‘Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.’

Thus spake John Adams, the Second President of the United States. Against perceived odds and all mainstream predictions, 2016 seemed to demonstrate a democratic awakening. Voters delivered several, well-aimed gut punches to an established political class on both sides of the pond.

There were several possible reactions available to politicians, and we have seen them all. There are those that have called for real change, after all, that is what voters have asked for. There are those that have pointed fingers at their colleagues and blamed them for the isolation that voters feel, implying that only through neglect and ignorance could people have voted for (insert political event here). Then there is the final group, the ones that have done all that they could to resist the democratic will of the people and, in some way, frustrate it.

We should in this final instance, heed the warnings provided to us by George Lucas at the end of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. As Chancellor Palpatine is granted emergency powers to rapturous ovations, Senator Amidala bemoans; ‘so this is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause’. It seems to have become second nature to most on the centre-left to dismiss the EU Referendum result as the outcome of ignorance, a democratic accident from which it is their mission to save those sensible enough to have voted to Remain. Of course, we hear plenty of platitudes about recognising the will of the people and seeking to carry it out, but it is normally whispered after boldly declaring that they themselves voted Remain and think leaving would be disastrous. Much like the Speaker, some MPs would like us to know that they are being dragged to the voting chambers by their constituents.

Fundamental questions need asking in the wake of these results that have knocked chunks out of the foundations of British and American politics. Democracy in the United Kingdom is already conducted under fairly restricted parameters. There is a consensus on the size of the state and what it should provide; one which falls to the left side of a traditional economic spectrum. British voters have similar expectations of the state to those in Scandinavian countries and these are met through taxes that are increasingly complicated to understand or simply not known about. Public and political discourse around the NHS crisis seems to be conducted on the basis of whether or not taxes are raised; all other possibilities are excluded on the basis of their heresy. The political pendulum swings generally from the centre to ever-so-slightly off-centre once every 10 years or so. Everyone outside of those narrow parameters are either fascists or communists, whatever they are, they are certainly ‘illiberal’.

Particularly with Brexit it seems that British democracy has laid out the path over which it will tread its final steps on the way to the gallows. That is not to say that Parliament will cease to exist or be replaced by some other form of government, but that the final steps will be taken in order to remove the semblance of public interaction in democratic debate. It is now the case that news is either favourable to a political argument or ‘fake news’. The police can retain individuals on charges of terrorism but public debate on the interactions between Islam and terrorism are ‘Islamaphobic’. Public speakers on extreme ends of political ideologies are finding it increasingly difficult to air their views in the open, driving them underground and in to the arms of cultists. Almost every major political or social challenge in the United Kingdom has around it some taboo that cannot be mentioned, some reason to exclude some groups or ideas from the debate.

Jonah Goldberg, in a book of the same name, called this ‘Liberal Fascism’. In the name of progress, we must all move towards our common goal. There is no room for dissent or deviation. This does not mean the existence of some power-grabbing conspiracy, simply that power is a corrupting force in all of its forms. Those that make political decisions and those that report on them have their own interests at heart – journalists and politicians need each other in order to climb their respective greasy-poles. This generates a narrow consensus in place of rigorous political discourse. Both sides of the referendum debate demonstrated a complete lack of imagination or zeal in their attempt to convince voters of the merits of their arguments. It was a race-to-the-bottom, fear-mongering, sound-bite exercise for all parties. It shouldn’t be so easy to complain of the ignorance of voters because our leaders should have conducted themselves in such a way as to educate and inspire. It is a damning indictment of this generation of leaders that no such figures emerged.

Our democracy grows lethargic and uninspired. To preserve it, we need those liberal values of tolerance and diversity to mean something more than the hollow platitudes that they have become. Unlike Monty Python’s parrot – this democracy is not yet an ex-democracy. It may, however, be slipping into a coma.

Daniel is a Secondary School teacher in Buckinghamshire and a member of the Wycombe Conservative Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielrdownes

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A 23 year old Welsh solider, Robert Clarke, is serving a 12 month Community Sentence for obstructing an anti-terrorism search. The former military man had planned to fly to Jordan to join Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS. Before boarding the flight, he was detained and instructed to hand over his smart phone and accompanying password. He refused.

