The Idle Pen Pusher

Independence, devolution, Scotland and a federal Britain

2012-01-14T20:44:00.005Z

The Idle Pen Pusher is happy that the question of Scottish independence is being raised very seriously. I don't favour independence and I hope the Scottish people choose to remain in the union. But I am glad it will be put to a vote and I do hope they vote for much more devolution.

There is no reason for most of the decisions that are currently made in Whitehall and Westmister about matters in Dumfries to be made there. But that doesn't mean they should be made in Edinburgh or Brussels. Edinburgh is a touch less remote than Westminster, but not hugely so. And the logic and the problems apply just as much to Carlisle across the border, too.

Westminster should remain in charge of defence, international relations, high level crime fighting, the currency and the basic law. Perhaps genuinely national transport issues like motorways, A-roads and intercity rail, too. All of that should cost no more than £50 billion annually, a fraction of the £650 billion the Government spends now. Everything else should be be devolved: welfare, pensions, education, local policing, transport, health, etc.

Crucially, wide-ranging powers of taxation should be devolved, too. Westminster should raise taxes to fund its expenditure and no more. VAT alone currently raises twice as much as my slimmed-down Westminster would need, so does National Insurance. Income tax raises almost £150 billion, about three times as much. Westminster should retain a flat rate Income Tax of about 8% and devolve powers for all the other taxes down to cities and counties in England and wherever local people choose in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Emphatically, we do not need another parliamentary institution of preening politicians to represent 'England'. As long as we remain in the UK, there is not decision which would be better made at either a local or UK level. Of course, the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish would benefit from the same approach, too, but that's entirely their choice, not a UK matter, and for now they seem happy with their assemblies and parliament.

So some in the SNP are right to say that there should be a third option in a referendum. But David Cameron is also right to insist there should be a clear, unambiguous in/out question. For what it's worth, I think there should be two clear yes/no questions on the ballot paper along the lines of:

"Should Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom?"

"If Scotland remains within the United Kingdom, should additional powers be devolved so that more decisions are made in Scotland?"

Scotland, England & Wales, Northern Ireland and any constituent part should be free to leave the UK at any time if the people in that region so choose.

The union is under strain. There is a hefty minority who favour independence in all of the home nations. Indeed, given the choice between the status quo and a break up, I think I'd probably choose break up. But unlike the EU, the UK has been better in the past and is reformable. Within a reformed, loose, federal structure where local decisions were made locally, I suspect most of the separatist sentiment would ebb away. Indeed, we could and should extend the offer to join (along with representation in Parliament) to the Channel Islands, the Falklands, Gibraltar and other territories and dependencies. Should anti-British sentiment ever fade in Ireland, we should offer it to them, too.

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Drugs, Welfare, Anti-Racism and the Tottenham Riots

2011-08-07T17:45:00.003+01:00

Last night youths in Tottenham in north London rioted in connection with a protest against the police killing of a black taxi driver, Mark Duggan. Duggan allegedly fired at police, who shot back and killed him. He was also an alleged drug dealer. While it is possible the police might not have needed to have killed him, the Idle Pen Pusher has limited sympathy for someone who shoots at the police and dies when they shoot back. Clearly, however, plenty in Tottenham do.

So far, 26 officers were injured, many shopkeepers have lost their stock and had their businesses severely disrupted, many homes, mainly flats above shops, have been completely torched with the occupants having lost all their possessions bar the pyjamas they left the buildings in. Some of the buildings appear to have been beautiful examples of Victorian architecture that are now lost forever. It’s not yet known whether the burnt-out buildings contain any corpses. So what are the root causes of the mayhem?

Unlike others, I can’t blame Labour MPs for blaming the Conservatives. This post will soon be about my interpretation of who’s to blame. In their empty heads, I’m sure many lefties genuinely but bone-headedly do think the so-called cuts are to blame. They’re not. But before I go into my own version of the background causes, let’s be clear about where culpability lies first and foremost: the hooded, balaclava covered, tracksuited scum who threw petrol bombs, smashed up property and looted sports shops for the latest must-have trainers and Aldi for its tins of Nourishment energy drinks. And let’s be blunt about this, too: most were black and those Asians and whites among them were dressed in the clothing of black sub-culture.

