The Contrarian

Ritchie has one person to thank...

2011-05-02T14:57:00.000+01:00

So Ritchie is at the top of Wikio's 'Economics' blog rankings for a second month.

Unfortunately, like most other things in the world, Mr. Murphy doesn't understand how the Wikio rankings work.

From the Wikio FAQ:

How are the Top Blog rankings compiled?
The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. These links are dynamic, which means that they are backlinks or links found within articles.

Only links found in the RSS feed are included. Blogrolls are not taken into account, and the weight of any given link increases according to how recently it was published. We thus hope to provide a classification that is more representative of the current influence levels of the blogs therein.

Moreover, the weight of a link depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking. With our algorithm, the weight of a link from a blog that is more highly ranked is greater than that of a link from a blog that is less well ranked.

The rankings are updated on a monthly basis.

To translate; the Wikio ranking of a particular blog is based on two things:

The number of links to the blog
The Wikio ranking of the blog that links the blog in question

This system is not a measure of how good a blog is, how many readers it has or how popular it is. It is a measure of how much people talk about it. It is a second hand measure, like measuring the ripples in the pond after a stone has been thrown in to understand the stone rather than investigating the stone itself.

So to put this into a real world situation, Tim Worstall writes several posts a week fisking Ritchie. Tim, as second in the Economics ranking, is weighted very highly.

In short, Ritchie has only Tim to thank for being No.1 in the rankings.

ROFL

2011-02-02T13:36:00.000Z

This induced a laughing fit that lasted for twenty minutes... suffice to say, my colleagues gave me some odd looks.

Neoliberals to the core, all of them, and utterly indifferent to a) reasoning b) rationality c) the reality of the economy d) the needs of real people e) the reality of democratic politics.

I thought that a-e were a bit rich considering the source, I'd consider them most apt descriptions of Mr. Murphy.

It is posts like this one that highlight how partisan Ritchie is and how his 'unbiased recommendations' can't be believed.

Once a shill, always a shill.

Scottish Independence - the Pros and Cons

2011-01-29T19:25:00.003Z

Seeing Dark Lochnagar comment on Ben's last post got me thinking about Scottish Independence again and this was compounded by the news that the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood may be given powers to raise its own taxes.

Scotland's devolution from the Union has been 125 years in the making. Ignoring the whole issue of the signing of the Treaty of Union I am more concerned with Scotland's future.

The West Lothian Question

For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate ... at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

- Tam Dalyell, November 1977

As things stand, many of the political decisions that affect Scotland are decided in the devolved parliament in Holyrood. Westminster exercises little executive power over Scotland these days but Scotland is still represented in the House of Commons with 59 seats. This means that Scottish MPs have the power to influence legislation that does not affect their constituents, this is the West Lothian question, still unanswered 34 years on.

The easiest fix is to make Scotland an independent nation, no Scottish MPs in Westminster, no English influence in Scotland but this has political and economic ramifications for both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Another fix would be to propose legislation preventing Scottish MPs from voting on bills that would not affect Scotland but this suffers from the same political ramifications as full independence.

The third option that everyone but the nationalist parties ignore is the federalisation of the United Kingdom, granting increased powers to the Welsh Assembly, Northern Irish Assembly and Scottish Parliament while creating an equal English Parliament and reducing Westminster's mandate to foreign policy, monetary policy and defence.

Scottish Income Tax

In the Scotland Bill 2010-11 there may be the potential to allow Holyrood to set Income tax for Scotland. Most Scots should be excited by this because the could induce a lot of change for the whole of the UK (if they are gutsy enough to try) but it could also cause many economic problems for Scotland.

Since this bill is still in the research gathering phase there are almost no specifics but Scotland's future is dependent upon two specific points:

Will Holyrood have to balance its own books?
Will there be limitations on how much independence Holyrood will have to set taxes?

The Ramifications - Economic

On the spending side; for a long time Scotland has been a net beneficiary from UK tax revenues, the tax money spent in Scotland each year is greater than the tax raised from Scotland's residents. If the Scotland Bill proposes that Scotland has to manage it's own budget then the future for Scotland is either austerity beyond what the Coalition has planned for the rest of the UK or eventual bankruptcy if they continue the generous welfare policy that they currently operate. If the Bill doesn't support a modification of Scotland's budget then it could exacerbate tensions between English and Scottish nationalists.

On the taxation side; if Scotland's tax policy is fully independent from Westminster's approval then Scotland has the potential to start competitive taxation within the UK. If Scotland sets its income and corporation taxes far below those of England then there will no doubt be a migration of people and businesses north of the Borders which will reduce England's tax revenue leaving the Treasury with three options; raise taxes to plug the gap but make every other country richer, faster by driving people and businesses away (the Laffer Curve again), don't compete and slowly run out of money while Scotland gets rich or lower taxes to Scotland's levels or lower to directly compete (and in doing so refill the coffers). Alternatively, Scotland could set its tax rates above those of the rest of the UK and see the previous scenario happen in reverse when the wealthy people and businesses that can relocate will move south.

The Ramifications - Political

As I mentioned earlier there are 59 Scottish constituencies represented in Westminster, 52 of those seats are held by two of the 'Big 3' parties. If Scotland were made fully independent tomorrow then there would be a 9% ((59/650)*100=9.1%) reduction in the number of available seats in Commons, Labour would lose almost 16% ((41/258)*100=15.9) of its seats in Commons while the Liberal Democrats would lose just over 19% ((11/57)*100=19.3%) of their seats and the Conservatives would have a majority with almost 52% of seats ((306/591)*100=51.8%). In short, Scottish Independence (or the removal of Scottish MPs powers to vote on English matters) would dramatically alter the dynamic of British politics.

You could see why Labour and the Lib Dems would be reluctant to allow full independence or the limiting of voting powers of Scottish MPs.

There would also be the matter of the British Armed Forces, would they stay unified or would the Scottish Regiments/Squadrons be separated into a new organisation?

The Libertarian Angle

Well its simple really, whatever they choose. If the Scottish Parliament held a public referendum and it revealed that an overwhelming majority of the Scottish public support independence then I'd support them.

The removal of Scottish MPs power to vote on English laws isn't an ideal solution but is better than the present situation in my mind (not just because it cripples Labour's opposition). While the federalisation proposal has benefits and flaws, more reflective politics being the benefit but the flaw will be another layer of bureaucracy but it would be worth it if each 'state' were financially independent.

A libertarian - of whatever creed - believes in the reduction of the state, so instead of having to listen both Holyrood and Westminster (at times) and only having to listen to one is a step in the right direction.

It is a step towards localism which is another thing that a libertarian strives for.

I have already raised the potential for competitive taxation which is another plus in my book.

From a selfish point of view independence is the best solution because it would reduce the tax burden meaning either lower taxes or a quicker repayment of the national debt.

How to stop Crow, crowing

2011-01-28T08:47:00.000Z

In the Telegraph.

EU wants wage equality, so does the RMT Union lead by the Cro-Magnum, Bob Crow.

I have a counter proposal to the EU and Mr. Crow. How about this "every union employee and representative should get paid the same as the mean wage of the workers that they represent".

It is something that Unions have always supported; closing of the pay gap between those at the top those at the top of an organisation and those at the bottom.

I don't suppose Crow and the other Union bosses would go for that, they want to live in an equal world, they are just more equal than the rest of us.

Bigots should be allowed to be bigots

2011-01-19T10:08:00.008Z

Inspired by that B&B in Cornwall. Both Bobski and I have written about this before, but if twitter and our legal system is any way to gauge opinion, this stuff needs to be reiterated. From the BBC:

The owners of a hotel who refused to allow a gay couple a double room acted unlawfully, a judge has ruled.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull, of the Chymorvah Hotel, near Penzance, said as Christians they did not believe unmarried couples should share a room.

Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Preddy, from Bristol, said the incident in September 2008 was "direct discrimination" against them.

I'm not particularly bothered by the details of the case - only in the general outline. Two people, the B&B owners, declined service to two other people, a gay couple.

For me that is as far as it goes.

Discrimination and bigotry, of course, are ugly things and ought to be condemned as often as possible. Not only is it just nonsensical, but from a financial point of view, I don't fully understand what anybody is supposed to gain if their business doesn't deal with a certain type of person. Unless this is the business's raison d'etre - y'know, like those lady-only insurance companies and, presumably, gay-only hotels dotted about the country.

But this is the point. This is a very simple matter of property rights. The only difference between a business and a home is that artificially created by law. Yes, obviously I am aware the law says that if you open a business you have to adhere to certain rules, one of which is anti-discrimination (more on that later), but let's not labour the point here. My point is deeper than simply 'the law was applied wrongly', much more that 'the law is wrong'. More simply put: I can't see a philosophical difference between a person's home and a person's business if they're both that person's property.

Firstly, the decision on whether or not to serve a customer lies entirely with the business. The business owners are the ones whose necks are on the line if the business fails - they are the ones who are responsible for the risk, and they are under no obligation whatsoever to serve anybody. This is very important. Exchanges between seller and buyer are voluntary on both parts, and either can choose not to buy or sell for any reason they like.

Second, I'm curious as to why this gay couple thinks they have been damaged in some way. It isn't as if they lost out by not being allowed to stay at the B&B. As above, the B&B owners are not obliged to serve anybody, just like they were not obliged to set up a B&B, or be in Cornwall, or do anything except lie about reading bibles and muttering all day long. No, they chose to set up a business and, as the property owners, probably expected that they'd be setting the rules. Suppose they had chosen not to set up a business at all. Would the gay couple have been damaged in some way? I suspect not. These damages stem directly from the idea that the reason the B&B owners didn't want them to stay was because they suspected they'd be up all night bonking, and bonking in a very un-Christian way. But surely the reason is irrelevant. Suppose they had lied and turned them away, I dunno, 'because we don't like the look of them'. Why not? Or perhaps they could have a policy of not allowing more than one male to stay in a room at a time. After all, camp sites around the country have similar rules regarding all-male groups. Would there have been any damage then? The outcome would have been the same. Claiming damages to me smacks of crass opportunism.

Not that I give a damn that it was a Christian couple vs a gay couple. For all I care, it could be a couple of druids vs a bloke with big ears. And they don't like big eared people. So they don't let that bloke stay. Boo hoo, they're not obliged to deal with big eared people, and to force them to do so, to me, seems much worse than leaving people to sort their shit out voluntarily.

This, for me, is why anti-discrimination laws don't really achieve what they say on the tin. They aren't there to nudge - or, really, force - people to see past superficial labels like 'homosexual', 'muslim', 'black' or whatever at all. No, they're there to heighten the considerations of specific minority groups. By trying to create a culture of non-discrimination, the law has, in effect, provided us with the inverse of that. Whether it's fair or not, certain minorities (not all) find themselves on the right side of the discrimination law, as this gay couple found out. And others, like the Christian couple, do not. And before somebody says, 'oh but Christians aren't a minority!' well that isn't really the point, is it? Discrimination isn't a case of majority or minority, it really should be a case of individualism. People are individuals. Treat them like individuals. The real fallacy here is trying to mitigate discrimination by empowering certain groups beyond the level enjoyed by others. Which, to me, seems the opposite.

The solution? Let people sort it out on their own terms! The profit motive is a wonderful mitigator of bigotry for one, and secondly I'm pretty sure, nay, certain, that if a B&B were outed, quite legitimately, as being vehemently anti-gay, I personally would at best feel embarassed for staying there and most likely wouldn't stay there at all - and I'm pretty damn sure I'm not alone in that. Of course, being a white, straight male, I wouldn't be able to claim damages for the offence that caused me...not that I'd have been allowed to stay there either if I had a ladyfriend with me!

The real crime here is using the law to force an opinion on somebody. This is a semi-hidden version of thought crime here. Private property is private property, and on that property one may express oneself how one wishes. If that means not allowing homosexuals on said property, so be it. Prosecuting somebody for such an antediluvian rule is in effect criminalising their opinion. And that should never be encouraged.

Ground control to Major Murphy

2011-01-18T23:57:00.005Z

TL;DR Sorry, another Ritchie fisk.

Ground control to Major Ritchie, take your protein pill and put your helmet on...

Yes it is another entry in the logs of Space Cadet Murphy and the S.S. Fantasy Land.

Here is Ritche's original post if you can be bothered to increase his hit count. I have copied the whole thing here anyway.

So the inflation figures for December came out today. And the analysis from an accounting, tax and economics "expert" is:

...bad. At 3.7% the number is bigger than expected.

Christ, a 5 year old could have come up with that analysis and for a lot less than the TUC plays Tax Research LLP aka Richard Murphy.

But then stand back a minute. As the Guardian notes (above link) if you exclude increases in indirect taxation the figure is just 2%. and if you excluded the impact of the 2.5% VAT increase that has just been introduced for the rest of the coming year, as will be necessary, the figure will probably remain within the target level set for inflation.

So what we are facing is a situation where inflation has been increased as a result of government policy - yes, both Labour and Conservative - and now we are seeing the City bringing pressure to bear upon the Bank of England to push down inflation, even though they also wanted the VAT increase to rebalance the government’s budget.

So, to translate, Ritchie is saying that if you remove the effect of VAT, duties and the planned increase in VAT (which started in January and should* therefore have no direct impact on CPI figures for December) then inflation is still within the target 2%.

For once Ritchie actually admits that Government policy (past and present) is making the situation worse.

At the same time, their chosen policy instrument, an increase in bank base rates, will have no impact whatsoever on this inflation. When inflation is caused by a combination of government policy domestically and international raw material price rises ( fuelled by City-based speculation) downward pressure on consumption is irrelevant. That downward pressure already exists because in the current environment of substantial involuntary unemployment, which can only rise, there is already real downward pressure on net household income that will already achieve this consumption orientated goal without further pressure being brought to bear by increasing interest rates.

Ritchie obviously missed it last week when the BoE decided that they would keep the base interest rate at 0.5% for another quarter, so the pressure to raise the rates clearly isn't that bad. Ah, Ritchie's usual scapegoat... speculation. Ignoring the fact that speculation protects future supply by decreasing present demand (price cycles and so on). Say for one minute that the City is being detrimental by 'over-speculating', the only reason they can do that is because money is cheap because of low interest rates, they know that the loans they use to fuel trading can be easily repaid when rates rise by selling the stock they have accumulated, the value (i.e. price) of which will have increased over the price they paid. So when supply starts to pick up again, the price will drop massively because of the stored supplies and the increased production... business cycle theory, wins every time.

The simple truth is that the knee-jerk reaction of neoliberal economists in the face of inflation to demand that interest rates be increased is on this occasion wholly inappropriate, as has so often been the case with neo-liberal prescriptions. What we are actually facing is a situation where, like it or not, real incomes in the UK may be under pressure because of a fundamental rebalancing of the overall economic equation within the world economy, where income shifts to the far east and the Indian subcontinent and away from Europe. In overall global economic terms this may be welcome, but if there is a reaction within the UK which sees ordinary consumers penalised for something that is entirely beyond their means to rectify through altering their pattern of consumption the consequence is that we will, inevitably, see an exacerbation of the fall in household income, and the creation of the environment for a double dip recession, which will inevitably follow.

Ah... Ben and I have been discussing whether methodological approaches can apply to social sciences like economics. My answer was that we can be methodological in our approach but we can never say an increase of 'x' in the interest rate will always cause a proportional decrease 'y' in inflation, for example. Economics, when centrally controlled (true where there is a central bank) is more art than science. Ritchie doesn't tell the whole truth in the above paragraph; if the base interest rate is increased too much over a short period of time then there is indeed an increased risk of double dip because the economy can't respond to a big change as quickly as a small change. But the economy and markets mirror one of my favourite chemical principles, Le Chatelier's principle:

If a chemical system at equilibrium experiences a change in concentration, temperature, volume, or partial pressure, then the equilibrium shifts to counteract the imposed change and a new equilibrium is established.

I love it when I can use chemistry to talk economics.

Back to the fisk...

The right reaction to this situation is to ask what we can do to restore our income, and not what we can do to restore the value of our currency, which is a matter of secondary importance.

This is fucking rich coming from the man who a few months ago was calling for more stimulus/quantitative easing, i.e. devaluation of currency by printing more money. One more piece of hypocrisy from Ritchie.

We can of course enhance our income. We can get people back to work, in the short term by government spending, which will pay for itself through increased tax revenues, and in the long term from the stimulus that this will supply to the private sector which would otherwise not grow. We can also ensure that funds invested in pension funds are put to real economic use by demanding that at least 25% of all contributions be used to create investment in new income generating opportunities in the UK economy as a condition of the grant of tax relief on those contributions. That will put £20 billion a year into the UK economy. And we can use green quantitative easing to start a programme of investment in the Green New Deal - in itself capable of generating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United Kingdom and paying for itself through the creation of long-term energy sustainability which supports the value of our currency by reducing our dependence upon imports.

Ah yes, the great Keynesian multiplier, this argument is invalid when you learn about the "Broken Window Fallacy". Before proposing increased government spending Ritchie was actually close to a solution. What Ritchie neglects to tell his readers is that when he says "increased tax revenues", is that the multiplier on government is never above 1, and rarely close to it; so the only way government could actually increase its tax revenue is by increasing said taxes, direct and indirect (don't be mislead here, while the government may appear benevolent by not lowering tax boundaries, with inflation at the level it is and boundaries not increasing in line with inflation they are actually lowering them). Once taxes start to go up as a result of Ritchie's "plan" then the Laffer Curve will come into play and tax revenues will decrease.

Like the rest of the paragraph, Ritchie's "Green New Deal" is more fantasy tinted with ecofascism. Internal long-term energy supplies can only be met by meeting the ever increasing base load which no renewable source can meet.

But all this requires a government with foresight and a willingness to commit our economy to a long-term vision of prosperity based upon the work people in this country can do for themselves. Instead we have a government that worries about the value of rate of return on short-term cash savings. It is that impoverishment of thought that cripples us.

Now Ritchie is being an utter retard. He supports Big Gov (tm), which actively prevents people from doing the work that they can do themselves and forces them into either working for government supporting corporations or the government itself.

As for people's savings, savings in the present are investments in the future. Present day cash savings are also the capital that banks lend out for people to start businesses, buy houses, etc.

I was in discussion with a shadow minister this morning. As he said to me, whether or not Labour gets back into office is not dependent on detailed plans for micromanagement of particular issues. It is dependent upon it having a meta-narrative that explains why a different economy is possible. That is the policy goal. And he is right on this occassion.

One Union stooge talking to another, shock. A Labour front-bencher not wanting to micro-manage private affairs of the people, I'll believe it when I see it.

Now that I have taken Ritchie's post to pieces I'll reassemble them into a better plan.

The biggest cause of inflation is government and its central bank. Low interest rates and high taxes is the perfect recipe for stagflation so the solution I propose is quite simple:

Cut back government spending, cut the foreign aid budget, stop money going to the EU, kill the quangos. At the moment it is just money that could be used to lower the tax burden and therefore increase disposable incomes. We are aiming for small government here.
Raise the tax free allowance to at least £12,500, then you aren't kicking the lowest earners while they are down.
Scrap the minimum wage, businesses that want and need to hire people now can't afford to because the NMW and NI make employees make expensive. Ritchie dreams of 100% employment, this is the only way to get it.
Follow Europe's lead and cut VAT (I'll accept a VAT rate of 10% or less), we are the only country that is currently running full VAT at the minute and the only one who has increased it. Cut all duties, especially fuel duties, watch how businesses boom when they aren't paying so much for transport.
Scrap the marginal 50% rate, these are the people you want to encourage to invest not punish for being successful.
Make income tax easier to administer by lowering it and making it a flat tax rather than a progressive one, no allowances, no time consuming tax returns.
Increase the BoE base rate slowly and steadily until you reach 4-6% to increase personal savings.

* The trend is that inflation is higher in December because it is the main retail month of the year so unsurprisingly shops put their prices up for Christmas. It wouldn't surprise me if they went up that little bit higher this year so that shops could cover the expected short falls in sales that the VAT increase would bring. Look here if you don't believe me and see that December is normally higher, 2007+2008 being the exceptions in the last 10 years because of the Credit Crunch.

UPDATE: The ASI have a short piece that runs parallel to what I have said here.

Under-age drinking: Part 2 - Weed

2011-01-17T22:39:00.000Z

This is the follow up to part one.

While writing part one I same to the conclusion that there was another reason that I wasn't an excessive drinker while under the legal age, cannabis.

I would enjoy being high at the end of a night and that was hard to do if you were too drunk to enjoy it so my friend and I would be steady on the drink. If I did have too much to drink then the spliff would just make me want to sleep.

Getting stoned is far better from a social stand point, a stoner will never get into a fight or smash something up because it is too much hassle, they would rather sit somewhere comfortable with some music or television for entertainment.

My argument is that all drugs are legalised (I'll accept with some controls and constraints at first), the 'problem' of under-age drinkers would decrease if they have access to other drugs.

Same old argument that Ben and I have made before really.

Under-age drinking: Part 1 - Booze

2011-01-17T21:52:00.001Z

The Speccie drew my attention to this article in the Independent.

I am 23 and I have to start by confessing that I am one of the last academic years (Sep - Aug) that could get away with under-age drinking in pubs because right after I turned 18 Her Majesty's Government decided that if you didn't look over 21 you had to be ID'd. Phew.

Anyway... to the article.

Mary Ann Sieghart: No wonder they've got a drink problem

If we had invented a system to encourage young people to drink too much, it would look like the system we have created now

If we were only looking at the headline and the byline then I would say, "Yep, totally" but this is a very wordy article so let's crack on.

Why do younger people binge drink more than their parents? It's not that their lives are so miserable that they have to obliterate their feelings. And it's not just their youth – their parents' generation didn't get routinely plastered at that age. No, it's much more the fault of stricter licensing laws, the demise of the pub and the relative cheapness of alcohol in shops.

This paragraph is 50/50 on accuracy. My father certainly drank far more than I did at the similar age (I actually went teetotal for two years because I thought that I was becoming too much of a mess), he (and by extension many other family members and family of friends (DEAD ANT)) have told me many stories of drunken escapades, I dread to think about the lack of stories I will have to tell my own children. So are the children drinking more than the parents? In my opinion, no, they just aren't being supervised the same way. As for relative pricing, well that is a major factor and Ms. Sieghart goes into it futher.

When we were teenagers, we started going to the pub from the age of about 14. We had to pretend to be 18, but most landlords didn't ask and the rest gave us a wink but served us anyway. The pub was an institution, a social hub. You wanted to be accepted by the regulars, so you behaved the way they did.

Totally agree, had the same experience and as Ms. Sieghart goes on to say it shapes your drinking habits.

All these things have now changed. In many pubs, landlords are so afraid of losing their licence that they no longer allow parents to take their children in with them, so the children don't grow up learning how to drink, chat and socialise in a civilised fashion. Then, when the children are teenagers, they can't drink alcohol in a pub until they're 18 – or until they look 18 and get a convincing enough fake ID. Even if they have the ID, they can't go unless all their friends have one too.

Again, I totally agree. More stories from family of being shoved to one side in the pub with a bottle of Panda Pop and a packet of Golden Wonder while the parents had their drinks, beer for the gents, fruit based drink for the ladies.

So how do they drink? They buy vodka from the off-licence or supermarket and bring it home. Only one member of the group needs to be old enough to buy it, or one member's big brother or sister. Then, because they're young and have no role models or constraints, they get completely pissed. They drink to get drunk.

Vodka, crates of beer, anything you could carry from the local corner shop back to your house and you will be amazed how much and how far a 15 year old can carry beer when they know they can drink it when they get home.

Now we get to the good bit of the article, money. (I apologise now for the long quote but this is the bit that you really need to read)

The price differential these days also predisposes younger people to drink too much. It's so much more expensive to drink in a pub than to drink at home. So even when teenagers reach 18, they're less likely to start going to their local. Instead, they can buy a 70cl bottle of own-brand basic vodka at a supermarket for just over £8. That's 28 pub measures, while a single vodka-and-tonic in a pub costs more than £3. Do the maths – young people do.

That's the common sense bit... unfortunately Ms. Sieghart's proposed solution is in my mind a u-turn but we'll get to that later.