The result is that Mr Clarke was detained, alongside others suspected of terrorism offences, a move so dangerous for him that he had to be transferred to solitary confinement. He will now spend the rest of his life obligated to inform employers of his conviction under the anti-terrorism acts, pay a ‘victim surcharge’ and serve his Community Sentence (only avoiding jail time in lieu of the time that he had already spent under lock and key).

Mr Clarke had come to the attention of the police via his social media statuses, which had indicated his intention to travel to the region. With this information, the police had sent several warnings to him of the dangers of such action. So, Robert Clarke had received military training, had clearly done his own research on what was involved and was sent various pamphlets and information from the police. Why, given that he had made a well-informed decision, was he prevented from going?

Another solider, a former currency trader who wisely hides his identity behind the name ‘Macer Gifford’, has himself been detained by the British Government on his way to successfully join the fight against ISIS; yet has never been formally arrested. This would suggest then, that until Robert Clarke had refused to hand over his phone pass-code he had not committed any ‘crime’. Three British men have died so far fighting alongside British and American-supported groups, none of whom were arrested or even detained under anti-terrorism laws.

So the act of booking a flight to Jordan in order to fight alongside forces supported by your Government is, in itself, not a criminal act. Robert Clarke had already been the subject of police surveillance and subsequent advisory communications. Receiving these had not deterred him, nor had they stated that following through on these proposed actions may be considered a crime, broadly because they aren’t. His ‘criminal’ activity came in refusing to comply with Schedule Seven of the Anti-Terrorism Act (2000).

This law is dangerously broad and empowers law-enforcement agencies to: detain a suspect for up to 9 hours; search an individual and keep their belongings for up to 7 days; deprive the individual of a publicly funded lawyer and take bio metric data of the suspect including fingerprints and DNA. It is also a criminal offense to fail to answer a question asked of you or hand over any of these belongings (as in Robert Clarke’s case). All of this can be exercised without the burden of having to demonstrate that an individual is a direct threat or the need to justify your suspicions. If a customs officer simply does not like the cut of your jib, they can enforce any or all of these powers.

But these worrying stop-and-search powers do not find themselves confined to the airport. Section 47A of the Anti-Terrorism Act allows for any uniformed officer to search any vehicle, again without need of suspicion, or any of its occupants. The apparent restrictions on these powers are that they must be used over a designated geographical area authorised by a senior officer. So far, these powers have not been enforced, but all it would take is one officer to believe that there is a ‘threat’ of an attack and supply the required authorisation.

These powers, Schedule Seven and Section 47A, replaced the repealed Sections 44-47, scrapped because of their considerable disregard for Human Rights. In the time that they were in force over 550,000 stop-and-searches took place. Just 0.6% of these (or just over 3,000) led to an arrest. The statistic that really leaves a pit in the stomach is that of the 509 arrests in 2009/10 just two of these were related to terrorism. This is according to official government statistics outlined in their own report on the Act and its powers.

So has Schedule Seven been more effective? Well according to the same Government report, ‘Terrorism in Great Britain: the Statistics’, over 360,000 people had been detained under section 7. Just 4% of these were detained for over an hour and 5,515 of these were kept for up to 9 hours, the maximum allowed by the law. There is no data on the number of subsequent arrests or how many of these arrests were then related to potential acts of terror.

We therefore have a data set of what is now approaching 1 million people that have been stopped, searched and detained. They have been stopped on the streets, in their cars and in their attempts to board a flight. Of this 1 million we know of just two, since 2009, who have been convicted of crimes relating to terrorism. That is a success rate of 0.0002% for these anti-terrorism laws. There are far more, like Robert Clarke, who have been criminalised by the laws themselves; over 5,000 convicted of other crimes following searches carried out by Sections 44-47 alone.

How many others are there who are unable to find employment because they have an Anti-Terrorism charge on their record? We have a set of laws which grant powers to law enforcement agencies which, far from keeping us safe, place any individual under the threat of detention without suspicion, deprived of a lawyer and submitted to searches without a warrant. These liberties would not be worth sacrificing even if they were successful, the fact that they fall so abysmally short of anything that could be considered effective is a matter of serious and grave concern.

Daniel is a Secondary School teacher in Buckinghamshire and a member of the Wycombe Conservative Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielrdownes

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Photo courtesy of flickr.com/andrew_buckie

‘When you step over someone on the way to the pub, opera, shops or your own home, think about this for a while: there but for fate go all of us’. So ends Penny Anderson’s, Guardian article on homelessness. We should all remember, she states, that but for a few changeable circumstances, any one of us could be on the streets.

