Tokenistic measures fall short in tackling immigration crisis!

Nowadays, the mere mention of the word triggers some of the most visceral conversations around. Whether it be exchanges in the Houses of Parliament, in living rooms and in pubs, or smeared across every social media platform imaginable, this is one of the most fiercely contested issues of our age.

And why shouldn’t it be, given the vast numbers involved?

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 745,000 more people arrived in our country than left in 2022. That is an increase of more than 1% of our population in just 12 months.

Whilst most are here legally, many are not. Just over 52,000 were detected illegally entering the UK in the 12 months to June 2023, although this is likely to be a significant undercount, by the very nature of the matter. At least 40,000 of these claimed to be asylum seekers.

Research from the Migration Observatory during 2023 shows that whilst the UK is almost evenly split as to whether immigration is a good thing (31%) or a bad thing (33%), well over half are looking for a reduction in the numbers arriving here.

This is a debate which I intend to address, if not with both feet, then across my next two columns for this newspaper.

In this article, I want to set out a number of general principles and observations. In February, I hope to offer some solutions. All from a libertarian perspective.

As a philosophy, libertarianism is suspicious of too much power being controlled by the state over the rights of individuals, families and communities. Most of us have grown up at times when the ever-encroaching interference from the state is almost taken for granted. ‘The state must do this, and the state must do that’, we say – heedless that the state, with its millions of employees and vested interests, operates to justify its own power and influence.

However, one of the few legitimate roles of the state is to protect its citizens from external harm, whether that be from military, economic, or migratory threats.

I accept that not all libertarians would agree with this. Some theorists, rather like the ultra left-wing demonstrators one sometimes sees or hears on demonstrations, advocate for completely open borders.

Most of us, though, whilst we would never advocate restrictions on people leaving this country, do feel that there must be a rationale for inward migration that is underpinned by our own economic and social self-interest.

Whether it be short-term to fill essential vacancies that the millions of our current citizens of working age choose not to fill (more on that conundrum in February), or in the longer-term to take advantage of overseas expertise to reap the benefits from new technologies, there needs to be a clearly articulated agreement between the governed and the governing as to this rationale. Unlike at present.

Tony Blair turned on the taps of mass migration in the early years of this century without any electoral mandate. Now, the present Conservative administration has facilitated another shift - again without any strategic approach or national consent.

As a libertarian, I have absolutely no time for anti-migration arguments based, explicitly or implicitly, on racial or cultural hatred. I abhor the dog whistling politics that seems to have even reached Suffolk in recent years. We need to have an objective system that evaluates what this country needs and ensures that we can access the right people irrespective of their origins.

But equally, we shouldn’t let the usual shrill leftie types get away with branding efforts to reduce overall immigration and refine precisely who comes here as particularly draconian.

For migration is an international phenomenon, propelling millions of people from the mainly global south towards ostensibly richer nations in the northern hemisphere.

A few examples will suffice. Last month, the French National Assembly passed legislation to make it more difficult for migrants to bring family members to France and delay their access to welfare benefits.

The Greek government has opted to simply deport undocumented migrants arriving across its archipelagos.

And famously, ex- and quite possibly future-US president Trump continues to focus on staunching the flows of illegal migrants across the Mexican border.

An international situation demands more of a joined up international response where appropriate, adapted to suit particular national situations.

This means taking a whole system approach, as opposed to Rishi Sunak's panic-stricken and tokenistic measures. The Rwanda scheme is a case in point. Rather than expending both taxpayers' money and political capital on an expensive scheme that even if it goes ahead will have a marginal deterrent effect at most, efforts should be focussed on speeding up the process whereby illegals without valid asylum claims are identified and deported.

The costs of this particular policy failure are eye-watering at every level. Since, 2022 the UK has handed over - or has pledged to so do - well over £320m for a scheme that may never happen or, if it does, is likely to account for a few hundred illegal migrants.

To properly 'take control' of our borders, we need both public consent and a long-term plan. More on what that could look like in February.

First published www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday, January 4, 2024.

Misunderstood: Why simple descriptions fail libertarianism!

 

Names matter, don’t they?