Because drink is so expensive in pubs and bars, students say that the incentive is to drink as much as possible at home before you go out. That means you force yourself to get drunk so that the feeling will last for the rest of the evening without the need to top up too much. One of the arguments for liberalising the licensing laws was that some people felt they had to drink all they could before the pubs shut at 11pm. Now younger people are drinking all they can at the start of the evening, which is surely worse.

To me this is six of one and half dozen of the other. From my experience the 'pre-drinking' was a precaution because to me most clubs were the definition of dull, the music was rubbish, no place to chat and you had to be totally wankered or extremely comfortable (same thing, no?) to have a good time.

If we had invented a system that encouraged young people to drink too much, it would look like this. Strong spirits would be ridiculously cheap to take home. Bars and clubs would be designed to maximize the amount people drank. And young people would be deterred from entering the one institution that taught them how to drink well rather than badly.

Last sentence is spot on in my mind. Third sentence is slightly misleading, they are meant to make it easy to drink (bar access and stocked drinks) and more enjoyable while intoxicated but they don't force people to drink. Second sentence to me is something that isn't the issue, I am a free marketeer (so low prices are good) and alcohol has always been cheaper to buy at a shop and take home than drink out. Finally the first sentence of the above paragraph; I think that we have created a system that has increased the availability of alcohol and legislation has removed the old teaching mechanisms and made it more desirable to 14-17 years olds by telling them that they aren't allowed it. On a parallel, the number of under 18's that smoke increased after the age to buy cigarettes was raised from 16 to 18.

The irony is that children spend the best part of their childhoods trying to be more adult and when they mimic adults they are scalded for it.

Pubs desperately need a boost. They are closing at a rate of nearly 30 a week. You can blame the smoking ban. You can blame a clampdown on drink-driving. But it can't help that alcohol has become so much cheaper to buy from shops, and – as a result – that young people aren't frequenting pubs.

I do blame the smoking ban but more fundamentally I blame the lack of trust in Landlords and Landladies across the country. Their pubs are their homes and places of business yet they aren't allowed to decide what happens there, as Ms. Sieghart points out, under-age drinking was only allowed with the landlord's consent.

For centuries, the pub, tavern or inn has been the drinking place of choice for Britons. Even the French Prime Minister, François Fillon, expressed his envy of them last week. They are wonderful institutions – at their best, they are convivial, friendly, sociable and unifying. They bring people together of all ages and classes. They introduce neighbours to each other and foster a sense of community.

It says something about the people when the centre of the community in the US is the church and in the British Isles it is the pub.

The Government is looking at ways to help local people buy their pub if it's in danger of closing down. But perhaps ministers should also look at raising excise duty on off-sales and cutting it for drink bought in pubs. For anything that encourages a culture of happy social drinking rather than hideous binge drinking would be good for society, good for our young people's livers and good for our town centres. Let's hope it's not too late.

This is where I get all libertarian and say "Why not let the license owners decide what happens in their pubs?" and "Raising a tax (because duty is just a tax in sheep's clothing) has never solved a problem while reducing taxes has solved problems, so let's slash duty all round". You are never going to get rid of binge drinkers but the least we could do is revert to the old ways of the landlord chucking them out or them spending the night in a cell until they have slept it off.

Mary Ann Sieghart tweets as @MASieghart or go to her website.

Dick Puddlecote beat me to it with his post.

Part 2 will be about "da'youth and other drugs".

Ritchie shoots wide of the mark again

2011-01-14T10:34:00.001Z

My friends and I really like to go 10-pin bowling, a couple of mates go every weeks and with that frequency of games there are more stories. One of those stories was when one of them (accidentally) managed to bounce his ball out of the gutter in his lane and into one of the adjacent lanes hitting the ball of the person playing in that lane, ruining that frame for them.

Ritchie has managed to do something very similar with this post.

Firstly, what Ritchie sees as indoctrination, I see as a good first step on the career ladder.

There was a time that this type of training contract/apprenticeship was much more prevalent among British businesses, for example, my brother did his degree on an apprenticeship, he is in a much better financial state than I am because he was paid a salary while he earned his degree and started his career. Similarly, most of the senior managers on the site that I work earned their degrees on training contracts/apprenticeships.

Two other industries that operate similar training practises as this are Law (many budding solicitors and barristers will enter training contracts to help them afford the fees for the LPC or Bar) and the Military, a childhood friend of mine earned his degree with help from the Army, the Navy and the Air Force operate similar training schemes.

There is a reason that businesses and professional bodies enter into these sorts of agreements with centres of education, so that they are sure that those who graduate have the appropriate level of skill and knowledge in the right areas to be useful to them.

Secondly, the following line cracked me up:

Second, doesn’t this deny 95% of the benefit of going to university, which in my experience was to have the opportunity to learn and question independently...

Ritchie is living in a dream world. Long gone are the days of training young people to think and question, that only starts at post-graduate level and only if you have a lecturer who encourages their students to think rather than taking their word as dogma.

As for social and political opinions, you are influenced more by the people you associate with than the place at which you are educated or work, think about the undercover policeman who 'went native'. (Oh no another story) Benzs made me question the conventional wisdom of social welfare, taxation and liberty. Both of us then made another of our friends question the views he held as a Labour voter and so on and so forth until we had enlightened our friends (as much as they chose to care).

The TL;DR of it is:
1. Business supporting degrees is good in the long run for the individual
2. Education has changed a lot in the last 40 years
3. Places do not influence people's opinions, people influence people.

Update: Timmy Worstall does his Timmy thing and once again points out Ritchie back tracking on previous complaints about the Coalition government.

No surprises really

2011-01-14T09:40:00.002Z

Hello all, first post of the new year (and in two months).

What has spurred me into posting again? Well I have been shut up for the whole working day in a small room that very few people come to, operating an instrument non-stop for nine hours a day and Richard 'Hyperbole' Murphy is talking non-sense again.

My comment was thus:

Firstly, Richard you have called for QE time and time again which INCREASES inflation (which you now concede makes people poorer).

Secondly, it was not investment bankers that induced the crash, it was retail bankers who sold mortgages to people who they knew couldn't afford them.

Thirdly, speculation on food prices is a good thing. If supplies of a foodstuff are going to decrease in the near future then increasing the price (thus lowering demand)and storing more for the future means that when the shortage does come then the supply of said foodstuff is better.

If you don't save for the proverbial rainy day then you are going to experience biblical feast and famine which is worse.

Fourthly, why make a villain out of Bob Diamond?

Barclays was the only British bank that took no money from the government. Therefore, Mr. Diamond's bonus has nothing to do with Government Welfare payments AT ALL.

You are just using hyperbole to create outrage.

I was hoping that this may make it past Ritchie's stringent comments moderation but it took him less than five minutes to permanently delete it. I am not really surprised and neither was Benzs who had the following to say:

You can't use sound economics arguments against Ritchie...

I wasn't the only person to spot Ritchie's hypocrisy, as ever the master of pointing out Ritchie's stupidity, Tim Worstall, takes Ritchie apart more succinctly than I ever can.

Let me elaborate

2010-11-18T15:12:00.000Z

A couple of minutes ago I posted this on twitter.

Does this mean that Gov will relax drug laws now? http://bit.ly/aq2s3e

What I'd like to elaborate on is the fact that a lack of a reliable roadside test to identify drug use in drivers has always been one of the main counter arguments to liberalising drug laws.

With this new little gadget surely that reason has been overcome and the gap between the 'dangers of drugs' versus the 'dangers of alcohol' is narrowed once more.

From my perspective the government now has two real options*; declare alcohol illegal (which they won't because its been tried before and it didn't work) or make drugs legal.

* maintaining the status quo is an option but it doesn't solve any problems therefore I am discounting it.

Friday: Blog-athon

2010-11-12T10:33:00.000Z

Well, it's been an eventful week, a very eventful week.

Monday we had Tom Harris MP objecting to a Minister suggesting that civil liberties should trump security.

Tuesday the some Ministers and government advisers landed in China.

Wednesday we had the appeal of the troughers Morley, Chaytor and Devine had their appeal rejected. The Mirrlees review of the tax system was published and somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 students took part in a demonstration against the planned tuition fees rises and ended with CCHQ and surrounding buildings being smashed.

Thursday was a sad day for the internet as the appeal of Paul Chambers in the #twitterjoketrial was rejected and a Conservative Councillor was arrested for a comment on twitter.

Friday - I will try and blog about all these things and some others over the course of the day.

TFIFriday

Quick technology bitch

2010-11-10T09:43:00.000Z

While I love how fast computer technology is moving but it is also a pain in the arse because the computer I built in 2008 (Just before DDR3 boards went on sale, then a top spec gaming machine) is now little more than a glorified typewriter... (over exaggeration I know but my PC is really struggling with some new games.)

What should I do; save for a new rig or try and upgrade my current one?

Legacy

2010-11-04T13:15:00.000Z

Legacy is more important than most people think.

If you look at 'old money' rich people they have achieved it through several generations of profit making, passing the legacy of their forebears onto their children.

'Captains of Industry' funded great works of philanthropy. To leave and their legacy on society and show the way for their inheritors and any other ambitious soul who aims to follow in their footsteps.

There are even ideological legacies like the Milibands or the Benns.

A favourite phrase of mine and Ben's is:

"Standing on the Shoulders of Giants"

To build upon the legacy of those who came before us.

People need to remember that we don't just live for today, we live for tomorrow. We need to give our children every advantage to succeed, i.e. beggaring our children for our comfort is madness.

Easy Thursday Morning Fisk

2010-11-04T09:41:00.002Z

Because I know that Sunny likes to have a high Wikio ranking and this is an easy fisk:

Here’s an excerpt from the New Yorker:
You’d think the Street would have learned its lesson. Instead, it’s now threatened by an even bigger back-office crisis: Foreclosuregate. Banks, faced with a flood of delinquent mortgages resulting from the bad loans they made during the housing bubble, have done exactly what the brokerages did forty years ago: they’ve cut corners. They’ve foreclosed on homes without having the proper documentation, and relied on unqualified people to sign affidavits attesting to things they didn’t know—so-called “robosigners.” In a few cases, they seem to have actually tossed people who didn’t have mortgages out of their homes.

As a result, federal regulators and attorneys general in all fifty states are now investigating. And, in the weeks since the scandal first erupted, other issues have appeared, calling into question the legitimacy of the way mortgages were packaged and sold, and raising the possibility that the banks might have to buy back piles of bad mortgages. Forecasts of “catastrophe,” “Armageddon,” and “apocalypse” have now become routine.
Doesn’t look like this crisis will explode, but it shows the extent to which banks deliberately and callously oversold mortgages. There’s still major bad debt on those books. This crisis isn’t going away anytime soon…

I'll concede that 'bankers' aren't blameless but Sunny is over egging the pudding somewhat with this line:

...but it shows the extent to which banks deliberately and callously oversold mortgages.

Now... let's operate on the not so risky rational that at least 80% of the time people act rationally from their perspective.

Put yourself in the shoes of an investment banker, their job is to buy and sell things to make a profit. The progression of their career is dependent upon how much profit they make. The quality of their life and retirement is dependent (in part) upon how successful their career is. So the rational action for an investment banker is to make profit on transactions.

The US government wants more people to own their own houses so they promote the building of low cost housing and the financing of mortgages for people to buy them. All well and good...

...Until the Fed raises interest rates, the once cheap credit (i.e. cheap affordable mortgages) is no longer cheap and people can no longer afford their repayments... sub-prime mortgage market is born.

Eventually more and more people defaulted and the dominoes began to fall leading to the 'Credit Crunch' and the 2008-2009 recession.

Back to Sunny's line:

...but it shows the extent to which banks deliberately and callously oversold mortgages.

Did the banks deliberately over sell mortgages? Yes. Did they do it callously? No.

Bankers were just doing what they get paid to do, credit was cheap at the time and the risk fairly low and the US government had just opened a previously inaccessible market to them (think Yukon gold rush). They aren't the only ones to blame for the economic crisis and there is a lot of blame to go around. I don't think that I could list all the peoples and groups who have had some impact worldwide that exacerbated the problem.

So the banker bashing is pointless, quit it.

So wait...

2010-10-29T08:55:00.001+01:00

... we are being told that the attitudes and actions of a parent have a massive impact on the academic development of their children; more so than the school they go to and the amount of money the parents have. Who knew?

"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.” - Andrew Carnegie /via Billy Blofeld

So ambition counts for more than money, I could have told you that for less cost than those studies.

//Sorry to any regular readers (however unlikely that people read our ramblings), I made a promise to myself to stop fisking Ritchie (because shooting fish in a barrel gets boring after a while) and I haven't been able to summon up the anger or sarcasm that usually fuels my rants (because sarcastic and/or angry posts are much easier than well thought out pieces). So Sorry//

The Copenhagen Interpretation in real life

2010-10-21T15:23:00.001+01:00

This line:

Jim Moore, the manager, said: "A survey showed speeds had reduced considerably on Lansdowne Road and it no longer met the criteria for speed enforcement with effect from July 2009."

Made me think of quantum mechanics and how the observation of something influences the outcome.

Ritichie still doesn't like UK PLC.

2010-10-12T13:22:00.000+01:00

Ritchie still thinks that governments are different from every other financial entity.

I have advised many businesses, many of them in deep trouble at the time I arrived. It looks like Sir Philip Green has too. And when you encounter that situation you batten down the hatches, cut all costs to the bone and hope the patient survives whilst not giving much thought to the impact on those whose jobs you cut, those suppliers whose terms you abuse and the stress this causes.
Well that’s fine for business. But countries are not businesses. When a country adopts the sort of policy Si Philip is recommending it remains responsible for the business failures it causes, the people made redundant, the stress that is translated into more demand on the NHS, and the loss of profit and reduced cash flow for the private sector whose ability to compete, and produce the new employment we desperately need is severely impaired as a result. In other words, what might be fine for a business is quite wrong for the UK – especially at a time when the private sector is already in the doldrums.
It has to be said that Sir Philip is the wrong man with the wrong mindset producing the wrong solution at the wrong time for the UK. And the person to blame for that is David Cameron: he appointed him.

Lots of classic Ritchie-ism here, messiah complex, cognitive dissidence, private sector bashing, public sector praise and ConDem bashing.

Ritchie seems to think that one entity that has an income, an expenditure and a product/service is different from another entity that has an income, an expenditure and a product/service.

That is all Government really is; it's income is it's tax revenue, it's expenditure are the wages of its employees and is services are defence, justice, welfare, health, etc.

Granted, it's not uncommon for a private business entity to spend beyond it's means in a month/quarter/year because they justify the loan (and the amount of the loan) on how quickly afterwards they will be back to making a profit.

In his first paragraph Ritchie spells out how a business plugs the gap (his emotive points are very generalised as small businesses hurt a lot when they are forced to let people go and big businesses are often aware that the loss of key persons will come back to bite them), considering there is not operating difference between a business and government why is it suddenly wrong?

It is suddenly wrong in the case of the UK because the government does too much.

If we operated in a truly free market then there would be fluidity in jobs, education, growth, finance, etc. all the things that the government interferes in now.

The public, the press and the politicians have been on the state control high for to long and now that the habit has become more expensive than we can afford the reality of withdrawal scares them. Withdrawal is never easy but you come out of it better than you went in.

Just about sums it up!

2010-10-11T16:15:00.000+01:00

One, two, three, four...
Hrmm!
One, two, (one, two, three, four!)

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

(if you drive a car, car;) - I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) - I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) - I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) - I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

And you're working for no one but me.

Taxman!

My Zen has been truly inspired while on all song shuffle.

More proof that the Beatles were awesome!

Ritchie, so close and yet so far

2010-10-11T13:09:00.002+01:00

Ritchie is hailing St. Ed of Moscow as the saviour of the British economy.

Ed Miliband is singing the right tunes:
Ed Miliband has ruled out proposing fresh increases in personal taxation or cuts to middle-class child benefits as he promised to say more this week about how quickly and deeply Labour would cut the deficit before the coalition spending review on 20 October.
He continued: "I’m not proposing rises in personal taxation beyond those set out by Alastair Darling, definitely not, but what I am saying is if, for example, the banks can pay more or you can clamp down on tax avoidance, you should do so". Miliband has spoken of doubling the bank levy.
We don’t need tax increases overall now – they have the same economic impact as cuts.
As Darling made clear – we do need a more progressive tax system.
And it’s clear the Tax Gap is now part of the agenda.
As are taxes on banks.
I but that agenda.
Dammit, I could have written that agenda.

One important line in all of that:

We don’t need tax increases overall now – they have the same economic impact as cuts.

Ritchie is actually right (in the four words I've emphasised). Tax takes money out of the hands of people who add to the British economy and puts it in the hands of people who subtract from the British economy. 'Cuts' aren't exactly what's needed either, more the withdrawal of government entities from areas that could easily have a free market in and a reduction in bureaucracy everywhere else will give us the growth that we clamour for.

The rest of it is the usual nonsense:

As Darling made clear – we do need a more progressive tax system.

And all I need to do is refer you to this comment. To which Ritchie replies with:

@Noel Scoper
But it works out the rich pay least - so the rates are simply not what happens

I understand the point that Ritchie is trying to make; that 'the Rich' are the biggest culprits of 'tax avoidance' as Ritchie has vilified it. What Ritchie fails to see is that he is part of the problem, not the solution. As long as Tax Accountants (like Ritchie) and Lawyers can be hired to navigate the the eddies and channels of the British tax system people will utilise the perfectly legal 'tax avoidance' to reduce the tax that they pay (just like Laffer said (3.58 onwards, h/t to AT for the whole documentary), go figure).

I think that I may go mad with the repetition of this point but if you want to reduce the Tax Gap then all you have to do is reduce and simplify the tax system so that the loopholes don't exist any more. With lower taxes people will also have less incentive to avoid paying.

But that concept would put a lot of Ritchie's chums out of work and last time I checked turkeys don't vote FOR Christmas.

Oingo Boingo - Capitalism

2010-10-07T16:43:00.000+01:00

There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don't try to make me feel guilty
I'm so tired of hearing you cry

There's nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask me I'll say it's just fine
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
I'm so tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution
Bringin' down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!

If it ain't one thing
Then it's the other
Any cause that crosses your path
Your heart bleeds for anyone's brother
I've got to tell you you're a pain in the ass

You criticize with plenty of vigor
You rationalize everything that you do
With catchy phrases and heavy quotations
And everybody is crazy but you

You're just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And you tell me that we've got to get back
To the struggling masses (whoever they are)
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
What the hell do you know about suffering and pain . . .

(Repeat first verse)

(Repeat chorus)

There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism

Sorry - this randomly played on my mp3 player and I realised I hadn't made a post today. Lazy, I know but I've been listening to lots of XTC and this is in a similar vein.

Ritchie boldly going into errors he has made many times before

2010-10-06T11:55:00.002+01:00

Ritchie, you don't understand 'neo-liberalism' (or how things would work in such an environment) so you can't criticise it.

I love the Nobel prize committees comment on the work of new Nobel physics laureates Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, granted the prize for creating wafers of carbon that are a single atom thick.

As the Nobel committee said of the two scientists in its press release: "Playfulness is one of their hallmarks. With the building blocks they had at their disposal they attempted to create something new, sometimes even by just allowing their brains to meander aimlessly."

Of course, such research would be considered utterly pointless under a neoliberal cuts regime. It will go. No time for such frivolity: only proven commercial applications must be allowed.

But that’s because neoliberals don’t understand the true nature of the human condition. Or creativity.

And that lack of understanding; their incomprehension of the capacity to make a mistake and learn from it; their inability to see anything except an absolute cash value will be their downfall, at cost to us all.

*Emphasis mine.*

I am a scientist by trade and training so I understand the importance of scientific funding. I also know that some of the most important scientific discoveries of the modern age have been accidents. That said, I don't think that government scientific spending is the best way to do it.

Ritchie criticises 'neo-liberals' (it's his newly learned catch-all term for libertarians, Tea Partiers, evil Tories and Orange Bookers (and anyone in-between) because I pointed out that calling us all anarcho-capitalists is just silly and incorrect) because they have to see things in a monetary fashion. The problem with Ritchie's opinion is that he is missing the long term value of 'abstract' scientific research ('pure' science for science's sake).

He is also unaware of the symbiotic relationship of 'abstract' and 'product' (research to create a marketable product) scientific research.

Sometimes when doing 'product' research you stumble upon something that can become 'abstract' research and vice versa.

Where 'neo-liberalism' comes in is that a business entity HAS to stay competitive if it wants to make a profit, there are two main ways of doing this:

Become more efficient at what you already do (short term).
Research a new technology that opens a new market (long term).

Doing 'abstract' research IS expensive because it may not lead to a marketable product immediately or ever (but sometimes you have to explore the wrong path before you can identify the right one) so most business entities don't bother doing research directly.

Fortunately for businesses these entities called 'Universities' came into existence many centuries ago that specialise in doing 'abstract' research. This allows businesses to outsource their need for research and new development.

This system works by letting 'creative' thinkers, that universities employ, find funding for their proposed projects from industries that might benefit from the research. (In fact a lot of research is funded this way now, mostly by big pharma)

Before people claim that research like nanotubes, sub-atomic theory and graphene sheets wouldn't get funding from private enterprise then you don't know the full potential of understanding them.

In order to identify worthwhile research businesses employ scientists and engineers for the purpose of enlightening them on the potential of said research, for example, a chemist goes to a company and say something like "I am looking to discover a novel acid catalysed synthesis of 'x'" and the business orientated scientist looks at research to date by the chemist and decides if it is beneficial to the company and makes a recommendation to the legal and business guys, the then decide if it is patentable and how much to fund it respectively, not unlike the state funded system used today.

The alternative ('product' to 'abstract') method is that the businesses approach the universities with a broad aim, let's say expanding human knowledge of "processable high temperature PTFE derivatives" and some unexpected breakthrough coming out of that.

It's not like the 'fat cat' business types are going to go in unprepared, if you watch Dragons Den then you may notice that most of the Dragons tend to support ventures that are in markets and industries where they already have some experience.

As for the human condition, Ritchie has even less of a clue than he thinks we do...

It is the Star Trek problem. In Star Trek, when ever talking to someone from the past or a culture that still has some sort of market system, the Federation character will always say "We have evolved past the need for material goods and money". Its a fantastic sentiment, it really is, it is the same sentiment that economically left leaning individuals express, but as long as something has value you will always have some people competing for it. In Star Trek it works because they have near infinite energy generation (whenever it suits the story they suddenly need fuel) capability and the means to convert that energy into matter but unfortunately this is just science fiction.

As ever Ritchie needs to take off his blinkers and try to understand the subject BEFORE opening his mouth (metaphorically speaking).

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Welfare

2010-10-05T09:53:00.000+01:00

This is something that I have known for a while but assumed that it was obvious enough for people to spot but I have to thank our old friend Ritchie for giving me the inspiration to write this post because he misses the obvious too.

I know I am not the most eloquent of writers and that this would be delivered far better by someone of calibre of the Raccoon, the Devil or the Crazy Cat Lady but I will endeavour to do my best.

This may get a little 'chicken and egg' but it is the nature of the issue and the only really solution is a giant pair of novelty scissors. So here goes...

The government taxes individuals and businesses to fund its operation.

The government then dangles tax credits, tax allowances, social benefits, etc. in front of individuals/businesses to a) promote activities that it views as 'good' and b) ensure that the cost of existence for those individuals/businesses are not so high that it chokes them.

The result of that is a reduction in the government's tax revenue so it responds by taking loans, printing money and/or increasing taxes.

The effect of that is that it is harder for the businesses/individuals surviving solely on the basis of government 'kindness' to actually survive. That 'kindness' then needs to be increased to meet the needs of those needing it.

And so on and so forth...

In truth, what is meant to be an enlightened attitude of supporting the weakest and most needy in society becomes a the way that the government enslaves the people it is supposed to represent. And as for business it is a more under handed method of the government manipulating the markets for political ends rather that profitable (in every sense of the word) ones.

I know that people will say that many companies exist because they take government contracts but it is related to this cycle - the government gets its fingers in many pies so it has a vested interest like any stakeholder, the have more money (other people's money) than any other single entity and are more than willing to spend it so business thrive on cycling the money back round to the government.

Remember the second Indiana Jones film (that is never mentioned because of the even number rule), with the rickety rope bridge? Anything to do with the government and money ends up like that rope bridge, ready to collapse.

