There’s been a spate of strikes recently over pay. Teachers, postal workers, and fire-fighters have all walked out over in protest at the pay deals they’ve been offered. On Wednesday, several hundred thousand council staff became the latest disgruntled employees to down tools, resulting in schools and libraries closing, flights and driving tests being cancelled, and bins being left unemptied, among other things.

BBC journalist (and Dragons’ Den presenter) Evan Davis explains on his blog how the argument goes whenever he interviews union representatives in the midst of industrial action at the moment:

I put what I think of as the obvious points about strikes: “we have to avoid wage price spirals”; “if the money isn’t there for a pay rise, it isn’t there”; “there’s no entitlement to an inflation-matching pay rise” etc.

But on each occasion, the answer comes back that chief executives have not shown the same level of restraint, so why should workers?

Davis admits to being perplexed about how to take things from there. He seems to find the union representatives’ argument persuasive.

He shouldn’t. The union officials aren’t disputing the argument that he offers for pay restraint. Instead, they are attempting to justify workers ignoring the argument on the ground that executives have ignored it. This is a tu quoque. Just because the executives have taken more than they should doesn’t mean that everyone else can too. Pointing the finger at someone else who has done something wrong doesn’t get you off the hook if you’re doing it as well.

Admittedly the situation is a bit of a mess. The economy can’t sustain the pay rises that the unions are asking for, but the unions won’t stand for workers having to exercise pay restraint when executive pay is spiralling upwards. So what’s the best way out? What should the unions be calling for?

Lower executive pay would get the unions the consistency between workers’ and executives’ pay deals that they’re after without destroying the economy. They shouldn’t be striking for higher pay for themselves, but perhaps they could strike for lower pay for their bosses instead.

Swindon Borough Council are considering getting rid of their speed cameras. Roderick Bluh, the Council Leader, offered a truly awful argument for doing so on today’s BBC lunchtime news:

When you fine a motorist for speeding, he’s already been speeding. Would it not be best to invest and make sure that speeding is prevented in the first place?

There’s nothing wrong with the idea that it’s better to prevent a crime than to punish one. If we can implement measures (e.g. advertising, improved signage, etc.) to encourage drivers to slow down, then that’s great. However, whatever measures we take to reduce speeding are only going to be partially successful; there will still be some people out there who break the speed limit. So what should we do about them?

There’s no reason why, having done all we can to prevent people from breaking the law, we can’t also try to catch and punish people who break the law. The first problem with Bluh’s argument is therefore that it restricts the options, trying to force us to choose between prevention and punishment when we can in fact have both.

The second problem is that it ignores the fact that speed cameras act as a deterrant. If you know that if you speed you’ll get caught and fined, then there’s a good chance that you’ll slow down. Bluh’s argument thus generalises from the fact that speed cameras don’t stop some crimes (those that they detect) to the idea that they don’t stop any crimes. Speed cameras may not stop people who are fined from speeding, but they do stop plenty of people who aren’t fined from speeding.

Even without those problems, however, there would still have been reason to worry about Bluh’s argument. If its logic worked, and we should get rid of speed cameras because by the time we catch and fine someone for speeding it’s too late to prevent them from speeding, then we should get rid of more than speed cameras. When the police catch and imprison a murderer, his victim is already dead; should we therefore forget about trying to catch and imprison murderers? Bluh’s argument isn’t just an attack on speed cameras, it’s an attack on crime detection and punishment in general, so goes far too far to be plausible.

Whatever decision the Council reaches, hopefully they won’t get rid of the cameras on the basis of the argument above.

In 2003, sprinter Dwain Chambers was caught taking the banned steroid THG. He served a two-year ban, and has now turned informer to the anti-doping authorities and returned to the track. Earlier this week he ran the fastest 100m by a British athlete this year, and he intends to win a place on the British Olympic team at the trials just over a week from now. He looks to have a great chance.

The problem is that the British Olympic Association (BOA) has a policy of not selecting athletes that have failed drug tests, whether they’ve served their bans or not. No matter how well Chambers does in the trials, the BOA won’t pick him unless they’re forced to.

Chambers will challenge the legality of this policy in court, arguing that it constitutes an illegal restraint of trade. He hopes to get a ruling from the court saying that the BOA have to pick him if he does well enough at the trials.

In response to Chambers’ challenge, the British Athletes’ Commission (BAC) has taken up a petition calling for the selection policy to stay in place. Over a hundred athletes have signed, including big names such as Steve Redgrave and Kelly Holmes. The BAC’s Peter Gardner explained, “The petition carries weight because it has support from many athletes.”

He’s wrong. The petition doesn’t carry much weight at all.

The question here concerns a point of law: Does the BOA’s policy of not selecting athletes that have failed drug tests constitute an illegal restraint of trade? The petition only tells us that certain people approve of the BOA policy; it doesn’t tell us anything about whether it is legal or not. The policy may be popular, perhaps even have near unanimous support among athletes, but still break the law. This appeal to popularity shouldn’t persuade the court.

The presence of big names on the list doesn’t change this. Holmes and Redgrave have plenty of Olympic gold medals between them, but being a faster runner or rower than anyone else doesn’t give you much insight into employment law. To suggest that Chambers’ ban should be upheld because some great British Olympians say so would be an inappropriate appeal to authority.

I sympathise with the athletes that have signed the petition: I hope that the selection policy is legal and can be maintained. But the petition itself isn’t evidence that should sway the court.