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It’s the end of the fencing season, and it’s been a good couple of days. Saturday was the British Championships, where I achieved 35th place — for once beating my UK ranking (42), and hopefully giving me enough points to push me up a little.
Sunday — today — was something rather special. It was the Much Wenlock Olympian Games. Now in their 122th year, the Much Wenlock Olympians are the progenitors of the Modern Olympics, and are receiving substantial attention in the preparations for Britain’s 2012 Olympic Games. The Much Wenlocks are a bit of an oddity, combining modern Olympic sports such as fencing, running, field athletics and cycling, with historical oddities like vintage cycling, and more traditional English fare such as Archery.
This year, for the first time, I took home the fencing trophy, the gold medal, and slightly embarrassingly, the medal for the highest placed veteran (they call you a veteran in fencing once you get over 40).
So, after almost a year in the UK top 50, my best nationals performance ever and my first competition title.
After 16 hours at fencing competitions in two days, I’m now ready for a bath and bed!

Did you see this week’s Doctor Who? You didn’t? You’re wondering what the fictional Time Lord has to offer the Prime Minister? (If you’re reading this and are saying, Gordon Who?, then you have some other catching up to do). Actually, this week’s episode didn’t really feature Doctor Who at all. It’s about what would have happened if the various calamities averted by the man in the TARDIS, generally on Christmas Day, hadn’t been averted after all. For the first twenty minutes it’s diverting entertainment, of the ‘very good, but we have seen this kind of episode before’ kind. But then it changes. Crisis hits Britain. The family of Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble are billeted in Leeds (”I am not living in Leeds”), along with two other families including some Italians. It’s hard times, but they’re sure to pull through. Except, after a while, the soldiers take away the Italians to the labour camps, as England is now for the English (the French have previously closed the borders). Just when we’re wondering if we’re actually watching this on family TV, we have an emotional farewell, with Bernard Cribbins in tears, reminding us that “that’s what they called it the last time”. And then we see the Italian family being driven away in an open topped truck, the wife burying her head in the husband’s shoulder as they both weep.

Doctor Who not really your thing? Then perhaps you remember seeing the first two episodes of the fifth series of Spooks, when Harry Pearce and someone unnervingly like Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti are imprisoned under a ‘temporary detention order’.

How do these award winning dramas connect with the rather more lacklustre Gordon Brown? In this: both present a picture of Britain after a few shocks have caused people to put far too much hope and trust in their leaders, and the leaders have responded by rescinding traditional British freedoms for the greater good.

Clearly, a series of invasions by aliens are unlikely to be on the horizon, and even the MI-6 (as script writers still insist on calling SIS) plot which triggers the Spooks episode is pure fiction, notwithstanding what we now know about Harold Wilson’s fears when he was in office.

But the great historical example of this, to which all such fiction alludes, which still looms like a spectre over all debates over freedom, that is, the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, was neither triggered by aliens nor by the machinations of sinister and secret government agents. It was triggered by the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, and the willingness of ordinary people to sacrifice traditional freedoms for the sake of a supposedly better world.

Gordon Brown has just put through the most wholesale reduction of liberties since the establishment of the Magna Carta. It is unlike anything in the English speaking world. More chilling was its reception by the public. Most people, according to polls, backed Gordon Brown. One man on a vox pop suggested that Brown should go further: “anyone who commits a crime should be kept in prison, until they are either sentenced, or not sentenced”. In other polls, we learn that most people are dissatisfied with the legal system, and want more powers for police and the courts to deal with the criminals swiftly.

Perhaps this all sounds like liberal hand wringing. But, in law, Gordon Brown has created a situation where people may be imprisoned without the intervention of the courts in a situation far short of a genuine emergency. In the six cases that the existing (and equally malign) 28 day legislation has been used, half of the people were never charged. That is to say, no evidence was acquired either before or during their detention that provided a reasonable case for prosecution. But if there was no evidence before their detention, on what basis were they detained in the first place?

In Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change has pulled out of the elections, ostensibly because they will not be ‘free and fair’, though we all knew that they would not be free and fair anyway, but, in reality, most probably because they recognised that violence and killing would increase until Mugabe was confident of victory, and even if Morgan Tsvangirai was victorious, there would be no reason to believe that Mugabe would step aside. But Mugabe has nothing like the legal power to fix the election which Gordon Brown has just given himself. Under the 42 day rule, Mugabe could have had virtually the whole of the MDC rounded up on suspicion of terrorism. He has more or less accused them all of terrorism anyway, he merely lacks a law that would give him the powers he wants.

Of course Gordon Brown would never do such a thing. But, when Lord Carrington negotiated the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980 out of the civil war in Rhodesia, nobody ever thought Robert Mugabe would do such a thing. The whole world watched the ‘miracle of Rhodesia’. The world watched again when the office of prime minister was abolished in 1987 in favour of an executive president.

Clearly, in a world of better organised criminals and better organised terrorists, we need a legislative framework which enables police and the security service to function effectively. But, at the moment, as a nation we are sleep walking into a future where our basic freedoms have been abolished in order to protect them. Can we be so blind? Or is it that most of us feel unthreatened, because we know that only Muslims, and extremists at that (or their family and friends) are liable to be targeted? What about when that is extended to Eastern Europeans? And what to Jews? And then trade-unionists? Then evangelical Christians? Political opponents of the government of the day?

In the words of Martin Niemöller, protestant pastor who died in a Nazi concentration camp:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

If twentieth century history has a lesson, then it is this: when tyranny comes, it does not come as an onslaught, but little by little, as one freedom after another is eroded.

BBC | How damaging is the Spelman saga?. The story in brief for those who haven’t been following it: with the Conservative party rocked by a series of scandals over expenses, beginning with Derek Conway and culminating (at least so far) in the resignation of the party leader in Europe, Caroline Spelman, the party chair who has been calling MPs to account, has herself come under the spotlight for (allegedly) paying her nanny out of constituency expenses.

On the surface of it, this sounds like the classic story of political hubris: public pressure forces a politician to champion a moral cause, only for them to be found out as a culprit. It’s the old story that dogged John Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, although Major himself wasn’t found out until years later, and, in any case, by ‘Back to Basics’, he really meant returning to Conservative economic basics, not basic moral values.

Far be it from me to defend the Conservatives, but on this occasion I need to come out and say that this story is not the simple one that it appears to be, and that Caroline Spelman deserves a fairer hearing, and a second chance.

We could talk about it being ten years ago, at a time when things were less clear cut, we could talk about the fact that it appears that the nanny genuinely did a bit of phone answering and message taking, and we could talk about the fact that Caroline Spelman was a new and inexperienced MP, who probably got some bad advice from someone. We could also point out that, if she hadn’t taken a stand to clean up the Tory party, nobody would even be talking about things that took place ten years ago.

I’m not convinced that any of those things stand up on their own, and I’m not convinced that, if they don’t stand up singly, that they have any value cumulatively.

However, there is one thing which puts this story in a completely different light from the Conway, Chichester and other scandals we have seen.

It is this: Caroline Spelman stopped what she was doing of her own accord. This is absolutely crucial, and none of the media commentators seem to have recognised its importance. Spelman was not threatened with blackmail to make her stop, she was not put under party discipline to make her stop, she did not receive angry letters from her constituents, or face tough questions from journalists, or a series of high profile media stories. She looked at what she was doing, decided that — whatever advice she had been given before, whatever anybody else was doing, and whatever the personal benefits of carrying on — it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t going to be part of her lifestyle as a politician.

Some would see this as an admission of guilt. In fact, it is an all too rare demonstration of moral purpose.