The solution is threefold:

Scrap the NMW (allows the creation of jobs that aren't worth the minimum wage and prevents the wage driven inflation caused by the NMW) and most state benefits , reduce the ones that you keep (incentive for people to work). Set the tax allowance threshold to £12,500 per annum (so that people earning the equivalent of the NMW or less aren't being punished for a low income job and are actually working themselves out of poverty rather than relying on someone else).
Simplify tax so that above £12,500 pa everyone is paying the same rate (no more than 25%, lower ideally to achieve greater tax revenue through more people paying lower rates). Remove all tax credits to keep the system simple.
Remove legislation that hampers business activity. Remove central government interference from most aspects of daily life. Increase the independence of local authorities (give them the power to fund themselves through a local tax) to create an environment tailored to the wants and needs of the people living there.

Charities like to tell us that if you give a man a fish he won't be hungry for a day, give him the means to fish he won't go hungry everyday. The same is true here, if you keep stringing people out on Welfare and don't make work an attractive alternative then the whole of society suffers because of it.

Give people the means to become profitable on their own and they will.

Hadley Freeman, you tickle me pink

2010-10-04T14:09:00.000+01:00

Hadley Freeman, Grauniad opinion columnist posted a cracker yesterday. With the title "Why do so many people wear clothes with brand names on them?" and the tag line "In short, because they are stupid".

Her column is called Ask Hadley and as you'd expect from an opinion piece, people write in with questions and Hadley strives to express her self-important opinion in response. (The main difference between me and her is that I'm not getting paid to write this and I am not making you pay to read it)

The first question was:

Hello Hadley, long-time reader, first-time contributor. Why is it that so many people these days wear clothes that absurdly advertise the shop?
David Walker, London

Hadley begins by berating people who do wear branded clothing as morons and then sets out to explain why they are morons.

For a start, they think that somehow flaunting the name of the shop from which they bought the garment makes them look cool. This means they are brand snobs, which is bad enough, but what makes it even worse is that the brands themselves are always ones that any sane, thinking person would try to hide from the world, such as Sloaney pony Hollister, or the sluttishly ubiquitous Emporio Armani (that Emporio Armani sure gets around: there is not a man on this planet who hasn't had a bit of Emporio Armani splayed across his chest).

I have to ask, "what about a person's freedom to choose what they wear?" Personally, I don't wear heavily branded clothing except sports team shirts (unless band related merch counts), maybe a small logo like a Lacoste polo shirt I wear to work but other than that I am a plan black T-shirt and blue jeans kind of guy. Ultimately, that is my choice, someone else has different tastes.

Thus, while this column obviously abhors any kind of prejudice, it is perfectly acceptable to shun these people, not because they are stupid (although that, too), but because they are saying they think you're stupid, because they think you are as impressed as they are with their label flashing. Now, that's just rude. So shun them, David. Shun them hard. They need to be taught the error of their idiotic ways.

So people who wear brands are some how sub-human now? Well I am guessing that Hadley has the same mindset as that cult that wants to blow up people who don't agree with them.

Second, they fail to see that they are merely being used by the brand as a form of free advertising. Again – moronic.

I have to ask, "what about a person's freedom to choose what they wear?" If someone thinks that wearing brands and logos all over looks good then let them, the WHOLE POINT of a company/organisation having a logo or other easily identifiable mark is to advertise. Is Hadley saying that people shouldn't wear Pink Ribbons because they are advertising Breast Cancer Awareness? Was Hadley raving that people were morons for wearing those rubber bracelets signifying a multitude of different 'causes'?

They are like those unbelievably dorky kids from summer camp who used to believe the camp counsellor when she said that tidying their bunks extra quickly would make them really cool.

Speaking from experience Hadley? I bet you got really quick at making your bed.

Worse, seeing as these idiots are willing to pay to advertise the brands, it is no wonder these companies then decide they probably don't need to fork out money to advertise in magazines and newspapers. Ergo, they are killing the press. Morons!

I'll let this one slide a little, Hadley is a Grauniad columnist so I expect her to have less of an understanding of markets and business than a four year old child. But she is also displaying a huge amount of self interest here; she is paid by a newspaper, they get a majority of their revenue from advertising and if the advertising money dries up then so does her employment contract. Conversely papers like the Metro make ALL of their revenue from advertising and are increasingly popular (for both advertisers and consumers) because they have a higher distribution that the Grauniad and they are free at the point of use. Granted the reporting in the Metro leaves much to be desired but it proves that the press isn't dying.

Third, they paid extra money for that label to be sloshed across their clothes. Lots and lots of extra money! Obviously, as I have never soiled my hands by picking up such a garment, I cannot tell you how much more they have paid for the privilege of being walking adverts. But seeing as they are morons, it is likely to be by at least an extra £500. Per letter.

There is more than just the label involved in a person's purchase. Seeing as I very rarely buy clothes, (and when I do it is rarely a labelled brand because I just don't care enough (mind you I would love to own a tailored suit from a Bond Street store)) I'll use consumer electronics as an example.

I have three big purchases planned in the near future; a car, a house and a television, in that order. When it comes to the television my requirements are this; Full HD, Freeview/Freesat, HDMI slots, Scart slots, a minimum of 23' in the diagonal and at least 7 years of working life. I will buy a named brand mainly on the last requirement alone. I have in the past bought cheap electronics that have lasted a long time but they have always been an exception rather than the rule, I have never bought a 'good brand' that has gone wrong because I am paying for the quality associated with the brand. A brand spends a long time building a reputation for good quality and the main reason that people pay for the brand is that they expect such quality. The same is true in all other markets and many commentors to Hadley's post say the same:

@Salmanc

Its what looks good. You cant simply call anyone who buys brands morons. For example, if you go into Harvey Nichols in leeds, there are loads of really nicely fitting things that are all branded, they feel better on your body, fit better, and are made from better materials. Ive found, even buying things from zara (i bought a suit for 150) and it tore after 6 months. It all depends on the quality. You can get quality stuff from TK maxx if you look hard enough, and primark has all the basic stuff you need from jumpers to socks that are fine for casual.
If you are just buying brands because its a brand then yes you are a moron. If you are buying something because it looks good and feels great and happens to be a brand, then you are not a moron.

@DKeith0904

I'm sorry but get the hell over yourself.
While people are entitled to their opinions on such issues it is utterly ignorant to label anyone who wears a brand as a moron and such generalisation is both patronising to 99% of people who read this (Can many people here really say they have never worn clothing with a brand name on it?) and utterly bereft of any insight.
I was wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch hoody today with a big A & F symbol on the front. Want to know why? Because my mum got it for me as a birthday gift. And because it is really warm and comfortable. You may call my mum a moron for purchasing such an item of clothing rather than stitching me together some nice hemp jumper but i'd beg to differ...then i'd call you mean for labelling my mother as a moron.
When reading your too cool for school answer I cannot help but think of an episode of Family Guy:
Meg: Hi, Craig. Umm, I was wondering if maybe you would want to, I don't know, go out sometime?
Craig Hoffman: Huh, that's about as likely as me playing by someone else's rules besides my own. Which I would never do. I play by my own rules, nobody else's, not even my own.

I wonder if we browsed through Hadley's own wardrobe we will find a brand name item? I expect the answer is yes.

What the fuck?

2010-10-03T23:05:00.000+01:00

I thought that AGW was supposed to be giving us warmer, milder winters...

Another nail in the coffin of climate alarmists' argument if you ask me.

*This post is my 'Ode to Obo' since he was a king of the one line link post

Ritchie, more failures of understanding

2010-10-01T17:17:00.000+01:00

I don't need to say any more...

Just because something is illegal doesn't mean people don't do it!

2010-09-30T13:23:00.001+01:00

Don Paskini has made a post on Liberal Conspiracy about the Department for Work and Pensions definition of someone living on benefits as a lifestyle choice.

There is a nice little ding dong breaking out in the comments about it (but the main issues are getting derailed slightly).

The sad fact about this post is that it could have been a really good talking point but Don has just made a political jab.

I agree with a lot of the comments that 'oppose' Don's final three lines:

So according to George Osborne, the key aim of welfare policy in future will be to stop people taking the lifestyle choice to live on benefits.

According to the Department responsible it is already the case that no one can receive benefits as a lifestyle choice.

What ~~an utter, utter embarrassing shambles~~ a fantastic example of joined up, effective government.

The key point is that has been over shadowed by the issue of an FoI request is exactly what I say in the title of this post:

Just because something is illegal doesn't mean people don't do it!

I've known people on Jobseeker's for example who would just change the dates on old log sheets on the bus into town so that they could claim. No one checked, they just signed the approval and sent him on his way... what a system we have!

Things that won't fix the problem:

Adding new rules (this never works)
Trying to weed out the genuine claimants from the 'gamers' and the fraudsters (this will cost money and the whole point of Osborne's comment was to save some money)

Things that will work:

Reducing benefit amounts so that the incentive is to get a job and make more money. (Incentive based economics wins every time)
Change the tax system to a flat tax of 20-25% with a minimum income allowance of £12,500 so that you aren't taxing people earning the national minimum wage (full time) or less. (this has the knock-on benefit of reducing the complexity of the tax system meaning money can be saved at HMRC)
Reduce the number of benefits and tax credits to simplify the system and remove loopholes that 'gamers' and and fraudsters use.

Just my 2 cents.

For the sake of my health I should really stop reading Ritchie

2010-09-30T07:39:00.000+01:00

Arrogance, thy name is Richard Murphy.

This says much of what I think about the right wing blogosphere:

They seem to be the ultimate definition of negativity – talk, and obstruction to all action for the common good.

I wonder if they ever actually created anything?

Ignoring the fact that most of the evil, nasty right-wing blogosphere blog as a hobby. Most of us have a day job and many are retired after careers of creating.

So Ritchie, stfu!

And if Ritchies doesn't buy any of that there is always this argument:

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
- Herman Hesse

Woe betide me! Arts funding is too complex to change.

2010-09-29T17:39:00.005+01:00

I still find it odd that cuts in funding so innocuous, and so obvious, as those related to the arts in the UK, still provoke a good deal of grumbling and fist shaking among the unmistakably middle-class shrills in the Guardian's dark places.

Via Worstall, a curious article attempts to justify continued arts funding based on little more than the fact that the funding of many arts institutions is probably rather more complex than it ought to be.

Of course, the author seems to have gotten things rather backward at, ironically, a very basic level.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum (in so far as wealth, infrastructure and glamour are concerned) is Forest Fringe. An idea rather than an organisation, Forest Fringe has for the past three summers set itself up in Edinburgh during the festival month of August in a venue it borrows from an artists' collective. Quickly, it has become regularly cited as the most creative and avant-garde corner of the Edinburgh fringe (too off-radar even to appear in the official fringe programme). Under the curatorship of Andy Field and Debbie Pearson, weird and wonderful theatre and performance art are showcased. They receive no subsidy for this, nor do they pay for their venue, nor do they pay their artists. For the audience, everything is free.

Sounds marvellous, actually. An event based on uber-creativity and volunteering which audiences can enjoy gratis?

With its network of mutual co-operation and volunteering, and its independence from government funding, this sounds dangerously like a Cameronian "big society" project. But again, to characterise it thus would be vastly to underestimate the complexity of the ecosystem it inhabits. Like Glyndebourne, Forest Fringe relies for its existence on relationships with other organisations: they include the Battersea Arts Centre in London, and Fierce, an annual performance festival based in the West Midlands. Both are funded by Arts Council England and, crucially, receive support from, respectively, Wandsworth and Birmingham City councils. The importance of local authorities should not be underestimated as part of this landscape.

Bear this bit in mind when you read the final paragraph:

The map, then, of our British arts landscape is impossibly, beautifully complex. Its pathways and routes are curlicued and winding – but they make sense. The mistake is to pretend that the picture is simple – which politicians have a persistent habit of doing. If the National Theatre is a great tree that the coalition will hesitate to fell when the cuts to the arts budget come, take care for the little weed that grows at its foot. It may look insignificant and easily missed, but without it we shall soon have no mighty wood.

Wait, wait, wait.

This apparent beautiful complexity of funding appears, to me at least, like standard taxpayer funding through the back door. As I pointed out the last time this nonsense came up on CiF, people don't really get to enjoy these events gratis, do they? If I'm reading this correctly, the allegedly voluntary and private Forest Fringe would not exist in its current form were its performers and organisers not already subsidised by the taxpayers, via various quangos, fake charities and local authorities, in other events with, shall we say, less ambiguous but very much public funding.

What, I think, the author is trying to say when she writes that the 'landscape is impossibly, beautifully complex' is that money comes from many different sources and every now and again performers have the wherewithal to get together and use their labour to showcase their work. This is great. Of course, what's not so great is pretending that this funding is firstly necessary, and secondly that it is some kind of complex ecosystem of awesome that gives the taxpayer brilliant returns and improves lives.

Look, middle-class artsy types. It doesn't matter how important you think arts funding is, or even if there is a real return on it. The point of tax, if there is a point, isn't to entertain the chattering classes! If these arts events were so good, so popular, so important, you would have no trouble whatsoever finding a venue or performers to do a bit of work, and then find an audience to pay a fee to see it. Who, among those who are genuinely disadvantaged, gives a flying rat's arse about opera at Glyndebourne?! Honestly, who? If you think these events when privately managed charge too much money, perhaps you could, I dunno, stump up the cash yourself and put on a show for the hoi polloi in Hackney? Because I know that I sure as hell can't afford to pay for your living.

This is my main problem with people who complain about arts funding. They rarely even bother to maintain the pretence that they're soft lefty types who care about the plight of the common man at the bottom of the vast clusterfuck of society. No, they merely care about how their profession is based on others forcibly paying for their living, and how they don't want the gravy train to end. Fact is, if your product is worth paying for, people will pay for it and possibly even donate to continue its operation. Otherwise, how about you leave the funding to the general public, and let them choose what they pay for, and leave the arrogance at the door?

Ritchie's Palm Impacts Face With Great Velocity

2010-09-29T10:27:00.002+01:00

Ritchie Murphy, misunderstanding the meanings of words and cherry picking again...

Even some Tories are beginning to realise how mad the cuts they are proposing are:
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has launched a big assault on the Treasury’s attempt to slash his department’s budget, warning that “draconian” cuts to military spending cannot be implemented without “grave consequences” for the Conservative party and the government.
Defence is not my favourite budget.

Fox is far from my favourite politician.

But he gets it: the cuts are massively harmful.

And his government will fail because of them.

But only after the rest of us have suffered enormously as a consequence.

Going through this nice and slow for you Ritchie...

A war is expensive (in many ways other than just money).
The last Labour government took us into not one but TWO wars.
The last Labour government spent more money than it had between 2001-2010 (one of the few budgets it rarely increased (and when it did, it the increases were relatively small) was defence spending).

The current Coalition government has to get the books under control.
The easiest way to do that is to not spend so much (just like you would do at home).
Since it has ring-fenced the spending on some public services it has to look to cuts in others (cuts good, ring-fencing bad because ring-fencing means deeper cuts in other places).

TWO wars are very expensive.
The government is probably thinking that it can cut in places (probably the bureaucrats in the MoD) and save some money.
If we weren't in two wars then they probably would cut military spending.

So Ritchie, if you read the whole letter, then you will see that Liam Fox specifically says:

...dangers and continue to push for such draconian cuts at a time when we are at war.

Military cuts while at war is like taking careful aim and then shooting your own foot. General spending cuts on the other hand are not harmful. I know this, Liam Fox knows this. Liam Fox IS NOT agreeing with you, Ritchie, or with Keynes that war spending stimulates an economy.

Personally, I think the justifications behind the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan are dubious and motivated through lies and over-reaction. We shouldn't have gone to either in the first place but now that we are they we should at least do a proper job of it and that means spending money on the military until the job is done and that the troops are safe as money can buy while they are there.

EDIT: The Spectator's Coffee House has a nice summary of this and the Miliband/Harman spat here.

Daily Dumbass

2010-09-28T13:51:00.001+01:00

Today is Jack Straw for his speech at the Labour Party Conference.

''This is not about selling out, or any of that nonsense. It's about listening, listening carefully, and putting our timeless values into ways which protect and benefit people as their lives - and their circumstances - change.''

Mr Straw repeated calls from new leader to appeal to the ''squeezed middle''.

The 'squeezed middle' being the in-public name that the Labour party front-bench have for their 'cash cow', the middle class. Prescott wasn't wrong in 1997 when he said that we are all middle class now; Straw is saying that the party needs to appeal to the middle class vote, which won it for Labour in '97.

''It took years of work by Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to undo the damage of the 1980s and reconnect us with all the people for whom this party works, recognising a fundamental truth: that we can only help the poorest and most insecure if we are in government.

Let's review the list shall we?
Kinnock - never won a general election
Smith - never won a general election
Blair - won THREE general elections
Brown - never won a general election
The only person of those four that you should if you want to get re-elected is Tony B-Liar. It should be evident that the harder you go to the left the less the public want you.

What damage of the '80s? The industrial sector production was up, the economy was growing, unemployment was lower than '79, etc. I fail to see the 'damage' that Straw talks about? Oh sorry - he is talking about the damage that was done to the Labour party of a decade in the shadows after utter failure on their part...

'Conference, our great legacy on equal rights and public safety is at risk,'' Mr Straw said.

Old Jackie boy forgot to finish the line as written: "Conference, our great legacy on equal rights and public safety is at risk, the Coalition government could undo everything we did to fuck it up. We need to get back into power so that we can make Comrade Orwell's dream a reality!"

''The Liberal Democrats have conspired to put the Human Rights Act under review. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are going to cut the use of DNA technology and CCTV, and restrict the ability of the police and local communities to fight the scourge of anti-social behaviour.

Oh noes.... the nasty Tories are thinking of returning us to a time when you were innocent until you were found guilty and the burden of evidence was on the prosecutor! And the evil Lib Dems don't want the people to suffer at the hands of a terrible piece of legislation.

''And who will benefit from this madness? There'll be greater freedom for the criminal, less liberty for the law abiding. It's crazy.''

Since 1997 it has been much harder for a person to actually be law abiding because of the hundreds of new laws that Labour brought in making everything illegal.
It strikes me that in Straw's mind there are four types of people - Inner Party, Outer Party, Proles and Criminals. Criminals being anyone who is against the Labour party.

Seeking to set out dividing lines between Labour and the coalition, he added: ''Equality is the most important idea which separates us from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Orly?

'We know that the countries which are healthiest, happiest and most secure are also those which offer the most equal societies.

I'm calling bollocks on that one... (more by the Spirit Level Delusion author, Chris Snowdon, here)

'Equality is not uniformity. It's not about making everything and everyone the same. It is certainly not about levelling down. It's about recognising and celebrating that every individual is different, and entitled to an equality of rights, of dignity, of the opportunity to realise their dreams to the greatest extent.

Close but no cigar Jackie boy... like everything that Labour preach it is great up until a point. The problem is the Labour always take their preaching way, way beyond that point until they are doing the opposite of what they set out to do, for example, the Equal Opportunities Act made it illegal to discount someone for a job based on race, sex, etc. Great in principle but it lead to a trump system of employment: Sexual Orientation > Religion > Sex > Race > White Male, even if the 'White Male' was the best person for the job.

Equality to all individuals should be the very basic things - their fundamental freedoms and the non-aggression axiom - after that, life is what each individual makes of it.

''And equality too is about opposing private extravagance and public squalor.''

What do you mean by 'public squalor' Jackie boy? Is this your nod to the Greenies? As for 'private extravagance', how can you possibly stop that? If you legislate against 'extravagance' then you are going to put people who work in markets that are luxuries out of work... how very worker orientated of you!

Who do you turn to in this situation?

2010-09-28T12:30:00.000+01:00

When the state owns everything, to whom do you turn when the state does ill by you?

A 79-year-old pensioner in Changchun, northeastern China's Jilin Province climbed to the top of a tall chimney at a local power station in protest after he received no compensation when his house was knocked down by the government. Liu had climbed to the top of the 25-storey high chimney. After emergency services were called, one firefighter climbed to the top using a ladder inside the chimney before attaching a safety rope to Liu. Then another fireman climbed the ladder on the outside of the chimney and led Liu back down to the ground. Once on the ground Liu was taken away by police

How can people think that state own monopolies are a good thing?

Still no news...

2010-09-28T10:54:00.001+01:00

We have sat through week after week of 'not news' that the Labour leadership 'race'. Now we are going to have to sit through several days of Dave Miliband doing the hokey-kokey.

I never really weighed in on the Labour leadership race but the circumstance of the result is more interesting.

The weight of the Union vote on the leadership race really makes me wonder: are the Union bosses going to force Milibrother Minor to take a sharp swerve to the left* or are they going to encourage their puppet to take the centre and then pillage the public coffers?

* I say 'force' because of the unique and democratic way that the Labour leadership is decided the Unions effectively rigged the vote in favour of Ed.

Early indications - denouncing the New Labour years - leads me to believe the former, the usual short-sighted rabble rousing by the Union bosses leads me to believe the former. BUT I always leave room for the unexpected and the unexpected would be the Union bosses realising that they can become richer - at the public's expense - if they get their puppet into office first.

But just imagine that weeks ago, it was Balls who got the Unions' support...

Ritchie, thinking of the children!

2010-09-23T11:08:00.001+01:00

More worthless nonsense from our moronic retired accountant:

My local paper has reported:
Speed cameras across Norfolk are set to be switched off as a cost-cutting measure. Councillors approved plans to withdraw the budget for the safety devices at a meeting of the environment, transport and development scrutiny panel meeting today at County Hall in Norwich.
This would mean that all fixed speed cameras would be turned off or removed and that mobile enforcement vans would also be taken out of service.
Police officers would retain the authority to stop and charge speeders, but with the force also facing cuts it is unclear what level of enforcement they would be able to provide.
In a report to councillors, director of environment, transport and development, Mike Jackson, admitted that traffic speeds would be likely to increase without speed cameras and that “more people may be killed or seriously injured in the county”.
In effect, at the behest of the Taxpayer’s Alliance and their lunatic friends in the ConDem government all regulation of traffic speed has ended in Norfolk.
Children on their way to school will die as a result.
More people will die in accidents as a result.
The demand on the NHS will rise as a result.
But libertarian driven cuts demand that we have the right to drive recklessly so we can kill.
This is sick. No other word describes it adequately.
I hope those councillors who voted in favour are forced to attend the funerals of those who will die as a result of their decision.

Swindon was the first English authority to remove fixed speed cameras. Did the roads of Swindon turn into Carmageddon? No.

Why not?

1. Because they switched off the fixed ones doesn't mean that there are no speed cameras, now they are just mobile ones that are far more effective because people don't expect them.

2. Clarkson told the people of Swindon not to drive like tits.

3. People are no longer braking sharply before fixed cameras to get their speed down, erratic driving causes more crashes than speeding crashes.

But more people will die! The number of fatalities on Swindon's roads went DOWN from 1 to 0, this says to me that people were already fairly responsible drivers and the lack of cameras has forced people to be MORE careful.

Why won't the children be effected by this? Most speed cameras are placed no-where near places where children are concentrated; schools, parks, residential areas, etc. Most speed cameras are sited on main roads, whose safety is being supported there?

Why is switching off the cameras a good thing? The bill for the installation and maintenance of the cameras is footed by the local council while the revenue from the fines goes to central government. If you want your council tax bill to go down then getting rid of them is a good thing.

This one tickled me the most:

But libertarian driven cuts demand that we have the right to drive recklessly so we can kill. People don't have the right to drive recklessly you mong. Driving recklessly is still a crime but people do have the right to CHOOSE to drive recklessly, if they do then they must face the consequences of that choice (i.e. prosecution, damages litigation, etc.).

If you look closer into this then is just like AWG/Climate Change, where two separate issues have become blurred by people (this is usually a tactic more used by authoritarian socialists than anyone else). In this case we have Road Safety and Speeding. The problem that Labour had when they introduced Speed Cameras is that Speeding isn't inherently unsafe (i.e. the safe/unsafe nature of speeding is situational; on an empty road in the early hours of the morning speeding has little to no safety impact, but at peak times on busy roads the safety impact is much greater). So they said that they were a safety initiative to make a better sell to the press and the public. Speed cameras don't improve a person's driving to be safer, in fact (as I mentioned before with sharp breaking) it is detrimental.

