Sardanapale

A few weeks ago I mentioned the crash of an Air France plane at Habsheim in 1988. The newly delivered Airbus A320 was to overfly an airfield in eastern France during a show, but went down into the forest. Three passengers died.

Following this post a pilot friend of mine gave me the book written a few years later by the captain, Michel Asseline.

He rejects the official ruling that the crew was to blame for flying too low, and says the investigation was a farce designed to conceal the early faults of the plane and protect Air France’s investment.

The flight and voice data recorders – which civil aviation officials allowed Airbus to process – were apparently doctored.

I’m not competent to pronounce on technical issues. But Asseline’s conclusion about French institutions has the ring of truth – and addresses a leading theme of this blog.

In a country where the state controls the bodies that make a plane, fly it, and regulate the aviation industry, conflicts of interest abound.

The book makes an interesting parallel between the A320 and Britain’s Comet jet in the 1950s. Up to a point, the same scenario unfolded.

A state-backed European aircraft manufacturer sought to challenged American supremacy (De Havilland; Airbus); the new plane uses revolutionary technology (jet engines; fly-by-wire); the national carrier is drafted to showcase the new wonder (BOAC; Air France); politicians burst with nationalistic pride; early crashes are blamed on pilots and minor “teething problems”, sparing the manufacturer’s blushes.

But the parallels end here.

In the case of the Comet , when one plane too many fell out of the sky in 1954, an investigation was finally launched with a view to actually determining the cause of the crash – as opposed to reassuring the public and allowing flights to continue with minor adjustments.

All Comets were grounded, and a hard-hitting official report identified the real cause of the crash: metal fatigue.

The fixes came too late to save the Comet: by the time the plane was ready to fly again, in 1958, the Americans had cornered the commercial jet market.

But the two episodes illustrate the opposite conceptions of the state that prevail on either side of the Channel.

Britain is no less elitist than France – and probably even more – but its elites are divided; in a nation that invented separation of power, it is taken for granted that a non-monolithic state is in the interest of the public.

In France, the “general interest” is whatever the government says it is, and to be pitted against one state-supported entity – as Asseline discovered – is to be pitted against the whole state.

“I’m shocked by the scale of it and by the allegations and evidence that they have presented of widespread criminal activity.” Andrew Neil, former editor of The Times

“If these allegations are to be believed, the enormity of it is unbelievable.” John Prescott, former deputy prime minister

“You need to make sure that it never happens again because it totally exceeds the power of the media. A free press is vitally important in a democracy, but this is far too much.” Max Clifford, celebrity publicist
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The British never cease to amaze me.

After the expenses scandal, where parliamentarians were pilloried over some legal fiddles, the country is now consumed by the “phone hacking scandal”, and the Murdoch press is on the defensive.

When I first read the screaming headlines, I imagined Fleet Street operatives, possibly assisted by corrupt spooks, hunched over computers, hacking into telecoms systems and listening to private conversations.

In fact, what The News Of The World did was call the mobile numbers of some celebrities and access their voicemails by entering the factory-set PIN numbers. Call me cynical, but I would expect no less from any decent tabloid journalist.

I don’t see what’s so wrong with this, and apparently neither does the police.

Scotland Yard said nothing new had emerged since a News of the World reporter was jailed for fraudulently obtaining voicemail PINs (a different matter!) two years ago, and there was no reason to revisit the case.

Far from showing the moral depths public life in the UK has sunk to, the whole affair once again highlights the high standards the British set for themselves.

What would hardly register as peccadilloes elsewhere becomes an object of national infamy and handwringing.

I first noticed this in the 1990s, when an MP agreed to ask questions in parliament behalf of Mohammed al-Fayed in return for three days at the Ritz in Paris.

The “cash for questions” scandal was seen as the height of corruption, and precipitated the downfall of the conservative administration in 1997.

During a recent trip to Paris I read in the newspaper that dairy farmers had attacked supermarkets to protest against falling milk prices.

In some cases they had taken cows into stores, ransacked shelves and handed out dairy products to customers.

What struck me most was few appeared to find any of this particularly objectionable. It was told as if it was part of life in France.

Le Monde did not question the violent tactics, but mentioned the 30% fall in the purchasing price of milk in a year. The implication was: those things happen when people are desperate.

Supermarket bosses themselves seemed to take the plundering in their stride.

In one store, a manager had put up a poster proclaiming: “We are closing the dairy section in solidarity with the farming world.”

There was no mention of police action. Far from being punished, the violence was rewarded.

The agriculture ministry later announced a deal to raise the price of milk. The farmers’ just cause evidently absolved them from prosecution.

A couple of days later I was confronted with another illustration of flexibility with rules in my native country.

I was at the Pasteur metro station – named after the famous medical research institute nearby. My eye was caught by a display on the platform showing the Code of Medical Ethics.

