On the face of it, articles today in the Guardian on Cameron's "vision of social responsibility" and Scottish Devolution and Independence might not have too much in common. But scratch the surface, and the same questions arise - and in each case the same answer is suggested.

Jonathan Friedland is a little embarassed at the attention "Dave" is lavishing on the "Guardianista troika" of Polly, Simon Jenkins and himself. But Cameron has a big idea to sell in order to get himself the keys to No 10, and he needs to sell this "big idea" to a wider audience:

He explains it as the simple belief that society's problems are up to all of us to solve. In other words, social questions currently left exclusively to the state would, in Cameron's Britain, be resolved not by central government alone, but by other key players as well, from charities to big business [my italics].

Unfortunately this statement highlights the problems with his idea, already picked up on by Tim Congdon and that I will expand on below.

Cameron is onto something, however, and Liberals should take note:

The left too has a heritage it may have forgotten, a libertarian, anti-statist tradition dating back to the 19th century and earlier, with its friendly societies, mutual associations and trade unions... If Cameron could stir that earlier, sleeping sentiment on the left, and combine it with the traditional Tory, Women's Institute brand of voluntarism, he could forge himself quite a coalition.

There is a problem with this because, as Friedland notes:

Much of that spirit was smothered by the Fabians' technocratic worship of the state and by the Labour experience of 1945, which combined to make many progressives believe the only vehicle capable of carrying their ideal was central government.

And that is a big challenge for Liberals - the ingrained notion that (i) the state must provide everything (and by that, we mean the centralised bureaucratic Westminster-based state) and (ii) that if things don't work at the local level, Westminster must intervene to sort things out.

Friedland uses this latter point as the basis of his challenge to Cameron's idea - that,as he puts it, "our civil society is too weak to carry the load he wants it to, and that would spell disaster for the very people he claims to care about."

I disagree with Friedland here. Cameron's "big idea" won't work, but not for the reasons he states. The problem with Cameron's idea is that it is, in the end, a paternalistic approach to problem solving. As Tim Congdon put it in his Telegraph article last week:

I never imagined that the modern Conservative Party would again embrace old-fashioned Tory paternalism, with a frank advocacy of expanding the state's responsibilities. The election of David Cameron to the leadership therefore came as a shock to me.

Ultimately Cameron is advocating that Central Government dispense largesse to charities and other NGOs for them to deliver services. The priorities will still be controlled centrally, and the taxes raised and collected centrally. The link between those responsible for delivering those services and those paying for them will be long, distant, and mediated via Whitehall and Westminster. In other words, this talk of "social responsibility" is a smokescreen - because Westminster will still be calling the shots and all the attendent problems will remain.

So, what is the answer? For me, Simon Jenkins touches on it in his article on Scottish Independence:

Partial devolution to Scotland and Wales remains a feather in Tony Blair's cap. It recognises the ambition of two component parts of the kingdom for an autonomy that reflects their sense of identity. No visitor to Edinburgh or Cardiff can be in any doubt that they are nowadays more different "places" from England. Their experience led Blair, or at least John Prescott, to answer the West Lothian question by offering similar powers to English regions. But those regions enjoy no collective identity or loyalty, being artificial Whitehall constructs. The idea failed.

Prescott's best answer to the West Lothian question would have been to have conferred partial autonomy on England's counties and cities. They would be viable: the county of Hampshire is the same size as the autonomous state of New Hampshire, and three times the size of sovereign Luxembourg. Westminster MPs would not then be deciding how to run English schools or roads or clinics or police any more than they used to, or any more than they do Scottish ones. Westminster MPs would have as little control over one part of Britain as over any other. They would be ruling a federation, as does the German parliament or the US Congress.

Jenkin's answer gets round the problems with Cameron's proposal. Strong local polities, with a pre-existing sense of identity (or "demos") exist in the form of Counties (traditional borders please!) and Cities. Given the power to raise their own local taxation, they would be able to run local schools, hospitals, transport and the like, either on the state-owned model or by tendering to private concerns, as their local electors saw fit. And, more importantly, the link between locally funded services, and local responsibility, would be clear and democratically accountable. It should also increase the volume and quality of participation in local government both from the passive (elctoral) and active(councillor) sense too, when people realise who controls the purse strings.