The problem is that Ritchie makes the same errors OVER and OVER and OVER again. People want as little hassle in their lives as possible, if they drive like a retard then they risk hassle. Therefore people (by and large, as always it comes down to the individual) will drive in a sensible and safe manner because the cost of driving recklessly is too high. The more you make people think for themselves the safer they and others around them are.

Ritchie Battles the Pink Robots

2010-09-16T16:31:00.002+01:00

To Ritchie anyone who is economically right wing is the embodiment of evil.

Ritchie cherry picks some statements from a Grauniad article about a statement issued by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, defending the cuts to the Welfare Budget.

Of course the mob are baying for Clegg's blood saying that he isn't a liberal and he is actually a Tory is disguise, the truth is that these are the people who forget that the Liberal Demorats are and amalgamation of two parties, the Social Democrat party and the Liberal Party. The old SDP dominated the Lib Dems until the rise the the Orange Bookers (and the appointment of Clegg as party leader) when the ideals of the old Liberal Party resurface. So Clegg IS a Liberal, he is NOT a Social Democrat.

Back to Ritchie, he poses six questions to the DPM:

Has Clegg not noticed that the disparity between those seeking work and the number of jobs available exceeds more than 2 million people right now?
Has Clegg no faith in the power of community – and the local – where people live their lives – and that most people have no desire to be mobile and cannot flourish if they do?
Has Clegg not noticed that the misfortune of poverty is in no small part randomly allocated – and few choose it?
Has he not noticed that the vast majority do not choose poverty – it is inflicted upon them?
Does he really believe that one of the richest economies in the world has no duty to redistribute wealth because the market always reallocates it upwards – so breaking down the cohesion that is essential in society?
Does Clegg really think the sole role of the state is to force people into any work the market offers – right or wrong?

1. I haven't checked the figures but with the recent downturn I am not surprised that unemployment has gone up. Mr. Clegg is probably well aware of the actual figure as this is one of the 'BIG ISSUES' that the Coalition has to tackle.

2. Here Ritchie is showing his total lack of understanding of profitability. I used to live in South Wales, once upon a time a majority of the working population in Merthyr Tydfil worked in the coal industry and the secondary industries related to it, then the coal in South Wales became too expensive to mine compared to foreign coal so the jobs dried up. Other parts of South Wales and the UK grew new industries and with them jobs. Some people moved to where the work was and are better off for it, other's stayed there living on government benefits because it was too expensive to move and the more time pass the lower the value of the house became because there was no prospect of work and the cost of living rose for those living and working in Merthyr as the taxes rose to pay for the support the local government was giving to the unemployed. It's why in 2010 Merthyr had a Jobseeker's claimant rate of 12.0% (the second highest in Wales). A large part of Merthyr's population is also in the public sector (the Jobseeker's rate was 14.2% in 2009 and thanks to the 'stimulus' package from Jonah Brown it dropped). People need to be fluid and go where the work is, especially when you have Welfare and the National Minimum Wage.

3. Now we are talking about 'poverty', not unemployment. Take note of the emotive change of words. You can elect to be unemployed but according to Ritchie you can't choose to be poor. First we have to define poverty, if you took the definition of poverty as struggling to feed oneself let alone a family then you would be looking at a very very small percentage of the population of the UK but the goal posts have moved because you can't argue that people are poor if they can afford all the basic requirements of living. Now you are poor if you can't afford the latest mobile phone, computer or flat-screen television. You can choose to be unemployed and therefore live off the state's largesse - and in some cases earn MORE than the NMW - but your aren't really 'poor' because you can afford everything that you NEED to live. So you can choose to be 'poor' and it isn't a random thing.

4. Same as No.3, well done Ritchie.

5. Hold on a second, this is typical Ritchie, confusing the meanings of words to suit his message. Society is the interaction of individuals, the market is the method of trade and those who trade the best get richer. The question people need to ask is "What is the alternative?" If we lived in a high redistribution nation, with high taxes and lots of welfare the people at the top (who are paying the most and receiving the least) will ask "Why did I do well with my career to have all the reward of it taken away from me?" While the people at the bottom will as "Why should I bother trying any harder when I get all this for nothing?" What happens to Ritchie's definition of society when the next generation can't be bothered to do well, the rich people all live abroad and no one is paying for the Welfare State, I know let's look at Cuba!

EDIT: Tim Worstall gives a better and more succinct answer than I can.

6. Back to Clegg being a Liberal. He is of the mindset that any job is better than NO job. Give a person the first job that comes along and when they are back on their feet they can decide their own career. It's not like that person is stuck in that job for all eternity.

Ritchie thinks:

It seems the answer to all these questions is yes?

I think Ritchie is being a Labour Party shill.

Ritchie then bemoans the Manchester School of Economics as evil and heartless because of its laissez-faire attitudes. He also highlights its largely political (rather than purely economic) nature, which school of economics doesn't have an associated school of political thought? Austrian economics is closely tied with libertarian politics, Chicago school is tied to (non neo-con) Republican thinking, Keynesian economics is tied to social democracy. Economics is all about politics and social interaction Ritchie, face it.

No wonder the Lib Dems are floundering in the polls.

The press have 'bigged up' the 'nasty Tories' so much that many people forget that the Lib Dems aren't in opposition for once. Also the BBC, Grauniad and Mirror have been attacking the government so hard that it isn't surprising that public opinion has dropped. Thirdly, had the government brought in the 10k lower tax limit with the June budget then I think the public polls would be different now.

No wonder the rump of the SDP within it – Mike Hancock, Charles Kennedy, Bob Russell is looking ever more likely to defect to Labour.

Good but remember the SDP split from Labour because Labour were TOO economically 'left-wing' and TOO authoritarian. If they do leave the Lib Dems then it just increases the concentration of Orange Bookers which is a good thing. If the Lib Dems do split though it means that Ben will owe me a drink as I bet they would be the first of the 'big three' to break up.

And no wonder more and more will turn against this government when they see their friends and families cats into poverty by attitudes like this – attitudes so far removed from the realities needed to address the economic crisis we have – and which the ConDems will make worse.

Ritchie, people who have the same economic plans as you have more in common with a drug addict than someone in touch with reality. You both think that the next 'hit' of drugs/stimulus will fix the problem but all it does is make the next come down harder. Let's go cold turkey for a while before the people get hooked again.

Do you know what?

2010-09-16T09:12:00.004+01:00

Life is dangerous.

It narks me that one accident happens when someone is doing something, it gets publicised by the press and out of nowhere the banstabators appears saying that it should be made safer/controlled/regulated/banned.

Seriously - we are going to soon end up living in Matrix style pods (or Surrogates style automatons), not because technology improves to the point where a person can live a second life in a digital world, but because the world is suddenly too dangerous for humans.

People WANT to experience the fear of almost dying - they get an adrenaline rush out of it. It is why we have activities such as motor-racing, skiing, sky diving and bungee-jumping. People are also safer when they know that there is an immediate risk to their lives, people get complacent because Health & Safety exists.

Death takes us all eventually, removing the small risks just ruins the enjoyment of life as a whole.

Don't worry because the government said so...

2010-09-14T20:47:00.000+01:00

Granted this is from Thailand but it feels very Orwellian to me

Unbunch your knickers Iain

2010-09-01T08:56:00.001+01:00

Iain Dale has gotten all bent out of shape about allegations raised by Guido about the sexual orientation of our Foreign Secretary.

All I have to say is that Iain Dale needs to grow up and become aware of the real issue that is getting overlooked in the gay/not-gay story.

The real issue - something that even Guido seems to have forgotten in the hype - is that Hague hired a total novice to a SpAd role on taxpayer money passing over better candidates because he may or may not be his secret lover. The Conservatives promised to end this sort of abuse of the public purse. I couldn't care less if every MP has a secret fetish/preference/habit that they like to indulge in as long as they use their own money to fund it.

I actually like Hague, I think that he is one of the best speakers at the dispatch box in the last century but this sort of abuse of taxpayer money is abhorrent and really tarnishes my view of him.

Ritchie started the day with a cracker!

2010-08-31T17:05:00.005+01:00

With this:

There’s been a powerful article on the New Yorker web site this weekend.
It documents the hundreds of millions of dollars David and Charles Koch have given in the USA to fund those who promote so many of the issues this blog opposes.
These are the people behind the Cato Institute that does so much to promote tax havens.
These are the people behind the Heritage Foundation.
These people are paying for the Tea Party movement,
What do these people think. Take this:
Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 (Libertarian Party] campaign [they funded] presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”
And why do they fund these think tanks:
That November [in 1980], the Libertarian ticket received only one per cent of the vote. The brothers realized that their brand of politics didn’t sell at the ballot box. Charles Koch became openly scornful of conventional politics. “It tends to be a nasty, corrupting business,” he told a reporter at the time. “I’m interested in advancing libertarian ideas.” According to Doherty’s book, the Kochs came to regard elected politicians as merely “actors playing out a script.” A longtime confidant of the Kochs told Doherty that the brothers wanted to “supply the themes and words for the scripts.” In order to alter the direction of America, they had to “influence the areas where policy ideas percolate from: academia and think tanks.”
These people want to destroy democratic politics as we know it.
They want to change society forever so that it becomes a brutal place for all but the elite winners – like them.
They deny our right to think for ourselves.
They deny climate change.
They deny the need to compensate for the abuse of the market.
They want to destroy our rights to choose.
And these are the ideas that the anarcho-capitalists who comment here, often endorse.
These are the ideas that creep into the Taxpayer’s Alliance.
And from there into the Mail and Express.
And into the Tories.
This is what we face: corrupting capitalisms that wants to destroy our society.
Cameron and Clegg are just starting that process.
But they pave the way for much worse.
And big money funds this. Daily. And I am sure it funds those who promote this vicious creed.
And that’s what we have to oppose.
Because such groups set out to destroy all we value.
They do so with a low profile. From tax havens. Behind fronts. And they do so with a mixture of respectable activity. But the aim is to destroy our democracies none the less.
This is the challenge we face.
Wake up and smell the coffee. This is what’s out there. And it’s spreading, like a cancer.
It’s what the left has to kill for good.
Without money to match only ideas can win the day.
There’s some serious thinking to do.

Big Tim Worstall responds to the part about the Koch Brothers here. And he is right in everything he says; rich people have money to spend... as they wish.

Ritchie's view of libertarians is completely facetious, he even claimed he was one. We already know that Ritchie puts democracy above liberty. In truth I think that Ritchie is a pessimist (and a control freak), so I'll go through each of his complaints and try to set him straight.

1. These people want to destroy democratic politics as we know it.
Not immediately and not totally (Minarchists still see the need for government but a very, very small one) but we think that the current system could be improved by diluting the power held by The Commons, The Cabinet and The Prime Minister.

2. They want to change society forever so that it becomes a brutal place for all but the elite winners – like them.
We want to change society to encourage winners, we also want society to be more aware of other individuals needs; and through enlightened self interest come to the conclusion that voluntarily helping others works to one's benefit. At the moment we heavily tax the most successful and productive to allow the least successful to be unproductive, the incentive in the current society is to sponge from the state, this is wrong in so many ways.

3. They deny our right to think for ourselves.
/facepalm Libertarianism is all about individuality, thinking and acting for oneself. The Nanny State on the other hand promotes 'unthinking' by taking decisions out of people's hands and making them for them.

4. They deny climate change.
Right-Libertarians are sceptical of any excuse used to levy a tax. I for one don't deny climate change, the Earth has changed its climate several times in the history of it's existence. Anthropogenic Global Warming on the other hand is inconclusive and once there is some clear, unadjusted results that show without a doubt that it is happening then I will buy into it again. At the moment I just see it as a scare fad like Avian flu, Swine flu, the coming Ice Age.

5. They deny the need to compensate for the abuse of the market.
...what? If you mean people being conned into deals then we have the law to deal with it (assuming that you use the non-aggression axiom as the main definition of a law). If you mean fluctuations in the market then all I can say is that it happens... someone will lose their job in one market but that means another job opening in another market.

6. They want to destroy our rights to choose.
See the answer to 3

7. And these are the ideas that the anarcho-capitalists who comment here, often endorse.
By my count Ritchie you have got 1/6 right when talking about anarcho-capitalists, half a point for the democracy one and half a point for the climate change one. If you are talking about Minarchists then you only have half a point on the climate change front. Keep trying though... one day we might take you out of the remedial class. :-)

8. These are the ideas that creep into the Taxpayer’s Alliance.
The TPA is a vaguely libertarian organisation, their main issue is balancing the nation's book (something that you should understand) and making sure that the taxpayer's money is well spent.

9. And from there into the Mail and Express.
...urgh. Calling those rags newspapers is like calling the Guardian a newspaper. It is an insult to real newspapers.

10. And into the Tories.
The Conservative party does indeed have a libertarian wing among its back-benchers; Douglas Carswell (Tory libertarian of choice for Dan Hannan, a libertarian Tory MEP), Steve Baker (founder of the Cobden Centre and mascot for the Devil) and Philip Davies (MP of choice for the libertarian blogger Dick Puddlecote). For the most part they are more pragmatic libertarians than those of us who are LPUK members or independent of political parties.

11. This is what we face: corrupting capitalisms that wants to destroy our society.
First let's try an wipe off the red mist all over this one... so we capitalists want to destroy society... let's work through it as a class shall we? Capitalists work in their own self interested (enlightened or otherwise), true. Capitalism (operated by capitalists) requires society (the interaction of individuals) to function, true. Capitalism wants to to destroy society, what? Ritchie, rethink that comment then try again.

12. Cameron and Clegg are just starting that process.
Yes they are because Cameron is (a little bit) more liberal than your pin-up Jonah Brown and Clegg is an Orange Booker who are my Lib Dem group of choice.

13. But they pave the way for much worse.
Yeah, like people becoming richer, more people getting employed, people free to do as they choose as long as they don't harm anyone else... sounds terrible!

14. And big money funds this. Daily. And I am sure it funds those who promote this vicious creed.
Does it? Where do I get my cheque?

This is rich coming from the man paid for by the Trade Unions who have a history of embezzling money from the taxpayer while there is a Labour government in charge...

15. And that’s what we have to oppose.
Every individual is free to choose in a libertarian society. If you and others of a similar mindset wanted to get together an make an area that is your perfect idea of the world you can as long as no adult is FORCED to live there.

16. Because such groups set out to destroy all we value.
What, like freedom and all that good stuff? Freedom is the reason that libertarians exist, we exist to live free.

17. They do so with a low profile. From tax havens. Behind fronts. And they do so with a mixture of respectable activity. But the aim is to destroy our democracies none the less.
Pot-Kettle-Black H/T to Tim Worstall again.

This is from the man who campaigns to close the tax gap (something I agree with on the conditions that the Tax meets with Adam Smith's definition of good tax practise, something not true in modern British Tax Law), against Tax avoidance and then uses Tax avoidance to lower his tax payments.

18. This is the challenge we face.
Life is all about challenges Ritchie!

19. Wake up and smell the coffee. This is what’s out there. And it’s spreading, like a cancer.
So we are a cancer now? I don't think that people who want to increase potential profit for everyone chould be described as a cancer.

20. It’s what the left has to kill for good.
Oh so you show your true colours now Ritchie, some might take that as a death threat.

21. Without money to match only ideas can win the day.
Are you looking for someone to fund you by any chance? I hear B&Q will hire people regardless of age Ritchie, possible new career for you I think.

22. There’s some serious thinking to do.
How about you start with the justification for all your posts...ever.

I think I got a little sarcastic towards the end.

Let's reinflate the bubble!

2010-08-26T09:28:00.000+01:00

This is coming from the prophet Ritchie...

I’ve just suggested that there’s not a chance that the UK will default on its debt – and to base economic policy on that risk is absolutely absurd when all the market indicators suggest that government debt is the one thing people want to buy.
That’s not to say there’s no risk of a sovereign debt crisis. Ireland has protested at S & Ps downgrading of its debt – and rightly so as these agencies are a positive menace, so frequently have they go things wrong. In this case they do signal real risk though.
The risk of sovereign debt crisis and a consequent new banking crisis is real. Very real. But it won’t be UK debt that triggers it.
It may well, however, be UK debt that will help get us out of it, again.
Thank goodness it’s in demand and cheap to issue right now.

This is from a man who has previously stated that it is impossible for a nation to default on its debts when it has its own sovereign currency.

H/T To Tim Worstall

Regressive cuts? Think about it for one minute...

2010-08-26T00:34:00.003+01:00

So an IFS Report has indicated that the poorest will be hit hardest by the cuts... it is inevitable and obvious that this would happen and someone at Channel 4 is aware of this (but of course it isn't shocking enough to form a bandwagon round).

This has got the Welfare campaigners up in arms but of course they can't offer up alternatives (other than to increase public spending) that will work and without contradicting their image of being 'fair'.

We will work with a simplified example:

Let's say we have £100 and we have 10 financial deciles to support based upon household income, decile 1 is the lowest 10% while decile 10 is the percentage of house holds with the highest income.

The simplest split is £10 to each decile, but that doesn't solve the issue that those in deciles 1-3 need more 'support' than those in deciles 7-10.

So what we can say is that decile 10 only needs £1 so that frees up £9 to go to decile 1 giving them £19 and so on for the other groups until decile 5 has £10. That is better but as a model it is still so linear to replicate real life because decile 1 needs more that a 90% increase over decile 5.

This is crude model but effective as an example:

In this example the sum of the pre-cut shares is 100 and the sum of the cuts is 25.

Click the image for full size

Granted I could of made a better example by using exponentials to calculate the proportions of the 'pot' that each decile receives but I had just returned from watching The Expendables at the cinema and as you made be able to tell from this Sylvester Stallone's unique writing style seems to have influenced me too much... so simple was the best I could do.

If you are going to cut 25% from the amount each group receives then the simple fact is that the lower income deciles will lose more in monetary terms because they received more to begin with. In normalised (percentages) they have lost no more or less than any other group, it's not really unfair or regressive.

The coalition cannot make the cuts in the high deciles because:

They wouldn't save enough from it
They would be called 'Unfair' by the Welfare camp and news groups like the BBC and The Guardian

Their only option is to make the 25% cut across the board because of politics because, in proportion, no one group loses out more than another in relative terms. But there are people who benefit by blurring the line between the absolute and normalised figures in order to grab headlines.

Democracy, the be all and end all?

2010-08-25T13:53:00.002+01:00

So Ritchie seems to think that Democracy is the pinnacle of everything... it isn't.

He has implied in several posts that liberty IS democracy and libertarians are undemocratic.

The sad fact is that democracy can be as illiberal as a totalitarian regime. Liberty and democracy are mutually exclusive, there is nothing to stop a liberal dictatorship/theocracy/etc. from existing.

As for libertarians being undemocratic; he is right and wrong at the same time. I know that Ritchie is calling us undemocratic in a governmental sense and in the case of anarchists this is true but I am going to talk about the concept of 'democracy'. In a democracy one uses their vote to show approval/agreement for a particular opinion, plan, manifesto, performance, etc. Each person has one vote and once that is gone that's it. So let's think of this from an anarcho-capitalist sense; you show your approval/agreement for a company/product/performance/charity/individual/etc. by giving them your 'vote' but you can also gain more 'votes' by exchanging your time, knowledge or experience for someone else's 'vote(s)' which you can then use to show approval to others. Now exchange the word 'vote' in the last sentence for 'money', suddenly not so undemocratic are we?

As for liberty:

First of all – as I’ve often said the issue is one of intimidation – they seek to propagate the message that if anyone stands up to their vicious form of capitalism they will seek to crush them. So much for a belief in liberty! It takes courage to stand up to such behaviour.

- Torrents of Abuse/Mein Kampf - Richard Murphy

Ritchie, you are as guilty as anyone of intimidation and abuse. The only difference is that you are so cowardly that you will keep it on your own blog where you can 'moderate' any other comments to paint the picture that you want. I have taken tonnes of stick from you and your peons for politely expressing a differing opinion.

EDIT: ~~I'd like to say congrats to BenS for us lazy bastards reaching 100 posts, a shame that I wasted it on Ritchie, sorry.~~ Scratch that, this was only the 84th post (apparently we have 16 draft posts, most are probably mine). On the plus side I didn't waste such a landmark post. The point about us being lazy bastards still holds though...

Correct me if I am wrong...

2010-08-24T08:53:00.000+01:00

... but didn't Darwin's theory of evolution already identify competition for living space as a key aspect of 'Survival of the Fittest'?

And surely even if it didn't explicitly say 'living space' sure the competition for other resources like food and water have that 'space' element to them because plants on the most fertile land will grow MORE fruit, the animals that feed on that fruit will be MORE healthy and numerous because they have better nutrition and so on and so forth around the food web...

So Sarda Sahney, you have probably just been awarded your PhD in "Stating the Obvious", congrats.

Cut it out Fox

2010-08-23T12:57:00.002+01:00

So Dr. Liam Fox MP wants the new Medal of Hounour game banned. Why? Because it lets you play as the Taliban where you can shot British soldier and that makes it 'un-British' (whatever that means).

Despite the response from EA Games telling the UK that NO BRITISH SOLDIERS FEATURE IN THE GAME.

So on that point The Right Honourable Dr. Liam Fox MP needs to shut up and stop putting his foot in his mouth.

He has also called for retailers not to stock it on the same grounds (because this was a personal opinion not a government one, therefore, right now there is no sign of bansterbation on the horizon).

I have to ask, "Why not let the market decide?" If the consumers have some objection to the game then they won't buy it, it will bomb and next time round EA will be more tactful. Banning it just makes it more desirable (like in Modern Warfare 2, where people talked about the optional Russian Airport level and that made the game MORE desirable)

EDIT: Just a thought but is part of Liam Fox's objection that there are no British soldiers in the game and he thinks it is unrepresentative of the whole Afghan situation?

Drugs, logic and morality

2010-08-05T12:17:00.003+01:00

As the drugs debate rumbles relentlessly on, I’m minded to point out that among all the statistical quotes, consequentialist analysis and high-minded paternalism, very few people seem to reference the most important aspect of the debate: the morality of drug control.

The reasoning behind the desire to legalise recreational drugs is sound. Statistics, of course, are compromised by the illegality of these drugs, but logically and evidentially all signs point to liberalisation as the best method to combat things like addiction and drug-related crime. Portugal provides the best example of this – with a general reduction in violent and property crime in conjunction with decriminalisation of all drugs, although these two things might not be necessarily related – and, generally speaking, everybody likes to see someone else test the water before jumping in themselves. Decriminalisation, simply put, works well in Portugal, overall drug use has declined, while cannabis usage has risen. It’s up to you what you think of that, but that’s what the indications are.

Some people, like my local MP, maintain the absurd opinion that, ‘The high THC… content of “skunk” cannabis renders it a dangerous drug; the difference between that and heroin is not great, I suggest.’ This, of course, is patent bullshit. It’s a simple failure of logic endemic throughout the political establishment and, worryingly, among people who should be more independent minded (rather than toeing the party line). It’s simple. If you make something illegal, it’s no longer obliged to submit to basic market rules and etiquettes. For instance, if you were to buy alcohol, you’re given an idea of alcohol strength, a general idea of what the beverage is made from (via the name itself… beer, whiskey, cider, vodka et al) and, most importantly of all, can openly rely on word-of-mouth and the opinions of family, friends and other consumers. You’re well aware of what you’re buying, and the vast majority of people will compensate according to strength. No sane person will drink a bottle of whiskey as he would a pint of lager – unless, of course, that is his aim, in which case the relative ‘dangerous’ rating of the drinks is pretty irrelevant. Not that skunk is really relevant to this. There’s no way skunk is as dangerous as toxic or even close to as addictive as heroin. But you catch my drift.

But this dissemination of knowledge simply cannot be achieved with illegal drugs right now. Pills are the best example. Politicians seem to be unaware that pills are usually easiest to obtain in nightclubs, which are dark, loud, smell like piss and aren’t the best environments to buy your drug of choice. If you want MDMA, you’ll most likely get a pill with some MDMA in it, and other shit too. Same goes for cocaine, which is exceptionally easy to mix with random rubbish to make the ‘gram’ of coke actually appear to be a gram. Basically, illegality gives dealers licence to commit wholesale fraud against consumers, simply because they are not subject to the pressures of the open market. This can easily be summed up by saying: dangerous drugs are dangerous because the law knowingly and actively stems the flow of information between seller and consumer. Simple.