Whether Caroline Spelman knew what she was doing was wrong or not when she started doing it, she reached a point where she decided she should not be doing it, and stopped. Some people might say that this is all very well, and might let her off the hook technically, since it supports the claim that she was unaware she was breaching the rules, but still does not excuse her setting herself up to clean up the affairs of other Tory politicians. In fact, it is exactly the moral quality which someone needs who wishes to challenge others to follow her example: “if you become aware you are breaching the rules, stop”.

Have we learned nothing from 2000 years of the New Testament. Or, for those who bitterly oppose the moral teaching of Jesus Christ having any role in modern society, have we learned nothing from twelve years of Harry Potter? We cannot take the magic of Hogwarts into the real world, but Dumbledore and his second chances have a lot to teach us.

In an ideal world, all politicians would all be perfect all of the time. But in the real world, it’s not just that not all politicians will be perfect, but that all people will be imperfect. Again, that’s something we could have picked up from faith, or children’s literature, if we didn’t have the perspicacity to spot it ourselves. In the actual world we live in, it is far more important to have politicians with the integrity to change what they do when they realise they are doing it wrong, than to have politicians who have never yet been found out. It is exactly the quality of ‘carrying on until you are found out’ which is the essence of sleaze, although it is usually then followed by ‘denying it as much as possible’.

In this, Caroline Spelman has also shown that she is different from the sleaze brigade: she has voluntarily referred the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

It may seem rather surprising that I am defending a Tory here. But my fear is that Caroline Spelman will go the way of Estelle Morris — someone who didn’t feel she was good enough at her job to stay in politics (despite some quite substantial evidence to the contrary), and left, making way for those who really were not good enough. If Caroline Spelman stands down as Tory Party Chair, and subsequently as an MP, she will not be replaced by a Tory who is more honourable, merely by a someone who is better at appearing honourable.