Even if this were true, and we shall get to that, to believe so would be extremely unhelpful for those that spend their lives on the street. Under this assumption, homelessness is a product of random chance, there would be little that could be done to avoid or prevent losing your home. You could not legislate away fate, so there would be little that one could do to eradicate extreme poverty.

The statistics tell us a very different story, and one vaguely illuminated by Anderson in her article. Short-term tenancies combined with the increasing unaffordability of houses in the UK market contribute to making people more vulnerable. There is little by the way of a safety net for those that find themselves evicted at short notice from a property, particularly those that do not live near family or friends. That being said, it is far from the majority of people who find themselves living in this insecure situation, so perhaps it might not be you sleeping rough one day after all.

The article is typical of the lefty/liberal consensus view that social problems are born of rampant inequality, that rich people do not have cares for those who find themselves in poverty and that factors such as criminal behaviour or substance abuse are secondary rather than primary causes. But in each of those cases their basic assumptions are as unhelpful as they are misguided.

Most often, for both men and women on the streets, it is the breakdown of a relationship that has led to their situation. For women, often this is because of domestic violence. Inequality cannot reasonably be blamed for either of these circumstances, or at least a reasonable amount of contortion of the facts would be needed. Suffering from mental illness is the next most common reason for sleeping rough; far from having an economic solution this could be alleviated by the often spoken of ‘parity of esteem’ for mental health conditions as physical ones. Substance abuse and alcoholism, not mentioned by Anderson, are major factors that not only instigate homelessness but also keeps people there.

To tackle the causes of homelessness, one may start with affordable housing. It seems a reasonable assumption. Government would need to look at reducing the barriers on those companies that wish to build houses so that supply can catch up with demand. There are arguments to be made for more social housing, but alleviating homelessness by creating another form of dependence would surely be detrimental.

Then we can begin to look at the deeper causes of homelessness; ensuring that mental health is treated as seriously as physical conditions we could ensure that people who are most vulnerable receive the care that they need. By doing so, the stigma of mental illness would also be eased, perhaps allowing those that are currently without a safety net to be better able to rely on the kindness and understanding of friends. These same services would be the same that are deployed to aid those with substance and alcohol abuse problems, providing a proper structure for individuals to seek help.

A solution will also need to be found for providing homeless people with the skills that they will need to enter employment. What hope do people have of escaping the devastating spiral that they get stuck in if they cannot find a job? There are many charities that are already fulfilling this role, perhaps all that is needed there is the space and support for those organisations to continue with their excellent work.

Finally, there is the demographic of homeless people that are in employment but are still sleeping rough. This is the clearest demonstration that could possibly be provided that we need to rethink housing benefit, tax credits and the tax system. What we have currently is a situation where the quest for independence does not pay and in fact, can make you more reliant on the state to get by. When both of these fail and it allows people to end up on the streets, there is a serious economic and social failure.

One thing is for sure, that the next time you step over someone on your way to your destination, do not think ‘there but for fate go all of us’. It simply is not true. Do not trouble yourself which such meaningless platitudes and instead consider the very real solutions that could make a difference to people’s lives.

Daniel is a Secondary School teacher in Buckinghamshire and a member of the Wycombe Conservative Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielrdownes

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Despite only being a few days in, there has been a lot of talk about wage inequality already in 2017. From Jeremy Corbyn’s maximum wage cap to the IFS study into part-time work, our attention is being drawn to the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Very little debate has occurred so far about why wage inequality may be bad. Corbyn himself seemed to focus on the fairness of it all; believing that it would be much more righteous to limit how much someone can earn rather than focus our attention on putting more money in the pockets of those on lower wages. There is a growing ‘liberal’ consensus which promulgate the idea that if poverty exists then there should not be a space created for wealth.

The fairness argument exposes a basic economic illiteracy and one that policy-makers of a certain frame of mind have a responsibility to educate away. Wealth does not create poverty – it is quite the opposite. Capping wages at a maximum does to tax receipts what cutting ones nose off would do to one’s face. Setting an upper limit on what someone could earn would reduce the amount of tax that could be recuperated, but projections of the damage that could be done could not take in to account the number of wealth creators who may simply wish to earn their money elsewhere.

The moral argument also does not sit well with me. Surely it is better that market forces distribute wages without ideological prejudice than a small group of people place a moral limit on the amount of money someone can earn through employment. What we would be doing is replacing the power of a market force and placing it into the hands of individuals, at whose mercy we shall be placed.

