1) is it reasonable to expect the government to take measures to reduce the harm that alcohol does to people who aren’t consenting adults?

Yes of course. Hence, tougher powers for councils to revoke the licenses of pubs and clubs associated with violent behaviour, tougher enforcement of bans on sales to minors, better treatment for domestically abusive alcoholics and support for their families, and so on are a good idea.

Nobody has come up with any evidence *at all* that minimum pricing would have any impact on this. Booze consumed in pubs and clubs is always going to be above any minimum price level that encompasses off-trade sales, because *that markup is what pays for the pub to exist*, so the town centre violence argument is nonsense; and bottle-a-day alkies are merely going to have less money to spend on other, less important things like food.

2) is it reasonable to expect the government to impose restrictive measures on consenting adults, based on the probability of health risks in later life *to the person being considered*?

Not in my opinion. If people choose to lower their life expectancy from 80 to 60 but have a better time on the way, that’s entirely their lookout.

This is where the puritan wing (‘teetotalitarians’) and the liberal wing of the left diverge: the puritans want to compel everyone else to live in the way that they view as most appropriate. Which, y’know, is pretty much exactly the same as religious fundamentalists compelling everyone else to live in the way that they view as most appropriate.

3) Even if you accept the puritan argument, is a minimum price a good way of achieving it?

Absolutely not, it’s a fucking terrible idea, because THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF THE POLICY GO TO THE BREWERS AND THE SUPERMARKETS. Suddenly, there’s a floor to price competition in the market, which means that everyone involved makes far more profit. This is what a cartel *is*.

If Cameron wasn’t in the industry’s pocket, he’d be suggesting that alcohol tax were raised to ensure that, based on the current lowest-cost production, all forms of booze cost at least 50p a unit (formal policy, actual rates reviewed every year based on what was available in the market). This would have the same impact on consumption of cheap booze as the proposed policy on drinking, whatever you think that impact may be, but the money raised would go to schools’n’hospitals rather than to Mr Tesco and Mr Heineken. At the same time, it would encourage people above the ‘cheap booze’ cutoff point to moderate their consumption, which is a desirable goal if you support the puritan argument (d’you think Christopher Hitchens drank cheap cider or Special Brew? Not exactly…)

The only reason to support a minimum price over higher tax is if you think the poor should have their lifestyle choices forcibly controlled by the state, but that the middle classes shouldn’t. In which case, you’re a bit of a scumbag, nah?

(disclosure as always: I’ve done consulting work for the drinks industry in the past and will probably do so in the future.)

This obviously gets me onto the history of the computer: so the calculator invented by a Victorian lady and her partner; was ignored. Almost a hundred years later, a very hardcore calculator invented by Polish geniuses to try and not be invaded by the Germans AGAIN was the genesis of the proper modern computer.

So we set up Bletchley for Polish, UK and general Commonwealth geniuses and a supporting cast to work together on similar grounds. And it was aces, and we cracked a bunch of codes, and a vast quantity of moral dilemmas were created for governments (’do we save the people of Coventry when doing so would risk blowing the D-Day landings, as it would let the Germans know that we know their codes?’ – while there are some aspects of the conduct of Mr Churchill and Mr Harris that I question, anyone who could answer that question with the correct answer, rather than turning into a blubbing wreck at the horribleness of the thing they’d just chosen, is a better man than me), and we started turning the direction of the war, and it was the first time ELECTRONICS WAS FUCKING ACES.

At roughly this point, a gay English genius invented the first electronic computer. Which was even better at doing sums than the electro-mechanical ones that had been going down before. At roughly the same point, the war was won. This was not a coincidence: it’s how WWII went down: we lost at actual battles, then we broke the Nazi and Japanese codes, then we stopped losing, because we knew where they were going to be, and they didn’t always know that we knew this. Both sides had highly skilled coders. Well, the Commonwealth, Germany and Japan had highly skilled coders [**]. But the Commonwealth chaps did better, largely thanks to Poles, geeks and queers. Meanwhile, the USSR won its battles for for, erm, nastier reasons.

Then the war ended, following the USA’s scientific contribution and the USSR’s entry into the War in the East. The USA’s manpower and materiel contribution to the war was unequivocal and without it, the outcome would have been terrible. Its scientific contribution meant that the USSR was scared off occupying Japan, which probably worked out best for even the people of Japan. Hurrah! Brief John & Yoko moment.