Blair’s faith in difficult task. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has set himself what is arguably the challenge of the millennium: to unite the world’s religions for the general betterment of mankind. His argument is simple: religions can create peaceful co-existence, but, right now, extremists seem to have control of the agenda. “It is a massive undertaking, but how important is it? If all the good tunes are with the extremists … if they’re the ones out there with the strong message and those of us who believe that religious faith is about peaceful co-existence are silent we’ve got a real problem on our hands,” he said at the New York launch alongside his old friend Bill Clinton.
But how valuable, practical, and, indeed, coherent is this new approach? Pundits have already pointed out that, if there was one man to unite the world in peaceful co-existence, it wouldn’t be Tony Blair, a man who’s primacy in Britain is primarily associated with the war in Iraq. But there are deeper issues here, and the usual sport of side-swiping Blair for his past may obscure them. It’s instructive that the last US president who could point to genuine religious credentials both before, during and after his presidency — Jimmy Carter — has indeed spent his post-presidential years campaigning for world peace, but has not attempted anything so grandiose as uniting the world’s religions.
Secularists might argue that this is because Carter, deep down, recognises that religions are the cause of the problem, and can never be the cure. The truth is more likely the opposite: it is Blair, and not Carter, who has swallowed this particular piece of secularist spin.
The real truth (as opposed to any other kind of truth which you might read elsewhere) is that dividing culture and belief into two categories — non-religions versus religious — is a gross over-simplification of the way things are. It is, however, a very common way of seeing the world in Britain, and among British politicians. The equation goes “secular=rational, objective, sane, clean”, “religious=irrational, subjective, unbalanced, tainted”. To accuse someone of being a fundamentalist is (at least in popular discourse) one step away from accusing them of being an extremist, which is itself only one step from being a terrorist. But a fundamentalist is no more than someone who believes in the fundamentals of their religion. The suggestion that fundamentalists of all religions are essentially (one might even say fundamentally) the same is, logically speaking, nonsense. But people who use the term rarely have much contact with fundamentalists of any religion, or, if they do, are not aware that the good, sane people they know are the ones they deride in public.
The key to understanding this is to recognise that religions are not ‘all the same’, but, like the cultures of which they are a part, are remarkably different. What’s more, atheism and secularism are no more different from religions than religions are from each other. If we wish to make a logical category, then we should include atheism, secularism and nationalism along with the religions. Or, better, we should include the different cultural forms which give rise to atheism. Marxist atheists (such as Terry Eagleton) are quite different from neo-Darwinian atheists (such as Richard Dawkins), and are not afraid to say so (viz Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching”, LRB, Vol.28, No.20,19 October 2006“), while both are quite different from Nietzchian atheists, who in turn would argue that the atheism of Hitler and the Nazis was a misinterpretation of Nietzche, in the same way that modern Marxist atheists would argue that the atheism of Stalin and Mao was a misinterpretation of Marx. Equally, forms of secularism cover most of spectrum of religion. The world’s first secular state, France, probably conformed most closely in its original incarnation to the ideals put forward by Britain’s National Secular Society (which uses ’secular’ as a pseudonym for atheism), but the second secular state, the USA, with its frequent references to God in its constitution and other foundational documents, was really created as a nation in which minority Christian evangelical groups could flourish, while the third major secular state, Turkey, is thoroughly Islamic in its outlook. Nor should we forget that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a secular state.
Religions, too, differ widely not only in the code of their beliefs, but in the categories which they regard as belief at all. Most people in Britain are most familiar with Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and so assume that religions are about a book of instructions based on a belief in God. Not all religions believe in the existence of a God! Not all religions even accept the category of a ‘God’ as a valid one. Most of the world’s religions do not have a set of sacred writings, and one of the mistakes which Westerners have often made with Buddhism and Hinduism is that they have taken the writings of these religions, and assumed that they have understood the religions once they have read and (in their view) understood the writings. Many Westerners see religion as a quest for truth or a quest for God, but identifying any kind of quest at all is problematic in many religions.
Tony Blair — to return to him — seems to think that religions are really about co-existence and harmony. Some religions are. Many religions favour co-existence and harmony along with a raft of other virtues which may at times conflict with them. Some religions are largely uninterested in how society is organised. And there are religions which are closely bound up with notions of violent victory over other groups. This last group are not necessarily more fundamentalist than others. Taking a historical example (for reasons of safety as much as anything), the Norse culture of 500-1500 has left us with a wide legacy of literature and recorded history. We know that war, battle and honour were integral to Old Norse religion. But there is no particular evidence to show that the predations of Vikings on the coast of England was linked to any particular upsurge of religious fundamentalism. In defeat, the most active of Viking leaders and their followers were at times willing to ‘convert’ to Christianity as part of the peace terms.
The real problem for Tony Blair is that he has believed the spin that wars are caused by religion, and believed the counter-spin that religions are really about peaceful co-existence. These might be interesting (though ultimately invalid) points in a debate about the net benefit or dis-benefit of religion on mankind. But they are a dangerous oversimplification as the basis of a programme for peace-making.
Fortunately, the notion that Mr Blair himself will make a big difference, is itself a piece of spin which it seems he has also believed. Having guided (he thinks) Britain through ten years of peace and prosperity (if we ignore some inconvenient counter-examples), Blair has left Downing Street to his successor, who, in a few short months, has plunged Britain back into the ill-led and pessimistic world it inhabited under John Major. As the world situation has not dramatically changed (again, if we ignore some inconvenient counter-examples), the difference is clearly Blair himself. Before Blair, chaos under Major. During Blair, peace and prosperity. After Blair, chaos under Brown. Tony Blair really does believe that he can make a difference to the world, and he can do it quickly, and he can do it right.
Once again, we are drawn back to the comparison with Jimmy Carter. Carter was the John Major and Gordon Brown of the USA, rolled into one. He pursued sensible policies, and a visionary foreign policy, but was a victim of circumstances beyond his control, lost his popularity at home, and was the first elected president since the war not to be re-elected for a second term. However, since losing his job, he has campaigned tirelessly for world peace, bit by by, rather than in one grandiose gesture, for which he has been awarded the Nobel prize. Carter’s achievements have been brick by brick, not a single grand design. His credibility has grown as he has done it, and it continues to grow.
People have always said that Blair was good on the big picture, but weak on the details. In this particular case — and perhaps in all cases — it’s the details that matter. And they are not on Blair’s side.

