Howard's scales

Last night I received an email from Anoneumouse over at The Anglo Saxon Chronicle which included a link to a reply that he has received from the Office of the Leader of the opposition regarding ID cards. You should read it but it basically says Michael Howard is a huge fan of ID cards and he thinks they will help us to exercise the freedom the government wishes us to enjoy. Hey, thanks for that.

Freedom and security are the watchwords of the Tory party, the letter says. But obviously these watchwords come with strings attached because it seems to me that Howard deals with these two principles as if they were two different sides of the same weighing scales. More security, less freedom. Less security, more freedom and ID cards are not the only measure of the man in this respect.

When he took away the private property of our countries sporting pistol shooters we saw his scales in operation again where freedom was the price that thousands had to pay for the security of all (that was effectively the line), though it is clear that in that particular transaction the security received was as ephemeral as many of us expected to be.

When I was being educated (not to a particularly high standard I am sure we can all agree) I managed to grasp a number of subjects only very loosely. There was a lot to do and I preferred some subjects over others. Mathematics, for instance, was a subject for which I received a passing grade through a very shallow understanding of methods, tricks , shortcuts and the like without actually grasping many of the fundamental principles behind the subject. It was a black box subject for me, and so it is with Michael Howard. The subject he has skimmed is freedom. In the old days he would have probably managed a C grade at O level.

Back then his careers advisor would have asked him if he had any interest in woodwork? These days this member of the 1952 Committee would ask pretty much the same question.