So. To recap, the Commonwealth diverted her finest scientific brains and vast resources to Bletchley and its satellites. This secured an extra advantage in close-matched battles, that made the Normandy landings feasible and won the Pacific naval war. After that, everything was bloody, grinding and attrition-y, but history, and WE INVENTED THE FUCKING ELECTRONIC COMPUTER.

You might assume, at this point, as an impartial sane reader from Mars, that you’d be reading this on a computer that ran on Turing-OS, or perhaps on something cutely named for Oxfordshire.

As if. Guess what the British government did at the end of WWII? Set up an endowment of millions of pounds to develop computers for civilian ends? Said to the brilliant scientists who won the war ’sorry, we’re broke, but why don’t you develop these for civilian ends and you’ll share the money’? Probably the latter, right? The British government was fucking broke at the end of WWII, and it might be a struggle to show the benefits of new technology, so pass on the rights to the folks who sorted it out and let them make money…?

As if. THEY GAVE THE ENTIRE FUCKING TECHNOLOGY, LOCK STOCK AND BARREL, TO THE USA, AND THEN MADE IT ILLEGAL FOR ANYONE IN THE COMMONWEALTH TO EVEN TALK ABOUT IT.

So the USA took this in the intended spirit, right? (fuck knows what the UK’s intended spirit here was, other than the spirit of ‘technological & industrial suicide’) Well, guess which company which was THE KEY TECHNOLOGICAL ENABLER OF THE FUCKING HOLOCAUST they passed the details onto, almost straight away, so they could market their Business Machines Internationally [CHALLENGING ANAGRAMS]. Whilst, just as a reminder, anyone in the UK would have been jailed or hanged for using any of the Bletchley computer secrets in any kind of industrial work.

I don’t blame the US government for this. If I were PM of anywhere, and someone gave me blueprints to THE MOST AMAZING TECHNOLOGY THERE WAS, then I’d immediately give it to every industrial company in my territory. But fuck, it changes one’s take on Attlee somewhat, doesn’t it? Yes, land fit for heroes, NHS, pensions, great, it is well fair. But you didn’t really need to TAKE THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION OF THE FOLLOWING 100 YEARS AND FUCKING GIVE IT TO THE AMERICANS AND THEN FUCKING MAKE IT ILLEGAL FOR YOUR OWN CITIZENS TO DO ANYTHING WITH IT AT ALL, did you? I mean, really, that wasn’t necessary.

So yeah. End of UK as anything important is exactly equal to the point when the idiots in charge decided that the computer was so irrelevant we might as well give it to the colonial cousins, they understand that sort of thing don’t you know. And the miserable, horrific hounding to death of the one man who did the most to save civilisation in WWII, Mr Turing, was hardly a surprise after that – once the computer had gone to America, what use is someone who invents something that nobody in your own land believes to be worth the square root of fuck all?

[*] That quite good war, before we returned to the pre-1939 model of only fighting wars that were pointless and stupid (apart from the one in 1982, which is only opposed by scumbags who hate democratic self-determination. And yes, I otherwise hate Madame T).

[**] The only USA code that remained unbroken during the war was the Navajo code. This is unsurprising, given the tale of the US Senator who toured the Melbourne coding facilities and then “went back home and told American newspapers how American ingenuity had cracked the Japanese codes”. Whichever member of the Australian government let a FOREIGN BLOODY POLITICIAN tour the facilities really should have been horsewhipped.

You’re well aware that a lot of companies are headquartered in the UK, that it costs them a grand and a few Ryanair flights a year to be headquartered in Ireland where there’s hardly any tax at all on foreign earnings instead, and so any company that makes the majority of its money outside the UK is only not sodding off to Ireland because the boss quite likes his office on the Thames/being among the London advisory community/and so on. But that this isn’t necessarily worth billions of squillions of squids.

So, given that the government’s official ethos is “we’re OK with people getting filthy rich, as long as they pay their bills”, rather than “fuck everybody we don’t like TO DEATH”, you come to deals with people, under which the UK gets shedloads of tax money, far more than if the companies in question had just fucked off to Ireland, and nobody has to fuck off to Ireland.

Then, you get a disastrous recession, caused more by the governing ethos that both parties have shared for 20 years than anything else – and which you’ve bought into wholly, as did everyone except for some marginal cranks (no, shut up, as did everyone except some marginal cranks). And it all goes to ratshit, and the incoming government declares war on the public sector.

What better to do than to a) strongly encourage you-as-lifelong-public servant to quit now; b) smear you to fuck as a FATCAT PUBLIC SECTOR SALARY PERSON, even though the pension difference is vastly less than the enormous lifetime paycut you accepted for working in the public sector in the first place?