Not political victory this time, but in fencing. For the first time in years, I won a trophy: with Max Weedon and John Routledge winning the men’s foil Team event. I was placed 8th in the individual event, defeating John Pryor and Richard Biggs after a bye into the second round of the direct elimination, but losing to former Olympian Nick Bell in the last eight. In fencing the last eight is ‘the finals’, which brings my tally of medals for the last year to 5. Not a bad haul.

Local election results: Stratford-on-Avon District Council
No need for spin in Stratford upon Avon after last night’s local election result, where there was a swing of five seats from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.
Beverley Mann defeated Peter Barton in Harbury
Richard Cheney defeated Trevor Russel in Shipston
Kate Rolfe romped home to a substantial win in Alveston
Trevor Honychurch picked up Stratford Avenue and New Town
Ron Cockings became the new councillor for Stratford Guild and Hathaway
Joyce Taylor was elected in Stratford Mount Pleasant
Paul Beaman retained Studley
Lib Dem Michala Piotrowski came within an agonising 5 votes of unseating Susan Main in Wellesbourne, which is in Stratford upon Avon district council, but not in the parliamentary constituency.

This is a superb result on a night where, in many places, the Tories were counting up their trophies.

Well done to all those who made it happen!

BBC NEWS | UK | How holiday scam snared thousands

A gang which cheated thousands of holiday makers out of a total of more than £6 million have been given sentences of between three and seven years, but £5.6 million of the money is unrecovered, and will be paid back by credit card and insurance companies and an industry body. So, is this a fair sentence, or are we encouraging criminals?

A few months ago someone broke into my car. He caused about £500 worth of damage, didn’t get my SatNav which wasn’t in the car anyway, but did find my iPod which I had left somewhere because I’d forgotten about it. In exchange, he left behind one drop of blood which, thanks to CSI Bordesley Green (soon to be a major US series endlessly repeated on Channel 5), resulted in a conviction and two months in jail. He probably got fifty quid for my iPod, or maybe as little as twenty. Twenty pounds for two months in jail — you’d think that would deter him. As it happens, in the week that he would have got out, my car was broken into in exactly the same way again, and with the things rummaged through identically. This time the thief didn’t get anything, only broke a window (the previous time he destroyed the locking glove compartment), and left no blood behind. Same bloke? Very probably. If it was the same bloke, then he clearly decided that risking two months in jail was worth it for an iPod.

2 months for £20, versus three years for a million pounds (I understand there were six in the gang). To make crime pay at the same rate, the holiday-scam gang should have been given 4166 years each. Or the kid who broke into my car should have been given 58 minutes.

Our system doesn’t add up. Of course, the gang now have criminal records, and will be tagged by the police if ever they try to scam again. But if the bloke who stole my iPod read the story, he’s probably thinking that three years for £1 million is time worth doing. After all, to earn that much, once you take income tax into account, he would have to be on more than half a million a year. Which, unless he also has talents in football and gets picked by a top side, is unlikely ever to come his way.

There are three things which deter criminals, and you need all three to make the system work. There has to be a high chance of them being caught, there has to be a relatively short time between the offence and the conviction, and the punishment has to significantly outweigh the apparent benefits of committing the crime. As a nation, we seem addicted to increasing the sentences for crimes we find particularly horrifying. This is emotionally satisfying, but doesn’t actually help: making the criminal certain he (or she) will be caught, and catching them quickly, before they offend again, is a much more effective strategy. However, with crimes where the criminal believes they are getting a substantial financial benefit, the penalty must be substantial enough that, even with calculations about the likelihood of being caught, the kind of calculating criminals who are expert in financial crime and fraud decide that it is simply not worth it. Until then, sentences like this one will simply encourage potential criminals to have a go.