 

Getting someone’s name right is a precondition to establishing reasonable contact with them. It’s said that there is nothing more English than not quite catching a new neighbour’s name, and then avoiding eye-contact with them for the next 30 years to avoid any embarrassment!

 

Addressing things by the right description is important in so many arenas of life. If we fail to tell it as it is, then we risk being misunderstood, misunderstanding others, and crucially, allowing people with extremist views to go unchallenged.

 

As regular readers of this column will know, I am a big believer in free speech. By which I mean that people should be allowed to say whatever they want, even if it offends others, as long as it is not deliberately intended to incite violence, and more generally, have as much freedom to order their order lives as they see fit.

 

Ideally, the state should be absent from as many aspects of our lives as possible, with the exception of protecting citizens from external threats – whether they be military, economic or environmental.

 

Libertarianism has been around for centuries and, in the West at least, is a well-established philosophy being a cornerstone for many of the liberties that we all too readily nowadays take for granted.

 

So why do so many mainstream news outlets seemingly struggle to identify what is, and is not, a libertarian perspective? I’m coming around to the conclusion that the establishment do this deliberately, so concerned are they that ordinary citizens might develop their own ideas!

 

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been quite a few examples of such centre-left double-speak, aimed at misrepresenting what libertarians really believe.

 

Exhibit one relates to the election of a new president of Argentina. Javier Milei was voted in by a landslide – in the main, due to the chronic handling of the economy by the ruling leftist party.

 

What I found most fascinating was how leftist organisations from the Guardian to the BBC (and also, strangely, the Telegraph) opted to describe him as a ‘far right libertarian.’

 

Now to be fair, there are a few aspects of Milei’s policy platform that I would applaud and would accept are good old-fashioned libertarian stances. These mainly relate to cutting the scale of the public sector, including the bloated and biased state-run media (perhaps we should copy this in the UK?).

 

Otherwise, his rather bizarre personal behaviour aside, his beliefs tend to the authoritarian, not least his opposition to abortion, women’s equality, identity rights, and the fetishisation of the military (watch out Falkland Islanders).

 

Ah, I get it. It’s easy to dismiss him as far right because he’d also like to reduce immigration from its current levels.

 

But as I’ve suggested earlier, protecting citizens is one of the few legitimate roles of the state. It is commonsense. And that includes regulating immigration. This is not about culture wars or appeals to nativism. Unregulated immigration distorts societies and the economy.

 

Forget Argentina. The situation in this country is spiralling out of control. Net migration in the year to December 2022 was 745,000 (revised up!). In other words, 745,000 MORE people lived here than choose to leave the UK and live elsewhere.

 

The left in this country decried Suella Braverman as an authoritarian, both because of her efforts to destroy the people smugglers’ business model, and because she, rightly in my opinion, queried whether certain groups shouting hate slogans were being treated more softly than others.

 

Although I do think in some of her language, she acted naively – the vicious attacks on her for sympathising with our Jewish communities facing vile antisemitic hate speech and attacks, singled her out for sustained opprobrium and misrepresentation from the left and their media allies.

 

But we do need to get a grip on these before there is a massive reaction from the authoritarian elements in our society. More and more European countries are starting to experience this.

 

Italy has a prime minister who says nice things about Mussolini. Hungary has a leader with a long-term admiring relationship with Putin, that authoritarian of authoritarians.

 

The recent Dutch General election saw Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom capture the most seats.

 

Mercifully, no-one has been naïve enough to call Wilders a libertarian. Because he’s demonstrably not. Many of his social policies are leftist, such as those on healthcare and housing, and he talks of Islam as a ‘retarded culture’ and of expelling Dutch Muslim citizens legally resident in the country. That is despicable authoritarianism and must be opposed.

 

Interestingly, there is a Dutch Libertarian Party which one political website accurately describes as ‘mixed left and right’ in its political orientation. They at least won’t be boxed in by simpleminded descriptions.

 

That is why it is important to not misname or misidentify libertarianism. We oppose the bullying overreach of fascist groups as much as we do the leftist-loving establishment.

 

We stand foursquare with that famous quote by Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." 