It’s not quite fair to view the current UK scenario solely as an excuse to fuck over people who work in the public sector. It’s also massively fucking over people in the private sector, but they have to meekly take it because FINANCE IS GOD. Thanks to Mrs Thatcher, as played convincingly by Corinna Harfouch, that’s the perceived medicine for everything. “Oh, you’re poor? Well, we’ll stop helping with your rent and your dole, then you’ll be less poor”. < - FACT | SATIRE -> “Oh, you’ve got cancer? Well, here’s my asbestos-themed cigar bar; also, this lady in heels will kick you in the genitalia whenever you care. After all, you wouldn’t want to bring kids into such a world”.

(I lied with the Harfouch resemblance. At lest Mrs G got the “not wanting to bring kids into such a world” part).

But yeah. Everything’s fucked. Dave Hartnett devoted his life to making the best job of public service, for paymasters who haven’t (at least yet) been hanged. Until and unless we hang them, we owe him that deal, just as much as we owe everyone else who rejected easy private sector money in order to do hard stuff for crap money with the sole benefits being a smile on your face and a tolerable pension.

Civ + sex devices + Lulu + Lady Popular = “No, fuck YOU. This bling does look fabulous against my fur, because I am the queen of the Zulus, and you’re still fucking an analog blow-up doll.”

The An-124 will likely be a rare sight in Kinston as Spirit plans to typically deliver its fuselage panels by boat to France, while its wing spars, also built in North Carolina, will be dispatched to Prestwick, Scotland on their way to Broughton in the UK.

‘Prestwick, Scotland on their way to Broughton in Wales’ would be fine. ‘Prestwick, UK on their way to Broughton in the UK’ would be clunky, but fine. But mixing them up like this is just strange (I wonder if he just didn’t know whether Broughton was in England or Wales and couldn’t be bothered to check…). On the plus side, at least he didn’t say ‘on their way to Broughton, England’…

Before 1535, England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland were legally separate countries. Following the English conquest of Ireland in the 12th century and of Wales in the 13th, England, Ireland and Wales had a single ruler, who was styled King of England and Lord of Ireland, but were administered as separate countries. Scotland had a completely separate king.

However, Henry VIII is often seen as a chap who shook things up a bit, and relations between the Home Nations were no exception.

Between 1535 and 1543, the Laws in Wales Acts extended English law to Wales, replaced Welsh local government with an English model, and gave Welsh constituencies representation in the English parliament. After 1543, Wales was effectively part of England from a legal/administrative point of view.

In 1542, the Irish Parliament’s Crown of Ireland Act made the King of England, whoever he might be, the king of Ireland; but unlike Wales, Ireland remained administered separately.

In 1603, King James VI of Scotland also became King of England (and hence, Ireland), as Elizabeth I’s nearest heir. Although James liked the idea of unifying his territories, both the English and Scottish aristocracy and parliaments told him roundly to piss off. So at this point, James was king of the independent states of England (including Wales), Ireland and Scotland, in much the same constitutional way that Elizabeth II is queen of the independent states of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Although obviously, he had rather more power then than she does now…

By 1706, following failed attempts throughout the 17th century, the Scottish aristocracy eventually accepted the concept of union between the two countries (largely because Scotland was bankrupt following its disastrous colonial adventures in central America). In 1707, each country’s parliament passed an Act of Union, creating a united kingdom of England and Scotland – referred to as Great Britain – with a single parliament, a free trade area and a single currency, although Scotland retained its unique and separate legal system, and the established Church of Scotland was not integrated into the Church of England or fully controlled by the UK monarch or parliament [see Chris in comments]. All laws of either nation that were incompatible with the Act were repealed by the Act. At this point, Queen Anne became Queen of Great Britain and Queen of Ireland.

In 1800, the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland each passed another Act of Union, creating a united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, referred to imaginatively as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a single parliament, a customs union, and a single currency – a similar drill to 1707. Part of the deal to gain Irish acceptance was that Catholics would be given the right to vote in and stand for the UK parliament (previously, only Protestants were eligible to stand for either parliament) – although this was later vetoed by King George III, much to the ire of the (posh, Catholic segment of the) Irish.

Unlike the 1707 Act, which was legitimately voted for by the Scottish parliament, the passage of the 1800 Act in the Irish parliament was driven by epic bribery, as well as by the lies about Catholic emancipation. The Catholic Relief Act was eventually passed in 1829 – too late to stop the Irish from being deeply and fairly pissed off about the whole event.