So here’s my take on the underlying factors. Least importantly, prohibition makes it more likely that people like Mark Duggan will carry guns. Secondly, the welfare state has brutalised people by encouraging lying, cheating and stealing and has reduced the level of social taboo concerning all those wrongs. Thirdly, and most prescient to the racial dimension, so-called anti-racist teachers, social workers and right-on journalists have warped the minds of far too many people into a victim mentality whereby every setback or problem in the life of a black individual can be attributed to ‘racism’. All these factors have combined to make a group of predominantly black youths and young adults in Wood Green and Tottenham to feel it’s OK to steal, vandalise and riot.

Prohibition. Why did Duggan carry a gun? Probably in part because he can’t rely on the police and courts to protect his contraband and enforce his contracts. This is because of the morally repugnant, cowardly policy of prohibition of some recreational drugs that pathetic politicians with their heads in the sand fantasize will make people’s problems that are related to drugs disappear. The hands of Labour politicians are just as blood-strewn with the misery and death caused by this policy as Conservatives. Only, I hate to say it, Liberal Democrats have anything to be proud of on this front.

Welfare. The welfare state incentivises families to break up and therefore makes fatherless families more common. This has well-documented effects on life-chances and delinquency. It rewards those who lie about their circumstances and it encourages begging for assistance provided on the basis of ‘need’ rather than reward based on worth, turning people into needy supplicants who stress how poor their situation is. This encourages a victimhood mentality. In a calm, measured and calculated way, the welfare state is looting writ large. Goods are taken from producers and distributed to those who the mob’s elected representatives deem worthy. Stealing and looting in the name of equality are thereby subtly de-stigmatized. This promotes an entitlement culture. It’s not just that it lures people into idleness. The taxes required to fund it destroy employment and prosperity in the process, too.

Anti-racism. I went to a school with its fair share of both inner-city black students and moronic lefties whose already limited brains became paralysed like rabbits in headlights whenever an accusation of racism was made before vomiting up some sick about how racism will not be tolerated and sending someone out of the class.

Kids are taught a caricatured history of slavery as something wicked white people did to noble Africans living at peace with Gaia with nothing but face-paint and straw skirts. They are told that everyone and every institution going is ‘institutionally racist’ and that the reason they are frowned at when they sit on outside tables in restaurants without buying anything, or walking around wearing tracksuits, sometimes with hands down the front of their trousers, or declined an offer from an illiterate job application is nothing more than racism. Is it any wonder many believe it and are angry with life and Britain?

I suspect that people’s fear of criticising black youths’ poor behaviour (for the hysteria we hold for racism) is one of the biggest causes of problems for black people today. White kids benefit from being told “don’t do that” by respectable adults when they step out of line and learn to moderate their behaviour. Black kids don’t get this so much, but they do from their peers and less respectable adults. The weird, perverted, tedious obsession in Britain with ‘racism’ is to blame here and for that Labour and the Lib Dems are most guilty.

I couldn’t help but notice that the pictures of individuals rioting on the BBC’s News In Pictures both featured white youths despite the fact that video footage clearly showed that most of the looters and rioters were black. Co-incidence, or is the Beeb trying hard not to show black people in a bad light?

So if drugs were legal, there was a minimal welfare system if any, and we didn’t get into a ridiculous flap at an accusation of racism, would those riots have happened? I wonder…

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Idly Watching A Cypriot Marriage

2011-06-01T15:11:00.006+01:00

longer than average...

The Idle Pen Pusher is visiting the Empire again, this time Cyprus, parts of which remain sovereign British territory. Sadly, those parts are just military bases while the rest of the island is run by Cypriot locals of Greek (in the south) or Turkish (in the north) ancestry to, how to put this, varying degrees of competence. But I am here not to wallow in dismay at locals but instead to witness the marriage of a friend to one, as best man.