 

Know our name. We are libertarians.

 

First published in www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday 30th November.

Balance has shifted too far - we need exchange of views!

 

We don’t get many people standing on street corners in Debenham, Diss or Sudbury shouting ‘jihad, jihad’, do we?

I wonder what the reaction would be if we did?

Yet the issues raised by someone doing just that at a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration in London, does have relevance here in Suffolk and elsewhere.

I’ve touched on this topic once or twice in the past. But this particular event has persuaded me to revisit the dynamic balance between upholding freedom of speech and dealing with language that promotes hatred, or incites acts of violence against others.

It’s certainly not an easy balance to get right every time, but I do think that overall, some groups are given the benefit of the legal doubt - more so than others.

I wonder why?

In short, I think that the Police frequently turn a blind eye to actual criminal actions by individuals allied to loud ‘woke’ lobbying groups, whilst over-reaching themselves in stifling the legal freedom to express views by those without such advocacy muscle. 

The key issue is, surely, one of context? Section 5 of the Public Order Act establishes that someone is guilty of an offence if they “display any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening … within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.”

I suspect the issue of geographical proximity may have been enough for the Metropolitan Police not to have taken action against the ‘jihad, jihad’ person – not least as one assumes not too many Jews and Israelis were nearby during the protest in question.

Officers would have had more justification for charging the speaker at a recent Sussex University rally in support of terror group Hamas, who described the 7th October butchery of Israeli men, women and children, as ‘beautiful’ and ‘inspiring’. But they chose not to, apparently, in spite of the proximate threat to the academic institution’s Jewish students. 

Universities, actually, are the worst perpetrators of these kinds of double standards. Too many have bowed the knee to small, but immensely intolerant grouplets with specific animus and agendas, to remove speaking opportunities to outside speakers, whose views these grouplets may disagree with.

Even more heinous, is the connivance of university bosses in imperilling the livelihoods of their own staff who have the temerity (or maybe naivety) to believe that such academic spaces benefit from, y’know, the actual thoughtful exchange of differing viewpoints.

Interestingly, many of these are high-profiled women who have been sanctioned at the behest of various parts of the spectrum of intolerance that is the professional trans lobbying industry.

In recent months, festival promoters and venues have joined this chorus line of prejudice. Readers of this column may recall that comedy writer Graham Linehan, of Father Ted and The IT Crowd fame, was banned from performing at a number of venues during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, because of earlier comments criticising some of the activities of the trans lobby.

His recently released book – Tough Crowd – details the emotional and financial impact of being ‘cancelled’ more generally at the instigation of loud and intolerant voices.

And of course, social media behemoths, hungry for the advertising spend from the major companies who are bending over in all sorts of curious directions, to be seen to be supportive of such groups, have become just as unevenly-handed.

Rod Liddle recently wrote in The Spectator how Facebook’s algorithms seem to stifle posts critical of groups such as Hamas but amplify more banal posts. He calls it out for what it is: an attempt by the global elite to shift attention away from those that only wish Israel and Israelis ill.

The UK Government now has direct skin in this manipulation game with the passing of the Online Safety Bill (OSB) into law last week. In effect, the legislation requires companies like Facebook and TikTok to censor speech on behalf of the Government (or more precisely, the Secretary of State for Culture, and the regulator, Ofcom) and access previously end-to-end encrypted conversations, even when no law is thought to be being broken.

This is all doomed, ultimately, to failure of course. Suppressing certain opinions won’t make them go away. A far better approach would be to critically challenge them in the glare of public discourse.

I recall the decision taken nearly 15 years ago by the BBC to invite Nick Griffin, then leader of the British National Party, onto Question Time. There were concerns raised that it would give him unparalleled publicity.

They were right. In front of an audience of nearly 8m, Griffin proved to be unequal to the task: out of his depth, nervous and incoherent. The most devastating comments were made, not by the panel, but by members of the audience. 

He and his odious little party collapsed back into irrelevance soon afterwards. 

So, I look forward to us rolling back cancellation culture, defaulting to open debate on issues, and a more even-handed approach to those who go too far and deliberately incite hatred and violence.

