h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Michael Howard has enjoyed a good run recently, even getting the Catholic Church to back his stance on abortion as stated to Cosmo.

He has repeatedly, since then, stated that he has no wish to turn this into an election/party political issue.

Why then did he lie? Why did he tell Cosmo that he had voted in favour of reducing the age of abortion to 22 weeks when in fact the parliamentary record clearly shows him to have voted *against* reducing the age 22 weeks?

Further, does this represent the beginning of a 'morality in politics' phase such has the US has undergone in the last ten years?

What the US is going through is not a morality *in* politics phase but a morality *as* politics phase.

There have been times when the unusually polarised political system has been totally two sided with no middle ground at all.

The stance of Bush has been to mobilize his political support on a with us or against us basis using any hook available to hang his banner from.

Terminations are an emotive issue and people are either pro-choice or think its the work of the devil

So Howard can announce his feelings (hint at a policy) knowing that it will galvanize a certain section of community but not have massive economic or social reprocussions that will drive away other people who might have supported him before.

But why lie about something that can be so easily checked?

This bringing morality into politics is driving me mad.

There was a great comedy sketch in a BBC radio four comedy programme about a week ago, unfortunately I forget which one it was. Anyhow, in this scetch, there was an interviewer interviewing a relitive of someone who'd died ina train crash. And the interviewer kept asking the relitive questions and trying to get him to say bad things about the government and the way the railways were managed, and the interviewee kept replying that he could not possible comment as he was too emotionally involved in the issue to have a coheriant logical view of things.

Morality has no place in politics or policy making. Surely what we want is logical, thoughtful approchs to issues, that look at the facts, and draw the necessary conclusions from them without bringin in peoples predjuices into the issues. There was a debate on radio four's moral maze (A show I despise normally for many reasons), in which abortion was discussed. And the obviously totally against abortion individuals made it quite clear that there objection was on religious grounds, and in essence what they wanted was for the person who was after an abortion to suffer, the child to suffer, because they deserved it from 'being bad' or some such ludercus idea of moral high ground that such religious minorities seem to believe they have.

A bit more common sense (I relaly don't like using that phrase for obvious reasons, and I don't want to detour this into any kind of 'thing' on what that saying means), logic, and thoughful examination of information would go a long way to make politics more relivent to the vast majority.

The tories have a recent habit of mucking up when they espouse family values and morality.

I think I read in a recent survay that people still considered them to be more sleazy than Labour after 8 years...

I think Sandy Toksvic nailed it spot on watching Question Time last night. Howard has been receving election advice from the guru who piloted the Autrailian PM back to office. I find myself in agreement with Sandy Toksvic, that this was another bit of electoral advice in action (such as the focus on immigration and challenging Blair over the NHS - the later not being considered traditional Tory territory.) If that's true then Howard was trying to skirt the political and morality debate that was so successful for Bush and in some sense at least it clearly worked! No sooner said than the leader of the catholic church in England is saying Labour is no longer the natural party for catholics and Howard is headed in the right direction with raising abortion as an election issue. (ie less to none at all)

I would detest any move to drag our secular politics down the moral road of American politcal debate. Its bad enough watching that imbroglio from a distance without having to wonder what my local MP's stance of stem cell research is.

Interesting about Howard's voting record in light of his contrary statements to the fact BUT I don't want to see that become the norm. I hope it does not become so. I do not believe that the firmly ehld beleifs of many peopel out there should be at issue when voting for a government. They barely keep to their promises anyway (tuition fees?) so why feel we can judge them on what they profess to believe when electionering - especially when that means inflicitng the values of one courted group over the others because of a claim to greater preceience on the nature of the divine or the moral?

I was always rather proud that our abortion laws were legislated by the whole of parliament rather than a party political issue (vote for me! I'll do X) or based on a legal judgement (Roe V Wade) the more we resist bringing morality in politics, the happier I'll be.

The case if it can be made for reducing abortions is not because they are 'evil' and 'wrong' but that as a last resort to terminate a pregnancy it should remain the last resort and that people should be better informed and more invovled with their own sexual health regarding contraception etc. The trend in america is instead to promote abstinence! It is bewildering the lengths moral puritans will go to to control human behaviour. It is because such decisions affect the health of the person involved the option should be there for them to have, and it should be *their choice* not dictat of a political party at the behest of guardians of public morality.

There. I think I'm rambled quite enough.
(When do those rules about discussing the Genereal election kick in?)

I would LOVE to see morality being central to politics. Not personal morality, as discussed above, but public morality.

Everyone knows the problems poverty causes, so why isn't it central to the election that it's diminished as much as possible?

Everyone knows (except those working for oil companies) that climate change is going to cause more problems than anything else in history, but nobody's doing anything about it. This is criminal.

Everyone knows there's an AIDS crisis and anyone who prevents condoms being distributed or tells lies about their effectiveness is a criminal. They are directly responsible for the deaths of millions.

Everyone knows (and lots of people knew) that Iraq didn't have WMDs, but we still invaded and the death toll is 100,000 and rising. We have a war-criminal for a PM.

Yeah, let's bring these f****rs to account. Morality should be central to politics.

(ps, I'm sure I've missed a few things out, please feel free to add to the list.)

Perhaps I didn't get my feelings across very well.

It sems to me that Howard has effectively lied his back teeth out on an issue that will play a part in the Election, as well he knew before he made those comments.

However, any attempt by the Labour Party to bring him to account will now be seen as an attempt to 'politicise the issue'.