The ceremony took place in a small Greek Orthodox church in the old town of the capital Nicosia. The Greek name for it is Lefkosia. The reason neither sounds terribly intelligible is that Nicosia is not an Anglicism. Not wholly, anyway. It's possibly a slight Anglicism from 'Nicosie', which the Franks invented after not being bothered to use the native word. But I digress.

The IPP is a (somewhat lapsed) Roman Catholic so I've been in pretty gaudy churches and seen some religious bling in my time (not least in Thailand) but these things are something else. Walls are covered in pictures both framed and painted largely with gold and, less frequently, silver. The senile old duffer of a priest was dressed and bearded how I imagined, with black robes under a gold vestment and a sort of upside down tophat above his white flowing beard. His pale skin and blue eyes looked unusually Nordic, however. While he didn't speak a word of English, nor I of Greek, I could make out that he did seem a fairly genial old duffer.

The day before the wedding I went along with the bride and groom to the church, along with their respective parents. I was told there that I'd have to take the rings of the pair off and swap them three times, as the priest intended to demonstrate by crossing his own hands over a couple of times and confidently announcing whatever the Greek words firing from his lips were. The groom and I thought it best to try it out there and then lest something was misunderstood. It took me a while to realise that he didn't mean I had to simply cross my own hands over, as per his quick demo, for example. But the priest, I was told, thought it was not necessary as he'd repeat his incomprehensible Greek instructions on the day and therefore everything would be fine.

Not present on the previous day was the maid of honour, who also had to perform the ring-related marriage initiations as I did and who screwed up ever so slightly by shunting the bride's slender ring too far down the groom's chubby digit, causing it to get stuck. Or was it the other way round? Luckily, I ignored the prudish looks of horror on some of the more puritanical guests at dinner the previous night when I floated the idea of filthy jokes during the ceremony. The groom grinned and the bride didn't seem to register as I muttered about "sliding her ring down your shaft" to the groom. Sadly not enough to make him laugh aloud. As well as the maid of honour, I think I may not have done things correctly, either. I counted the swap back as a swap and I'm starting to wonder if exchanging the rings three times meant swapping them across and back three times. If so, they're now living in sin and had a sham marriage. In time gone by I'd have had to pay the church a chicken and the groom's father a goat for my error while the bride would have been stoned to death. No wonder we get these details wrong these days...

I also had to walk around the little table (not nearly as impressive as the sometimes huge altars in Catholic churches) three times while the bridge and groom kissed a bejewelled copy of the bible each time. The groom also had to go up and kiss a gold icon of Jesus on the right hand side of the cross (the bride kissed one of Mary (I presume) on the left), quite a feat for my comically proud friend. "You mean, actually kiss it?", he checked, horrified. A surprise duty was having to swap the (by this stage decreasingly) happy couple's garlands over. Three times, again. I couldn't tell for sure, but I think a lot of what the priest was waffling was repeated a few times, too. I first thought it was symbolic of the trinity, but now I'm not sure whether it's a procedural custom or if all that triplicate action was just so he can remember whether it's been done or not.

After the ceremony we all travelled in varying degrees of style back to the bride's parents' home for a garden party in the torrential rain. Fortunately, marquees had been erected beforehand, disproving the theory that their erection would guarantee bright, sunshiney weather. The varying degrees of style ranged from the bride and groom's two-seater BMW sports car, followed by the VIPs in saloons, followed by favoured guests in the first minibus and followed finally by evidently less favoured guests in the second minibus driven by a Cypriot gentleman who may or may not have passed his driving test but certainly drove into a wall.

After canapes had been served and we were seated at our tables (mine was 4th), I asked the bride when we would be getting menus as I watched others getting up and hurrying themselves over to a table with food on it with alarming haste. She explained that we had to go up and serve ourselves and looked unsure whether to be amused or disappointed when, looking dismayed, I sought reassurance that "so it's like a canteen affair, then?".