The Free Speech Union exists for that very reason, and I’d urge everyone interested in this key topic joining them at https://freespeechunion.org/

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday, 2nd November, 2023

With costs spiraling, we need to reset net-zero conversation!

Well, that aged well, didn’t it?

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last column which explained my rationale for leaving the Conservative Party and supporting the #NoneOfTheAbove campaign.

 

In it, I referenced my disappointment with the drifting and timid leadership of Rishi Sunak. Lo and behold, he then went and said a few things that rather impressed me, not least on the issue of ‘green over-reach’.

 

What do I mean by that? Essentially, the crushing juggernaut that combines the increasingly intolerant environmentalist lobby, and certain corporate organisations – including the car industry – and which seeks to deliver arbitrary targets regardless of the hurt they cause ordinary people. As an aside, hats-off to Nissan UK, who reacted to Sunak’s statement by saying that by 2030, all its UK produced cars will be EVs.

 

These green Stalinists – from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and his ULEZ, to Lord Zac Goldsmith – are so detached from the cost-of-living crisis that they think nothing of weighing down people and small businesses with greater and greater burdens in pursuit of their goals. And this means more taxes (the current tax burden is at its highest since the Second World War), more penalties for non-compliance and, inevitably, more resentment from those most impacted by the establishment’s whims.

 

As we saw with the draconian and politically-influenced Covid lockdowns (Matt Hancock – whatever became of him?), if Governments pursue an ambition without even considering, leave alone, measuring its costs, society as a whole will be damaged and distorted.

 

As The Spectator recently said: “Net-zero policies have the potential to wreak even greater havoc in coming decades.”

 

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not a climate change denier. I do believe in climate change, be it a natural cycle or affected by human activities. As an engineer, I weigh up facts and look to adapt accordingly. It’s what I do in business and in my private life.

 

But the pseudo-religious fervour attached to climate ideology I find to be both annoying, and sometimes distasteful. My doubts go as far back as Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and the fabled ‘Hockey Stick’ graph.

 

Scientific forecasts are sometimes wrong and certainly always need to be challenged. I’m old enough to recall that in the 1970s it was global freezing and new Ice Ages that were said to be imminent threats to humanity.

 

Attempts from the turn of this century onwards by Gordon Brown, the hapless Ed Miliband, the legacy seeking Teresa May, and not forgetting dear Boris, to set uncosted and un-planned target dates was foolhardy and, in Governmental terms, grossly incompetent.

 

Although I’m a believer that the one legitimate role of Government is to fund and deliver new infrastructure, there are parallels here with HS2 where a lack of financial control, on the back of uncritical establishment support, has led to a white elephant of record proportions, with the associated lottery-winning salaries and pay-offs.

 

I don’t know when Sunak had his Damascene conversion by slightly, ever so slightly, loosening some of our green targets and seeking to balance the interests of households with those of the green lobbyists. Perhaps it was the ‘Just Stop Oil’ mob on his roof, but his rowing back on the net zero targets comes not a moment too soon.

 

In fact, were he a true Conservative, this should have been announced within his first month as Prime Minister.

 

Now we must take the initiative and start accurately calculating the real costs and benefits of the green agenda. Whether it be the end-of-life implications for batteries, solar panels and turbine blades, or the sourcing of raw materials, especially rare earth minerals, and the environmental impact of wind turbines on bird and marine wildlife, we need to reset this country’s net-zero conversation.

 

And just when, finally, are we going to crack on with Sizewell C – the single most important decarbonised energy in the country? Why, oh why, do our large infrastructure projects have to go through decades of interminable analysis with its associated bureaucracy and unnecessary delay?

 

But I’m not confident that that will happen anytime soon, either nationally or locally. Many of our councils are now led or influenced by the Green Party and so we are likely to see net zero theology taking precedence over pragmatic and evidence-based decision-making.

The bottom line is quite simple: with the economy in the doldrums, inflation and tax still at generational records, what will ordinary households across Suffolk and Norfolk be thinking when presented with the ever-increasing costs of a mad rush to net zero?

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday, October 5, 2023.

