On the radio this morning David Cameron was interviewed about the Tory party’s immigration policy. Among the points made by the interviewer (I forget who) was that limiting immigration as Cameron described was racist. We’re required as a member of the EU to accept any EU citizen (just as British citizens can work anywhere in the EU), and Europeans are predominantly white. Any limitations, therefore, must come from non-EU countries that are predominantly non-white. And that, the argument went, is racist.

It’s a fair point, I guess, but the interviewer seemed to ignore the fact that any immigration policy can be seen to be racist. You are apportioning a scarce resource to people not of your nationality, and to the degree that nationality is a proxy for race, that is arguably racist. But this completely ignores the importance of intent; if a country is trying to control immigration because it doesn’t want any of those horrible {insert group here} coming in then it’s racist however it’s done. In contrast, if you decide that your country is functionally full (public services are overwhelmed, for example) then a policy might be racist (“we’re pretty full, so no more {group}”) but it isn’t automatically so.

For example, I might choose to allow in only the 10,000 most intelligent applicants each year. That might appear racist – intelligence as commonly defined is a function of education, which is more widely available to some than others based in part on nationality – but if the intent is simply to welcome the most ‘profitable’ people it isn’t racist. In fact it’s arguably the opposite, as such a policy arguably lowers the overall status of existing citizens.

What’s the link with the ‘complaining’ of the title? The British are excellent at complaining, almost to the level of a national sport. A reporter making the mistake of skimming the surface appearance of an issue, such as the guy this morning, switches from being a probing investigator to a whiner with a radio show.

Here’s a nice opinion piece on the similarities between the current and possible future President. My favourite quote:

I really do think that he ran for president partly just to appease his Oedipal issues and partly because he needed to do something with his life and he didn’t think he could pass the written test to become a pirate.

Turkey is currently weighing what to do militarily about the PKK, the Kurdish rebel group that is either a terrorist organization or an army of freedom fighters. The Kurds, or some number of them at least, want an independent homeland made up of parts of Turkey and Northern Iraq. Turkey and Iraq are less supportive of this idea, and the Turkish parliament has voted to allow their forces to move into Iraq if needed. The US is trying to discourage this because of the potentially destabilizing effect it would have on Iraq (imagine what a destabilized Iraq would look like).

Here’s the thing. The US doesn’t agree with these possible actions, but they are all in line with what the US itself has done in Afghanistan, and in fact are pretty understated compared to the war in Iraq. We can argue with them based on tactics, we can explain that a stable Iraq is worth the risk, we can even bribe them with cash and cheap fighter jets. But we can’t take the moral high ground because we don’t have it; we gave it away 5 years ago.

One of the criticisms often made of ID is that it isn’t predictive; that it will see something that appears to be designed and point it out as an example of ID, but if an evolutionary explanation is found they don’t hesitate for a moment to just move on to the next one in the list. What that means in practice is that any feature can be considered evidence for their cause, yet the exact opposite could just as easily do the same; what decides isn’t evidence or research, but convenience.

Here’s the same idea at work in politics. John Negroponte commented on activity in Afghanistan recently:

NEGROPONTE: It’s getting better. It’s definitely getting better. And I’ve heard some people suggest, go so far as to suggest, that al Qaeda is getting discouraged in Iraq and is thinking more of concentrating their efforts on Afghanistan and other areas.

ROSE: That good news or bad?

NEGROPONTE: Well, I think it’s at least good news that their wings have clipped somewhat in Iraq.

Here’s the rough grid Negroponte is working from:

How are AQ doing?	Well in Iraq	Poorly in Iraq
Well in Afghanistan	Last desperate throes	Getting desperate in Iraq
Poorly in Afghanistan	Getting desperate in Afghanistan	We’re in the end game

It doesn’t matter what the facts on the ground are – it doesn’t even matter if we can’t know them – there’s only the message.

No, surprisingly, not a George W Bush post, nor even one about an existing election. in the UK elections must happen at least every 5 years, but the ruling party can call one anywhere within its term to start the 5-year clock ticking again. There was much speculation that Gordon Brown* would call an election for November, based on his current honeymoon period as leader. In the event he’s decided that he ‘wants time to show us his vision’ so that he can get a mandate for the future, not just for his competence.

No, I’m not entirely clear on it either, but I guess it’s a plausible reason to want to put off an election, even if the real reasoning is mainly that the Tories are mounting a much stronger challenge than most expected. The problem comes with previous statements made around the time that Brown took over. Many people (myself included, though nobody noticed) called for an election because we were changing leaders. In theory that shouldn’t matter – the Prime Minister is nominally ‘first among equals’ – but in practice he sets the agenda for the entire government, so the fact that he was elected by only 25,000 Scottish people to govern 60 million Brits is irksome to say the least.

That on its own should only matter to people of decency and honour, so we’re not troubling any politicians yet. But the reason we got for not calling an election straight away was that the party had a manifesto that it was elected on, and while there might be tweaks to implementation, basically we’ve already agreed to what we’re going to get. That too is another reasonable explanation why we wouldn’t have an election. The problem is that it directly contradicts the previous reason; either one could be correct, but using both negates them both. The rules of Parliament specifically prevent politicians from using the word ‘liar’ in the House. We, happily, have no such block on our actions.

* texture like sun