What right or ability does anyone have to determine the value of someone’s experience or economic value annually? There are circumstances under which this kind of intervention may be necessary, in terms of those employed by the state, but even those wages are linked to the wider market value of equivalent skills and jobs.

What possible advantage could a limit bring to those that are earning the least in the UK? It is a move that seems aimed at punishing the wealthiest rather than helping the poorest, and it would do so at the extent of those who benefit the greatest from the tax revenue. We could benefit from revisiting Margaret Thatcher’s response to Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes in 1990; ‘he would rather the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich’.

Alternatively, a reform of income tax to take those that are working minimum wage (or living wage) jobs would do a substantial amount to alleviate money worries for the lowest earners. It would also reduce the nonsensical and burdensome tax breaks and welfare administration, as Eaomonn Butler would put it ‘paying people with one hand and taxing them with the other’. This would also increase the incentive for job seekers to find employment by making wages after tax higher than that received on welfare.

As for the job security, or lack of it, highlighted in the IFS report – the best way to create decently paid, secure, full-time work is by allowing individuals to innovate and create those jobs in the first place. That is the kind of pursuit that can earn you a great deal of money. We should be open in our defence of individuals who want to do just that.

Daniel is a Secondary School teacher in Buckinghamshire and a member of the Wycombe Conservative Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielrdownes

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The Department for Education have announced their new funding formula, which means more money for schools in the most deprived areas and less for those in London. Whilst this looks like a simple rejigging of the Education budget – the National Audit Office predict that this will constitute a £3bn of cuts in schools. So will these budget changes bring greater equality to our schools and end the massive geographical inequality that are currently inherent in the British system?

The changes are certainly long overdue – a funding system where two schools of exactly the same size and similar cohorts of students should receive roughly equitable funding. Taxpayers should not be expected to sustain the privilege of certain schools over others, those that pay their tax in Barnsley should expect their children to get as good a deal as those that pay their tax in Kingston.

However, in reality, what these cuts will do is impose a greater amount of pressure on a system already groaning under the weight of their financial burdens. The NAO, in the same report, also predicted that 60% of Secondary schools are already in deficit and can ill afford the projected £326,000 they are set to lose by 2020.

Cuts like these that affect the classroom mean bigger class sizes for our students, a limited opportunity to provide the best resources in our schools and an even bigger burden placed on staff shortages. If cuts are to be made, we should seek to ensure that the impact is as far removed from our children as possible.

So what can we do without? There are plenty of quangos that could be added to the 2010 ‘bonfire’. This could both contribute tremendous spending cuts and have the added benefit of liberating our schools from unnecessary administration and restrictive practices.

Take OFSTED for example, with a budget of over £160 million. Most of what OFSTED does be replaced by school leaders sharing best practice and governors being given the proper ability to hold their schools to account. Removing the four tier rating system would also have a significant impact on our schools.

School leaders are perpetually caught in a tsunami of paperwork; all in the name of securing the best OFSTED ratings. Even those schools that are already ‘Outstanding’ struggle to recruit to their Senior Leadership Teams, with staff shirking the burden that comes with maintaining such a reputation. In addition, 89% of England’s schools are rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by OFSTED – but where is the evidence that this rigour in the quango’s assessment of schools is having an impact on school’s results, or England’s performance Internationally? If there isn’t, it’s time to get rid. Try something else, something significantly less expensive.

That deals with how schools are judged – what about how students are assessed? Why is the government designing a curriculum? Not only is it costly (to the tune of £265 million) but there is something fundamentally dangerous about the state deciding what the future generation should and should not learn. The £265 million comes from the Standards and Testing Agency, who design Primary school tests, and Education Standards, Curriculum and Qualifications, which includes the qualifications regulator. The idea has been mooted before that Universities and other professionals should have a role in assessing the quality of various qualifications, and why shouldn’t they? There is no reason at all that the government should or needs to be involved in what we teach our children and how they are assessed for what they have learned. If the state does set the curriculum and tests it inevitably stifles a school’s ability to innovate and further, ultimately restricts parental choice.

I mentioned earlier staff shortages, and where there’s a problem there is a highly funded, bureaucratic organisation there to fill the void. The National College for Teaching and Leadership is the departmental body responsible for the awarding of Qualified Teaching Status (QTS) for new recruits, the further career development of teachers and school leaders and the building of partnerships between schools. This cost £403 million in 2015/16.