Here's why I'm resigning from the Conservative Party.

Nothing works. Absolutely nothing!

 

In recent months, how often have you overheard this comment? Or perhaps you’ve been increasingly muttering it yourself?

 

It seems that Britain is entering into a state of entropy, where the collective will and energy to grasp opportunities, and make things happen for the better, is slowly and steadily bleeding away.

 

The public sector, in spite of record numbers of people employed, offers increasingly poor services, from planning applications to education.

 

Nationally, Government seems to be in complete retreat, incapable of taking the long view in terms of infrastructure investment, and obsessed with short-term posturing and posing, not least regarding the worsening crime and immigration situations.

 

Public discourse, with one or two honourable exceptions, has become obsessed not with the major issues of economic and social importance, but with set piece battles in the so-called culture wars.

 

As the economy grinds to a halt, and businesses and households come under increasing pressure to keep their heads above water, not least due to historically high taxation levels, the two main parties blend into each other offering similar world views with only the merest rhetorical differences.

 

Some readers may recall the term ‘Butskellism’ from the 1950s. This portmanteau was associated with the almost identical policy platforms being espoused by the then Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rab Butler and Hugh Gaitskell, Labour’s leader at the time.

 

Today’s equivalent term might be ‘Hunarmerism’ (Hunt/Starmer) or ‘Reevakism’ (Reeves/Sunak), or any other silly combination.

 

Either way, all these ‘leaders are quite lacking when compared with our post-war political beasts. 

 

After it’s drubbing in 2019, it was to be expected that the Labour Party would return to the so-called centre ground. What has most appalled me is that the Conservatives have done exactly the same thing, in spite of an overwhelming majority and a clear mandate.

 

I believe that Boris Johnson’s administration was a forthright riposte to the establishment ditherings of his awful predecessor, Teresa May. I was devastated when he was deposed by disloyal Conservative MPs, but even I felt he partly deserved it for his support for the appallingly draconian, and mostly unnecessary measures imposed on society during the COVID19 pandemic.

 

I supported Liz Truss for leader, inspired by her recognition that the low growth rates and productivity of recent years could only be addressed by huge supply side reforms and tax cuts. Imagine my frustration, when her lack of clear communication, and the over exuberance of her chancellor, holed this policy ship before it had left port.

 

Once again, the ever-disloyal Vicars of Bray in the Parliamentary Conservative Party did for her, installing her defeated rival without the courtesy of a further vote of the membership. An own goal if ever I saw one!

 

And Rishi Sunak’s Government has turned out to be everything I feared: slow-moving, anti-small business, pro-taxation, pro-state meddling, and captured utterly by the caution and miserabalism of the Treasury, and the sleepily destructive and out-of-touch Bank of England.

 

Which is why I am using this column to announce my resignation from the Conservative Party, a party that I first voted for in 1979, and I have been associated with for decades, including in senior positions within my local constituency and across Suffolk.

 

I believe that it is sleepwalking into an avoidable electoral defeat, taking with it the support of many hard-working citizens and businesspeople like me.

 

Is there any alternative? Not really, and not yet.

 

I like the Reform Party’s broadly libertarian instincts, including standing up for free speech in the face of woke cancel culture activists, as well as it’s no-nonsense approach to crime and immigration. But its present leader, Richard Tice, is no Nigel Farage, and lacks the charisma and intellectual rigour to cut through to bereft right-wing voters.

 

There may come a point, once the Conservatives are defeated at next year’s General Election, that there will be a realignment of the right, combining libertarian Conservative, Reform and Laurence Fox’s populist Reclaim Party.

 

But for now, for me, it’s #NoneOfThe Above. I cannot in all conscience support any party or candidate, as I feel such a deep level of disquiet and contempt for the whole political system.

 

I know that I am not alone. But what to do?

 

To not vote would be a tactical error as our electoral silence would be taken as consent.

 

And so, come the next General Election, I would urge as many readers as possible to vote, but spoil their ballot papers with the words #NoneOfThe Above.

 

Your protest will be included in the turnout figures and will be included in the numbers of spoilt papers not allocated to any candidate.