I hope our policy makers take note.

The veil debate refuses to die down. The Guardian's Comment is Free has featured numerous articles on the subject in the last week, with no sign of a conclusion or consensus.

Mary Riddell raises the argument that veils are both a cause and symptom of social division; Soumaya Ghannoushi doesn't like the niqab herself, but believes in the right of others to wear one; Salma Yaqoob argues that the right to choose one's clothing should be defended. It's certainly good to see differing points of view raised, and it's an interesting departure from the usual bland consensus displayed when sensitive matters of religion are discussed.

But there's something a bit odd about this debate: the protagonists all seem to think that there is a 'right' answer to the question and that, once the right answer is arrived at, someone ought to do something about it. Mary Riddell calls for a 'veil-free future', whilst Salma Yaqoob regards the veil as irrelevant to the questions of integration and social cohesion.

To me, this seems wrong. Freedom to wear the clothing you choose is a negative right, which means that nobody else can force you to do otherwise, except in cases where your clothing may break the law (for example, laws on public nudity or, perhaps, certain safety laws). Negative rights simply say that a person cannot be prevented from doing as they choose so long as they do so legally. The core of traditional liberties are all negative rights, including free speech and freedom of assembly. Others are prevented from infringing these rights, but these rights do not confer any special privileges or entitlements.

In short, we have the right to wear what we want, but no right to force others to accept that. This can be demonstrated by means of a simple example: try walking into a bank wearing a motorcycle crash helmet and see what happens. There is no absolute right to freedom of clothing which trumps all other rights. Some would argue that freedom of religion is so important that we must tolerate even extreme religious dress in all circumstances. I'm uncomfortable with this; religion is a matter of choice and I don't think that we should have special rights for self-selecting minorities. Any freedom for Muslims to wear niqabs in all circumstances should also require a freedom for Scousers to wear hoodies.

In the end, I suppose I am reiterating my original point: there's no right or wrong answer here, certainly not one that the government can enforce. Society has to come up with its own answers and its own compromises. Those of a liberal persuasion have to campaign for liberal outcomes, not rely on the government to mandate them. Vigorous debate and dialogue are the way forward, not calls for the government to 'do something'.

Let's start off by saying that people of all backgrounds should have the right to wear just about anything they want to. Politicians have no business interfering in what people choose to wear as they go about their private business and we should deplore any efforts to do so. So if Jack Straw was suggesting that there should be some kind of ban on veils, he'd be wrong. But, from what I can see, he didn't say that; the issue is evidently more complicated.

So, if nobody is advocating a ban on veils, the question is really a matter of social relations. In other words, it's all about individual preference and the relations between the preferences of different people. My preference is to be able to see the faces of the people I talk to; it's easier to relate to someone when you can see them smile, frown or express emotion via the minute facial twitches that millenia of evolution have given us as a way of understanding each other better.

Some veils, such as the hijab (the BBC has produced a helpful guide to the variety of veils for those unfamiliar with the terms) do nothing to hide the facial expressions. But full-body or full-face covering veils such as the niqab and burqa would make it more difficult for me to communicate with someone; being used to seeing faces, it is harder to talk to someone who doesn't show their face.

I don't, however, see what the problem is here. All lifestyles involve tradeoffs and the choice to wear a burqa is one that, whilst it makes communication with others more difficult, might have other benefits. It's up to the wearer to decide if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Of course, it's vital that the choice is freely made by the wearer and not imposed, but this applies to almost every lifestyle choice a person makes. It is not necessary to make a specific reference to Islam here; freedom is universal.

So, to put it as simply as possible, people have the right to wear what they want, and others have the right to take a view on that style of dress. Seems sensible enough to me. But this view is not universal:

The Islamic Human Rights Commission called Mr Straw's views "astonishing" and accused him of discrimination.

The Protect-Hijab organisation said the "appalling" comments showed "a deep lack of understanding".

But Dr Daud Abdullah, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he could understand Mr Straw's discomfort adding that women could choose to remove the veil.

Conservative policy director Oliver Letwin said it would be "dangerous doctrine" to tell people how to dress.

