright-Pratt—thinks the old Etonian is a "sociopath." From Toynbee's account, it sounds like Boris is something of a Tory libertarian:

He hints at utter contempt for the NHS, with USSR comparisons. Though liberal on matters of sex (what else could he be?) and drugs ("I'm instinctively inclined to liberalise"), his politics are right off the Cameron scale. Here he is on education: "I am in favour of selection ... So is every member of the British ruling classes"; and on universities: "I believe passionately in academic inequality."

In other nutty British political news, George Galloway, the execrable MP who celebrated Saddam Hussein's "indefatigability" and claimed that the end of the Soviet Union was "the biggest catastrophe of my life," has been suspended from parliament for "concealing his financial dealings with Saddam Hussein's government."

Full story here.

If you are unfamiliar with Boris the TV star, check out this selection of clips from YouTube.

United Wild Kingdom

jblanks@reason.com (Jonathan Blanks) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:24:00 EDT

In an effort to curb human trafficking and child exploitation, the Home Office study proposes tracking all children who enter the U.K.:

Every child entering the UK should have their biometrics taken in an attempt to stop the trafficking of children for sex, domestic slavery, street crime and drug smuggling.

The plan to track children after they enter the UK comes in a Home Office-sponsored study, which admits that human trafficking is now a “real and significant threat” to the country.

There is the obligatory Drug War tie-in:

Chinese boys aged between 13 and 17 were identified as a specific group being trafficked, while Vietnamese boys and girls were also highlighted as a vulnerable group that had been particularly exploited in cannabis production.

“The cannabis factories that have been raided highlight the highly organised business of cannabis cultivation in this country,” the study says. “Houses have been transformed into highly efficient industrial cannabis production works using technical knowledge.

While modern slavery is certainly a problem that should be fought vigorously, taking detailed inventory of all children who enter is not the answer.

But if the Home Office does follow through with this, the least they could do is give the children a fighting chance at freedom: I suggest give the kids a running start before officers bring out the tranquilizer darts and tags.

The effect is the same—my plan is just more entertaining to watch.

Fury: Rushdie's Knighthood

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:12:00 EDT

Salman Rushdie, author of the best-selling and largely unread book of blasphemy The Satanic Verses, joins the esteemed ranks of Elton John, Oswald Mosley and Cliff Richards as a Knight of the British Empire. The BBC World Service asked Lord Ahmed (audio link), Britain's first Muslim peer, if Rushdie is worthy of such an honor:

"I'm appalled because there are some wonderful British writers like J.K. Rowling...who makes a huge contribution in British society, in terms of helping children. Robert Frisk (sic), who has been excellent author (sic) writing about the lies and deception in Afghanistan and Iraq. And many, many more writers who deserve this knighthood much more than a man who was born in India, caused problems in the United Kingdom and now lives in the United States. The only contribution he has made [is] cost our British taxpayer huge amounts of money, but divided the communities and also created hatred against the Muslims. Therefore he does not deserve the knighthood he has been given."

When asked about the position of free speech in a democratic society, Ahmed slithers into that meaningless, post-Jyllands-Posten dodge: "Let me say that I believe in freedom of speech, but it has to be balanced with responsibility." Ahmed also seems unclear on just why Rushdie has "cost the British taxpayer huge amounts of money," though he might want to direct that question to some of his more extreme coreligionists.

But anti-Rushdie sentiment isn't confined to the religious fringe. In the little Englander Daily Mail, Ruth Dudley Edwards comes out against knighting the "self-pitying, pretentious and ungrateful" author:

...he banged on relentlessly in public about his sufferings as a post-colonial expatriate. It seemed to me that he didn't like India, his birthplace, and he certainly didn't like the United Kingdom, his host country. But he was, of course, a wow with the masochistic liberal intelligentsia who loved his savaging of British values as insufficiently cosmopolitan.

In 2005, Rushdie discussed "free speech, fundamentalism, America's place in the world, and his new essay collection" with reason contributor Shikha Dalmia

Liberation Finally Arrives in the UK

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:45:00 EDT

The UK Department of Communities and Local Government is looking to take on discriminatory golf clubs, among other injustices, in a new Single Equality Act, as proposed in a consultation document released yesterday. The ultimate aim is to simplify some of the UK's 40-odd years of discrimination laws, but the current proposal seems a little off the mark: among its priorities are such (it claims) "common-sense" measures as abolishing inequalities in golf clubs and legally guaranteeing a woman's right to breastfeed in all (public and private) child-friendly venues.

Such legislation is apparently necessary because, as The Guardian reports,

Rosie Dodds of the National Childbirth Trust said: "13% of women in England and 16% in Wales have been asked to stop or made to feel uncomfortable when breastfeeding in a public place."

Private, single-sex organizations would, however, be excluded from the law:

Private clubs and associations - we do not favour preventing people setting up clubs which have membership targeted at one sex or group.

But we believe that people being treated as second class citizens when a club is open to all is not acceptable. For example, there are still golf clubs which restrict the times their female members can have access to club facilities or play during the day or bar them from being part of the running of the club.

This all-or-nothing measure would, of course, directly discourage membership reform among the most traditional private organizations. After all, why grant excluded groups partial membership at all when they would be legally obliged to demand full rights and privileges?

Sterling logic from the British government.