 

Without this action, the establishment in Westminster, and also in Whitehall, will turn a blind eye to the negative consequences of their incompetence and controlling ambitions.

 

Without this act of electoral disobedience, nothing in this great country will ever work properly again, and our freedoms will be eroded even further.

 

Remember, vote #NoneOfTheAbove!

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday, August 31st, 2023.

Climate lobbying industry must get ordinary folk on side.

 

Climate lobbying industry must get ordinary folk on side

I’m not sure what the protocols are for commenting on a fellow columnist’s opinions, but I did find Matt Moss’s recent piece about not investing in electric vehicles (EV’s) for his company, a very good read - even if I disagreed with him!

 

I have recently touched on the very sparse electric vehicle charging network here in Suffolk, but I do want to revisit the broader issue of taking an objective view when making such decisions – just as Matt has.

 

The reason I emphasise the word ‘objective’ is because what distresses me the most on this topic, is the strident, borderline hysterical, and often religious-like fervour with which some climate activists berate and badger others who might not entirely share their climate ‘gospel’.

 

From the chaos of Just Stop Oil protestors, through to the simplicities of St Greta Thunberg’s world view, by way of the platitudinous nonsense coming of our local authorities declaring climate emergencies left, right, and centre, most ordinary folks feel disconnected and abandoned by the grim-faced climate lobbying industry.

 

My advice to them is to stop preaching about the big stuff, and start presenting the evidence as to how ‘going green’ doesn’t mean abandoning who you are, or having fun,  or even undermining your own quality of life.

 

In other words, don’t patronise your audience, inspire them! Don’t attempt wholesale conversions, rather, encourage people to adapt their lifestyles on the basis of what already motivates them.  

 

Unashamedly, I love techie stuff. I like what are frequently dismissed as ‘boys’ toys’. I’m not a Jeremy Clarkson or a Freddie Flintoff, but I do like the freedom, style, speed, and convenience of driving a decent vehicle. That’s my schtick, I suppose. Driving shouldn’t be an unpleasant experience, just to keep a PR-savvy Swedish agitator happy.

 

Although I am not an eco-loon, or a climate evangelist, I am an early, albeit not a first, adopter in driving EV’s. Why?

 

Admittedly, through years of experience, I waited for a while to better understand the technology, and its advantages, and disadvantages. And in spite of those charging challenges (and concerns about the environmental costs of battery production), I’m a pretty happy member of the estimated 700,000 electric vehicle drivers in the UK. And our numbers are growing - 17% of all new car sales last year were EV’s. 

 

The thing I love the most about my EV is the drive - it’s so smooth! Plus, the regenerative braking, which makes driving a one pedal only experience most of the time.

 

More broadly, I’m motivated throughout my life by a core belief that we should burn less stuff. As long as I can recall, I’ve felt an antipathy to polluting the air we breathe. It’s all about enjoying a good quality of life.

 

Therefore, I am 100% behind renewables – wind, solar, nuclear (YES, nuclear), tidal and hydro. In fact, I think my interest in energy was nudged forward a few times in my early career as an engineer.

 

As a 17-year-old, halfway through an OND course in Engineering Technology, I was taken to see two pumped storage hydro schemes in North Wales; Ffestiniog and Dinorwig, the first working, and the second in construction. Then, during my degree course, I visited Hinckley Point B when it was undergoing maintenance, and also got to see the only nuclear power plant in London … yes in London!

 

As a graduate engineer, I was an ‘Energy Planner’ for a large manufacturing company which  taught me how to make efficient use of resources, using controls such as timers and thermostats. Later, as a Young Members’ representative for the I.Mech.E in South Essex, I visited a CEGB research unit that was using robotics to go inside Magnox reactors to repair corroded thermocouple fastening clips.

 

All in all, I have had a broad interest in energy, and have advanced my beliefs based on evidence and science.

 

It is important that the green lobby learns to treat the likes of me, if not as allies, then certainly as rational people to be treated as adults, and not there to be subjected to constant hectoring!

 

It is going to be fascinating to see whether the new Green Party-majority, or Green Party-led, district councils in Suffolk want to browbeat people, or work with them in their ambitions. I’ll not be holding my breath!