And Liberal Democrat president Simon Hughes: "The experience of visiting their MP is difficult enough for many people without having to consider a dress code."

I don't find anything "apalling" about what Jack Straw said, and I'll quite happily dismiss the arguments of anyone who does. As for Oliver Letwin, branding Straw's views as a "dangerous doctrine" is going much too far, though to be fair to him he does appear to be responding to a suggestion that Straw never made. The same applies to Simon Hughes, who appears to be responding to the suggestion of a "dress code", a suggestion never made.

This underlines the problem with the increasing 'sensitivity' that surrounds any debate over cultural values. We are often too quick to rush to an absolute judgement, ignoring the fact that in the real, messy, confusing society the lines are much less clear and the situation more fluid. Where people disagree, compromise should be our aim, and Jack Straw was entirely right to raise his views, and he was also right to resist calling for any presceptive measures. This is one issue where people have to work it out for themselves.

UPDATE: Other bloggers on this subject: Alan Beddow, Rob Fenwick, MayorWatch, Mark Valladares.

I've just returned from watching the cricket at the Oval. It has been a momentous day, not for the cricket as such, but for the way play ended.

In the afternoon session the umpires decided that the ball had been tampered with by the fielding side. They therefore awarded England five penalty runs, and changed the ball. No announcement was made as to the action taken, but those of us in the crowd who were also listening on the radio soon found out.

Tea was taken early because of bad light, but at the end of the interval only the umpires emerged. The Pakistan dressing room door remained closed.

After a few minutes the umpires returned. Spectators were told nothing, but most inferred that Pakistan were protesting at the earlier decision.

A few minutes later the umpires returned, and the England batsmen also walked out to the middle. Again they stood around for a few minutes, before the umpires removed the bails and all returned to theor respective changing rooms.

Again no announcement, but the only sensibble interpretation seeemed to be that the umpires had asked both teams to take the field, that Pakistan had not done so, and so had conceded the game.

Still no announcement. Pathetic.

Zaheer Abbas (one of my childhood heroes) and David Morgan appeared to meet and negotiate. The Pakistan team appeared. No umpires.

In short confusion. Finally, nearly an hour and a half after play was due to resume, came an announcement that there would be no further play today.

The BBC has a report that negotiations are ongoing.

My view is that the game is over. The rules of cricket have been applied. The umpires may have made the wrong decision when they decided the ball had been tampered with. No one can know. But crcket depends on having a couple of people out in the middle who take impartial decions in the best way they can. (There are plenty of ways to have an inquest after the game.)

When the umpires had taken a decision, that decision should have been communicated to spectators and respected.

If this Test match is resumed then - based on what I know of it - people should stay away.

And the ECB should explain why umpires decisions are not relayed to spectators.

Finally, given the poor quality of the drink on offer at the Oval, I have decided to sign Don Foster's petition against the ban on taking alcohol into Test grounds

There was a discussion this morning on Radio 4 around the news that the world's second-richest man is to give away his $44bn fortune to the Gates Foundation. Philanthropy is a well-established phenomenon in the US. Partly this is due to the much lower level of State provision; partly due to a culture in which Religion has a much higher profile and reach than in Europe. Crucially there is also a much greater prevalence of the view that wealth is not there to be horded and passed down to the next generation. This is in marked contrast to the UK, where views on inherited wealth are informed by the actions and attitudes of the Aristocracy and the Monarchy. Preservation of dynastic priveleges and wealth are paramount, and fly in the face of meritocracy and philanthropy.

Perhaps the last word should go to Andrew Carnegie:

"The man who dies rich, dies impoverished."

Channel 4's "Fact Check" makes interesting reading. Its verdict on Labour's attempt to paint us as soft on crime:

The Lib Dems ... have voted against key legislation around law and order in the recent past but ... their 'no' vote is a vote for tougher policy, rather than showing them up to be soft on crime.

This is one area that Labour still think they have the upper hand. Yet recent events have shown otherwise. If I was an inner city Labour MP, I'd be getting concerned ...