Title II (”Duties towards patients”), article 39 proclaimed: “Physicians cannot recommend as beneficial any medicine or procedure whose efficacy is illusory or insufficiently proven.”

I thought: What about homeopathy? The next day, as it happened, I had lunch with a pharmacist cousin of mine. I asked him:

“Do French doctors ever prescribe homeopathic pills?”
“All the time,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

I read to him Article 39 of the Code of Medical Ethics.

“Nobody takes a blind bit of notice,” he laughed. “And homeopathy is reimbursed by the Sécurité sociale.”

Doctors up and down France solemnly swear not to prescribe “illusory” remedies, but routinely give sugar pills to patients – and it does not bother anyone. The state even funds this.

France is often said to hamstrung by regulation. But it isn’t. Every profession is regulated by labyrinthine rules, but I wonder how many are taken seriously.

A bit later I talked to a friend of mine who is an airline pilot.

We inevitably talked about the plane that plunged into the Atlantic and, one thing leading to another, about another accident involving an Air France Airbus: the crash in eastern France in June 1988, when the plane ploughed into a forest during a demonstration flight with journalists and various worthies on board, killing several.

The accident was due to a variety of factors, including technical problems with the plane. But what is beyond dispute is that the captain (who survived) had deliberately overflown Habsheim airport at 100ft.

This directly convened air safety rules, which state that authorisation is needed for any flight under 500ft.

Air France had been informed of the pilot’s plan to break the rule and had not objected.

Furthermore, a review of flight manuals suggested that the airline routinely ignored the 500ft rule.

The subject of the regulations, in other words, felt entitled to violate them when it suited it.

This cavalier attitude pervades society. In France, everyone is above the law.

I believe this lies at the root of the lack of civic bond: you cannot trust people who you know are as prone to flouting the rules as you are.

I don’t think the French are culturally aggressive or distrustful.

On the contrary, they tend to be light-hearted and amiable – certainly more pleasant company than the English.

But now that I live across the Channel, it is obvious to me that casual interactions are much less harsh and infinitely easier in Britain.

That is largely because people here take for granted something that is alien to the French: the amazing idea that rules are there to be obeyed.

If you trash a supermarket in Britain you will suffer the consequences: both the customer and the store manager know that.

As a result, when you shop at Tesco’s everyone is nice with you and you with them.

Professionals and professional bodies do not deliberately lie to you – or they will get into deep trouble.

Safe in the knowledge that there are generally accepted boundaries, the Brits do not need to be perennially on the defensive with strangers.

They don’t need to maintain that “I’m-not-taking-any-nonsense-from-anyone” attitude that is so ubiquitous in France and poisons the milk of humankind.

The British, usually a phlegmatic lot, are getting awfully worked up about their MPs’ expense claims.

It turns out that some representatives have been abusing the system, and the commentariat is reflecting (as well as fuelling) public outrage:

“This mother of all expenses cock-ups is the stuff of banana republics” - Simon Jenkins, The Guardian.

“The Daily Mail today backs a move to bring to justice MPs whose flagrant abuse of expenses has shamed Britain… The campaign follows seven days of extraordinary disclosures which have dragged the reputation of British politics to a shameful low point.” – The Daily Mail.

“The deepening scandal surrounding the claim of second-home allowances is infecting not just the executive but the whole body politic.” – The Daily Telegraph

“The acid of public scorn will go on dissolving the fabric of democracy.” Sarah Teather, The Guardian.

All this is hysterical nonsense. Far from showing that British democracy is under threat, the scandal is proof that it is alive and well.

The fiddles uncovered by the media – which have not been shown to be illegal – would not have raised eyebrows in more corrupt countries, such as France or Italy.

The revelations are healthy, but instead of indulging in self-righteous fulminations, commentators should ask whether to MPs are allowed to live decently (their annual salary is £65,000 a year, or 72,000 euros).

The basic problem regarding the wages of senior officials in a democracy was identified by Tocqueville 175 years ago:

“There is a powerful reason that usually induces democracies to economize upon the salaries of public officers. Those who fix the amount of the salaries, being very numerous, have but little chance of obtaining office so as to be in receipt of those salaries…

It must be allowed, moreover, that a democratic state is most parsimonious towards its principal agents…

It is held to be fair that the servants of the public should be placed in the same easy circumstances as the public themselves; but when the question turns upon the salaries of the great officers of state, this rule fails, and chance alone guides the popular decision.

The poor have no adequate conception of the wants which the higher classes of society feel.

The sum which is scanty to the rich appears enormous to him whose wants do not extend beyond the necessities of life; and in his estimation, the governor of a state, with his twelve hundred or two thousand dollars a year, is a fortunate and enviable being.

