Iain Dale was clearly deliberately trying to cause a stink today with his post about abortions. The first question one must put to him is, what does it have to do with the country? How is it in any way our business to label these women as shameful? I would have thought that as a gay man, Iain would be a little more wary about moral pontification. He does appreciate that a large number of his allies in this debate want him to burn in Hell, doesn’t he?

Who are we to judge if the potential life of one foetus outweighs the quality of life of one woman? We could set up some kind of Orwellian evaluation procedure to calculate it scientifically, at great cost to the taxpayer and fraught with problems, or we could just leave it to her to make the decision. It does seem to me that the latter option is not just more liberal, but more pragmatic, unless we wish to see the return of the coat-hanger in modern gynecological standard practice.

At the heart of this debate is whether one considers a foetus to be a baby, and specifically at what point one considers a foetus to be a baby. This is important because, as Iain deliberately obscures but even the Daily Mail doesn’t, just one in twelve of these terminations was carried out after 13 weeks (less than 17,000) and just 136 were carried out after 24 weeks. Use the 13 weeks statistic and, even if you ignore the miscarriages (I don’t have the stats to hand for what point in pregnancy these took place - most I suspect were early in the cycle), that makes Iain’s scare statistic of 1-in-4 closer to 1-in-38. Use the 24 weeks statistic and it becomes around 1-in-4,700.

Should we consider a 12 week old foetus to be a baby? Where do you draw the line? At best it can be described as a potential human, but you could say the same about every sperm or ovum. It is not just infantile to call to every ball of cells that looks vaguely anthropomorphic human, it is degrading.

Those nice people at the CIA calculate the UK infant mortality rate to be 5.01 or every 1,000 live births (in 1911 the UK average was over 100). What is the greater tragedy? The 3,000+ infants who die each year, or the 136 abortions that take place after 24 weeks? Why is one shrugged aside as “just life”, while the other one “shameful”?

Of course it would be nice if there were fewer abortions, but how would we achieve that? Reduce poverty would have an impact, as would compulsory sex education and a far greater use of condoms and other forms of contraception. George Bush has considerately provided us with clear - and very expensive - evidence that abstinence education does not work. These would have a whole host of other knock on effects such as greater sexual health generally and reduced teenage pregnancies. If you are serious about reducing the abortion rate, really serious, then all of these would be at the top of your priority list. Otherwise, it is just so much moralistic posturing.

Full marks to the Young Liberals of Canada for these fantastic adverts, managing to spoof both those annoying Mac adverts and the Conservatives’ constant attempts to rebrand themselves as something they’re not (sound familiar?).

Enjoy!

If I ever become an actual politician, when I am inevitably asked “did you ever smoke cannabis in your youth?” I will have a terribly dull answer. I didn’t. I ate a hash brownie once but it didn’t seem to have any effect. In fact, generally I’m uncomfortable about taking any substance that has an effect on my mental state, although that doesn’t prevent me from the occasional tipple or chunking down enormous quantities of sugar and chocolate. In short, when it comes to personal practice, I am the Daily Mail’s poster child for insouciant hypocrisy.

Yet, inconveniently for the anti-legalisation lobby, I’m in favour of legalising - and thus regulating - cannabis. The rise of skunk (and Ben Goldacre puts some of the more alarmist headlines into perspective), far from causing me to doubt my opinion, has confirmed to me that prohibition has a toxic effect on society. Five years after alcohol prohibition had been imposed on the US in the 20s, you can guarantee that the sort of alcohol available on the black market was much more dangerous than when it was legal. With no quality control, with huge profits to be made and with huge penalties imposed when dealers were caught, the rise of moonshine was an inevitability. Skunk, grown in people’s cupboards, is the equivalent of moonshine.

What annoys me most about the Sindy’s stance is that it is based on the moronic rubric that because the medical dangers are greater than we may have thought, the case for legalisation goes right out of the window. Yet no-one (apart from that bloke with a guitar who stands outside all the party conferences each year) believes that tobacco should be made illegal - people would be injecting nicotine within months. If there is a medical problem, the solution should be a medical one, yet that is hindered by criminalising the users and forcing them to buy their supply from criminals. From what I’ve seen though, the Sindy seems utterly uninterested in even exploring that argument.