Dave Hill has a good post on Comment is Free about the frenzy for tabloid justice. What he didn't mention was the extent to which this is bipartisan. At PMQs this week Cameron and Blair were competing to show who was better at listening to the redtops, rather than to voters. (Regular readers may remember that nothing in politics offends me more than this). Doing what the red tops want on judges and on sentencing is another of things Cameron and Blair have in common (like Iraq, the Education Bill etc).

None of this means that I want Sweeney to be released early. There are certainly many criminals I would like to see locked up for a very long time.But I don't want vigilantees, I don't want sentencing to be decided by the Sun, and the idea that longer sentences will cure crime is mere wishful thinking: many - perhaps most - criminals do not expect to be caught when they commit their crimes..

The great merit of Dave Hill's piece is that it exposes just how hand in glove Wade and Blair are

The ensuing embarrassment should suggest to ministers that saying the kinds of things they think the red-tops want to hear doesn't always make them look as butch as boots.

Yet their deep desire to do so at this difficult time was disclosed on Tuesday's Newsnight by the ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. He described Blair as being very "media friendly" at the moment and revealed that he had "probably" dined with Sun editor Rebekah Wade "the other night". When pressed by Paxman, he grinned and said he "certainly" had.

Again, let's remain calm: it's no big deal for a premier to break bread with an editor. What is noteworthy, though, is the Sun's pious rubbishing of Terry Grange on Wednesday morning.

Hill suggests that Blair should now realise that he can get nothing more from this game. But let's face it, these papers sell a lot of copies, and if they will destroy Blair's enemies for him...when is he going to change?

In any case, this is not the message from Blair's speech in Bristol where according to the BBC the prime minister said the rights of suspects must not "outweigh" those of the "law-abiding majority".

This reminds me of nothing more than some of the things Thatcher said in her later, madder days in office. The thing about "Suspects" is that they are part of the law-abiding majority until proven guilty.

But the difference was that in those days the rest of the opposition - the Labour Party - stood against knotowing to the redtops. Now Labour have gone to the bad, and Cameron merely tries to outbid them. The fight against yobs risks turning into mob rule.

Link to Dave Hill article on Comment is Free

Link to Blair's Bristol speech

Although one might think that they have more important things to be worrying about, it seems that the New Labour instincts are still functioning: if in doubt, start passing some new laws!

The latest target for the legislative scattergun is the "lad's mag", which Labour MP Claire Curtis-Thomas (click the link and take a look at that voting record) has decided must be banished to the top shelf by force of law. Never mind that there is already a voluntary code regulating this matter, and that Trading Standards officers have the power to reprimand newsagents who disobey it; in the world of Labour MPs, there are no grey areas. If something is bad (in some people's views) then there must be a law against it.

Let's just stop and think about this for a moment. There's already a voluntary agreement, several major retailers have shown a willingness to tackle material which offends their customers and many already place such magazines on the top shelf. Yes, it's a voluntary agreement that lacks the formality of law, but there's a process one can go through if one finds a newsagent placing such magazines inappropriately. Most important, a degree of common sense can be exercised by all concerned; retailers are generally wary of upsetting their customers and would listen to a genuine complaint, while spurious complaints (for example, by people with extreme moral views) can be ignored.

What good would a new law do? It would remove the possibility for discretion, for individuals to exercise common sense and judgement; it would be a license for every moral crusader to claim that they have the law on their side in their quest to banish anything they find objectionable to the top shelf. This will do little harm to genuinely pornographic magazines, whose clientele will think nothing of reaching up to the top shelf. But magazines which are not pornographic in nature will suffer from the stigma of top-shelf status.

Might I be over-reacting here? I don't think I am. Consider how such a law would be framed; under the present common sense system, we know what type of magazine we're concerned about and can use our own reason and faculties to decide on a case-by-case basis. A law would have to set down strict criteria about what constitutes a top-shelf magazine. Would exposed breasts be judged immoral? That's The Sun gone to the top shelf then (hang on, maybe there's something to this idea...). How about explicit descriptions of sexual acts? Don't some women's magazines contain these too though? Under such a law, all it would take is for a complaint to be made against any of these and the retailer would be required to do something about it. And in today's risk-averse society, that probably means caving in and moving the magazine to the top shelf.