If you try to convince him that the representative of a great people ought to appear with some splendor in the eyes of foreign nations, he will at first assent to your assertion, but when he reflects on his own humble dwelling and the small earnings of his hard toil, he remembers all that he could do with a salary which you judge to be insufficient, and he is startled and almost frightened at the view of so much wealth…

It is the parsimonious conduct of democracy towards its principal officers that has caused more economical propensities to be attributed to it than it really possesses.

It is true that it scarcely allows the means of decent maintenance to those who conduct its affairs; but it lavishes enormous sums to succor the wants or facilitate the enjoyments of the people. The money raised by taxation may be better employed, but it is not economically used. In general, democracy gives largely to the people and very sparingly to those who govern them.”

Democracy in America, Volume I, Chapter 13

Evolution, sophisticated Europeans like to think, is only controversial in backward parts of the US.

Would that it were so.

Watching Richard Dawkins’ latest series “The genius of Charles Darwin” – broadcast by Channel 4 recently – I realized that creationist myths exert undue influence on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Says Dawkins:

“This is multicultural Britain. And one of its fault lines runs straight through our children’s classrooms. How do we reconcile scientific truth with the deeply held convictions that bind religious communities?”

Dawkins finds out by visiting a high-school in London, and finds astonishing resistance to Darwinian ideas on the part of students. (Clip here)

He then takes them to a beach and look at fossils, and only then are some of the kids willing to accept that evolution might be a fact.

Later, in the high point of the series, he confronts the kids’ teachers to find out why they failed so abysmally to acquaint with basic scientific facts.

The answer is clear: the teachers are unprepared to challenge religious views that contradict science.

“We can’t get in to the business of knocking down kid’s religions and the religions of families,” one says.

Dawkins retort sounds banal – but it obviously bears repeating:

“There really is something special about scientific evidence.

Science works; planes fly. Magic carpets and broomsticks don’t.

Gravity isn’t a version of the truth; it is the truth. Anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth floor window. Evolution too, is reality.”

Yesterday David Davis, the shadow home secretary, took a step that is almost unheard of in British political history.

He resigned as a member of parliament – and as the second most senior conservative leader after David Cameron – and promised to run again for his seat on a platform of defending “British liberties”.

Davis took pissed off his party – which is a year or two away from being elected – to take a moral stand, a day after the House of Commons passed a law extending detentions for terror suspects.

Many find his move baffling or quixotic. But his stirring resignation speech is worth quoting:

“Up until yesterday, I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because with centuries or forebears we defended the freedoms of the British people. Well we did up until yesterday.

This Sunday is the anniversary of Magna Carta, the document that guarantees that most fundamental of British freedoms – Habeas Corpus, the right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason.

Yesterday this house decided to allow the state to lock up potentially innocent British citizens for up to six weeks without charge…

Now the counter terrorism bill will in all probability be rejected by the House of Lords very firmly. After all, what should they be there for if not to defend Magna Carta…

But in truth, 42 days is just one – perhaps the most salient example – of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.

And we will have shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it.

We have witnessed an assault on jury trials – that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary use by the state….

The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws that stifle legitimate debate – while those who incite violence get off Scot-free.

This cannot go on, it must be stopped.

And for that reason, I feel that today it’s incumbent on me to take a stand.

I will be resigning my membership of the House and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden….

I will argue this by-election, against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government. “

On Saturday the BBC aired an excellent documentary on Enoch Powell, entitled “Rivers of Blood”.

Powell is Britain’s equivalent to Jean-Marie Le Pen in France: not only are you not supposed to say anything good about him –you are supposed to slate him.

That is exactly what filmmaker Denys Blakeway refuses to do. He dispassionately analyses the 1968 speech that both made Powell famous and relegated him to the political wilderness.

Powell warned that Britain’s open-door immigration policies would lead to increased tension, citing Virgil’s vision of “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.

Forty years on, Blakeway argues, Powell has to a large extent been proven right.

He was certainly correct in his prediction that by about now, one in ten people in Britain would be foreign-born (it was 9.7% at the last count in 2005).

And mass immigration has in place bred separatism and violence (the film mentions the race riots in Brixton in 1981, those that flared across northern England in 2001, and the July 2005 attacks).

Blakeway’s defense of Powell is qualified. He deplores Powell’s rhetoric («wide-grinning piccaninnies»): by focusing on race, Powell neglected the fact that the main problem would be cultural – the refusal by whole communities in this country to accept British values.

In the end, Blakeway basically says, Powell gave anti-immigration positions a bad name.

For my part, I disagree with Powell on substance. Powell did not understand the economic advantages of immigration (Britain would be a much poorer place if it had shut out immigrants), and very much exaggerated the cultural conflicts (most newcomers adopted British values).

But all that should be open to debate without throwing accusations of racism – and that Blakeway must be praised for doing just that.

He could also have mentioned that in the 1970s the political establishment, while treating Powell as a leper, adopted the policy that obviously followed from his warnings – the end of mass immigration.