I’m afraid that the fact the Sindy is starting this debate demonstrates two things all too clearly. Firstly, the tabloidisation of the Independent papers is now complete. First it was the size, then it was the content, now it is the mindset. The obvious kneejerk populism is a blatant attempt to gain sales, not to enlighten debate.

The second factor is that liberalism in the UK has been significantly weakened over the past half decade, and it will take years to recover. Drugs policy is a case in point. Back in 1999, the rightwing press attempted to cause a storm over the fact that Charles Kennedy had publicly backed the party’s policy to have a royal commission on drugs policy (which Paddy hated). This quickly turned into a damp squib however as it became clear that the public wasn’t interested. Later, the Tories’ hypocrisy on drug policy was exposed when it emerged that half the then-cabinet happily admitted to taking cannabis when they were younger.

Now we have Cameron screaming about his right to privacy (except for when it is convenient for him to show off his disabled child) and now, the Sindy pretending to be the Mail on Sunday. We live in a different country now.

In September 2001, I was getting t-shirt’s printed to promote LDYS’ latest scam, the libdemsondrugs online debating website on drugs policy. We were hoping to cause a real outrage and get ourselves on the front page of every red top in the land. Then 9/11 happened. Sad.

There is one positive thing you have to accept about this “Orange Book 2″ - aka Britain after Blair. At least they’re finally taking health and safety seriously.

Look at the cover to the old book. Marshall and Laws have got that poor girl leaning at an uncomfortable angle. She looks like she might topple over any minute. Surely it would have been more sensible to move the ladder across? The mind boggles how she got everything above her painted.

Now, contrast this with Britain after Blair. The man is painting in a much more comfortable position. Although again, how did he paint everything above him - and how come he left this last space until last? While he seems to finally be taking safety precautions more seriously, I would question his efficiency.

But the real question is, why do they want to paint their walls this ghastly colour in the first place?

For a perfect example of how confused David Cameron’s speech on human rights yesterday was, you need look no further than Iain Dale’s blog:

David Cameron is getting excellent coverage this morning for his Human Rights Act policy. I just heard Baroness Helena Kennedy saying positive things, which is deeply ironic considering she was one of the prime movers behind the original legislation.

There’s nothing “ironic” about Kennedy supporting calls for a Bill of Rights, as that is what she and Charter88 were calling for in 1998. The HRA was regarded by them as a compromise.

What is “ironic” is that both Kennedy and David Davis’ Representative On Earth seem to like what Cameron was saying. One of them is surely going to be deeply disappointed. My suspicion is that it will be the Baroness as I think I can just make out the high-pitched screeching of a dog whistle.

Rebekah Wade can quite clearly hear one. She reckons that what Cameron is proposing accords entirely with the Currant Bun’s “string’em up” campaign. The rhetoric is all there: he isn’t calling for reforms of the HRA, but to scrap it. This nonsense about the Strasbourg courts backing off from countries with their own Bill of Rights (only if they believe that the Bill of Rights is worth the paper its printed on, Dave). And to many Tories, the Bill of Rights is something that came down from Mt Sinai in tablets of stone circa 1689.

Meanwhile, Cameron is trotting that old canard about having to balance security and liberty. To be fair, he’s probably only saying it because Blair said it first, but it is still utter balls. Was it safe to live in Saddam’s Iraq? Is it safe to live in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? Blameron’s logic would have you believe these were paradises of security. Karl Popper may as well have never existed as far as these two are concerned: political theory begins and ends with Hobbes for them.

The fact is though, liberty buys us security. It isn’t a perfect trade-off but if people are free, by and large they behave responsibly. If people are treated like impudent children, they behave like impudent - or if you go too far, traumatised - children. Politicians who believe otherwise are potential tyrants who deserve to be treated with nothing but contempt.

Before I forget again, just a quick note to invite people to Liberal Drinks this Wednesday.

We’ve had a couple of really good turnouts recently, so I’m hopeful this week will be a success as well.

I’ve blogged about this before and I’m sure I will again, but what is Nick Cohen’s problem with liberalism? He has never spelt it out beyond complaining that reality rarely meets the ideal, but that is true of all ideologies, and yet he returns to the subject again and again.