How dismal.

Here’s an unpopular thought: how far should Free Tibet protesters be allowed to go? Should they, for example, have the right to clamp down on free speech in order to prevent their case being challenged?

Don’t get me wrong here. I believe Tibet ought to be free, and I believe that China should face up to world opinion. But that is not a blank cheque for protesters.

Here’s the story. According to PR Week, “Any PR agency that works for the Chinese government runs the risk of demonstrations outside its offices, campaigners have warned”. Apparently the Free Tibet Campaign has issued a warning, saying “Any PR agency that is trying to assist China in its twisted distortion of the truth would be potentially exposing itself to our protests outside its offices”.

If this really is true, and if this really what they meant, then I think that the Free Tibet Campaign has established that it is really not so different from the Chinese government it opposes. I sincerely hope that this is not what they meant.

In a free society, everyone must have the freedom to make their case to the media, to other people, and to opinion formers. Hiring a PR agency to help you make that case is legal, and it should remain so. There are lots of people, organisations and groups out there that I don’t agree with. But, in a free society, I must defend their right to make their case. As soon as I decide that one case is too heinous to be presented, then I have moved from being a free-speaker in a free-society, to a totalitarian advocating that only views which chime with my own should be expressed.

Twenty or so years ago, everybody thought that Robert Mugabe was marvellous, for the peaceful transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Events have shown that Mugabe was never interested in justice and fairness, but only in the promotion of his own interests and those of his own followers. This is by total contrast with the work of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

I hope that China eventually gets the message that freeing Tibet is in its own interests — and, even more, that ceasing to support atrocities in Sudan is a must-do if it is to play a full role in the international community. But I hope also that the Free Tibet Campaign learns that making threats against free speech is neither helpful to their cause, nor appropriate to the society in which we, here in Britain, live.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Cameron Olympic dithering claim

It’s one of the days of the week which ends in ‘day’, so, sure as sure, David Cameron is sniping at Gordon Brown again. This time it’s for dithering over the Olympics. Of course, when Mr Cameron himself was dithering over expelling Derek Conway MP for paying his son public money, it wasn’t dithering, it was ‘leadership’. The fact is, we all know that Gordon Brown is not the decisive figure that Tony Blair was. Brown has been ‘Mr Prudence’ for as long as we’ve been aware of him. After ten years of Tony, many people were glad to have something a bit different.

The real issue is that David Cameron does not seem to have anything in his arsenal except for sniping. Well, perhaps that’s a little harsh. After all, he can also mock, jeer, deride, damn with faint praise, and hold up for ridicule. But that’s it. No wonder the public are losing confidence in their MPs: if they behave like schoolboys, people will trust them like schoolboys.

Am I perhaps doing the same thing, mocking poor Mr Cameron?

Perhaps.

But I do have a serious point to make. When someone is elected to parliament, they are being paid by the taxpayer to serve the public. As such, they should respect other public servants, and work constructively to create a better Britain. There are times when, for the sake of a better Britain, opposition MPs must oppose with vehemence and with passion. They must hold the government to account, questioning motives where they appear to be in doubt, questioning the wisdom of courses of action, and proposing alternatives. There are also times when the opposition should support the government of the day as it discharges its public duty. And, of course, opposition parties have a right to put forward their own policies and views, so that the public can know what they would be getting if one of those parties were in power.

It seems to me that this is what David Cameron is entirely failing to do. Every action by the government is held up to ridicule. Very seldom is a coherent argument put forward for why the government’s course of action is wrong, and the course of action which Mr Cameron proposes is right. Often, Mr Cameron has no course of action to propose.

By the law of averages, not everything that Mr Brown does can be ridiculous. Nonetheless, it appears that Mr Cameron thinks it is. This shows poor judgement, and a lack of proper respect for another public servant.