Yes, admittedly, some drugs really are quite dangerous, but statistically this is magnified unfairly in most countries as it stands. So, what do we do with this knowledge? The general thought pattern for the high-minded paternalist is that if a drug goes beyond an imaginary ‘danger’ limit, it ought to be illegal. If it’s within this limit, it ought not to be illegal. You could realistically draw this line anywhere, to be honest. Cannabis, for instance, simply isn’t toxic enough to actually kill anybody via overdose, while the link between mental health issues and heavy use is not necessarily causal (do people with mental health issues smoke cannabis because they’re ill, or did they become ill because they smoked cannabis? Answers on a postcard, to…), while alcohol absolutely and definitely is toxic enough. Not to mention nicotine, which in a cigarette isn’t really toxic but it’s highly addictive and long-term use can result in some pretty horrendous illnesses. Not only is this a curious double standard, but it highlights the most important point about the morality of drug use, which is the ability to choose what, when and how you put something into your own body when given accurate information. Imaginary lines are just that – imaginary, made up, bunkum, humbug, bullshit. It’s just another type of prohibition.

I simply do not buy the argument that some drugs – the most stigmatised of which are crack, heroin and meth – must be banned for the good of society, or some other high-minded but ultimately empty concept. These drugs are, indeed, dangerous, but particularly in the case of crack and meth, they’re cheaper than, say, cocaine, which is slightly less dangerous even given its impurity on the streets. Driving all this activity underground creates a criminal underclass, and opening it up to the sunlight of the open market will hardly perpetuate such an activity. Consider the way you live your own life. Would you rather buy a bottle of wine from a reputable dealer, or moonshine from a bloke off the street? Unless you already have serious problems, I strongly suspect 99.9% of people would rather peruse the shelves and make an informed decision.

Quite frankly, the freedom to choose what goes into your body trumps all of the above. The logical end of legalising some drugs is to legalise them all, but doing it on a consequentialist basis does not remove the heinous immorality that is certain individuals and groups – Dept. of Health, I’m looking at you – thinking they have the moral authority to tell you what you can and cannot do to yourself, on the grounds either of danger or society. What utter balls! If danger were an issue, why not outlaw rugby, hiking, parasailing, tree surgery, bobsleighing, motor racing, horse riding etc? These things are arguably as addictive for the adrenaline rush, and can result in physical and, in some cases, mental anguish. You might argue these things encourage health, but that’s not much use after your spine has been crushed or your tendons twisted to the point of no return, is it? The society argument is also a nonsense. Nobody has an inherent obligation to anybody else. We all voluntarily associate with one another, and we all do stupid things from time to time. The presence of an arbitrary selection of drugs doesn’t change any of that, and it certainly does not change the axiom of self-ownership. It’s on the heads of the individuals involved to help somebody who’s really in trouble with drugs, if they choose to do so. If somebody’s actions lead to them dropping out of society, or harming themselves as a result, that’s, frankly, their business, and it should be left to friends, family and voluntary groups to persuade these addicts and ne’er-do-wells to clean up. It’s not up to government to force the issue.

To the prohibitionists and prohibitionist-lites, I ask you, what is self-ownership if you do not have complete control of your body? Assuming illegitimate moral authority over some other poor sod in order to ‘protect’ them is not only grossly immoral in itself, but exceptionally patronising. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet, but I’m pretty sure I’m more intelligent and street-smart than anybody in the current legislature (granted, that isn’t difficult) and, surprisingly, I can make my own decisions, thank you very much, and deal with the consequences. And I strongly suspect the rest of the country can, too.

The Problem of Hunting with Dogs

2010-08-02T20:07:00.005+01:00

After a small discussion on twitter about the ban, I thought I'd pen some of my thoughts on how the ban against fox hunting isn't a ban against an activity at all, but against a mentality.

Most people will agree with the following premises:

we need to eat in order to survive

this food can come in plant or animal form

where it comes in animal form, that animal usually must be killed in order to be eaten (exceptions being things like eggs, milk, cheese, etc)

sometimes, in order to acquire or store this food (plant or animal), other animals also need to be killed or have their influence mitigated (scarecrows for birds, traps for rats, ant poison, etc)

I'm not listing these things to be controversial, or even to invite some in-depth debate on the morality of killing animals in the name of eating. They just are, to my mind, legitimate and logical stages to our survival. We must eat, and in order to do so we must do certain things.

One of those things involves death. Yes, a cute animal must die in order for our appetites to be sated. A lamb might be raised for a few weeks then killed for its tender meat to end up in a market or kebab shop. Generally nobody has a problem with this. It's distasteful that an animal should die, but we're passing the buck onto other people – farm workers, men in white coats in slaughterhouses, butchers – so we don't get our hands dirty, but still get some nicely prepared food.

Often, this food can be compromised. If you've lived in London (or anywhere else densely populated and vaguely dingy), you'll know all about mice and rats. They usually zip about reasonably peacefully, but there is a chance they'll get into your big bag of rice or whatever you keep in the cupboard. So what do you do in order to stop that happening? You can either put a nice big lock on the cupboard, but as any rat fancier (or rat hater) will tell you, they're unsurprisingly adept at making their way into places you wouldn't think possible. And, besides, they carry diseases and stuff, right? You wouldn't want droppings lying about anyway, and heaven forbid there are baby rats knocking about...

So, when push comes to shove, you get a trap, or lay down some poison. These will at the least reduce the number of rats you have running around your house, which is pretty much the best you can hope for given the situation. Neither method of killing is a particularly nice way to die. A trap, for obvious reasons, can be painful, and usually fatal, with poison sharing the same problem. The rat – which, don't forget, is one of the more intelligent animals out there – undoubtedly suffers while you're trying to create a clean environment for your own eating habits. And don't think getting a cat is a good idea. They're quite capable of killing a small rodent, but are prone to treating it like a plaything...

If we translate this little story and replace 'rat' with 'fox', what happens? Well, it's clear that poultry and lamb farmers are not huge fans of foxes. They steal their produce, dent their profits and generally wreck the place. So they erect large fences, or construct pens for their animals. Well, that'll work after a fashion but the fox, like the rat, and any other scavenger, will make its way onto your land eventually. So, the farmer must protect his animals as much as he can.

If he walks around with a rifle shooting any fox he sees around the perimeter of his farm, would there be objections? There certainly shouldn't be. In order to make food for the rest of us, and earn a living for himself and his family, he must do what he can, including killing animals secondary to the poor blighters which will end up in a Sunday roast. His shot might be good, but there is a chance he'll miss and the fox will limp away in terror, or convulse in pain, just as the rat did on the trap. But all's fair in love and war. Both human and rat/fox are after the same food, and damn right the human isn't going to give in. Where would we be as a species if we did that?

This all sounds reasonable so far. So, suppose I'm in my kitchen and I see a rat go past. My face lights up as I anticipate the classic game of human-and-rat (kind of like cat-and-mouse only less cutesy). I pick up a shovel and chase the bugger around, hollering and yelling, letting out a roar of celebration as I get hit the rat out dead with a flat swipe. The rat's dead, in fairly short order, which is good 'cos I'll clearly never be arsed to actually buy a trap.

But wait, I had fun doing that! I essentially achieved the same thing as anybody else would have wanted – pest control – only I did it with a smile on my face.

This is the inherent problem with fox hunting. Foxes are, and remain, vermin. They do scavenge, they threaten and they ruin livestock. A bit like rats. However, I wager that a pack of dogs, given how short a time they chase the fox for (the part with the actual chase is the very final hurdle, everything leading up to that is picking up a scent) and how many dogs there are compared to fox, would kill that fox more quicker than a trap would, poison, or, in many cases, a gunshot. Obviously it's all pretty random. Some animals will be more resistant to poisons than others, some will lie in the traps differently, some might not receive the crushing blow to the neck that you might expect from pack animals, but essentially the survival rate is the same. They'll all die, and they'll all suffer for a short amount of time. The difference between suffering from a gunshot wound to the stomach and suffering from a frenzied attack of hunting dogs is not a great deal.

So the main problem can't be suffering. It absolutely can't. Animal death is a nasty business, whether you're killing explicitly for food, killing for fun and food, killing to control pests, or just killing for fun. There are shades of grey across all of these, and, I'm sorry, but there's nothing to suggest that methods of killing rats are more humane than hunting foxes with dogs. Rats suffer far more, with far less sympathy. Probably because they're less fluffy.

And, I suspect, the toffs who run around on horses hunting these foxes are, by and large, having a laugh. That's right, they're pest controlling while having a bit of a giggle. Not my kind of giggle, admittedly, but some people obviously like it. The fox at the end – disregarding certain dodgy practices – doesn't suffer any more or less than it would have, and certainly not compared to the poor rat, but the fact that the activity is considered a sport is generally frowned upon. Killing for fun is immoral, they say, and shouldn't be a legitimate sport at all. No blood sports here!

So finally I reach my main point. If you disagree with hunting with dogs, you can't eat meat. You just can't. If you eat meat, there's blood on your hands. Animals have suffered and died for your survival and you can choose whether or not to have a problem with that. I don't, personally. I like to see the animals die as quickly as possible (the rats I feed my snake are gassed to death before being frozen, which is pretty humane as it happens) but I recognise that in order for me to eat healthily and safely, some generally bloody things had to happen. Such is nature. The manner by which those bloody things happened is immaterial. It matters not to the rat, or the fox, whether or not the person hunting him, either with trap, poison or dog, enjoyed what he was doing.

If, however, you disagree with hunting with dogs and still eat meat, you've got to ask yourself: what are you criminalising? The activity of causing suffering to an animal in the name of sport? The activity of causing suffering to an animal in the name of your eating habits? Or are you just criminalising enjoying such activities?

It's not such a daft question. Well, unless you're a class warrior, then you're totally beyond redemption anyway.

The Art of Taxation

2010-07-28T17:20:00.006+01:00

Obviously I’m not planning on a full-blown philosophical and economic discussion on the various quandaries of taxation (‘Tax is theft’. There we go!), since I’m more interested in how lefties perceive the idea of why we get taxed, and where the government spends that money.

See, my understanding was that in some kind of clause within that invisible legal hazard known as the ‘social contract’, you pay money to be part of society, and that money is spent by your elected government in order to improve society’s problems. Yeah, ok, I don’t really know what any of that means specifically, but you get my drift. If I were going to have a stab at it, I’d say the idea is to tax the wealthiest – those who can afford to lose the most money – so that the poorest – those who have little, or no, money at all – can in turn become wealthier, healthier, more independent, and all that jazz. This can, of course, be done through various means, but the two main ones seem to be via the welfare state, through benefits, the NHS and such, and the other is public sector jobs, which is basically the same thing only you can put it on your CV.

So imagine my surprise when Polly Toynbee’s latest column pops up on google reader with the title

Arts for everyone is cheap considering its rich returns

Ok, now, I’m well aware of the fact the arts is a huge industry. Chances are, as Tim Worstall points out, the ‘creative industry’ Polly refers to includes much larger sectors, such as video games and advertising, but fine, I’ll happily accept that government spending in some areas of the arts will generate the rough equivalent of a profit.

As others have pointed out, if an industry can easily create value – by, you know, offering consumers something they’re prepared to buy – then why does it need state funding at all? Secondly these poor buggers who are going to these plays and what have you have already been taxed for the privilege of seeing an event, so it’s slightly dishonest to mislead on the revenue vs cost front. Incidentally, this is identical to the argument for the privatisation of the BBC. Apart from the moral problem of throwing people in jail for the heinous crime of owning a TV but not a licence (seriously, how do people not get wholesale pissed off with that concept?!), I think it’s pretty obvious the BBC produces and commissions some pretty stonking shows which do very well commercially anyway. Hell, I’d pay for it, and own several BBC DVDs. And I’m almost certainly not alone.

But that’s by the by. My question, really, is how can a lefty – somebody who is oh so concerned for the welfare of the poorest and how these people can go about their daily lives without struggling with their health, their bills and their attempts to find a job – possibly justify spending tax money, money which is supposed to be redistributed to these people, on the art industry, when the net gain for the poor is… nonexistent? It’s probably no secret that the poorer people are less likely to attend or participate in the arts (probably because they want a proper job first), so why, oh why, is money spent there? Judging by the general hysteria around things like child poverty and relative income inequality, it doesn’t really seem to work, does it? I mean, it’s even more of a conspicuous pile of wank than the welfare state.
Perhaps it can be summed up in Polly’s final paragraph:

What is the "big society" if not arts for everyone? Tiny grants already stretch far into communities, making music, dancing and art, engaging with history and heritage, drawing people together in shared emotions and experiences. Civic pride, quality of life, pleasure and endeavour (and art for arts sake) is cheap for its rich returns, but it's not free.

Sound like poncy Islington intelligentsia much? You go find me someone who lives in a Bradford slum who gives a flying rat’s arse about ‘heritage’, ‘shared emotions and experiences’, ‘civic pride’ or ‘arts for arts sake’. Go on. And then tell me why the hell we tax and spend again.

Fashion bashing back in vogue

2010-07-27T19:12:00.005+01:00

Not minutes after my last post, I notice this little wheeze is back in vogue after a few months' absence:

The coalition government is to put the fashion industry under pressure to stop promoting unrealistic body images and clamp down on airbrushed photographs in magazines and adverts.

Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister, who has long campaigned against size-zero photoshoots, will convene a series of discussions this autumn with the fashion industry, including magazine editors and advertising executives, to discuss how to promote body confidence among young people.

The first will focus on airbrushing, which Featherstone argues is contributing to "the dreadful pressure that young people, girls and women come under to conform to completely unachievable body stereotypes".

Lynne Featherstone has talked about this before (as a little aside... does anyone else find her voice incredibly irritating? Cheesegrater on chalkboard style?) and I remember thinking at the time, 'what exactly are you trying to change here?' Anybody'd think that unrealistic expectations about one's body, face, hair, career, love life, income etc etc are recently developed vices.

Sure, these advertisements are not entirely honest a lot of the time, and could probably do with a ballsy individual kicking them in the face with a fraud boot, but I'd like to refer everyone to Penn & Teller to tell us why this is all bullshit:

Yeah, what Featherstone is doing here is suggesting that skinny models promote unrealistic expectations of slimness, and so more body types must therefore appear in advertising. And then she proceeds to use Christina Hendricks as an example of a good role model.

Ok, Christina is absolutely cracking. Honestly, there are few more beautiful women in the world. And yeah she has curves, and certainly doesn't look as if she's putting two fingers in her throat every half an hour. But...really? Isn't holding her up as an example of a good role model just as bad as the size -5 model in the ridiculous fashion ad? As the excellent P&T pointed out up there, there's not a great deal anybody can do about their body if they want to achieve one specific look. Skinny, curvaceous, grossly overweight, muscle-bound... it doesn't really matter. People will always have these unrealistic expectations they can do sod all about. You know what the best thing about it is? Eventually, the majority of impressionable young women (and men, it has to be said) realise they're fighting a losing battle if they want to look like Keira Knightley (or... Brad Pitt? is that right?) and just get on.

Lynne, honestly, you can't protect people's feelings with legislation, that's just nonsense. I'm calling shenanigans.

Left, right or moot?

2010-07-27T16:09:00.005+01:00

I’ve watched with some interest the discussion among Telegraph bloggers dealing with the legitimacy of describing the BNP as ‘far left’; or, at least, deliberately aligning the BNP’s policies with more traditional left-wing parties like Labour, Socialist Workers Party, Respect, etc.

Generally speaking, I’ve agreed with Dan Hannan that the BNP are, in fact, far left. Economically, this is certain. A party which favours nationalisation and protectionism clearly sits on the left side of the economic spectrum. At least, in the spectrum as I understand it – the far left are for state control of the economy, and the far right for no state control of the economy.

Ed West takes a more historical view, asserting that it would be incorrect to label some fascist factions as left-wing because they were just as influenced by an “ultra conservative” in Joseph de Maistre as they were by socialism.

Now, I’m not sure if this is what he was trying to say, but I’m going to make the point anyway. There seems to be some confusion as to the correct application of ‘right’ and ‘left’ as either historical examples or as current descriptions. As in, perhaps it is true the BNP did not reach their economic policy conclusions through extensive reading of Karl Marx – while it is almost certain the SWP did – but what’s more important, the process of arriving at the conclusion, or the conclusion itself?

Using history to justify contemporary terminology is fraught with pitfalls. One of my great academic heroes, John Locke, is frequently described as one of the founders of liberalism, and rightly so. But it’s not the kind of liberalism Ed means when he says, “the wider liberal media.” Indeed, he recognises this distinction by noting the position classical liberalism – old-fashioned liberalism – would take on a slightly more fluid version of the political spectrum. The term ‘liberal’ has taken on a new meaning with something of a resemblance to old, but I can’t imagine those old liberal thinkers being much impressed with liberalism today. In fact, we have a term for what many call ‘liberal’, and it’s ‘social democrat’. Or ‘socialism-lite’ as I’d call it, but I can’t imagine that catching on anywhere except Fox News. If you’re describing their current policies, surely history cannot be relevant to the terminology. That’d put the Liberal Democrats in one hell of a muddle, wouldn’t it?

So we move on to problem number 2 with ‘left’ and ‘right’. They each hold, I think, fairly distinct meanings in two spheres – the social and the economic. If you’re economically left-wing, you’re all for the state having more say in the way the economy works. If you’re right-wing, you are the opposite. Logically, then someone who is far-left economically wants almost total state control of the economy (or control by the proletariat… tomato tomato) and someone who is far-right will be advocating either minarchism or anarcho-capitalism. The problem is the switch and the inconsistency inherent in the ‘left’ and ‘right’ axis. If you’re socially right-wing, you favour – to generalise for a second – things like the drug war, the prevalence of religion, active state discrimination against certain minorities (like homosexuals or ethnics), and if you’re left-wing, you want increased civil liberties, a transparent judiciary, accountability, and general equality before the law. These things also translate into areas of foreign policy. A right-winger will be seen as a jingoistic retard, while a left-winger is a naïve pussy.

So when Hannan stresses the left-wingness of the BNP, he’s certainly not wrong. The BNP are left wing as their policies stand. Their method of reaching the policy is hardly relevant. Language changes, and everybody must adapt – confusing the issue by using historical precedents is really a pointless exercise (even though I’m known to bemoan the left’s (oh shi-) kidnapping of the term ‘liberal’). They’re also right-wing. They want the state to have more of a say in people’s interactions and private lives. And, to make this personal for a second, this makes me both far left and far right. Libertarians are almost exclusively described as ‘right wing’ (granted, the phrase ‘right wing libertarian’ is usually used by disgruntled lefties who like to conflate free marketers with those babyeating Tories, but that’s by the by), but could, by common definition, by considered ‘left wing’. But I bet you the bases of libertarian philosophy didn’t inform, say, Respect’s vision of freedom. We almost certainly arrived at similar conclusions via different methods. So I suspect LPUK and Respect agree on many aspects of civil liberties (free speech, interaction, movement, etc). Is history relevant here? Or, is history more relevant than an adequate description of current policy or ideology? I don’t think historical terminology is useful beyond a historical context, at which point you have to be very careful. These terms are there to describe policy is a nice and concise, albeit exceedingly clumsy, package. And, funnily enough, that’s how they were used in the past.

I’ve not really got an answer to this, but that’s the point I’m trying to make. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ are entirely context dependent and are largely relative. They both imply opposite levels of state intervention (either economically or socially), but they are not semantically consistent with each other. Hell, in this post I’ve used the terms to describe simultaneously the SWP, BNP, LPUK, Locke, Labour and the Tories. And each time, I guarantee you, I’ve not been wrong, but I have been consistent. Seriously. It's easy to use such terminology to your advantage. So let's at least be consistent, right?

Richard Murphy - the Libertarian...as if

2010-07-16T19:08:00.001+01:00

Seeing as the whole Libertarian blogger community has been made aware of arch-Socialist Richard Murphy's claim of being a libertarian by the internet's foremost Scary Clown I thought that I would throw in my 2 pence worth.

Not only did Mr. Murphy claim he was a libertarian, he also claimed that 'the right' had effectively annexed the word 'libertarian' inappropriately.

Never the less, I attempted to highlight that he wasn't a libertarian and that his perceived image of libertarians was miss-informed.

Richard Murphy :
@mad foetus

Dammit, if you use the real definition it is very clear I am a libertarian. I consider myself to be so - I genuinely want to provide the individual with the opportunity to make choice.

You aren't a libertarian in any stretch of the word.

Richard Murphy :
@PJH

Censorship is an essential part of freedom

The above comment is evidence of that.

Libertarians aren't all identical, it is a key part of the idea behind libertarianism that everyone is different and individual and that all have the same freedoms assuming they follow the non-aggression axiom.

While there aren't just economically 'right wing' libertarians, there are also economically 'left wing' libertarians. Most libertarians are 'right wing' because it fits better with the philosophy behind libertarianism.

Most Libertarians - regardless of believing in the economic left or right - lie somewhere between minarchist (very small state) and anarchist (no state).

Richard, you seem to have convinced yourself that libertarians are only interested in the powerful few, this is not so. The premise behind libertarianism is that everyone has the same basic foundation and the right to achieve whatever they can achieve (as long as they don't break the non-aggression axiom). Its aim is to not disadvantage or for that matter advantage anyone.

As for your claim that libertarians are anti-immigration, this is not so. Libertarians believe in Free Trade and also the Free Movement of People. Libertarians are anti-welfare state (as they believe that the Welfare State reinforces negative behaviour patterns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning and traps people into being reliant on the state for survival), some believe that as long as there is a chance that the state's largesse could potentially be abused immigration is something that should be avoided, think of it as getting one's own house in order before inviting guests over (poor analogy I know but I am writing on the fly)

Hopefully I have dispelled some of your misconceptions.

For more information you should look at http://lpuk.org/pages/about-us/what-we-believe.php and http://lpuk.org/pages/manifesto.php

@idle pen pusher

Agree with you completely.

Needless to say, my comment didn't make it through moderation, what with Ritchie being the libertarian he is.

Governments, are they an inevitability?

2010-06-11T15:55:00.003+01:00

The modern government is a monster, a many headed hydra. Every time people cut off one head, two more heads grow in its place. The new heads are smaller and more insidious until they grow to become as large as the head that was lost, when they have to be cut back. So the cycle to continues…

Is there some way to kill this monstrosity?

Anarchy is to live without government and is touted as the solution by many, but is it sustainable?

I openly call myself a minarchist – even though I am drawn to the ideological and philosophically purity of anarchocapitalism – for two reasons, the evolution and application of law and the prevention of a government being formed.

Law

I have had several discussions with BenS on the application and evolution of law within an anarchocapitalist world. He tells me it is simple, every person would be in charge of their own protection so they could either do it themselves or hire someone to do it for them. You could hire detectives to investigate crimes in a Dick Tracy sort of way. Crime would naturally be low because of the greater cost of an aggressive act than a defensive one. Theft would be pointless because it would be cheaper and easier to actually purchase an item.

That is half of the application of law covered, got no problem with any of that.

Courts are the second half of the application of law. I have been told that like everything else in a market driven world the most efficient and cost-effective would thrive while others would not. This would be like a law practice, where judges come together and sell their individual services as part of a franchise (MacJudge, Burger Judge, Judgeway, etc.). Okay, simple, just like any other competing business.

What about the evolution of Law? Well, being libertarians, BenS and I both agree that Common Law is preferable to Civil Law. That would put the evolution of law in the hands of the judges who makes the day to day decisions and the effect is that Law evolves with the times and situations that are brought to its attentions.

What dictates that all of these judges should follow the same basic set of rules to abide by? Are the judges within each ‘court’ going to adhere to the rulings of other judges from other ‘courts’?

As much as I have come to dislike governments, the commonality of law is useful; the dictation of law is not.

Prevention of another Government being formed

Governments are a very unnatural thing but they form very naturally. They start with something simple; the biggest and strongest person, a cabal of heads of powerful organisations, land owners in a parley. Look at the EU that started as a congress to discuss the steel industry in Europe, it became an entity to promote trade between its member nations and now it is a proto-super state.

The closest legal clause truly intended to curtail the power of a government is the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. ‘The Right to Keep and Bear Arms’ is partially intended to deter undemocratic governments.