A few years after (most of – see Thumb in comments and my reply) Ireland effectively seceded from the Union in 1921 to form the Irish Free State and hence lost its representation in Westminster, the legal name of the remaining entity was changed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1927. King George V became King of the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland) and King of (most of) Ireland.

(Most of) Ireland declared itself a republic in 1948, at which point King George VI ceased to be King of (most of) Ireland – although bizarrely, the Republic of Ireland parliament didn’t repeal the Act of Union until 1962.

The recent devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although massively important in practice, hasn’t changed the overall legal status of of the above – we’re still in the same position as in 1948. The state of which Elizabeth II is queen is still the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the UK Parliament is still sovereign over the four nations that make up the state.

Sources: Laws in Wales Acts (1535, 1543), Crown of Ireland Act, 1707 Acts (England, Scotland), 1800 Acts (Great Britain, Ireland), Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921, Royal & Parliamentary Titles Act 1927, Republic of Ireland Act 1948, Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962.

Yorkshire Alex’s comment is the best take on the 2000s ever:

In the UK and Ireland, and as far as I know elsewhere, the property boom was an era of absolutely repellent, piggish greed that was actually open to you! It was a culture of speculation that was participatory and all the uglier for it. All sorts of people got the opportunity to behave like caricature bankers, right down to the horrible politics, and they did.

In other news, people who think that Blairy-Browny-Labour was a left-wing party are still mentally ill.

The most important bit, and by far the most offensive to get wrong, is recognising that the non-English nations within the UK can never be called ‘England’. England, Scotland and Wales are Great Britain; Great Britain and Northern Ireland together are the UK; and citizens of the UK are referred to as British citizens (the word ‘Britain’ on its own doesn’t have a set meaning). If you call someone from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland ‘English’, they’ll be extremely cross. This is a particular problem for non-native English speakers, since many languages don’t discriminate between ‘British’ and ‘English’.

However, there are also plenty of ways of using technically correct forms that can cause confusion, and sometimes offence.

Most Scottish or Welsh people don’t mind being referred to as ‘British’, although most wouldn’t use that term to describe themselves. However, a Scottish or Welsh person with strong political nationalist views might take offence at it. In general, it’s best to describe someone who’s Scottish or Welsh as simply Scottish or Welsh, although a mixed group of people from England, Scotland and Wales can be referred to as British without offending anyone.

With Northern Irish people, there’s a Protestant/Catholic divide (in the sense of heritage/culture rather than actual religions). Most NI Protestants are happy to identify as British; most NI Catholics would be angry to be described as British, even when they’re in a group that also includes people from England, Scotland and Wales. You can’t even sidestep that one by using ‘Northern Irish’, as most Catholics would just describe themselves as ‘Irish’ (particularly as many Catholics born and resident in Northern Ireland choose to carry [Southern] Irish passports, since the Republic of Ireland grants citizenship to anyone born anywhere on the island of Ireland, and Irish citizenship gives you full residency and voting rights anywhere in the UK). Nor can you sidestep it by using ‘Irish’, because many Protestants would be offended to be described as ‘Irish’ rather than ‘Northern Irish’.

Whether a person born in England says they are ‘English’ or ‘British’ is dependent on several factors: whether they have mixed UK heritage, whether or not they’ve grown up in London (‘English’ tends to have more rural, village green-ish connotations, whereas ‘British’ is more urban and ethnically mixed), if they’re from an ethnic minority (black and Asian people in England generally refer to themselves as ‘black British’ and ‘Asian British’, because they don’t identify so well with the stereotype of English), and political affiliations (because of the connotations above, people who are more conservative are more likely to identify as English and vice versa, although this isn’t a hard and fast rule).

However, most people born in England won’t be offended by being called the term they don’t personally use (I’m not offended to be described as English, and my Tory friends aren’t offended to be described as British) – I think this is largely because England is traditionally the dominant nation/culture within the UK, and in most English people’s minds there isn’t much of a difference between English/British. The exceptions here would include a few extreme English nationalists (but a far smaller percentage of the population than in Scotland or Wales) if called British, and possibly a few people from ethnic minority groups if called English.

(the entirely crazy-old-man David Duff has rightly pointed out that in the spirit of the headline, the Welsh are Taffs. CHANGED)

The fact that the piece had quite a few visitors isn’t too surprising, I suppose – it was a take on a newsworthy and important topic that dissented somewhat from the conventional wisdom, based on hours and hours of discussion with people who were on the scene across different English cities and/or who really understand counterinsurgency strategy. And it was pleasing to see strategy/COIN experts talking about it favourably.