Lynne Featherstone has written an interesting and thought provoking essay on the problem of children carrying knives elsewhere on Liberal Review - I am glad to see a prominent MP thinking carefully about this issue, and doing so on this site.

Knife carrying is undoubtedly a significant problem for the children blighted by the presence of knives on the streets and in schools. However, we should question how widespread a problem it is. The Home Office's Young people and crime: findings from the 2004 Offending, Crime and Justice Survey states the following:

CARRYING WEAPONS
… the 2004 OCJS also asked respondents whether they had carried a knife or gun in the last 12 months either for protection, for use in crimes or in case they got into a fight'. The questions did not specify the type of knife or gun carried and respondents were not asked whether they had actually used a knife or gun to either threaten or harm someone.

4 per cent of young people aged 10 to 25 said they had carried a knife of some sort in the last 12 months for protection, for use in crimes or in case they got into a fight. Less than 1 per cent said they had carried a gun of some sort for the same purpose. Although the types of knife carried are not known, early indications from the 2005 OCJS suggest that many cases involve the carrying of pen knives.

An accurate and measured assessment is that while this is an observable problem, it is not endemic. Allowing for adolescent braggadocio, these are figures for concern but probably not for widespread worry. Of course, the figures say nothing about geographical or socio-economic distribution of knife carrying and I’d hazard to guess that where a knife culture exists the problems will be magnified. The OCJS goes on to state:

Males were significantly more likely to have carried a knife and a gun than females. Carrying of knives was most common among 14 to 21 year-olds (6%). Carrying guns was rare for all age groups.

Note that carrying guns is rare. Note below that carrying weapons is more common than the use of weapons, and that excluded children are more likely to have used a weapon against another person than the average in mainstream schools.

The annual Youth Survey conducted on behalf of the Youth Justice Board asks detailed questions about weapon carrying among children aged 11 to 16 in school and excluded
young people aged 10 to 16 …The 2004 survey reported:

Although a substantial proportion of children had carried or used a weapon (defined as ‘something like a gun or a knife’) most had only carried a pen knife which could be used for a variety of innocent purposes.

Actual levels of use of a weapon were far lower than carrying. Three per cent of children in mainstream schools said they had used a weapon of some sort against another person at some time. The figure for excluded children was higher at 14 per cent.

Lynne suggests a number of solutions, which I’m going to explore one by one. First up she suggests:

So - as with drunk driving - a hard hitting campaign about the consequences of carrying a knife both for the victim and the aggressor can make an impact over time. It's about education about the realities; face-to-face work with the families or survivors of knifings - so consequences are faced.

This may or may not work. There are a couple of fundamental differences between boozy adult drivers, and frightened insecure children. Some are obvious, but some not so. The first is that children may well react differently to shock campaigns. Some children may be indifferent, or consciously reject the concerns of adults. For others, a widespread campaign highlighting the dangers of knife carrying may actually increase the insecurity that drives children to carry knives in the first place. Lynne herself states:

First - kids are afraid that without one they will be vulnerable to others with knives.

We need to be careful we send out the correct message about how widespread the problem is. Though knives are a problem, the vast majority of schoolchildren go through life without being affected by them. Ramp up the tension and more children may decide that they need to protect themselves.

Secondly, as the survey evidence suggests, most knives are pen-knives which have an entirely innocent and functional use. Even those children who may carry them as protection mostly do not use them and probably never intend to use them. As such they may not consider that they are the target of “hard-hitting� campaigns. Again, as Lynne says:

Most of them carry and don't intend to use - but it happens and they 'plunge' and that's it.

There is a fine line to tread with regard to this. Education is often a good solution to problems of ignorance – but do we do children discredit by imagining that they do not know that knives are fearful and destructive? On this point I remain agnostic.

The second solution that Lynne presents is:

We also should have equal sentencing for carrying a knife as carrying a gun - but simple locking away on its own can just shield young people from the reality of their actions, and so doesn't help reduce the reoffending rate when they're released.