But like I said, a new branch of government is an insidious creature. It can disguise itself as an independent entity, as a well intending charity or advisory body.

A new government may have good intentions in its origin and for the first generation it may uphold its original intentions and limits but as the elder statesmen retire/die the new blood with see the benefits of slacking from the tight rules of their predecessors.

Who knows what form a post anarchy government will take?

This is why I say that I am a minarchist, working on a ‘better the Devil you know’ attitude. I think that if we did manage to change Britain or the world into an anarchy I believe that a government of some sort would always end up forming BUT I also believe in the cyclical nature of governments so an anarchy would come around again. If we could reduce the size and power of the current government to the point where it isn’t a path for the self-interested unless they are enlightened and keep it that way through legality and the threat of civilian revolt then we may have a chance to keep it that way.

In Her Majesty's Service

2010-06-08T18:56:00.000+01:00

Big outrage last week about public sector pay with the revelation that 172 civil servants earn more a year than the Prime Minister.

So let's assume that all 172 civil servants were earning £150,000 per year. That makes a total gross pay of £25,800,000 before an employers NI contribution (using 11% salary as the employer NIC = £2,838,000). 172 Civil 'Servants' are costing us £28,638,000 per year.

George Eaton (huhu) over at the New Statesman blames the private sector, somehow.

Had public-sector pay not risen in response to soar away private-sector pay rates, such positions would have become, as Polly Toynbee has written elsewhere, "disrespected jobs for disrespected people, second-class, depressed and despised".

George brings the guns of the left's biggest Guardianista to bare on the situation thinking that she is somehow correct...

Cameron's desire to tame public-sector pay is legitimate and understandable, and his decision to apppoint Will Hutton to lead a pay review for the coalition shows that he is sincere.

Good, the public sector is paid too much!

But until the government gets serious about private-sector pay, by establishing a High Pay Commission, its approach will remain distinctly unbalanced.

Now you are showing your uneducated ways George. As we have recently learnt people with Left/left-liberal leanings are 'unenlightened' on the nature of economics. Several problems with your plan, firstly, Governments should not dictate to private entities what they pay their employees, secondly, private pay rose in response to the boom in trade so it is natural their they pay their staff more for their success, thirdly, all those private businesses would have enforced a pay cut or freeze when the economic downturn hit. "Ah! but the Government put a pay freeze on the Civil Service," I hear you cry. That's right they did, but that pay freeze was too little, too late from a bloated public sector.

As for St. Polly of Nonsense's article; it is utter drivel how Public Sector jobs are more 'noble' than their Private Sector equivalents and how Harriet Harman is god's/the floating spaghetti monster's gift to the oppressed in the UK.

I don't think there is enough time in the universe to correct Polly on all of her errors.

Living beyond one's means

2010-05-24T19:23:00.005+01:00

Long time no post, real life being a bitch and all that.

There is a pattern between the posts of myself and BenS. I like to attack the idiots on the left, while he likes to attack the idiots in the blue left.

So here I am, upholding my normal posting position.

Once again it is a Guardian poster where Cuntery is Found (CiF) lets the vocal, but ill-informed, 'progressive' left speak out.

Over to you Adam Lent...

The £6.25bn of savings for the UK announced today are potentially damaging enough but when set in a wider context of the cuts-mania gripping the European Union they become positively terrifying.

It is because they all spent more money than they earned. So like any other people in the world they are having to cut back in order to make ends meet.

£6.25bn may not look like a vast amount in the context of overall spending...

Correct, the £6.25 billion isn't even a drop in the vastest ocean of debt the UK has ever been in.

...but as a recent analysis revealed, cutting that amount will lead to thousands of job losses and damage growth.

The 'recent analysis' is flawed, it is from the Guardian.

The cuts will lead to thousands of job cuts, in the short term. But let's think about this for a minute; the public sector wage bill is massive, all of them earn more than what Jobseeker's allowance would give them. Simple fact is that costs have just been cut. Eventually, with corporate and NI tax cuts, the private sector will pick up the employment slack and all those people will be productive members of society again.

Alongside cuts to local services, today's announcement also included cuts in areas specifically designed to help the economy: such as employment programmes for young people and regional development.

Who do you think pays for those employment programmes? "The Government", you say. But where does the Government get their money from? "Err...", you reply.

They have three options:

Firstly, they take out a loan. The Coalition can't afford to do that because that because that is how Labour got us into this mess.

Secondly, they could print more money. The Coalition can't afford to do that either for a whole mess of reasons but the elephant in the room is Stagflation.

Thirdly, they could raise taxes on persons and businesses. The 'progressive' left's favourite money pot. The thing is, the money boys in the Coalition know that businesses are the best way out of this and if they dig into earnings/profits they know that it will slow down growth.

And there are rumours of cuts to be announced in industrial investment. It is looking as though a big proportion of these measures that Labour put in place to support the economy through uncertain times is facing the chop.

Government has no place subsidising industry, Adam, you look old enough to remember the 1970's. You are aware that subsidies were a large part of the problem? As for Labour's 'plans', that is an oxymoron.

These plans alongside similar announcements being made across Europe put the future of the UK and the continent at risk. This is not just an economic concern, unpalatable political forces could well flourish in the resulting downturn. Angela Merkel may be under enormous political pressure at home but by leading the calls for eye-watering cuts, the German chancellor is at great risk of repeating historical mistakes that damaged the advanced economies incalculably in the 1930s and the developing economies in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The political consequences in both cases were rarely pretty.

Listen to me here Adam, left leaning policy has - several times in history - turned thriving nations into squalid, crime-ridden wrecks. Let's look at British history from 1946 onwards shall we; post-war Labour government makes a complete hash of the postwar era leaving the Conservatives to have to fix things, which they did. 1964, Harold Wilson comes along and turns all the hard work to shit. 1979, Maggie had to do what needed to be done to save the country from collapse but she is now viewed with hate by Unionists and all other left-leaners. 2010, Cameron isn't the man I would pick but he is a damned sight better than Brown and his thugs.

The really tragic part is the austerity packages being unveiled across Europe will not work. Cuts in one country are dangerous enough for a national economy close to recession but simultaneous cuts across a continent still reeling from the biggest financial crisis and recession in decades is absurdly risky.

The damage done to European economies and hence to tax revenues and the public finances could be huge. Deficits will widen and the markets will continue to panic. Indeed, for all the Tory talk of how the bond markets want to see deep and urgent cuts, there are clear signs that the markets are equally worried about the impact of austerity packages on the European and global economies.

Frankly, I am getting sick of repeating myself. Simply put, so that even a unionist can understand, short-term the cuts WILL hurt but they are the bitter pill that we have to swallow in order to survive in the long-term.

The senior politician one might have expected to have intervened early in this situation with some good sense, Vince Cable, is clearly not in a position to speak out. It is only the opposition and wider progressive forces, hopefully supported by a wider movement, that can urgently start calling for some sanity. Alistair Darling has made a typically understated intervention along these lines but something much noisier is required.

I like to think that St. Vince, for all of his spouting about left leaning economic policy, got into his office on Day One of the new government, he took a seat in his big comfy desk chair with a grin that would put the Cheshire cat to shame. He then took one look at the books, grin wiped from his face, and said "We're fucked!"

Progressive forces must demand that the EU acts closely together to take the necessary action to restimulate and rebalance the whole European economy. Yes, that will mean richer nations, particularly Germany, stumping up the cash and honestly acknowledging that their economic model is as much to blame for the problems afflicting the EU as any other. And if some restructuring of sovereign debt is required, so be it. The alternative route of deep austerity is to risk a leap into a fiscal, economic and political nightmare. The right may be happy to see Europe sleepwalk into this, the left must shake the continent awake.

The EU and the Euro, what a waste of space. Germany, France and the rest of the 'progressive' squad are having to pay for the mistakes of the super-socialist, workers paradises like Greece. How does that seem right to you Adam? Would you think it was fair if you had to give your neighbour money to stop him defaulting on his mortgage because he spent all his money living the high life, well beyond his means?

Update: Everyone's favourite hypocrite 'progressive' champaign socialist has weighed in on the subject but the combination of rage induced high blood pressure and this heat isn't good for me.

The 'P' Word

2010-05-05T20:30:00.003+01:00

It is been about a year since I got interested in politics and there is a word that I have come to hate because it has been co-opted by a school of political thought that at times is the antithesis of this word.

The word is 'Progressive'

Synonyms:

adjective: advanced, onward, forward
noun: progressist, progressionist

progressives plural

Someone who is progressive or has progressive ideas has modern ideas about how things should be done, rather than traditional ones. Adjective

Antonym

conservative

...a progressive businessman who had voted for Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936.

Willan was able to point to the progressive changes he had already introduced.

The children go to a progressive school.

A progressive is someone who is progressive. Noun (countable)

Antonym

conservative

The Republicans were deeply split between progressives and conservatives.

A progressive change happens gradually over a period of time. Adjective usu ADJ n

Synonym

gradual

Antonym

sudden

One prominent symptom of the disease is progressive loss of memory.

...the progressive development of a common foreign and security policy.

progressively Adverb ADV compar ADV with v

Synonym

gradually

Her symptoms became progressively worse.

The amount of grant the council received from the Government was progressively reduced.

In grammar, progressive means the same as continuous. Adjective ADJ n grammar

Is it progressive to tax the poor when you claim to help them?
Is it progressive to hamper the efforts of individuals who are trying to improve things by helping or creating jobs just because they are outside of the government's control?
Is it progressive to spend your way out of an economic downturn when that is one of the reasons for it?
Is it progressive to claim that a service is free when you take money from people each month to pay for it?

Leftist Election Tactics #1

2010-04-24T08:07:00.002+01:00

For Incumbents: Employ a majority of the working population under your government then threaten those people that they will lose their jobs if the other guys get in.

The Finite Universe

2010-04-23T12:54:00.007+01:00

So there is 'The Universe' and that is infinite.

There is the 'Milky Way-verse' and that is finite

There is the 'Sol-verse' and that stops at the Oort Cloud.

There is the 'Earth-verse' and we all know that it seems to get smaller each day.

There is the 'UK-verse', well...

There is the 'England/Scotland/Wales/N. Ireland-verse' they are finite

There is the 'County-verse' because in Cricket, those boundaries are important.

There is the 'Place where I live-verse', it'd be awful if my town were infinite.

Finally,

There is the 'My life-verse', because I am not a comic-book superhero my life is ruled by the laws of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.

Therefore; time is linear, my perception is limited to what I see, hear, touch, smell and taste and I will eventually die.

I want to become a renowned scientist, a husband, a father, a Libertarian activist, have a successful career, travel the world, do extreme sports, play video games, spend time with my friends and leave my mark on the world but more importantly I want to be happy.

The easiest way to be happy, from what I have learnt in my 22 years, is that trying to do too much and stressing yourself out does not make you happy.

Now to the crux of this aimless musing:

Women have the essential but unenviable role of being child-bearers, raising children is a full-time job in itself.

I understand feminazis when they say they want to be mothers but also have successful careers but unlike them I am a realist, I am aware that I can only do so much in my life, the more I try to do, the more what I already do will suffer.

Men on the other had are (from a strictly functionary perspective) useless after conception. In the natural world 'He' can be helpful by taking the role of providing for the mother of his child. In the modern world many men take the 'house husband' role because they choose to, this frees the mother to work.

I could now start a discussion on this being a prime example of when collectivism is better than individualism but anyone who reads the 'Humble Devil' will have heard it before:

Generally speaking, libertarians recognise collectivism, when voluntary, as
being A Good Thing; libertarians welcome people working together, as they
can
often achieve things that individuals cannot. However—and this is worth
repeating ad nauseam—the stress must be on the voluntary aspect of this
collectivism.

Feminazis, need to learn something that almost all other people in this country know, you have to prioritise your life because you only have so much time to spend.

Personally, I would rather die poor in money and rich in friends than poor in friends and rich in money.

TL;DR - Feminazis are selfish cunts who want to have their cake and eat it too.

h/t to JuliaM for making me think about it.

That B&B thing: redux

2010-04-12T18:14:00.003+01:00

My eminent colleague has already covered this general palaver about property rights confusion, and something to do with eviiil Tories, but I'd like just quickly to talk about a specific point brought up in the comments section of Andy Meyer's guest post at Liberal-Vision. He makes a few arguments in the post itself against discrimination by businesses - most of which, to me, are easily answered with, 'for the love of god, it's their business, not yours, not mine!' - but there's one specific argument I've heard a few times that honestly baffles me. Here's Andy in the comments:

Ben: I hope you agree people’s homes are private spaces unless they choose to make them more public by selling or offering access. How public a space they then become, and what rights or not that grants to those permitted access, and who decides, is where the piece draws distinctions between different political traditions.

I recommend reading the whole post for his summaries of the 'different political traditions', just in case leaving that in the quote causes any confusion...

I'm assuming the usual libertarian definition of property - you own yourself, and the products of yourself - which happens to be pretty much common to most western countries. To a point.

I could, in theory, own a 400 bedroom mansion and only allow certain people inside based on whatever prejudice I picked out of a hat that week and, presumably, that wouldn't be a problem.

On the other hand, if I own a 2 bedroom terraced house which happened to have a convenience store underneath, and picked 'gays' out of the hat and refused to serve them, suddenly that property is... no longer mine?

There are two problems really with this sort of approach. Yes, I understand the concept of a private household being different to a building which houses one or many businesses, certainly from a practical perspective. But, quite simply, there really is no obvious intrinsic difference between the two. Is it a matter of scale? Well, no, of course not, if a mansion owner can discriminate but a corner shop owner cannot. So, then, is a matter of whether it's a business or not? Well, no, that isn't the whole story. If I as an individual sell and buy things on ebay (i.e. trade, like businesses do...), but refuse to sell to morris dancers, am I also liable for prosecution on the grounds of discimination, despite my 'private' residence effectively also housing my business? Where is the non-arbitrary handy dividing line?

Furthermore, this line of thinking relies on a woolly definition of what a business is. To a free marketeer, libertarian or individualist, all individuals are, effectively, businesses, just smaller in scale than your standard corner shop/local pub/sports shop/whatever fare. The only thing that changes with the employment of extra hands and the expansion of property and wealth is scale. The specific use of the property can be many and varied, but there really is no point at which, somewhere, somehow, it changes from being private - and owned privately - to public - and still owned privately.

If someone could explain to me how the public suddenly gets a stake in private property merely by virtue of that property being used for trading above level X, then I'd be delighted to know about it.

Why Stone and Parker are gods:

2010-04-08T18:11:00.003+01:00

Gary Johnston: We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

If you think about it really hard, there is no situation in life that involves people that this quote can't be applied to.

Another silly twit

2010-04-08T12:24:00.003+01:00

The hottest political topic at the moment is the planned NI rise should Labour win. Labour and the Lib Dems are calling the Tories foolish for promising to freeze NI while some of the biggest names in the private sector are coming out to support the Tories plan.

Now there is a horrid bastard, Dan Roberts, spouting utter bullshit with no understanding how economies work and flaring up the old partisan lines of employer vs. employee.

Gordon Brown has once again tied himself in verbal knots trying to rebut the
criticism of business leaders over his National Insurance
plans.

Because the Fuhrer... I mean the Labour Party Leader, can't defend his position and is therefore WRONG, I'll say it again for good measure. He is WRONG!

But rather than tackle the critics head on, Labour has been forced into
a bizarre ritual of deference.

Because these are people who successfully run multi-million pound businesses that make a profit and still improve. Gordon Brown on the other hand has nose dived an economy into the ground and sold off a large amount of assets at the lowest price the market has ever seen.

The prime minister can be heckled
in the street by rude men screaming out his name...

People in this country have the right to bring their points across to the government, it is called lobbying, it is a system that is abused 9/10 times, but there is that one time in ten when it is right.

...but when it comes to sparring with angry business leaders he feels a
need to doff his cap: merely suggesting they must have been deceived by the
Tories.

For once Gordon knows when he is beaten? It is that or he is still in denial that he has done anything wrong.

Instead, in a bizarre twist, the story has become about this perceived snub to
their intelligence. Stuart Rose is deeply
offended. Others feel patronised. Commentators have begun to talk of the
prime minister's "shocking
insult".

Because these are some of the most business savvy people in the country, saying that they have been duped would be like telling Gordon Brown he has really been a Tory all his life.

The reality is that these top executives almost certainly do know what they are
talking about – but it doesn't make them right.

Oh but it does. I would have to ask Mr. Roberts, "If you were going to ask someone what would be the best crop or livestock to grow in a particular area who would you ask; a farmer whose expertise, life and soul was farming OR a civil servant desk clerk in the Ministry of Agriculture who has been taught the safe way to operate a stapler?"

Business leaders almost invariably prefer lower taxation. National Insurance is
unique in that it hits employers and employees, but their arguments have been
made about almost every upward change in taxation since time began

Simple fact of history is this: when taxes are low economies thrive, when taxes are high economies die.

Look at the height of the British Empire, the Netherlands, the rise of the United States, the resurgence of Georgia, etc.

The real question is what the alternative would look like. Would these business
leaders say the same thing about a rise in VAT?

They would probably grumble if it were not matched with a reduction of Income Tax, Corporate Tax and the hundred other taxes that people have to pay.

What about their supposed concern over the size of the deficit?

Michael Caine understands the principles of the Laffer Curve, why don't you?

How would they feel if overly-hasty cuts in public spending plunged the economy
back into recession?

It would create a vacuum of industry that the private sector would very quickly fill, the faster the cuts are made the more turbulent the transition but the end result is the same, a double dip recession would be unlikely or prolonged.

On this broader argument, Brown has more support in the business and
economics communities than this week's shrill name game would suggest.

Tescos only supports Brown here because they use his government to force through more legislation that protects their market share, the small increase to NI would barely dent their income but devastate smaller rivals.

More importantly, these are just the voices of a few dozen individuals, not
wisdom from on high.

They [business leaders] are at the top of their game and you say that it is not wisdom from on high, moron.

Much as they would like to think so, business leaders do not speak for their
employees, let alone their customers. On matters of personal political opinion, they speak for themselves. They should be politely listened to like everyone else, but the idea they have not only become the sole arbiter of economic policy disputes, but also remain beyond reproach themselves is insulting to our intelligence.

Let's go through the logic shall we? Businesses need customers, they wouldn't make money and therefore exist if they didn't have customers. Businesses also need staff, they wouldn't be able to supply their goods/services to their customers without them. If staff become more costly to employ then the business has two options; 1. transfer the cost to the customer, 2. lay off staff. Neither option is good for the business. When a business leader says that tax is bad they aren't just talking about themselves because like a food web in nature, all things are connected in economics.

You Mr. Roberts are insulting peoples' intelligence by lying to them.

Could Britain go the way of China?

2010-04-08T00:25:00.002+01:00

Special note to the Civil Servant who might read this: Think about WHY you are doing this, think about the implications of what you are doing and yes, I am not the government's (in almost every incarnation) biggest fan.

With the Digital Economy Bill being passed into law is this the beginning of the middle of the end* of British liberty?

I predict that in a couple years Labservatives will propose a new bill to end paedophile rings by making Google (or any other search engine) stop and report any searches for prohibited materials**.

Eventually there will come a time when Google will have the same battle with the British government as they are with the Chinese government right now.

* Sorry about that, but the beginning of the end of liberty started a long time ago.
** Of course the advertised prohibited materials will be child pornography but the bill will no doubt have a broad definition of prohibited materials and a whole bunch of enabling acts to grant extra powers in other places.

The flaw in modern British politics

2010-04-07T23:55:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time the case may have been that you voted for the LOCAL candidate with the intentions of doing the best for yourself, your family and your community. Unfortunately that theory has been lost over time.

Now, combining the 'first past the post' system, the post war central government and the government model that has both the executive and legislative branches of government sitting in the same house has led us to a situation where we are voting not for the interest of our constituencies but for the horrid fucker who going to do the least damage to the country as a whole.

Seems fucked up, doesn't it.

B&BGate

2010-04-07T12:19:00.006+01:00

God, I hate people who put 'Gate' at the end of any political scandal. The Watergate Scandal is called that because the Watergate Hotel was where it was uncovered, this does not mean that 'gate' is another word for scandal. I only do it here because I am surprised that it hasn't become a widely used name for this whole issue.

Back to the point...

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, suggested that the owners of a B&B should have a right to turn away homosexuals if they want.

This in turn sparked outrage from all over the place and caused some of the few homosexual Tory supporters to waiver due to CallMeDave's silence on the matter.

Then I read a post by Charlotte Gore on CiF, it was the libertarian stand point (I agree with this but I have less of a moral quandary about this because I know that I am liberal and while I might not like certain groups or ideas (furthermore, I am not a homophobe*, family meals would be very difficult for me if I were), I will tolerate them), but CiF being CiF was bombarded by short sighted leftist, 'liberal**' comments. My criticism of her post would be that; considering where it was being posted, she should have put more emphasis into the who "if they persecute then they go bust" point, I don't think that this point was transmitted clearly to the average Guardian reader.

Personally, the only problem I have with this is that Chris Grayling is an idiot. Had he said "It should be the right of a B&B to refuse any potential customer" then he would have not had half as much uproar. Of course some clever clogs in some newspaper would piece together the potentially negative connotations of the statement but at least it wouldn't have named any group in particular.

** I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
"Any fucker in the world who calls them self a 'liberal' and advocates banning an activity, philosophy, belief, sexuality, group, sex/gender or race is a fucking hypocrite."

liberal /l'ɪbərəl/

Synonyms:
adjective: generous, bounteous, lavish, bountiful, free
liberals plural

1. Someone who has liberal views believes people should have a lot of freedom in deciding how to behave and think. ADJ ADJ-GRADED usu ADJ n
She is known to have liberal views on divorce and contraception.
Liberal is also a noun. N-COUNT
...a nation of free-thinking liberals.
2. A liberal system allows people or organizations a lot of political or economic freedom. ADJ ADJ-GRADED usu ADJ n
...a liberal democracy with a multiparty political system.
They favour liberal free-market policies.
Liberal is also a noun. N-COUNT
These kinds of price controls go against all the financial principles of the free
market liberals.

...need I say more?

* Had to make that point clear before the pink army takes aim.

The way things were...

2010-03-30T17:53:00.006+01:00

Let me set the scene for you all;

The Players:

I am on the preferable side of 23 and a university graduate from a well-to-do middle class family. I am a minarchist Libertarian.

My sister is on the more legal side of 18, currently working as a Nursing Auxiliary, a prospective university student with aspirations to be a doctor. She has very little understanding of politics other than what she is spoon fed by the government, the MSM and my parents.

My father is an Engineer as was his father and his father before him. Staunchly Tory as far back as I am aware.

My mother is the daughter of an Italian-Polish immigrant family who arrived in Britain in the late '50s. Her side of the family are* traditionally Labour supporters.

The Stage:
Our kitchen table, Alan Titchmarch on the television discussing the "Chancellor's Debate" which of course kicks us off into discussion.

The Discussion:

I launched off saying that none of them knew what they were doing. My father gave a more politically correct answer; they all knew what they should do, but for the sake of votes none of them were going to say what needed to be said.

I then said that they need to cut tax and spending. Mother said that tax always goes up, no matter what you do. I said that if you cut out public sector non-jobs then tax can be cut, this outraged Sister, under the belief that I was referring to nurses.

So enlighten her I tried, I informed them all that if all the quangos that the government supported were cut loose then Income Tax could go. This outraged Mother again, "There has always been tax, there always will be tax. Every country in the world has tax, the Romans took tax, even the Egyptians took tax".

This is when Father tried to inform Sister of the standard tactics on tax at elections and the social responsibility of the more well off. "Labour will always claim to hit the richest of the rich with more tax because that panders to their supporters, but this doesn't work because the Richest of the Rich can afford to hide their money from the tax-man. The Tories will raise the tax bands to relieve the poor. But no matter which way you cut it, it is people like us in the middle who foot a majority of the tax bill." I could not disagree, but I chipped in with the concept of the Laffer curve, with a little dig saying "Yeah, the future is really fair for you".

I then pointed out that if you really wanted a socially 'fair' tax system then switch to an all sales tax system, the rich naturally spend more money, therefore, they will end up paying more tax. Mother chimed in again, "That won't work!" So I asked why not? "Look at VAT" She stopped there, so Father and I both said "That is a sales tax" "Yeah, I know, but they only brought that in because they weren't getting enough from income tax" was her response. Father then brought up the legality of it, Brussels wouldn't allow them.