The odd thing, though, is that whenever I’ve written a piece in the past that has gained masses of attention, it’s been through links from bigger blogs, news sources, or occasionally forums. This time, as far as I can see from my logs, there haven’t been *any* blog links to the piece. All the traffic is coming from retweets and reshares on Twitter and Facebook.

I wouldn’t go quite as far as to say that blogs are dead as a medium: the existence of a self-publishing platform with a fairly powerful off-the-shelf CMS, and that isn’t restricted to a particular social network, remains useful.

But it’s looking like the sense in which we’ve traditionally understand blogs – roughly, a community of people who link to each other’s posts, comment on them, and write pieces that track back to them – no longer really applies. Facebook and Twitter have killed it, in favour of something flatter and much less based on the blogger’s personal brand.

However, following on from Jamie’s post about how the riots went down in Manchester, and a question on Tim’s blog about Liverpool and Manchester cops making more arrests more rapidly than London cops, I do have a few thoughts on police tactics.

First up, the police did an excellent job at preventing loss of life and serious injury. Obviously, the deaths in Birmingham are terribly sad – and if the initial eyewitness statements prove to be correct, about as cowardly and evil as it gets. But the fact that in London, nobody was killed and few bystanders were seriously hurt is amazing, and not what anyone would have expected from news footage on Sunday/Monday. “People not being killed” is more important than “Currys not being robbed”.

But while the police did well on that basic front, the disorder in London lasted longer than the public could reasonably be expected to tolerate – hence the myriad of calls throughout the week to send in the Army, and/or to use water-cannons, rubber bullets and CS gas. The problem is that none of these would actually have helped. In short, policing in London on Sunday/Monday didn’t fail due to lack of force, or due to political correctness preventing officers from beating thugs up (plenty of beating up of thugs was done). Rather, it was due to a lack of understanding of what was going on – and, to some extent, a lack of absolute manpower.

The looters this time round flashmobbed. Digressionally, this is why BlackBerry Messaging is important to how the riots worked, not just an irrelevant detail like Twitter and Facebook. For example, the mass of reinforcements 30 seconds into this looters-push-back-cops video has to be pre-arranged, not random. Throughout London, mobs turned up at a co-ordinated time, looted, ran away, and regrouped. That isn’t how riots have historically happened: normally, the mob is trying to claim a specific territory, and the authorities are trying to stop them. Like a traditional war, with a front line.

These riots are the difference between WWII and Vietnam: the insurgents didn’t have a front line, but tried to appear, attack and disappear – and the authorities just didn’t know how to handle the new kind of conflict. Adding water cannons and CS gas into the mix wouldn’t have done anything to stop the looters, and I’m sceptical that rubber bullets would have achieved much. Live automatic weaponry would’ve done the job, but if you think that’s an acceptable solution to teenagers robbing shops, then you’re a dangerous lunatic who shouldn’t be allowed out in public.

The only alternative to mass slaughter is to adopt standard counterinsurgency measures. You learn the looters’ tactics, how they’re organised, you disrupt and intercept their communications, you try and infiltrate their groups, you arrest known looters when they’re at home in bed rather than out looting – and you use all the above measures to ensure that looters can’t get to their targets, and that if they do get to a target, then they can’t escape again.

In London, once the cops worked this all this out and managed to mobilise extra troops, the rioting stopped almost immediately (presumably because the looters either got arrested fairly rapidly, or worked out that they would get arrested if they didn’t stop). When the looting began in Manchester and Liverpool, the police had the benefit of a three-day London case study to work into their own plans, so it’s no massive surprise that they were able to end everything in a night.

Politically speaking, the wider mob of angry non-looting citizenry needs to be placated – so completely useless draconian measures seem likely to be introduced. If they are, they’re certain to be used when more-or-less peaceful demonstrations like UKuncut get rowdy, because those are the crowd dynamics in which CS gas and water cannons ‘work’ (if you class quelling the violent thugs slightly more rapidly, while also injuring far more non-violent protestors than would otherwise be the case, as ‘working’). So that’s a bit depressing for those of us who support the right to political protests.

But the good news (at least, for people who don’t like their house being on fire) is that the things the authorities have clearly learned over the last few days make it unlikely that the perceived total breakdown of law and order seen in London will be repeated. At least, not until the next new kind of rioting strategy emerges…