The idea of having the same sentence for carrying a knife as carrying a gun should be resisted simply because they are not directly comparable offences, and they are not the same weapon. Knives have many purposes; guns only to kill. Knives require proximity to use; guns are more remote – and much more deadly. There would also something faintly absurd in demanding that a school-boy carrying a pen-knife (once the thing of every boy’s trouser pockets!) would be culpable for a misdemeanour ranked the same as carrying a gun. In the same vein, I’d make the judgement that carrying knife might not automatically lead to a custodial sentence, while carrying a gun always should lead to a custodial sentence.

Secondly, by equalising the tariff for carrying a knife with carrying a gun I suspect that for those who are minded to carry a weapon, guns will increasingly be the weapon of choice. That is, inasmuch as what is carried (or not carried) is subject to the influence of the deterrent effect of a punitive tariff, an equal tariff will marginally encourage the carrying of the weapon that is most likely to “give status�, since the negative effects of carrying such a weapon are now equal with the alternative. [This argument is only marginal because there are other determinants of what weapon is carried, as opposed to whether to carry a weapon in the first place – cost, ease of acquisition, ease of concealment and so on.] What the OCJS is also clear about is that children do not think that they will be caught if they offend; it is therefore questionable whether higher tariffs act as effective deterrents in any event.

Where I think Lynne is absolutely right is in suggesting that detection may be the key to dissuasion:

Next - take away the relative security that young people feel about not being caught carrying a knife. Random metal detector arches going into key places - out of the blue. Has to be random - in timing and placement. I'm against permanent arches in places like schools as that brutalises children and they would just leave them elsewhere anyway. But if that sense of not being caught could be removed - and it becomes too dodgy to carry - the less they will carry.

I have absolutely no idea whether such mobile arches are viable or – out and about - legal, but I strongly suspect that permanent security checks in schools are a more effective way of ensuring the knives – and guns – are not a part of school life for any of our children. And yet Lynne rejects this.

I see no problem in children “leaving weapons elsewhere� – this would be, after all, an improvement of sorts. And would such checks really brutalise children? After all, what is brutal about airport security checks? Okay, they are not convenient; they are just one of those things – but brutalising? Such checks are much more likely to be considered as invasive and worrying if they are random, unusual, out of the ordinary. If they are an everyday feature of school life they will be considered no different to going through security before a flight, having your bag checked at a sporting event, or going through the security gates used by every public library to ensure you haven’t accidentally packed away a book without taking it out, or the same systems used by shops to prevent shoplifting. It is important to stress again, that for most children such security checks will never be an issue – because they do not carry weapons.

I find myself at the end of this with one last nagging thought, that I began with … how much of a problem is this? If it is a serious problem then is deserves significant attention – to act on, and perhaps, to go beyond what Lynne has already suggested. But is there a danger that in pandering to overblown concerns relating to risk assessment and the dangers to children that we feed the feed the hobgoblin that afflicts our times perhaps more than ever - and on this issue, my mind is not made up...

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." – H.L. Mencken.

The Guardian reports today that David Cameron will make a speech about the family in which he will:

claim the best test of how good a father is to his children is the amount of time they spend together. Mr Cameron has already suggested that he regards his family as more important than becoming prime minister.

"Quality time" is a much over-used phrase, and there are many tales to be told of children abandoned to the care of others (or even sent to boarding school) by excessively driven parents who are "never there" for their children.

Yet such a claim reveals, in the same way as his recent comments about focussing on quality of life rather than amassing money indicate, that he does not understand the pressures facing many parents today.

Its very easy for someone in Cameron's position to decide to spend more time with his children - I can't imagine him struggling on a weekend in his "leisure time" to do the shopping, cleaning and DIY because of the long hours he's had to work during the week just to make ends meet. If he wants to downsize he has the wherewithall to do so, and even whilst in employment I doubt he has to undertake the mundane tasks that make life such a drudge for the majority. Quitting politics to "spend more time with his family" will not make an appreciable difference to his lifestyle in the way that would happen in the vast majority of British households were the main bread-winner to quit working.

Life is hard enough for many parents in this country without the likes of David Cameron heaping more guilt on their heads. He should concentrate on formulating policies (remember those, Mr Cameron?) that make life easier for working parents to spend more time with their families, such as cutting direct taxation of the lowest paid, than lecturing them on how to be good parents.