Is this not disgraceful?

Actually the report I heard did state that he announced this "after rethinking his position" ie seeing which way the wind was blowing and hopping on to the nearest available bandwagon.

What a scummy thing to do. Typical of him and probably the sort of thing that got him to the top of the tory party.

Morality - right and wrong - most certainly does have a place in politics and policy making. Otherwise what grounds would there be for making murder and theft illegal?

However, it's true to say that law and morality are different. Not everything that is immoral is illegal, and vice versa. There are many acts which many people think are wrong, but are no business of the law. Do we really want adulterers and tellers of white lies being dragged through the courts?

The challenge in a diverse and pluralistic liberal democracy is to find a set of laws which those with wildly differing beliefs can subscribe to as a basis of mutual cooperation. The philosopher John Rawls described this as a search for an 'overlapping consenus' - whatever we may disagree about as private individuals, there are thing we ought to agree about as citizens about what the state should and should not be entitled to do. Generally this plays out as a commitment to liberty and tolerance (I may disagree with you absolutely as a private individual, but I accept that I am not entitled to try to use state power to force my view on you).

For those who are pro-choice, this seems reasonable. Abortion ought to be a private matter for the individual to decide within limits laid down by the state. However, for those who believe that carrying out an abortion is morally equivilent to murdering a human being, this does not seem reasonable.

Imagine that the state decided that all babies under the age of one year were not yet fully human persons and therefore could be humanely killed by their parents if they so wished. Most people (even those who are pro-choice) would not think that this was a private matter for the individual and would campaign for this parental "right" to be removed, and might even feel justified in taking direct action against those doctors responsible.

For the anti-abortion movement, abortion and baby killing are (nearly) morally equivalent. I don't agree with this, but that's their view. And that's why they don't think that abortion should be a private matter. I don't think that many pro-choice people understand this.

The most effective way to argue against the anti-choice lobby is not to debate whether the foetus is a human being or not, or to try to play the liberal individual conscience card. Rather, the best way to do it is to point out the consequences of criminalising abortion would be.

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That's exactly right, Otto!

due to Otto.

Isn't the debate really about religion and politics where the logical end game would be a theocracy such as the Taliban. Maybe it's a projection too far but didn't one theocracy under Bush annihilate another in Afghanistan

Out of interest I plugged morals, politics and religion into the word Survey site to see what their usage ranking was:

politics 1388
religion 2295
morals 13831

The morality of the arguement about abortion is one I am entirely happy to leave to the individual conscience. Likewise how people choose to let that issue affect their voting intentions. I am perfectly well aware of the arguments on both sides.

BUT;

Michael Howard LIED about his voting record in the House of Commons. He then, having received the support of the Roman Catholic Church, stated he didn't want to make this into a 'party political issue'.

I would suggest that LYING about your voting record in the Commons on a highly volatile issue such as this is dishonest, and immoral. To then say 'This is not a party political issue' smacks of a deliberate attempt to make it a 'party political issue' by the back door..

I agree that lying about one's voting record in order to gain political support is wrong, dishonest, and immoral. Period.

The so-called "morality in politics" scares the HELL out of me. Under no circumstances do I feel I have the right to force other people to live according to my personal code of ethics. I certainly don't expect them to force theirs upon me.

It would be foolish to think that any politician or government official is not going to be guided by their individual code of ethics. But I think any attempt to legislate one's own "moral" standards, forcing the public at large to adhere to them, is an abuse of power and morally reprehensible.

(I won't derail this discussion by addressing individual issues here. How I feel about abortion is not the point.)

I'm not familiar with your system of intorducing bills, but in the United States, you can attach poinson pills to stuff. You can wind up voting against a bill that you would normally support except for some intolerable rider that the opponents of the bill slid in there.

I've seen where this has made congressmen vote in ways that their opponents can twist their lack of support for a bill with arider into being against the idea itself.

Could this be a case like that?

That was a very good post Otto.

Entirely agree with you, Blues. I wouldn't want a liar running the country.

Oh - hang on -

Mol

PS Expect the election discussion restrictions to kick in from 30 March cos that's the official kick off for local elections.

I think Howard's just getting fairly desperate. He was supposed to be the man to make the Conservatives back into an electable party and he's failed so he's clutching at straws.

The whole abortion thing is a joke. I'm surprised that Catholics are so willing to go along with it. Howard isn't saying he's going to outlaw abortion, just change the law to make it a little more difficult. It's hardly a massive fig-leaf to the anti-abortion lobby but he's trying to make it out to be so and seems to be trying to find allies in the Roman Catholic church to go along with him. It's just a desperate act to grasp a few more votes that he hopes will make him Prime Minister.

Hopefully, it'll come to nothing.

I'm with Blues Shark on the issue of Howard lying however I have always been of the opinion that successful politicians are skilled manipulators of the truth. How else did they get where they are?

Morality is central to politics, surely, otherwise what would these people have to be righteously outraged about?

Howard and the Tories are desperately ranging around looking for a big issue that will pull in the votes. They know that disaffected labour voters will either not turn out or will vote for another party like the Lib-Dems and a certain number of their own may vote for one of the Joke parties like UKIP/Veritas (). (Veritas must be the silliest and least plausible name for political party - especially run by that slime-ball Kilroy-Silk, a bad politician who left politics and went into chat-show hosting and was bad at that so came back to politics. Perhaps he will go the same way as David Ike!)

turvy