Father then brought up another good point, echoing one that I made earlier about governments exist only to get more power for themselves; "It is all about control, if it were an all sales tax system then they could never control how much money they got." Upon hearing this I returned to the earlier subject saying that since the Second World War, the government has gotten more and more involved in how people run their lives, eventually taking control of many aspects. I stated that a person is in a better position to determine what to do with their life than some jackass in government. With this Father agreed, the first time that he has ever agreed with one of my "stupid Libertarian" points.

One statement that they repeated several times through the whole discussion was "Things will never change."

I came to realise that it will be hard work, incredibly frustrating but worth it in the end to open my family's eyes that things can change, you just have to want it to.

*some of that side of the family have come round to a slightly better way of thinking in recent years.

It's all so simple really

2010-03-14T14:41:00.001Z

From Terry Pratchett's 'Hogfather':

'It's the dried frog pills, he eats them by the handful,' said the Senior Wrangler dismissively. 'I say,
why don't--'
'Oh dear. I hope they're not addictive.'
'I'm sure he wouldn't keep on eating them if they were addictive,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Now, why don't you have another glass of wine...'

The insightful comedians

2010-03-07T14:13:00.004Z

Recently I've been watching some episodes of the animated Sketch show Monkey Dust, which, I guess, apart from teaching me the true meaning of 'black comedy', I have to say was very well-written and just hilarious in an uncomplicated way.

One of the sketches features David Baddiel... not Baddiel himself, you understand, but his animated persona is consistently drafted into situations to which he is not suited at all, because he's a 'famous comedian'. Hostage situations, stricken space shuttles, an England football team devoid of a full back... there's nothing David Baddiel can't be called on to do and then invariably not even remotely succeed.

This kind of comedian worship - i.e. if a funny bloke or lass goes makes a satirical joke, then he or she is instantly some kind of authority on politica or philosophy or whatever - so well-lampooned by Monkey Dust seems, however, to be persisting. In this instance, it's David Mitchell, well-known comic lefty (unlike most lefties, he's a professional comic) who, from memory, has made appearances on Question Time, Newsnight, Have I Got News For You and... Mock the Week. Ok, the last two aren't really cutting edge current affairs discussions, but at least he's making an effort right?

So let's turn to his latest piece on CiF:

If you think Ashcroft is a scandal, what about the attacks on the BBC?

No broadcaster in the world can match the BBC and its critics should stop belittling it

In all honesty, I can't be bothered with the Ashcroft and other non-dom stuff. It's been done to death and is neither that relevant or that interesting.

The stuff on the BBC though? Yeah, that is interesting, since I've got to fork out for The Glorious Media Network's funding every year. So let's see what Mitchell has to say about it.

The BBC exists in a nest of paradoxes. First, it's supposed to be impartial yet accountable – impartial politically, but accountable to the licence fee payer. But how is that accountability to manifest itself other than through politicians whom its impartiality should empower it to ignore? Getting people to text in their snow pictures seems to be the current best guess.

Well, yes, this is true, but it's not really 'paradoxes' but rather 'hypocrises'. Mitchell correct identifies the problem with the BBC's remit that while it must try to report news neutrally (which it does not), it has, ultimately, to keep its paymasters happy - on paper this is you and me, but in reality it's the party with the majority in Parliament. I guess the problem is that if you disregard market incentives and forces, you'll end up with a situation where, instead of being accountable to customers - 'taxpayers' to the BBC - you are accountable to the robbers - 'politicians'. You see it all the time in any kind of political or quasi-political institution. In many ways the BBC's incentives and motives can be linked to those of a party in Parliament; ultimately, the only goal is perpetuation of the status quo.

Second, it's supposed to provide content that the free market wouldn't otherwise support and not hamper commercial competitors too much, and yet remain popular enough to prevent viewers resenting the licence fee. People, including Thompson last Tuesday, say the BBC should "concentrate on what it does best", but most of us wouldn't pay £142.50 a year just for the Proms and Storyville. We also want Strictly Come Dancing, Football Focus and, in millions of cases, Jonathan Ross.

I'm not really sure what the BBC produces that 'the free market' would not. Sure, a free market in media might not produce a documentary on the ordeals of a dwarf in a sack tied to a rampant bull in the streets of Shanghai, but presumably that's because the demand isn't high enough. If it were, the private sector has much more incentive to cotton on to niche ideas than organisations like the BBC ever will. That's essentially my problem with the furore surrounding 6music and the Asian network's potential axing from the BBC. I know both stations are relatively cheap compared to other BBC ventures. I also know that both are reasonably good; I've been known to listen to 6music on occasion and enjoyed it. But, this is the point that people miss even though it's staring at them in the face: if there's an audience for this kind of thing - which, to me, without having conducted any surveys or anything, there seems to be - then it's not like this is the death of 6music- and Asian network-esque programming in the UK. At least, this would be the case in a free market of media.

The problem with the UK is the market is skewed, not just because of the BBC's effect on subscription packages, but also silly rules surrounding terrestrial TV, like the need for there to be a minimum amount of news/current affairs coverage p/week (or p/day, I don't remember). Although, in fairness, C5 manages for this rubbish to count towards this minimum.

I understand why the BBC frustrates the private sector – it makes business much harder for them. But I don't know why they expect the public to care, other than out of concern for the Murdoch and Rothermere families' finances. In all their whingeing, they've consistently failed to point to any other country where, thanks to the unfettered function of a free market, better television, radio and online content are available.

Um... what about across the pond? There's a constant stream of stonking TV shows coming from America some, I daresay, that are better than British-produced series in many cases. Even their news is more varied. Where among UK news broadcasters - BBC, Sky, C4, C5, ITV... any more? - is there such a startling dichotomy as between, say, Fox News and MSNBC? Nowhere. The American broadcasters are more interested in catering for opinion precisely because they are in it to make a profit. Thus you get far more stimulating and interested debate in prime time slots than you would get here. There are probably a variety of complex reasons for this, but the BBC's pervasive, limp-wristed and ultimately subservient approach to political reporting can't help the low quality and low variety of programming. Especially when it claims both neutrality and inclusiveness are part of its remit.

On the contrary, the BBC is the envy of the world. Why are we letting its competitors, and the politicians they have frightened or bought, tell us that we can't keep it as it is?

This is the killer. The competitors don't like the BBC because it, effectively, takes money from them thanks to the government. Politicians don't like it because - now, this is a surprise - some of them apparently think it's an unnecessary waste of money. Newsflash: Just because somebody disagrees with you, doesn't mean they've been bought off. Why does this sort of accusation keep appearing in CiF?

But I digress. If this is supposed to be a defence of the BBC from the maurauding 'competitors' and its paid-off politicians, Mitchell has completely missed the goal. I understand he's paid by the BBC, works for them on both TV and radio, and is a product of Oxbridge (which makes him a lefty automatically, from what I understand...). But he's missing the point. If we take the default position as no public service broadcaster whatsoever, then why should there be one? Let's look at the BBC's three-pillar remit as described by Mitchell:

1. Impartial? No, not likely.
2. Accountable. What does this even mean? It's not like we can stop paying for the BBC if it's shit. So this is hardly relevant to the licence fee payer.
3. Provides niche material. Does it really? For whom? Why should I pay for your, or anybody else's, tastes? Isn't that immoral, especially for something as increasingly useless as broadcast television? I mean, as far as 6music and the Asian network go, I can think of several radio stations which cover similar tastes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So, the BBC is useless, unaccountable and useless again, in addition to being biased and expensive for those who pay it.

I can only conclude that Mitchell has been paid off by the BBC. Oh...

Would you vote Labour?

2010-02-27T13:41:00.014Z

The discussion among libertarian bloggers about who to vote for at the next election (whenever it is) threw up some surprising results - more than one insist that voting Labour is the way forward. I broadly see the point of the Hitchens-esque argument with regards to the Tories.

However, I have to agree with CF's opinion on voting Labour:

What the flying fuck are you on about? Are you fucking mad?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that this woeful government has fully, comprehensively fucked up everything it has touched. Do we really want them to carry on meddling, interfering and ruining the country just so we can prove that they're ... err ... not very good at governing?

From the point of view of my personal situation, I'm sure I'm too young and not wealthy enough to want either to tolerate or make the best of New Labour for another 5 years, even if there is an outside chance that the Tory leadership might discover sense and sanity. The idea of voting for New Labour makes me want to recoil from my own thoughts and bang my head against a glass-covered breeze block for a few days.

Unfortunately, despite Jackart's attempts in Obo's (and others') comments to convince otherwise, I'm also not convinced by the idea of a Tory government, either. If anything, economically they're a sandwich short of a picnic, in addition to the usual disregard of anything approaching social liberalism.

But, that said, the Tories are better than Labour, but only better in the sense that they'll fuck about less. Ultimately they're still a statist, pro EU (despite resistance from actual, you know, people) and socially conservative, with some promising, yet insignificant, tinkering round the edges. Their education bill showed some promise, for instance, but I'm unsure how many people Dave will be willing to upset to pull that off. I fully expect it to be watered down massively.

The Lib Dems? Well quite apart from the fact they don't really understand economics, they too often tend to be just as authoritarian as the rest of them. Something I would not expect from a 'liberal' party, but such is life. Despite admirable attempts by groups like Liberal Vision to steer some Lib Dem policy into more sensible waters, I think Clegg, much of the leadership and, I hate to say it, the majority of the grassroots, want the social democratic side of the party to be dominant.

I think the answer is... vote for an independent candidate. Under no circumstances give your vote to any of the 3 main parties. Not only are they slaves to electioneering party policy, they're also too unwilling to change the status quo and, lest we forget, took part in the expenses scandal and almost to a man closed ranks until the secret could be hidden no more. While some might see it as a waste of time, consider that voting is, on the whole, a waste of time anyway - it's about what you, personally, can stomach when you put the cross in the box. I simply can't stomach voting for anyone who has been in, or is in a party already in, Parliament.

LPUK is my preference, but given there's no candidate in my area, I'll have a look at the independents and, maybe, if they don't piss me off again, UKIP. Maybe.

Farming new things

2010-02-24T14:07:00.003Z

Dan Hannan wrote today on the best way to protect elephant numbers in the wild:

The best way to incentivise the protection of the herds is to allow local people to treat them as a renewable resource, selling their meat, hide and tusks while preserving their numbers.

Which reminds me of a similar post at the ASI last month:

There is a market solution: the commercial farming of tigers. It is not difficult to farm tigers, and it is being done in many countries, including China and the USA. China has 5,000 captive tigers; the US 10,000. In fact these privately owned tigers may very well guarantee the survival of the species.

Economically and environmentally it makes total sense. The high demand is met by an increased offer. Therefore the market price for tigers goes down. If the price of a farmed tiger sinks below the price to poach one, poaching will disappear. In other words: farm tigers in captivity and tigers in the wild will be left in peace. It has been done before: widespread farming and internationally sanctioned trade rescued crocodiles from extinction.

Seems fair, sensible and to the benefit of all. Perhaps something similar could also be done with whales (although, in fairness, that would take up a little more, uh, farmsea, so to speak). Let's do away with the barriers to entry and allow a trade to flourish, along with, no doubt, the wild populations.

Want to see condoms on TV?

2010-02-21T14:27:00.004Z

Well maybe your dream has come true!

Officials will reveal that they have analysed popular TV shows and concluded that not enough sex scenes feature the characters discussing contraception.

They will say that "careful" analysis of 350 episodes of soap operas and comedies show that only seven per cent of sex scenes include a discussion between the characters about safe sex.

A report, called Mis-selling Sex, to be launched by the Department of Health, will call on television writers to include more dialogue about condoms and plot lines featuring the consequences of unsafe sex such as unwanted pregnancies and disease.

This is just mental, obviously, another example of too many busybodies getting an irresistable compulsion to do something, even if that something is neither necessary nor effective.

But this is more stupid than usual. It's like when these bansturbating tosspots assume that a long life is a good life. If you're banned from smoking and drinking you can live to 100 years old, and that's good. They're missing the point that most people try to concentrate on the fun parts of life. When the average person thinks about sex, it's not like he or she confronts a mental dilemma about the merits of different type of contraception.

Researchers found that only seven per cent of sexual content featured discussion of safe sex. Of the 102 encounters of actual sex, only three couples used condoms.

How do they know?! I watch a fair bit of TV, and I just assume that at some point when the camera isn't pointing at the sweaty couple, somebody's slipped a condom on or something. I mean, this is mainstream TV, not porn. I've no desire to see some bloke flopping his old boy out to cover it in rubber halfway through a particularly emotional episode of Spooks.

It will also call for more slang words to be used in order to connect with teenagers.

Yeah man it's totally dope that you wear the rubber ya dig?

Oh I do wish these people would fuck off.

A disconnect from reality

2010-02-20T17:31:00.006Z

CiF has kicked off a series on 'citizen ethics'. A short explanation:

Bankers' bonuses, MPs' expenses – the recent financial and political crises suggest a failure of ethics. "Citizen ethics in a time of crisis" is a project by the Guardian, in association with the Citizen Ethics Network, designed to instigate debate about who deserves what, how politics can help humanity flourish and what we mean by a good life. We asked prominent thinkers to explore key questions

Predictably, this has been good for a laugh, especially Michael Sandel's piece on a 'just society'. Or more specifically, in the subtitle:

Although we debate the meaning of the 'good life', it is impossible without shared ideas about justice and civic virtues

It always strikes me how those on the left are very quick to espouse certain key principles - like economic equality, communities, environmentalism, etc - and yet fail to realise that that very same view contradicts their supposed aim. A lot of the time I'm not even sure the writers understand what it is they're saying.

To demonstrate:

Citizenship, sacrifice and service: If a just society requires a strong sense of community, it must find a way to cultivate in citizens a dedication to the common good. It can't be indifferent to the attitudes and dispositions that citizens bring to public life. It must find a way to challenge purely privatised notions of the good life, and cultivate civic virtue.

The message here is quite simple: a just society features strong communities which are strongly dedicated to the public good. My problem is the separation between what Sandel calls 'the good life' and 'civic virtue'. If I am reading this correctly, in his opinion 'the good life' is, or ought to be found in serving the public good. Since it's evident that most people either disagree with that, or, most likely, have many different opinions what 'the good life' is, then these communities should be moulded in order to become civically virtuous. This would benefit everybody, thus enabling everyone to have 'the good life'.

This is a strange process. At the top of the piece, Sandel acknowledges that 'the good life' means different things to different people. Presumably only the deaf, dumb and blind would assert that each person doesn't have different needs and desires, so this isn't really a surprise. How, then, can suppressing that in favour of a public good possibly have a positive outcome? It will cease to be a public good at all if only the very few - the wealthiest - can actually follow their own preferred 'good life'. It's evidentially true that the compulsion of some governments to boost community and civic virtue results in less social mobility than before and the cradle-to-the-grave thinking that precludes any kind of civic virtue. And now it's trying to become justified philosophically? Damn.

The moral limits of markets: One of the most striking tendencies of our time is the expansion of markets and market-orientated reasoning into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. Consider the outsourcing of war to private contractors; the rise of commercial surrogate pregnancy; the growing use of market incentives to motivate students and teachers; the advent of for-profit prisons. These questions are not only about utility and consent. They are also about the right ways of valuing key social practices – military service, child-bearing, teaching and learning, criminal punishment, and so on. As marketising social practices may corrupt or degrade the norms that define them, we need to ask what non-market norms we want to protect from market intrusion. We need public debate about the moral limits of markets.

A common mistake of the left is its total inability to appreciate what the market is, and who takes part. For some obscure reasons, Sandel here assumes that the market is something that happens to other people. It's some kind of separate entity, like 'the government' or 'the church'. 'The market' only exists in some specific parts of your life.

Of course, this isn't true at all. The market is you, me, everybody. It's just a collective term of exchange. It's not run by anyone, except government regulatory bodies, which suppress it and mould it to the point where, in many cases, it makes little sense to blame the market when it goes wrong. This 'moral limit' is a red herring. The moral limit of the market is a meaningless term. Obviously, I see what he's getting at; he assumes that the less government regulation a section of the market has, the more likely it is to exploit, intimidate and be generally against the 'public good'. But he fails to recognise that if the 'public good' is the sum of the many and varied desires of, well, the public, the 'market' is the best way to allocate resource. Free exchange without interference is both moral and just, if your aim is increasing the public good. Special favours and the unintended consequences of regulation are neither moral nor just.

Inequality, solidarity, civic virtue: In many countries, the gap between rich and poor is growing, reaching levels not seen for many decades. Too great a gap between rich and poor undermines the solidarity that democratic citizenship requires. As inequality deepens, rich and poor live increasingly separate lives. The affluent send their children to successful schools, leaving other schools to the children of families who have no alternative. Private health clubs replace municipal recreation centres and swimming pools. A second or third car removes the need to rely on public transport. And so on. The affluent secede from public places and services, leaving them to those who can't afford anything else.

This is, frankly, a peculiar paragraph. The gap between rich and poor may well be growing, but that is not to say there are more people in poverty. In fact, quite the opposite. To be 'poor' now means you have to settle for a smaller TV. One hundred years ago it meant settling for a workhouse.

But I'll go along with the idea that gaps between rich and poor increase divisions and tensions. Certainly, that is true. Envy, a sense of entitlement, anger at exploitation and lack of opportunity are modern manifestations of this. What's confusing is Sandel's suprise that people with extra cash are less likely, for instance, to use public transport or public health. Is that not obvious? Do those things not exist to provide those without extra cash with some level of service? These rich people still pay for these services - more than the people who apparently use them - so what's the problem?

So, inequality can be corrosive to civic virtue. A politics of the common good would take as one of its primary goals the reconstruction of the infrastructure of civic life.

Again, these public services have either exacerbated an existing problem or created new ones. Government spending increases government reliance, decreases individual ambitions, and creates a welfare trap. The public good hasn't been served at all - these 'poor' people do no better personally, and have little opportunity for 'the good life'. It's an offensive fact to the left that for a lot of people the 'good life' is probably something to do with money, over-indulgence and extreme comfort. That's also known as a market incentive, and it's for some reason considered evil and unethical, when it's precisely the opposite. What better way for citizens to interact with each other than mutual exchange of goods and services?

A politics of moral engagement: Some argue that politics and law should not become entangled in moral and religious disputes, for such entanglement opens the way to coercion and intolerance. This is a legitimate worry. Citizens of pluralist societies do disagree about morality and religion. Even if it's not possible for government to be neutral on these disagreements, is it nonetheless possible to conduct our politics on the basis of mutual respect?

Ironically, most of this aritcle's suggestions entail 'coercion and intolerance', but that's by the by. And in fairness, I think this is a good analysis of politics and morality. Conducting politics on the basis of mutual respect? Well as a libertarian that's something I like to hear. You do your thing, I'll do mine, I won't interfere with you, you don't interfere with me. I'd respect that.

The answer, I think, is yes. But we need a more robust and engaged civic life. In recent decades, we've come to assume that respecting our fellow citizens' moral convictions means ignoring them, or conducting our public life without reference to them. But this stance of avoidance can make for a spurious respect. Often, it means suppressing moral disagreement rather than actually avoiding it. This can provoke backlash and resentment.

Rather than avoid the various convictions that our fellow citizens bring to public life, we should attend to them more directly – sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening to and learning from them. There is no guarantee that public deliberation about hard moral questions will lead to agreement – or even to appreciation for the moral and religious views of others. It's always possible that learning more will lead us to like them less. But we cannot know until we try.

I don't know about that. If you disagree with someone on moral grounds, and therefore ignore or avoid them, then that, spurious though it may be, is surely preferable to hectoring and hassling them in the name of not suppressing moral disagreement. But that's ultimately irrelevant. If somebody is interested in subject x, they'll go and find out about it. There's no point in pushing this 'learn more stuff about more people!' agenda if people don't want to do it. That, to me, is not respect.

It really is striking how many on the left seem to refuse to see that people really are different. There isn't a 'common' anything. If people agree, they come together. If they don't, they go their own way. But for some reason there's this desperate idea that everyone should have the same needs and desires, the same level of ambition, interactivity, moral opinion. And to think that free marketeers and anti-state types are often portrayed as unrealistic, childish and lacking in compassion. If reducing people to vague automatons, half by intention, half by accident, is your idea of 'just society' and 'civic virtue', then I can only feel pity for you.

Dear Socialists and Social Democrats,

2010-02-19T16:54:00.004Z

For all you deluded fools, I have a simple theory; if you make money valuable and easier to keep and acquire then people and companies will be less inclined to screw you for every penny for their goods and services.

Simple, isn't it?

Bob-"Awesomeness now has a name. Let me introduce myself."-ski

For the advanced lesson click here. (I just can't get enough of that song)

Kudos to the Heffer

2010-02-17T22:46:00.003Z

Simon Heffer is to my mind a proper Tory - socially too conservative, but economically sound, and politically extremely astute. His piece yesterday on the ambiguity of the Tories' policies, and its parallel in the US, hits the nail on the head:

The problem for the Tories is this, succinctly put to me by a close observer of the party the other day: if you boarded a bus anywhere in these islands, sat down next to a passenger at random and asked what it stood for, he or she could not tell you. The Tories' propagandists like to foster the belief that there is a secret agenda of radicalism waiting to be unleashed when and if the party seizes power by pretending to be like Labour. However, there simply isn't. Oppositions cannot afford to behave like this.

All true. I know I give the Tories a lot of stick on here, but this is exactly why. We know Labour is ideologically bankrupt, and the Illiberal Dems stand for nothing whatsoever, and those of us who might in the past have been inclined to vote Tory just feel betrayed. Yet another viable option on the ballot paper gone.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

Twitter wars!

2010-02-16T14:09:00.005Z

...or how I learned not to read too much into what happens on twitter.

As reported by most party political bloggers, particularly Iain Dale. His response, essentially:

I feel a Get Wright Out campaign coming on. He has a majority of 5,500 over the Conservatives. The Tory candidate there is Tom Biggins. If you would like to donate to his campaign, here's how to do it. Get Wright Out!

Fair enough, I guess.

There's no doubt David Wright is a prize wanker - he's a Labour MP, so it stands to reason - but I can't help thinking that his is all a bit... petty? Is that the right word? I mean, there's an election coming up for these guys, and the overwhelming message from the public is, 'what are your policies?' And Eric Pickles goes and sends an oh so strongly worded letter (heh) while Wright himself just keeps on digging a hole. Meanwhile saying something as innocuous as 'scum sucking pig' (not really sure what that's supposed to mean) gets a whole load of people in a tizz because, I don't know, it's ungentlemanly or something? I would have thought Labour MPs and activists calling the Tories 'evil', as is their wont, is a little more sinister, but there we go.

I suppose my main point is: who the fuck cares? People say pointless things sometimes. This is just political opportunism of the most irrelevant kind. It should barely even qualify as a scandal, or even a local spat.

That said, Guido's analysis is sensible:

If he had just admitted that it was too far and said sorry last night this whole thing would have been over within minutes

Not that I think he did anything particularly wrong, but pouring cold water on such stupidity would've been nice.

They're doomed

2010-02-12T14:46:00.002Z

Gorgon's curse will strike again!

Call me uninformed

2010-02-12T10:41:00.003Z

Just read this post by Sunny 'I learned to post from Boatang and Demetriou' Hundal over Liberal Conspiracy.

I have to ask, what do most libertarians think of Glenn Beck? I confess that I have missed this talking point.

Is he a guy with good ideas and verbal diarrhoea? Is he just a nut (crazy in the coconut), or talking sense?

Barking up the wrong tree

2010-02-10T18:14:00.002Z

Robin Hood Tax

I understand the sentiment, but seriously...

Batty Hattie is at it again...

2010-02-09T12:45:00.002Z

Harriet Harmon, equal rights activist, ultra-feminist, hated by everyone, is up to her old tricks again.

Not long after going toe-to-toe (and losing) with the Pontiff over her proposed Equality Bill, the mad Hattie is making news again trying to ban a word, that's right, a fucking word.

This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise for those who are unaware the UK has been at war with a word since 2001.