This week, Kate Winslet’s Number One Fan is attacking “Europe” (whatever that is…) for not being as liberal as it claims to be. In doing so, he cites Simon Jenkins - an arch Tory - and Franco Frattini - Sylvio Berlusconi’s personal appointee to the European Commission. He laments the prohibition of Holocaust denial and laws to prevent criticism of religion, both of which are predominently advocated by socialist parties. He suggests at the end that the people of Europe are becoming contemptuous of hypocritical politicians who espouse liberal ideals yet fail to observe them in practice, yet that is an argument for more liberalism, not less.

More to the point, this Euston Manifesto supporter fails to come up with something even vaguely resembling a leftist alternative. Indeed, that manifesto includes plenty of exhortations to freedom which, last time I looked, was the alpha and omega of liberalism. Euston can be read as a wholesale surrender of the left to come up with a better model for society than liberalism after two centuries of wasted effort. Yet for Cohen, it continues to be the root of all evil.

I should probably stop reading these columns as Cohen has become so idiosyncratic now that they are seldom worth the time. But one day I would love to see him attempt to come up with answers. Polly Toynbee may be consistently wrong, but at least she tries. The polemicist schtick has got old, Nick.

Creationism is to be discussed as part of the GCSE biology syllabus:

The [OCR] exam board says students need to understand the background to theories.

Its new “Gateway to Science” curriculum asks pupils to examine how organisms become fossilised.

Teachers are asked to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation)”.

Sounds innocent enough. Except that creationism as it is currently understood is very much a modern phenomenon. The Biblical creation myth was a hodge-podge of different creation myths borrowed from other cultures. There was no “creationist interpretation” before Darwinism, there was just the Bible and a lack of any other satisfying explanation. A series of theories, not least of all Lamarckism were explored, before the scientific community settled on Darwinism. Creationism is a reaction to Darwinism and the enlightenment, a modern literal interpretation of a clearly allegorical myth. Its place in a lesson on “interpretations of the fossil record” merits a paragraph or two, sure, but such a lesson would only have validity if it mainly focussed on the various attempts at formulating a scientific theory.

I’d dearly like to know who in OCR came up with that guff, as it has all the hallmarks of the wedge strategy, the well documented plan by US evangelists to subtly undermine the enlightenment by dressing up dogma as quasi-scientific scepticism. Intelligent Design is of course a famous example of this strategy.

I didn’t catch all of Rod Liddle’s Dispatches programme on Monday, but what I saw was disturbing enough. The picture that Liddle painted was that of teachers selected for their faith rather than ability, a subtle but no-less-comprehensive attempt to infect science teaching with religious dogma without falling foul of Ofsted and a selective use of exclusion to remove “troublesome” pupils. As time goes on, I have no doubt their confidence will grow. Meanwhile, another evangelist is planning to use his money to create a chain of McAcademies, and despite being a Tory donor, Blair has rewarded him with a peerage (if he can passed the Appointments Commission). Overseeing the entire schools revolution, of which these are just a small part, is a woman who has well known sympathies to the Opus Dei cult.

This is a full scale onslaught on scientific reason, salami slice by salami slice - make no mistake. It has its links with the religious hatred laws and the moral authoritarianism of the Respect Agenda. All this is being presented to us in perfectly reasonable terms: it’s about choice, or respecting communities, or tackling anti-social behaviour. The risk of creating sectarian tensions and a hysterical culture of intolerance is glossed over.

What to do about it? Where do we begin? But we can make a start at least by talking about it.

Can you believe it is only 3 weeks since the last Liberal Drinks? Sheesh! Time goes by quickly!

Anyway, same time and time of the month - Wednesday 15 March, 7.30pm - and same place - The Silver Cross. I’m not personally planning to hold one in April, so this is the last chance to get together until after the locals. We’ve had a great turnout for the last two this year, let’s pull out all the stops on this one.

I’m surprised this article on Equality by Vice Chair of the Meeting the Challenge working group Duncan Brack hasn’t provoked any discernable debate so far. No doubt everyone has had other distractions this week. I certainly don’t have time to deal with it in depth right now.

It is laying down the gauntlet to quite a serious ideological debate however. Brack’s argument is that inequality lies at the heart of the problems we face with health, quality of life and crime issues, while other commentators such as Andy Mayer are quite contemptuous of such notions.

I’m not saying I agree with every word that Brack has written - I certainly don’t share his warm feelings towards the egalitarianism of income tax - but I do think it is a serious challenge to the classical liberals within the party that they need to answer.