In 2012 the National Professional Qualification for Headship ceased to be compulsory, allowing ‘anyone’ to step into a Headteacher’s office and assume the role. Schools did not implode or crumble from the lack of decent leadership. In fact, only 10% of England’s schools are considered to be requiring improvement or inadequate 5 years later. Why then would we not trust schools to award QTS to the appropriate candidates? After all, a school is assessed by their results and quality of teaching, it seems unlikely that schools will flood the classroom with hugely underqualified staff. And why aren’t these leaders who have ensured that a staggering percentage of our schools are good and outstanding trusted to build their own partnerships between schools? Many naturally exist because of academy chains, and the changes to the National Curriculum and Primary Assessments make it vital that Primary and Secondary schools communicate with one another. It simply is not necessary for the Department of Education to be involved at all.

The savings outlined above would only amount to around £828 million, give or take allowing for administrative costs. There is also the possibility that the bulk of the quango be offset but that some skeleton of the organisations would need to remain for maintenance and monitoring of processes, although I would argue that this too would be unnecessary. Whilst these savings would not total the required £2 billion, it does demonstrate the incredible potential there is to make savings that would not impact directly on the classroom.

Quangos cost money, their status should not be maintained at the expense of funding for our schools. If cuts need to be made, this is where we should start.

Daniel is a Secondary School teacher in Buckinghamshire and a member of the Wycombe Conservative Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielrdownes

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Thanks for all the good times, Tony. It’s been gr-r-r-r-r-eat!

The Committee of Advertising Practice have deemed fit to rid our screens and social media sites of Ronald McDonald and Tony the Tiger for fear that they are sucking our youth into a sugar and salt-based doom. The characters will no longer be allowed to appear on screen to advertise food products that are considered unhealthy and will soon also disappear from magazines and social media websites.

For the ban to be enforced, the under-16 audience of any given media need only be 25% or greater. This is actually far too little for Professor Kumar of the British Medical Association. He feels that the number of older children that access a wide-range of media sources necessitates a much smaller quorum. If parents can’t be trusted to moderate their child’s sugar intake, why should Professor Kumar trust them with what they let their children watch?

The attempt to erase Ronald & co. from the consumer consciousness of our children is the latest in a string of measures directed at tackling the country’s sugar problem. Other policies include a tax on products according to their sugar content, a national effort to reduce the sugar and salt content of food during production, an eradication of price promotions for unhealthy foods, the mandatory reduction of portion sizes and the removal of products from the ends of aisles and the tills to a more secluded spot.

In their 2016 paper ‘Sinnovation’, the Adam Smith Institute argue against such heavy handed actions as they do more harm than good. Looking at public conceptions of vices such as drinking and smoking, they stated that the majority regret the health risks of addiction, but did not generally support measures to penalise addicts as they actually passed on the pain to those who were able to partake in moderation.

If the primary aim is to have a much better educated society of responsible agents, then children need exposure to these issues and not hiding from them. However, the plan seems to have formulated that if you ban cartoon characters from appearing in adverts then sales for those products will drop. This will encourage companies to reduce their sugar and salt content in order that they can bring back their much-loved mascots and again increase their revenue.

With a better educated public comes the greater incentive for companies to innovate. They would need to find ways of delivering products that conform to their brand and values whilst also reducing sugar and salt content to fall in line with the higher expectations of their better-informed customers. This way, the majority of consumers who are able to indulge the occasional whim can do so without the financial penalty which comes with the enforced collective responsibility that the current proposals impose.

Ultimately, sugar consumption for children is a question of responsibility. Parents have the legal and moral obligation to ensure that their prides and joy aren’t mainlining sugar into their eyeballs. Advertising directed at children could well plant bad habits at a young age, but Tony the Tiger isn’t forcing Frosties into the trollies of unsuspecting parents.

So, will the disappearance of Ronald McDonald on daytime television reduce for ever the scourge of obesity for the next generation? Of course not, in fact pushing anything with high sugar or salt to the side-lines in an attempt to convince children that it doesn’t exist, or that it is in some way ‘forbidden’ is probably the basis of a much unhealthier relationship.

Daniel is a Secondary School teacher in Buckinghamshire and a member of the Wycombe Conservative Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielrdownes

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