The most accident-prone and ridiculous prime-minister for many years was, of course, the last Tory prime minister, John Major. In retrospect, of course, the actual impact of John Major’s policies seems to have been no worse than his predecessor. Let us not forget that it was John Major who began the process that led to the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, even though Tony Blair completed it. But he was prone to gaffes, one of which was when he accused the Labour party of not being a proper opposition at all, more like ‘a government in waiting’.

David Cameron’s party have shown little effectiveness as an opposition, but neither do they show any sign of being ‘a government in waiting’. It would be entirely too self-serving of me at this point to suggest that there are parliamentarians and there is a party which has consistently attempted to hold the government to account, and questioned the substance rather than the style, while putting forward carefully formulated alternative paths. And it would be unfair to claim that that party never indulged in a little banter, and perhaps even some mockery. But herein lies the difference: it is a lot of hard questions, and a little mockery, not a lot of mockery, and merely a few hard questions.

Voters, take note: you will get the government you deserve.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Astronomers must make own case So are we going to fund science or not?

The main thrust of Gordon Brown’s argument on embryology is that if we do not pass controversial legislation, then the UK will be left behind as other countries move ahead. But, at the same time, his government is busy starving primary research in fields which are entirely legal and create no ethical dilemmas.

From the 1940s until the 1970s (or so I’m told, as I wasn’t there), the British attitude to scientific research was that it was a good thing, and the government should back it. Just here in the Midlands we saw the invention of Radar, the microwave, the heart pacemaker and holography. British universities could count on — if not funding royale — the solid support of government. But from the 1980s (remember who was in power?) Britain began to tighten its belt. Research grants suffered. Student loans were brought in as a cheaper alternative to full grants. In the 1990s universities continued to be squeezed, until Blair came in with ‘Education, Education and Education’. However, his vision was not greater depth, but greater breadth. Vastly more people would go to university, but they would pay tuition fees for it. Meanwhile, Britain continued to innovate, and many British inventions were then taken up overseas, for want of British backing.

We can point to a number of successes. Clive Sinclair’s ZX80 home computer and Electric Car. Dyson’s cyclone vacuum cleaner. Trevor Baylis’s amazing clockwork radio. But innovators and inventors consistently claim that Britain does not value them.

Blair’s government did not have a policy on science and technology, and Brown’s does not have one either. It may make complete economic sense to prepare Britain to be the heartland of embryology, but it makes no sense to starve astronomy and other disciplines while doing so. Of course, it can be argued that embryology is a science with a direct economic benefit over the next ten years. Brown may argue that if he wishes, but in advancing that argument he will demonstrate his utter lack of understanding of the nature of scientific research. The programme par excellence which demonstrated the spin-off benefits of ‘irrelevant’ research was NASA’s programme to reach the moon. Nobody has ever found anything on the moon worth bringing back. But everyone acknowledges that the spin-off benefits of NASA’s work have been immense and far-reaching.

It’s all very well telling astronomers that they have to make their own case. But the kinds of people who are good at primary scientific research are not necessarily the people who are good at making the case for funding. This has become more than apparent in other areas, such as the arts, where ability to make ones case is the primary means by which one gains funding. There is a small industry of lottery-award consultants which has grown up around the self-awareness of artists that being good at something and being able to sell it are not the same thing at all.

There is a group of people who are good at making the case for things, and who are paid to have a broad view and a generous understanding of what is important and why. These people are not scientists but politicians. For politicians, through their civil servants and arms-length organisations, to tell scientists they must make their own case is both ironic and dysfunctional. Britain needs a future in the sciences, and investment in primary research is something which has paid our nation dividends for the last four hundred years — from the chronometer to the steam engine, and from calculus to penicillin and on to the discovery of DNA.

Does Britain need the ethically dubious honour of being the easiest country in the West to conduct embryology experiments? That is a matter for debate, and, we have finally agreed, for a free vote in the House of Commons. Does it need a science policy which is more than a starvation diet? Absolutely, and without doubt.

Gordon Brown, get your act together.