Tom Sutcliffe: We expect the worst of our Secret Service

I don't suppose many people will be shocked by the increasing evidence that there was British collusion in the torture of British detainees. Or more precisely – since the word "shocked" packs together a sense of moral outrage with the sense of being startled – not many people will have been surprised.

Quite a lot of us will have felt ashamed at the transparency of our outsourcing arrangements (the moral equivalent of exported pollution) and some will feel contempt at the prevarication of government ministers when it comes to investigating such claims. But not many people will have said, on reading the reports: "That's astonishing."

We expect the worst of our security services – and, though this isn't often honestly acknowledged, part of that expectation is based on the tacit acceptance that the intelligence services may have to behave badly on our behalf. It's one of the reasons that the moral argument against torture – although serious and unanswerable – has so little purchase on those that carry it out. Sure, they think, you say you want us to stop but we all know what you want from us really. Keep it out of sight, tell us lies when necessary, but do what has to be done.

Which is why the practical argument against torture is so important. But the difficulty with the practical argument against torture is that torture works or, at least, appears to. It regularly delivers in two crucial respects. The first of these achievements is illusory, but not easy to expose as such. The second achievement is real, and makes it far less likely that anybody will take the trouble to expose the delusion.

Achievement number one is the supply of information, which – at least superficially – is almost always forthcoming from torture sessions. Everyone talks eventually, as fictional (and real) torturers are fond of saying. The trouble being that they'll readily talk rubbish, if that's all that they have to make the pain stop.

Information offered almost immediately is tainted by the fact that it doesn't have enough compulsion attached to it, while information that only emerges after days is, in effect, substantiated by the agony required to extract it – even though that agony might be the only reason it exists. And though apologists for torture would argue that findings are cross-checked and verified, that doesn't help either – since the one thing a torture victim wants to do is tell the torturer what they want to hear. Torture is peerlessly good at making men lie.

The second achievement, as I said, is a real one. Torture makes intelligence services feel good. I don't mean by this that they are entirely staffed by sadistic psychopaths who get a thrill out of the infliction of pain. I mean that they are staffed by idealists, who broadly wish to feel they have gone the extra mile to do their job. And torture, however deniable and arm's length it is, delivers that feeling. What's more it delivers it more reliably and more regularly than more difficult and vaporous forms of intelligence gathering. An action is taken (one that "civilians" would flinch at) and a result is delivered, which can be filed and processed and generate further actions.

And the moral dubiousness of the action underwrites the satisfaction rather than undermines it. The members of the Einsatzgruppen who murdered Jews on the Eastern Front weren't told that what they were doing was morally right, they were told that it was practically necessary and that their ability to master their understandable distaste and perform such deeds was the measure of their dedication. Which is why it would probably be better to leave aside moral pieties in responding to our implication in torture and stick to practicalities. Those who procured it or condoned it are simply incompetent.

You're going to have do more than give back your OBE, Pete

I wouldn't want to impugn the sincerity of the actor Pete Postlethwaite in his opposition to the projected Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent, but I couldn't help smiling when I read that he had "threatened to hand back his OBE" if the proposal goes ahead.

Is "threat" really the appropriate concept here, implying as it does the infliction of damage or harm on some other party? Did the news send junior civil servants running down the corridors in shock, white-faced at this unexpected ultimatum? Were hurried meetings convened to discuss strategies for avoiding Her Majesty getting a little box through the post? Or did the gesture simply serve to remind the world at large that he'd got one in the first place? "I can't be an officer of the realm if Kingsnorth goes ahead," Postlethwaite is reported to have said – a remark which seemed rather odd.

Why on earth not? Officers of the realm don't actually do anything to prop it up, after all – and I don't suppose an OBE comes with a letter of acceptance requiring that the bearer shall now accept cabinet responsibility for all future government decisions. And if that's how Postlethwaite feels about it, what was he thinking of in accepting the honour in the first place? There's a merit in turning one down when you're first offered – but giving them back later just underlines your naivety in thinking it matters to anyone but you.

Who needs privacy in a public house?

Apparently some police forces are now opposing licence applications by pub landlords who decline to install CCTV cameras – a fact that has provoked the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas to raise the matter with the Metropolitan Police. Some landlords simply turn the cameras off once they're installed – in the words of one publican, because "people want to be able to... relax with their friends without being spied on by God knows who."

As someone who cares about civil liberties but isn't hugely agitated about CCTV cameras, I've always felt that "God knows who" is an overlooked detail in the surveillance debate. If one's privacy is to be invaded, after all, someone has to do the invading... but with every CCTV camera that is added to the roster, that invasion gets a little more impractical. In fact custodians of civil liberty might well have grounds for welcoming the addition of thousands more cameras, since the more of them there are the more impractical it becomes to monitor them in any comprehensive way.

Those worried they're being spied on at the pub can relax. Nobody's interested in you, unless you get a glass in your face. At which point you may choose to trade a bit of privacy for a solid identification.