"Now I see why you weren't allowed to give a speech", said someone on my table. Yes, the IPP was banned from giving a speech, ostensibly on the grounds that it's not traditional. I had toyed with the idea of chinking my fork on my glass anyway and using the many glasses of fizzy white wine I'd drunk to introduce a bit of English tradition, laughter and marital embarrasment to the occasion. After all, none of the really old people spoke English - Greek or Portugese depending on which side of the couple they were from. Alas I'd clearly not drunk enough glasses and didn't quite find the right time for an interjection.

Anyway, as I never got the chance to raise the toast I'd been grinning about all day, I'll do it now:

"To the bride and groom and a longer than average marriage"

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Rajan Tata, Chorus Steel and the idiot (Ian Murray)

2011-05-21T23:31:00.005+01:00

Rajan Tata, boss of Tata Group, which owns Chorus Steel and Jaguar Land Rover, is sacking 1 500 staff in somewhere like Sunderland (ie, somewhere in the North East, can't remember exactly where, not that it matters) as he castigated the work ethic in Britain, particularly of managers.

"It's a work ethic issue. In my experience, in both Chorus and JLR, nobody is willing to go the extra mile, nobody. I feel if you have come from Bombay to have a meeting and the meeting goes on till 6pm, I would expect that you won't, at 5 o'clock, say, 'Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home.' Friday, from 3.30pm, you can't find anybody in their office."

And people wonder why the North East is a poor region. But there's more. He adds this interesting management/worker angle:

"[In India,] if you are in a crisis, if it means working to midnight, you would do it. The worker in JRL seems willing to do that; the management is not."

So far, so uninteresting. Lazy, disinterested workers are less productive and therefore less employable. No great surprise it hits here when the axe falls. He had also indicated that he'd hired new management that didn't enjoy a cushy 9-5 culture. But... but the responses in the Times story on this were incredible. Mainly because Mr Tata is a member of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Group.

"I think the Government needs to reconsider whether he is a valuable person to have on the business council."

So said first class idiot Ian Murray MP, a Labour member of the Business Select Committee.

What a prize fool. I can't quite get my head around how contemptibly stupid this clown, one of the nation's parliamentarians, is. This creature wants the Government to stop listening to a businessman because the businessman laments the poor attitude of British managers? What the fucking fuck is going on in his head?

This idiot thinks the problem is the messenger and suggests shooting him. This idiot is a Member of Parliament. Not only that, but he sits on the Business Committee. What a fucking joke.

Is there any wonder we have such an unattractive business culture if this is the sort of monkey we elect to draft our laws? This actually genuinely upsets me.

Oh, and if you wondered where that comment about the good workers versus lazy management was going, this is how a perplexed GMB simian (Keith Hazelwood, since you asked) struggled with the businessman sacks management employees versus also praises workers and blames management dichotomy:

"Surely it's up to Mr Tata to make sure he employs the proper people, to make managers come up to the standards of the workers."

Yea, thanks for that, union person.

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Rally Against Debt - today at 11am in Westminster

2011-05-13T23:52:00.004+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher love protests. The buzz in the air, the on edge police, the thousands of retarded lefties spouting ignorant drivel about their pet subject and generally being quite offensive. But a protest in favour of the government? By right wingers? Something to get your head round. The Rally Against Debt (register here on Facebook if you're a member) is a protest today at 11am (opposite Parliament as you walk down to Millbank from Parliament Square) with speakers such as Bill Cash MP, Nigel Farage MEP and the Institute of Economic Affairs' Mark Littlewood.

I think it's worthwhile, despite the cringe futility of it all and the legions of weird people who will turn up to a 'protest'. First, it draws attention to the fact that spending and the National Debt are both planned to rise year-on-year, despite the "cuts" rhetoric. Second, it's a marker against all the mongs who waddled "for the Alternative" back in March. Third, there will be plenty of very sound people to meet. Why not go?

Visit the Rally Against Debt website for more details. Or register on the Facebook event page.

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Fucking Up Teenagers - School & Care Homes

2011-04-24T03:07:00.005+01:00

I've read (and heartily recommend) two marvellous articles, both about how we are really fucking up kids.