Seriously, 'Chairman', for fuck sake, it is easier to say than 'Chairperson' and I am sure that any person worth their salt would refer to a female 'Chairman' as a 'Chairwoman'.

If anyone in the world is going to drive voters AWAY from the Labour party it is Harriet fucking Harman.

Party loyalty

2010-02-08T18:06:00.007Z

Talking about the apparently declining popularity of the Telegraph - via a survey of 150 PPCs, and general mumbling about the newspaper's Conservative coverage - Iain Dale remarks:

Conservatives are instintively loyal to their Party. A newspaper's loyalty lies elsewhere. Over the last few years the Telegraph has given the impression of delighting in any difficulty the Conservative Party happens to find itself in. It has been sceptical, if not downright hostile, to David Cameron right from the start, with some difficult personal relationships not helping. Simon Heffer has played a big role in the alienation of the Telegraph from the Party, but he has been aided and abetted by many other Telegraph regulars such as Janet Daley and Jeff Randall. No matter who has been brought in to provide some balance, the space provided to Cameron sceptics has always been greater.

Perhaps this is because the Telegraph is a conservative (small c) paper, with a conservative readership and conservative writers, who prefer to write about their conservative opinions removed from the shackles of, what was it, instinctive party loyalty. Is it not obvious that Cameron is not really a conservative anyway? Because that could probably explain the apparent hostility.

Surely all this says is that uber-loyal Tories read a site run by other uber-loyal Tories, and prefer it to a newspaper whose views don't always line up with their opinions. That's not really a slight against the Telegraph, unless you happen to be an uber-loyal Tory... obviously.

I, for one, am glad the Telegraph's conservative writers, like Heffer, sometimes call out Cameron and his fellow social democrats for what they are, but I suppose some dislike such honesty.

Sunday Supposition

2010-02-07T12:39:00.001Z

CF beat me to this.

Today's supposition:

"How far would Gordon Brown go to try and muster up some public support?"

New rhetoric? Not likely.

2010-02-04T08:27:00.004Z

One of the most interesting things about David Cameron and his current Tory experiment - or perhaps it is a genuine lurch to the left - is how somebody can constantly talk about 'change', often quote the 'people' with confidence and call for different attitudes and approaches, merely by using the same old tried and tested techniques.

Take, for instance, his article in the Telegraph today. On the whole it's a swipe at the Brown government's tendency to a) stick its collective head in the sand, which ain't wrong, and b) engage in blatant electioneering by announcing meaningless policies, again, not wrong. We've seen at least two in the last week.

It doesn't quite add up, though.

One of the things that works in our current system is that a general election gives people the power to get rid of tired, useless and divided governments like the one we have today.

The truth is that people don’t want a new voting system – they want a new politics.

Steady on there, Dave. As the leader of a party which has backtracked on both the EU referendum and essential spending cuts, and hinted at policies which are just half a dozen to Labour's six, I'm not really sure it's prudent to say that.

His description of the current administration is spot-on, obviously, only a fool would disagree. And I can't be bothered to get bogged down in a discussion over electoral reform, so let's take Dave at face value that people don't want a new voting system, they want a 'new politics' instead.

They want change across our entire political system – the way it’s run, the people who run it, where power lies, and how much it costs.

Again... is big Dave setting himself and his party up as some kind of realistic alternative where all of that can be achieved? I'm not sure how on one hand Dave can, rightly, perceive that people are exceptionally sceptical of the political process in this country, when the promise of the EU referendum has barely left rigor mortis. I'm pretty certain that promise alone would, at least partly, deal with all of those complaints.

We will call for a ten per cent reduction in the number of MPs. And we will call for a change in the boundary commission with a view to levelling up the size of all our constituencies so that every vote weighs the same.

Cutting the cost and size of the House of Commons will address the symptoms of what has gone wrong in our politics, but we need to address the causes too.

I disagree that doing this is anything to do with 'what has gone wrong' (he's being very vague...), but, well, credit where credit's due, I can't really disagree with a reduction in the number of MPs. I've for a long time thought that 646 is just absurd. My personal preference was to keep the fox hunting ban and use excess MPs instead of foxes, but we can't all have what we want.

Oh, speaking of getting what we want...

In so many areas of our lives, people have more power and control than they have ever had before.

Armies of jobsworths able to enter property sans warrants, increased penalties for deviant behaviour, an increasingly detached and politicised police force, constant government hectoring on issues of health and in some cases just outright nazism, thousands of pounds worth of debt on every single person's head for decades and, of course, the Lisbon Treaty. At what point did people get power and control in among that mess? Maybe Dave means something else. But actually these are the things people are worried about.

But when it comes to the things we ask from politics, there is a sense that the system is self-serving, not serving us. This all needs to change if we are truly going to restore trust in our political system.

Too true. I have an idea: offer something different to the incumbents and stop this childish fascination with this middle-ground paternalist social democracy nonsense. Come on, how can you criticise the Blair and Brown years while only offering slightly less offensive rhetoric?

Of course, it’s going to take time and it’s going to be a tough process – but I’m determined to make it happen.

It won't be tough for the people. Just the politicians. And that, Dave, is exactly why you and your party are just more of the same, and the reason Labour aren't being absolutely caned in the polls despite their inability to govern. The reason why this isn't new, fresh, or promising, and why people aren't warming to it quite as the seasoned politicos in CCHQ expected.

You still just don't get it.

What should the NHS treat?

2010-02-02T16:52:00.003Z

Actually, I'm not really going to make two lists of 'yes' and 'no' with long explanations for each contentious point. On a basic level I'll just say that, if the NHS must exist, it should be doing only elective - that is to say, necessary - treatments and surgeries. There has to be a clear line between elective and non-elective otherwise you just end up overspending on absurd treatments that undermine the whole idea of universal health when one person takes the piss with a breast enlargement while another misses out on a hospital bed. That's socialised healthcare for you.

But I digress. Just saw this very, very strange story in the Independent:

In Britain today therapists are trying to convert gay men and women to heterosexuality. I know this, because for several months I infiltrated this network of therapists and put myself – a happy, "out" gay man – through treatment.

According to a report by Professor Michael King of University College London, one in six UK psychiatrists and psychotherapists have sought to reduce or change a patient's sexual orientation. And with the help of the American conversion therapy movement, practitioners here, along with a clutch of international "conversion" organisations, are becoming co-ordinated and unified. They plan to gain credibility, university backing and government funding. In some cases, the NHS is even paying for the treatment.

It's a long and in-depth article and, assuming it's not been blown out of proportion (although even on their own some of the quotations are worrying), quite a worrying development. I'm hardly privy to the opinions of medical staff in this country, but... really? Is this for real?

It transpires during the sessions that she gets most of her clients through an NHS GPs' surgery near her home. She says they refer people to her for treatment for their homosexuality. I tell her I know someone in that area that wants referring, should he just say its for anxiety and depression? "I think it would be better to say anxiety and depression initially and then we can take it from there," she replies. "He can usually get four sessions with the practice, which are paid for by the NHS."

So... how exactly does this happen? Obviously if you run a monolithic relic like the NHS some money will go places it probably shouldn't (homeopathy 'treatment' for instance, and probably a few other weird and wonderful alternative remedies) but this is just beggar's belief.

Is the NHS really that foolish with its money? Or is that a stupid question?

Climate change, the special case

2010-02-01T16:32:00.007Z

H/T to Geoffrey Lean at the Telegraph, whose post I almost missed, but eventually I did see this story:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday said companies must disclose to investors the physical impact that climate change has on assets and the consequences of regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Skip to next paragraph

The SEC public disclosure guidance on climate-related risks is seen as a major victory by an army of environmental groups and institutional investors that have pressed the issue since 2007.

"This is a big step forward," said Maryland State Treasurer Nancy Kopp, who also chairs the board of trustees for the state's $33 billion pension fund. "As investors, the information being disclosed isn't as useful as it ought to be."

There are several obvious reasons why this is pointless. The fact this isn't quite legally binding notwithstanding, I'm not sure who the SEC thinks are running companies these days. Sure, the banks went under (or should have done), but I'd wager administrators, investors, CEOs and entrepreneurs elsewhere are perfectly capable of judging risk and making tentative forecasts. It's the same for anything, presumably.

Under the guidance, companies should consider whether existing laws or pending legislation and regulations are a risk, and whether climate accords carry some financial risk. It also directs companies to consider whether actual and potential physical impacts should be disclosed, including whether there is a risk of increasing insurance claims in coastal areas due to severe weather or sea level changes.

Wouldn't any business worth its salt take all relevant problems into consideration? Or else they'll go bust, right? Or perhaps too many people for the democrats' liking are a bit too blasé when it comes to this catastrophic climate change lark.

Mostly this just reminds me of one of those tedious exercises kids are made to do in school so they can understand some sensitive social issue. I'm not really sure how this can be of any practical use to a business... and if it is, I'm fairly certain it's in the business's interest to adjust behaviour accordingly.

Schapiro and other proponents said the guidance "is merely intended to provide clarity and enhance consistency."

"If something has a material impact on a company, then it is something that needs to be disclosed -- that has always been the case," Schapiro said. "It is neither surprising nor especially remarkable for us to conclude that of course a company must consider whether potential legislation -- whether that legislation concerns climate change or new licensing requirements -- is likely to occur," she asserted.

If so, she added, companies should disclose the impact on liquidity, capital resources and operations. "Similarly, a company must disclose the significant risks that it faces, whether those risks are due to increased competition or severe weather," she said. "These principles of materiality form the bedrock of our disclosure framework."

Obfuscating competition with bad weather? What? What on Earth is this woman on about? So she's saying that businesses will find it in their interests to predict what idiocy congress will come up with next, therefore the SEC should tell them to try and... predict it. While sitting in the path of a tornado. Or something. Does the SEC also tell business to predict fluctuations in prices so they can adjust behaviour accordingly, to buy low and sell high, to keep customers happy, or is this a special case?

Ultimately, at least somebody has stumbled upon the most likely reason for this wheeze:

Commissioner Kathleen Casey, appointed by President George W. Bush, opposed the measure. She suggested that the SEC was trying to please the "social environmental policy lobby," which she said has long pressed the commission on the disclosure issue to drive environmental policy objectives. "The issuance of this release at a time when the state of science, law and policy relating to climate change appear to be increasingly in flux makes little sense," she said.

Yep, given the rating this gets on the pointlessness scope (a solid A, I think), this just stinks of pure politicking. And this is just one of the small steps in the middle.

"I bet that if we do the same thing again it will all work out just fine unlike last time!"

2010-02-01T14:52:00.003Z

Is the essence of the message from 40 Labour MPs who have made a press release with some 'radical' policy suggestions for the rest of the Labour party.

The only thing radical about them is how radically stupid they are. I swear Labour Party members must think that they live in a world where reality will shift into line with their thoughts because 'they want it that way'. Unfortunately for everyone else who has to live in the real world it doesn't work like that and all of Labour's 'ideas' just make things worse.

A. Keynesian economics, we all know how that works out in the end. So a few years down the line we will end up with a bigger bust than this one. Top that with some environmental scare mongering and we will be dandy.

B. Yet more regulation for an industry, yay. The result of government intervention will be that all the rich investment bankers will fuck off to where they can make money without having half of it stolen by the government. The next result will be yet more government endorsed and enforced cheap credit (see point A).

C. What a good idea this is, nationalise everything so that there is no competition and no incentive for improvement and customer service.

D. I thought that Robin Hood was just a legend. Apparently not as he is now embodied by 40 Labour Moro...MPs. Tax is just legalised and justified theft. They also want to return us to the Labour disaster that was the 1970's by restoring the Unions stranglehold of the British workforce.

E. Household Carbon Allowances, what a novel idea for a new tax! Renewable energy, which can't supply enough electricity to meet British demands. If the government wants industry to cut its emissions by 3% a year why don't they just tell all the shareholders of all the companies in Britain to sell up now because they will only be worse off in the future.

Unlisted point F. This translates to "let's supersede the British Parliament with the Labour Party so that only the decisions of members of the Labour Party matter to the nation as a whole"

Unlisted point G. This translates to "Insert another level of bureaucracy so that it makes it even harder for people to undo our mess."

These people have no grasp of logic or 'cause and effect'.

Yet more biased BBC...

2010-02-01T11:47:00.003Z

Full body scanners, are they really worth it?

That was the question that was supposed to be debated on BBC Breakfast this morning between Lord Adonis, Transport of Transport and Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch.

The first problem was that Lord Adonis didn't show, can't have a debate with only one side can we? But fear not, the unbiased reporting of the BBC is here...

Unfortunately for Mr Deane the BBC, Sian Williams and Bill Turnbull were once again operating as the mouth piece of HM Government. Oh wait...

Mr Deane was never given an opportunity to articulate his point. Williams, more so than Turnbull, was talking to Mr Deane like he was insane for considering that FBS' were an invasion of an individual's privacy and that privacy was important. I can't help but think about the old maxim about learning from history, not only would we be doomed to repeat it, we would neglect the good things that were learned in the past...

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a
little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Benjamin Franklin

An individual's privacy is an essential liberty, if you give the government or anyone for that matter the right to an inch of your freedom they will take a mile and tell you it is for the sake of your safety.

Ah, this is what we pay them for

2010-01-29T03:53:00.001Z

Words fail me:

The British Potato Council is trying to garner support for its campaign to reclassify the tuber as a "supercarb" - recognising its "unique dual identity" as both carbohydrate and vegetable.

A petition is being put to Downing Street asking for such recognition amid what the industry body believes is widespread confusion about the health benefits of the spud.

Are the potato people on to something, or simply trying to bamboozle the health-conscious with a new but meaningless name?

I knew the potato experts council, or whatever it is, did something...

'Five ways to improve the union'

2010-01-27T17:18:00.006Z

So says Alex Spillius' blog at the Telegraph. Overall, apart from the Obamalove BBC and Guardian articles, this is the strangest post/entry/article I've seen on American politics for a long time.

There are, predictably, five points which will make the US a better place. I don't have the motivation to go through all five (the commenters are giving them a pretty rough ride anyway), but it's this first one that really got my goat:

1. Reform of the Senate

For starters, end the filibuster, which is a mere Senate regulation, not a rite enshrined by the constitution. Modern democracies around the world are governed by the principle of majority rule; there is no reason the US senate should be any different. Once a measure of last resort, the filibuster has become not a check or balance but a bludgeon deployed with casual menace by the opposition. Other reforms could include a time limit on debating and passing legislation, and abolishing the senate altogether.

Now, I've long been a fan of the American style of politicking; how difficult, relatively, it is to pass a law; how the power is spread across two or three institutions; how accountability is easier to find; how the majority is eminently less powerful in Washington than in London or Paris or Berlin.

While the system could be seen as unwieldy and clumsy, I prefer to look at it from a different angle. It is unwieldy, but that's because, between the legislators and the people, there are obstacles to avoid and hoops to jump through. The gap between an authoritarian (or many) and an individual was constructed to be wide enough so that absurdist laws do not see the light of day. Well, that was the idea. Evidently it's seen some weakening over the years.

Essentially, what Mr Spillius is saying is that precisely because it's so difficult for the majority to push its agenda through the legislative branch, the majority ought to be given more power to act, somewhat like in the UK. A majority leaves you unopposed in the Commons, except for an increasingly impotent House of Lords. This very basically is what enabled New Labour to piss all over the average Briton's freedom.

Now, America, of course, is not immune to these things. The Patriot Act, somehow, despite being unconstitutional in the extreme, passed through Congress, for instance. But damn, at least there is a mechanism there to stop the majority running roughshod over the minority. I suppose Mr Spillius is not familiar with such minor states as New Hampshire and Vermont. They'd have virtually no say in any legislative proceedings were the senate to be abolished. And that is hardly conducive to a fair political system.

As for the filibuster... I think Dan Hannan put it best.

Quote summing up all civilisation!

2010-01-26T18:08:00.000Z

He was a wise man who invented beer. - Plato

Need I say more?

Speed cameras go green

2010-01-25T16:22:00.005Z

As reported in the Telegraph:

In a report published today, the Sustainable Development Commission has called on ministers to bring in the cameras to ensure that motorists stick to the 70 mph limit.

This alone would achieve a reduction of of 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the Commission says.

Well, aside from the fact the 70mph limit was thought up when cars still took about 3 miles to come to a stop, there's plenty to take the piss out of here. I never really understood speed cameras on motorways (of all roads) when they're the safest, and easiest - and often the emptiest - roads in the country. As such, I've always thought, if speed limits must be set, a higher speed limit on motorways was a sensible thing to do, since driving at 80mph rather than 70mph doesn't really increase risk to yourself or other drivers (on a straight, smooth road...) with the added benefit of, y'know, getting from A to B a bit faster.

But it's ok, the Sustainable Development Commission (???), one can only presume not a motoring group, has stepped in to ensure the arbitrary 70mph limit is kept... for environmental reasons. Check out this guff:

Other proposals are aimed at using technology to reduce the need to travel altogether, such as the promotion of video conferencing and making it easier for people to work from home rather than commute.

“While information technology alone won’t provide all the answers, it could go a long way towards making travel in the UK safer, more pleasant and more sustainable," said Stewart Davies, Business Commissioner at the Sustainable Development Commission.

“Already, eco-driving technology can help motorists spend less at the pumps and reduce their emissions; better information can make using public transport easier, and videoconferencing technology can help business travellers avoid some journeys altogether.

"It can help provide a better work-life balance, ensure we have more time with our families and as well as more productive working time. Increased, reliable internet connections on public transport could transform journeys into time well spent in a moving office, or for leisure travel – a cinema."

Isn't this all pretty moot when you're too busy suggesting new ways and new reasons for the government to crack down on drivers, who already have had their fair share of victimisation?

I mean this all sounds very reasonable on the face of it, but apparently Mr Davies and his cronies think you and I are too stupid to make decisions for ourselves... so government must enforce such things through 'law'.

Other recommendations in the Commission's report include a call for all cars to be fitted with speed limiters to cut carbon emissions.

Oh do shut up.

There is a ray of hope, however.

The idea of installing "time over distance" cameras on all motorways was condemned by Claire Armstrong, who runs the campaign group, Safespeed.

"For any organisation to call for any car behaviours to be altered in favour of unproven carbon emissions shows what a total shambles Road Safety has reached in this Country. The arguments are unproven," she said. "Are we to now be expected to offset road safety, against someone's misunderstood concept of Global Weather Patterns ? If so this would be a travesty."

Let's hope the motoring industry in general will be as robust in their responses to such nonsense.

Sunday Supposition

2010-01-24T18:18:00.004Z

This weekend has been spent watching Life in HD so today's supposition is themed just so.

This week, the UK's terrorist threat level was increased. The official reason is as a response to the attempted bombing on Christmas day of an American airliner. I suppose that better late than never is good enough...

My theory is this; Sarah Brown 'bought' her husband, the Right Hon. Gordon Brown PM, BBC's Life in high definition for Christmas and this week he finally got round to watching the Insects episode where he heard key phrases like "...number in the millions...", "...chemical weapons..." and "...suicide attack...". Tada! UK Terror Alert increased.

Your theories on the back of a stamped address comment please.

Life as a statistic

2010-01-24T18:16:00.009Z

Just saw a comment piece in the Telegraph asking for a national debate on what exactly the NHS should and shouldn't treat, using obesity to illustrate the point:

Rationing has long been built into the NHS (prescription charges are a form of rationing by price), as it must be since demand is almost unlimited. Where, then, do the grossly overweight figure in the scheme of things? Should they receive treatment on the NHS, or be told to stop eating so much and take exercise?

Here's the flip side:

On the other hand, were they to receive surgery, such as the fitting of gastric bands to stop them eating, this would reduce the risk of their contracting diabetes or a host of other illnesses and complications that, in the long run, would cost the NHS much more than surgery. However, the number of obese people is growing so rapidly that surgery cannot possibly be offered to all of them.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that it's not this article per se that's set me off (there is, in fact, a good debate to be had about the legitimacy of non-vital treatment being paid-for by the NHS). It's the very real and slightly disturbing public sentiment behind the idea that NHS treatment on the whole ought to be selective.

Ok, here's the thing: if you're going to tax everyone to pay for a National Health Service, on the grounds that you're providing universal healthcare, then provide universal healthcare. It's either universal or it isn't. Isn't one of the classic attacks on capitalism and private health that it doesn't help those least able to survive? Well, the NHS is supposed to alleviate that. So if somebody is more inclined to eat a lot, and thus become unfit and unhealthy in the process, they are covered by universal healthcare, which is better than struggling to find private cover, right? Like when somebody thinks it's a good idea to ride a horse and falls, breaking his collarbone? Marvellous.

But no, that's not quite right. I keep hearing the same lines time and again... 'the NHS can't cope', 'why should they get treatment for their own mistakes?', 'they're just taking up another hospital bed!' et al. You know, I'd have sympathy with this view, if those fat/coffee drinking/beer swilling/horse riding/whatever people did not also pay tax forcibly towards this system. They've either a) already paid for it, or b) are deserving of it according to the principle of universal health. It's that simple.

Is this not completely indicative of the apparently discredited 'road to serfdom'? Your life isn't your own, and soon it will cease to be entirely. By force you pay for the NHS, and soon you will have to obey its moral rules on activities and consumption before you can receive treatment. For many people, this will mean lead a life according to someone else's preferences, or never receive medical treatment.

And the statistics will look great. Fewer people will have died in NHS hospitals; more would have been successfully treated. Say nothing of those who were turned away; they were immoral, not doing their bit for their country, and didn't deserve the treatment. But under that sword of Damocles we will prosper on the Party's spreadsheets!

Let's rally against this absurd, elitist entitlement theory before the troughers start to pay too much attention to it. Then we can work on putting the NHS to bed finally.

The weapon of freedom

2010-01-22T18:07:00.004Z

Excellent article over at the ASI about Scott Brown's turning Massachusetts red. Here's a snippet:

I wrote a while back that so-called "Far Right" social conservatism was giving way to libertarianism as the GOP’s most powerful weapon, led by the phenomenon of the Tea Party movement. Brown’s victory is yet another triumph for this perception. This new Republicanism is tough to discredit, as it’s peppered with that very American, and oh-so-un-Far-Right idea, "freedom".

Sort of doubles up as a quote of the day.

An excuse for expansion

2010-01-22T17:01:00.008Z

It's extremely rare that I agree with a statement from a government minister, but - even though it's massively hypocritical of them to say so - I think the Labour opinion of this little gem from Big Dave C is spot on.

Mr Cameron, who was at a campaign event to talk about what he called Britain's "social recession", acknowledged that the problems went back decades.

He cited the cases of Jamie Bulger, Baby Peter, Damilola Taylor, Garry Newlove and Ben Kinsella, as well as the Edlington torture incident.

He said: "On each occasion, are we just going to say this is an individual case? That there aren't any links to what is going wrong in our wider society, in terms of family breakdown, in terms of drug and alcohol abuse, in terms of violent videos, in terms of many of the things that were going wrong in that particular family?

"I think we should ask these questions."

And Liam Byrne's reposte

"What Mr Cameron appears to be trying to do is seizing on one absolutely horrific crime and almost tarring the people of Doncaster, if not the people of Britain, with the same kind of standards and I think that people will recoil from that."

As I say, the irony of a Labour minister saying that won't be lost on anyone, but his basic point is correct. There's no doubt that the torture case in Doncaster is an horrific example of the worst kind of social problems that exist in this country, but to make a political point of it, as if such a thing is avoidable through government regulation of family life, is little more than fatuous, opportunistic bullshit. Is it not wholly possible, considering the sweeping reforms to our liberties and self-governance over the last few decades, often to combat this very thing, that, just maybe, in every basket you will find one or two bad apples? Legislating the whole based on a bad apple is, surely, like trying to crack a single nut with the moon. It's obvious to anybody who has seen a commercial or read a newspaper that sensationalising with a brutal story is very, very, very, very, very easy.

Of course, his opinion is moot automatically because the Tories, like most in Parliament, seem to think that drugs are bad by default - because prohibition has worked, apparently, and there's no bigotry involved whatsoever - and wonder why violent crime is on the rise when nobody can defend themselves effectively. Perhaps they should concentrate on what government can't do for us.

Non-profound quote of the day

2010-01-21T17:00:00.004Z

It just made me laugh:

Imagine that: a Labour supporter and a political techie. Is it possible to have less than no friends at all?