 

First published on Friday 28th July 2023 in www.dissexpress.co.uk and Thursday 3rd  August 2023 in www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk

Relinquish control and let AI change lives for the better!

 

Relinquish control and let AI change lives for the better!

I was speaking to my Daughter the other day - she lives on a small holding, and they keep cows for beef production. The subject of AI cropped-up and it was a few minutes before I realised that she was considering dispensing with the services of a bull and trying AI (Artificial Insemination).

So, what about the other AI – Artificial Intelligence? I’d say, so far, so predictable.

The debate about the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has followed a rather inevitable pattern: benign neglect, followed by outright panic, ethical hand-wringing and drop-of-a-hat calls by European Union – and other - bureaucrats for regulation, regulation and yet more regulation!

Even the UK Government has got in on the red tape act, with Rishi Sunak’s proposals for a new regulatory body. 

So, what to make of it all?

Well firstly, just what exactly is AI? The question is a little like being asked to categorise all bird species in one paragraph. After all, there is a vast range of AI applications from ‘weak’ versions (AI trained and focused to perform specific tasks) through to theoretical ‘strong’ variations AI (where a machine would have an intelligence equal to that humans). 

IBM uses the following, broadly useful, definition: “ It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable."

AI has become a pretty commonplace feature of our daily lives: from the mildly annoying (online customer chat bots) through to the useful (autonomous delivery robots) to the lifesaving (multi-disciplinary monitoring of illnesses and their treatments). 

Advances in AI’s language-generation capabilities have unbelievable promise. They enable higher-quality applications, such as the development of translation tools, digital assistants, and even news editors to improve communications and, therefore, understanding between people from different countries and cultures. 

In short, AI is already changing lives – for the better. 

As an optimist, I also believe, everything else being right, that AI can release us from the dreary tasks that weigh our lives down and it can cut out waste and the capacity for mistakes by making business decision-making better informed and more adaptable. 

There is a real chance for the UK to benefit in particular as arguably outside of the US and China, our research and development ecosystems between universities and applied AI pioneers are world beating.

What we don’t need, is a Luddite regulatory environment that kills off this growing sector. This country was a leader in GM foods in the 1990s, but that emerging success story – and the highly skilled and well-paid  jobs it could have created -  was throttled by the hysteria and childish antics of the green lobby and their Parliamentary and Whitehall stooges. 

From a libertarian perspective, as long as AI applications are not initiating violence or control against otherwise peaceful, innocent people, then bring it on!

The main worry behind some of the recent apocalyptic commentaries relates specifically to the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems which can decide within flexible parameters when to launch attacks and against who.

And it is in this sphere that I think there is a particular case for international agreements to restrict such research and development. More on that in a moment.

More generally, I believe that the best place for the ethical considerations around AI to be initially worked out is within the AI community itself which, after all, is putting up the risk capital and putting the hard yards in to develop commercially viable propositions. I’m not convinced we need much more involvement from regulators and inspectors and quality controllers than we have already across other sectors.

I find it more than a coincidence that the second loudest calls for regulation are coming from existing market leaders, including Microsoft-owned OpenAI of ChatGPT fame. This is an old trick, much loved by corporate businesses in particular, seeking to lock in their initial advantage by making it harder for the hundreds, if not thousands, of little developers from outflanking them.

As one US libertarian commentator explained: “Journalists are incentivised to sensationalise coverage of artificial intelligence and policymakers are too technically illiterate comprehend it.”

Therein lies the tyranny of state-backed oligopolies. And now we are being played to endorse their self-interest cause in the case of AI

And this is my major concern with such scare stories. They miss the point. The issue is not AI per se: it’s who programs and controls it, and indeed all other aspects of our lives. 

It is governments – western, as well as those in China and Russia - which are funding and rolling out technologies which seek to extend their surveillance of our entire lives – where we go, who we meet, what we are writing and saying, and what we might be thinking.

What is needed is not yet more regulation, and yet more control – it’s less of both!

  

First published on Thursday 6th July 2023 in www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk