In Downing Street and Whitehall there has been much hand-wringing since July 7 over how to clamp down on Islamic extremism while keeping the Muslim community on board.
The Home Office has been pilloried for proposing a new offence of ‘glorifying terrorist acts’, then dropping it; and for proposing 90-day detention without charge, while accidentally releasing a draft letter which revealed grave doubts over the idea. Such mistakes are bound to occur when ministers are anxious to strike a delicate balance over critically important questions, in a hurry and under public scrutiny.
But to read the text of a petition got up by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, and signed by more than 160 Muslim organisations and prominent individuals, you would think that Tony Blair and Charles Clarke were knuckle-headed BNP types with their fists trailing on the ground. The petition says Blair has been ‘inaccurate and disingenuous’ in describing supporters of sharia law and an Islamic Caliphate as extremists. It argues that the government is ‘pandering to Zionist pressure’ over Israel. And it suggests that a ‘knee jerk’ reaction to the London bombings threatens to ‘set the course of British politics onto the slippery slope of intellectual censorship and totalitarianism’. Hmm.
Groups signed up to the statement include George Galloway’s friends in the Muslim Association of Britain, although the moderate Muslim Council of Britain has steered clear. Intriguingly, the petition organisers briefed journalists that the 160 signatures included lots of councillors. Labour councillors, I asked them? They weren’t sure. So I went through their list.
There were a few Lib Dems and Tories but only one Labour name. Step forward Bolton councillor Ismail Ibrahim. One man does not a movement make, so ‘Labour rebels savage Blair on terror laws’ never found its way into the papers. On the contrary, their absence from the list underlines the constructive role that Labour MPs, peers and councillors have played since July 7. Where they have disagreed with the government, they have said so without resorting to the kind of inflammatory language that, at times like this, is best avoided.
In some parts of the country, motorists caught speeding can escape penalty points on their licence if they agree to attend a ‘speed awareness workshop’. The scheme has been judged a success and police chiefs are to introduce it nationwide.
Of course, education is better than punishment. But as an (unwilling) veteran of a speed awareness course, I fear the project is flawed. Naturally, I swore as I read the letter: ‘Exceeding 30mph on a restricted road … supported by photographic evidence… fixed penalty of £60 with three penalty points.’ And, naturally, I welcomed the get-out: sit through a three-hour seminar and my licence would stay clean. (You pay the same amount, but, instead of it being a fine, it goes to the private firm running the course.)
I sat through an afternoon of psychology tests (‘Do you drive to feel powerful?’), discussion and computer simulations. But the weird thing that emerged was that all 20 of us on the course had been clocked doing 36mph in 30 zones. Our tutor explained that cameras ignore speeders doing 35 or less, while anyone doing 37 or more gets penalty points without the offer of a course.
So the drivers who really need re-educating – the ones who screech around city streets at 60 making wrist gestures at anyone in their way – are not eligible. Later, I found out that in the Oxfordshire village where I was caught, there have been no serious accidents since 1996. The camera was installed in 1998 and the limit was cut from 50 to 30 in 2000. Supporters of speed courses hope they will take the political heat off the government over the rising number of cameras and fines. But if they foster the idea that the good guys get lectured at while the bad guys go free, they will only raise the temperature.
A survey the other day showed that five in six people don’t trust government statistics. It was a bit of an embarrassment for the Office for National Statistics, which carried out the survey.
So how did the ONS communicate the news? It sent out a press release that put the best possible gloss it could muster on its findings. It buried the most damning, and most interesting, findings at the bottom of the release. And it came up with the most boring title possible, ‘No change in public confidence in official statistics’, presumably in the hope that no-one would read any further. Maybe, in the circumstances, it would have been better to tell it straight.