In 1972, the British governments introduced an openly racist exception to the ban on non-European immigration: you could qualify for a UK Passport if you have a British born grandparent.

This exception – which allowed many New Zealanders of British origin to enter Britain but barred Commonwealth blacks – remained in the statute books until the 1990s, I believe. Blaweway’s program is summarized here.

PS: On related subjects, I recommend this Economist special, and this excellent column by the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby.

Britain is consumed by the controversy triggered by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s pronouncement that the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law was “unavoidable”.

Rowan Williams said that many UK citizens did not relate to the British legal system, and that adopting parts of Islamic law would help maintain “social cohesion”.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia courts, which should be part of “plural jurisdiction” in Britain.

Most commentators were appalled.

One of the most vocal and articulate critics was the British writer Christopher Hitchens, who wrote in Slate.com:

“Picture the life of a young Urdu-speaking woman brought to Yorkshire from Pakistan to marry a man—quite possibly a close cousin—whom she has never met. He takes her dowry, beats her, and abuses the children he forces her to bear.

She is not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male relative and unless she is submissively covered from head to toe. Suppose that she is able to contact one of the few support groups that now exist for the many women in Britain who share her plight.

What she ought to be able to say is, “I need the police, and I need the law to be enforced.” But what she will often be told is, “Your problem is better handled within the community.” And those words, almost a death sentence, have now been endorsed and underwritten—and even advocated—by the country’s official spiritual authority.

You might argue that I am describing an extreme case (though, alas, now not an uncommon one), but it is the principle of equality before the law that really counts.”

I don’t share Hitchens’s concerns. It seems to me that he confuses two things: criminal and civil law.

Any viable system of criminal law must indeed entail a monopoly. All citizens of a country should enjoy equal protection under a single norm.

The full force of the law must bear on any man who behaves like the bastard in the not-so-hypothetical case Hitchens mentions.

A woman who came to the police with those complaints should secure a prosecution: the guy is clearly committing a number of crimes (assault, child abuse and sequestration).

But what Williams is talking about is civil law – disputes between individuals (or individuals and companies) – and there a plurality of jurisdictions is desirable.

People should be allowed to choose their arbiter – as long as that choice is freely accepted by all parties.

Britain itself has a history of plurality in civil jurisdictions. Until the 19th century, England and Wales had a system “chancery courts” (which was famously denounced by Dickens) alongside other common law tribunals.

Now the chancery courts have gone, but parallel systems of dispute settlement remain, from chartered arbitrators to religious community courts for Jews – which are all recognized in law.

Even Muslims, in matters of divorce, can already go before Islamic Sharia Council.

It sure beats me why any woman would take her divorce case to a bearded man working out of a prefab cabin in a dodgy part of London, as opposed to say Heather Mill’s lawyer.

But as long as it’s her choice, I don’t have a problem with it.

Although I’ve lived among them for years, the English never cease to amaze me.

One of the weird and wonderful aspects of local culture I always puzzle at is the British “scandal” – the type of things that get this most unflappable of races hot under the collar.

The latest such affair, “Crowngate”, has just cost the boss of BBC1 television his job.

Peter Fincham paid the ultimate price who his “deceitful” presentation of a promotional clip for a documentary about the Queen back in July.

It showed Elizabeth having a sartorial difference with a photographer during a shoot. Cut to the Queen walking briskly in Buckingham Palace saying: “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this.”

But the trailer was edited out of sequence, and Fincham wrongly told the press that the monarch had walked out of the session “in a huff”. When the error was revealed, public outrage led to an independent inquiry.

The report, released on Friday, blamed “misjudgements, poor practice and ineffective systems” at the BBC, and Fincham fell on his sword.

Note that Fincham did not know at the time that the clip had been misleadingly edited. The point is: the mistake should have been spotted beforehand. And he did not apologize until the day after the presentation.

Crowngate is only one of the recent blows to the BBC’s cherished credibility.

The broadcaster was forced to conduct an internal inquiry after it transpired over the summer that several audience competitions had been rigged.

In the most notable offense, producers at a children’s programme ran an online poll to name a cat, but ignored the moniker chosen by the audience (cookie) to give him another (Socks).

This odious “breach of trust” led to an internal investigation, a groveling apology, several high-profile departures, and an unprecedented 70,000 euro fine.

This put me in mind of the mid-1990s, when accusations of corruption against the Conservative government culminated in the “cash-for-questions” affair.

A rich foreign businessman was said to have offered an obscure backbencher a free trip to the Ritz in Paris in exchange for asking a question in parliament.

I come from a country where a star news presenter can fake an interview with a foreign leader with impunity, and where political parties extorted cash from firms bidding for public contracts for years before voting an amnesty for themselves, and marvel at Britain’s ability to wax indignant over Crowngate.