David Bennett

Cameron Risks The Prosperity Of Britain

I wrote this on 13 Mar 2016 before the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016, which was on 23 June

Cameron Risks The Prosperity Of Britain

The parties to the drama:
David Cameron – prime minister
George Osborne – chancellor of the exchequer
Andrew Marr – television current affairs host

I watched part of Andrew Marr’s interview with George Osborne this morning. I was struck with how similar Osborne’s statements on the dangers of leaving the EU were to statements that David Cameron has been making over the past week or so.

I was waiting for Andrew Marr to follow up with the obvious question, but he didn’t. He kept pushing the same point, namely that the EU is a basket case and would we really be better off by staying in.

The obvious question that he didn’t ask is this.

In the lead up to the last election, Cameron promised a referendum on staying in the EU.

He promised he would go to the leaders of the EU and negotiate better terms.

He claims he has secured better terms, but no one agrees.

Now he and Osborne are trying to convince the British people to vote to stay in the EU in the upcoming referendum.

They talk about the shock to the economy and the terrible dangers and consequences if we leave.

But, and here’s the thing, whether or not Cameron had negotiated better terms we would still be facing what he says are terrible consequences if we leave.

So how could he ever have said what he did before he went to Brussels – which is that he would recommend leaving if he didn’t get the deal he wanted?

So, let’s see how Cameron might answer this.

He might say that he needed to convince the Europeans that he was serious about leaving, and a referendum was the only way to show that.

In fact he did say that before he went. He said he wanted the Europeans to understand he wasn’t just a politician playing political games.

What that means is that by his own assessment of the realities, he has put the future prosperity of Britain on the line and gambled that it would all work out OK in the end.

He has gambled that the British people will vote to stay within the EU, and that is not in his gift to decide.

Heart Of Darkness

I originally published this on 10 Oct 2012

Have you seen the film ‘Apocalypse Now’ by Francis Ford Coppola? It’s based on Heart Of Darkness. I didn’t know that when I started reading the book, but something clicked when I read that the central character was going up river in search of someone named Kurtz.

If you have seen the film ‘Apocalypse Now’, then you get an idea of the journey into the deepest, darkest unknown. The film is, of course, set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The book, however, is set in Africa and the central character isn’t an assassin like in ‘Apocalypse Now’.

But like in the film, Kurtz is a mystical character and a central feature of his character is that he knows horror and has an opinion on how to deal with horror.

What makes the book worth reading is the way Conrad writes and the small observations about human character that don’t tolerate fools gladly.

I could go on, but I haven’t the inclination. I was never interested to read this book when I was younger – and more’s the pity. It is a great book. A giant of a book – and quite a slim volume, though not necessarily a fast read.

Conrad first published it as a three-part serial in a magazine in 1899, so the Africa he describes is a darker place than we perhaps think of today. Back then, everything beyond the trees that lined the river bank was in the heart of darkness.

And now in 2016, prompted by someone who is just now reading the book, I am thinking again about the heart of darkness. I am thinking about it in the context of this planet.

There are other contexts and the book weaves those in – darkness of the soul, of the character. But sticking with planet Earth, it seems to me that the image brought up by the phrase is not fixed.

One man’s heart of darkness is another man’s back yard.

So the viewpoint is always that of someone who finds the environment of the heart of darkness too real, to hard to bear. It is the point of view of someone who normally lives in a privileged bubble of comparative ease.

There’s an argument for saying that someone who lives on the poor fringes of ‘civilised’ society is better equipped for the heart of darkness.

The play, The Admirable Crichton by J.M. Barrie, deals with this. Shipwrecked on a desert island, the master and his family are incapable of looking after themselves and the manservant (Chrichton) becomes the leader because he is better equipped for practical things.

After their rescue and return to normality, the master of the house finds it difficult to continue in his role with Chrichton around the place because he is a reminder that the ‘natural’ order of things is not a fixed star in the heavens.

I’ve diverted from where I was going with my thoughts, which are these. That on this the last day of 2016, the vast majority of us in the comfortable West probably believe that there is no heart of darkness any more.

Everywhere has been investigated, drilled into, photographed, written about. The planet is our playground and the mystery has gone down a notch.

Perhaps that is part of why we find it so easy to kill off species without remorse.

European Court of Justice Rules Mass Collection Of Data Unlawful

Following on from my last article, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the Investigatory Power Act is unlawful in that the mass collection of data is unlawful. Therefore the Act exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society, as required by the directive.

I am particularly happy that the court highlighted my concern about how much information about its citizens is simply too much.

In that connection, the court stated that:

with respect to retention, the retained data, taken as a whole, is liable to allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained.

The court also ruled that:

As regards the access of the competent national authorities to the retained data, the Court confirms that the national legislation concerned cannot be limited to requiring that access should be for one of the objectives referred to in the directive, even if that objective is to fight serious crime, but must also lay down the substantive and procedural conditions governing the access of the competent national authorities to the retained data.

In other words, it is not sufficient to limit after-the-fact access to the data: The data must not be collected at all except in a specific case where a serious crime can be shown to be likely.

The Investigatory Powers Bill

The UK has just passed The Investigatory Powers Bill. It will become law once it receives the Royal assent – a formality.

It enables a wide range of public bodies to access the records of every person in the UK who connects to the internet. Internet service providers are obliged to keep a record of every site that their users access over the past year.

It’s the modern equivalent of the authorities accessing the record of the library books that a person borrowed.

I am not concerned with whether the authorities can access a person’s predilections for pop music or porn, prison breakouts or paedophilia.

I am, however, concerned that a Government or its agencies can access the records of interesting people. By that I mean that GCHQ could construct an algorithm that splits people into two camps.

There are those people who are interested in trivia – in the diversions of life – and little else. A Government can ignore those people – they aren’t going to object to much of anything.

And then there are a smaller number of people who have a broad range of interests. With the Investigatory Powers Bill the Government will know who its ‘thinking’ opposition is.

Of course, it is not this Government I am worried about. This Government is fair and open. But a more fascist government. If that came to pass they would have all the tools they needed to weed out the potential opposition.

Ah, but this is far fetched. Except that it has happened in other countries.

It can always happen here.