First on penning them in schools with nothing worthwhile to do (written about why nerds are unpopular in American schools but relevant here and generally, h/t to Sam Bowman on Twitter):

"the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow."

And second on how we are bringing up a generation of feckless, pathetic scroungers in care homes simply because we refuse to discipline them, even verbally.

"Nor does this state-sponsored bribery stop at points: to get them to attend workshops or seminars, they’re given free take-away pizzas, sweets and soft drinks. These classes include a two-hour session entitled ‘Benefits’, for which an expert on scrounging comes in to instruct our clients on any additional payments that they might be entitled to."

Both thought provoking and worth reading.

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AV Referendum in May

2011-04-18T22:12:00.005+01:00

The Prime Minister and Labour former cabinet minister John Reid delivered speeches in Westminster today for the No2AV campaign. Mr Reid's was pretty powerful and reminded me of his opposition to the smoking ban when he was Health Secretary.

The No2AV has done quite a few naff posters, but they're not quite as bad as the Yes campaign's videos. And it's surely notable that they style themselves "Yes to fairer votes", a statement everyone can agree with. Conversely, "No2AV" is honest and a proposition people can disagree with.

How can you watch this and not have pure, bubbling contempt for the Yes campaign?

I can barely contain my contempt for the charlatans who have let this poor old sod make an idiot of himself in the public glare. But aside from the campaign froth, the Idle Pen Pusher is clearly against AV, albeit not massively passionately so.

AV is the system whereby electors rank candidates in order of preference. The least popular candidate's voters have their votes recast for their subsequent preferences in successive rounds until a candidate achieves over 50% of the votes remaining in the round. In summary, it means the popular candidates who attract the support of voters for the least popular candidates are chosen rather than the most popular. The least unpopular rather than the most popular.

AV means all elected candidates will achieve over half the stated support, to some deree, of the electorate in more cases than at present. In most elections, it will mean a more proportionate parliament and more frequent coalitions. Landslides, like 1983 and 1997 are likely to be larger still.

The downsides are far clearer. It reduces accountability, it makes for more Continental, mushy politics, it makes votes less fair, it reduces the simplicity of the system and it will be more costly.

Accountability. More coalitions, more hung parliaments. Under AV, we'd probably still have a Labour government now. This is a far more important consideration than proportionality.

Mushy consensus. Mavericks will find it harder to get elected as PPCs will know they have to be blander to ensure wider but less concentrated support than under first past the post.

Less fair. Why should the couple of hundred votes of, say, the Chrstian Revivalist Party decide whether Labour or Conservatives win a seat while the thousand or so 2nd preferences of Liberal Democrat voters be ignored, just because their minor party is not as minor as some others?

Complexity. First past the post is beautifully simple. AV is also pretty simple on the voting side, but not on the counting side. This complexity is a bad thing as it reduces public understanding of the system. And tactical voting will not disappear. Voters will still have to think tactically if they want their vote to be a decider.

More costly. Several rounds of counting will need to be carried out, all with paid officials overseeing and monitoring. It's likely the 2am election day results will be a thing of the past, unless we spend a heck of a lot more on hiring officials to count each round a lot faster than we currently do. This isn't a small matter. Results within hours are an important feature of the British electoral system, one I don't want to see consigned to history.

Your vote will never be the one that changes the MP, less still the government. Democracy is good because it disperses power. Participation is worthwhile to express your choice and declare that no one else has the right to decide for you, not because your one vote will change the government which is elected. Any one elector's power is miniscule and that is a good thing. AV will not change that but it will make the system worse.

I'll be voting No in May.

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Osborne's Coalition Budget... C+

2011-03-23T23:16:00.003Z

George Osborne's budget was a workaday affair. Not bad, but nothing much to see. A few silly schemes, but nothing completely dreadful. But I expected better.

20,000 fewer public sector job cuts compared to the Emergency Budget. Lame.

2 per cent Corporation Tax cut. OK. But not nearly enough. It should be abolished, and he should have cut it to 20 per cent immediately.

Enterprise Zones are a joke. They are proof the government thinks it is getting in the way of business and prosperity. Why limit their effects to a few select areas?

Fuel duty cut of 1p. At last. This was good.

Personal Allowance rise next year by £600ish. It should be raised to £12,000 now, £10,000 at least, as per Lib Dem manifesto.

National Insurance and Income Tax. He should have been merged immediately. There's no need for a 'consultation'. He should have abolished both employer's and employee's NI, compelled business to raise salaries by whatever they save in NI and then whacked up Income Tax to make up the shortfall. It'd have meant a basic rate at about 33 per cent and higher rate of about 50 per cent and the top rate of about 55 per cent. Savings and dividends should be added to it with their differing rates and thresholds abolished.

Pensioners would squeal (not without reason) but fuck them. They bore fuck all burden when they were working (for their parents minimal pensions and tiny NHS expenditure) but they're milking the working age now. If they add to a chorus arguing for a tax cut for everyone once it becomes clear how much we all pay, so much the better.

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How Pure Is Your Libertarianism?

2011-02-27T22:22:00.002Z

I am a 'hardcore libertarian' according to this 64-question test. I couldn't call myself an 'anarcho-capitalist' and I'm not sure 'bombing civilians' is morally equivalent to murder (manslaughter seems nearer the mark). These things stop me from being a perfect or near-perfect libertarian.

Try it. What's your score?

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Racism, Charm & The Left

2011-02-21T22:51:00.005Z

Yesterday some mong left a comment on my blog about the Sunday Times clown in "knob end" glasses, David James Smith.

"Wow. I bet you think of yourself as not racist, as well, don't you?

This post and the commentators here are disgusting. "

Said the mong about my deconstruction of the clown's inane article. The Idle Pen Pusher doesn't obsess about race in the way that the left (Labour) and the hard left (BNP) do. But equally I don't really care if some random lefty thinks I'm a 'racist' either. I imagine quite a lot of them do, not least because the ones who worry about it seem to often have the deepest, most gutteral racist instincts hiding underneath their sappy front.

Which brings me to this blog at the left leaning Political Scrapbook:

On 29 January,NUS leader Aaron Porter was chased through Manchester by dozens of “activists”, the most aggressive of whom were wearing masks. The mob were led by somebody screaming “SCUM! SCUM! SCUM!” in Porter’s ear with the aid of a megaphone. By the time the battle cry changed to ”build a bonfire and put Porter on the top” the police were escorting him towards Manchester Students’ Union.

Funny. Shouting 'scum' doesn't seem to be the most alarming bit of the video they referred to. No, I find the charming lefties shouting "Aaron Porter we hate you/You're a fucking Tory Jew" rather more interesting. Funny how it wasn't mentioned on the PS blog!

Charming lot, lefties...

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The Dominant Political Culture

2011-02-07T22:03:00.003Z

He knows best

Alain de Botton wrote a 'clever' article for the BBC Magazine misunderstanding libertarianism which said many silly things which Anton Howes at the Adam Smith Institute and Harry Aldridge at IndHome have dealt with. One of his clever ideas is that:

"A libertarian state truly worthy of the name would accept that our freedom is best guaranteed by an entirely neutral public space."

A true libertarian state would thus ban free expression. But this wasn't what really made me choke on my croissant. It was this:

"Modern politics, on both left and right, is dominated by what we can call a libertarian ideology."

If only, Alain. If only.

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Faceproof - Case 009 (Richard Waines)

2011-02-06T12:38:00.006Z

Less conversation, please

The 16-year-old girl had been on her way home to a friend's house after a New Year's Eve party at the Venue nightclub in Llandrindod Wells.

The court heard how Waines crept up behind her and grabbed her around the mouth, telling her to "shut up or I'll cut your throat".
Horrendous attack
He took her to a nearby riverbank where she begged to be let go, but Waines told the girl "shut up or I'll drown you in the river", the court was told.

Guilty.

Next...

See other Faceproof cases

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Privatise Marriage

2011-02-05T21:57:00.006Z

No need for bureaucrats

Since 1837, the beast has required all marriages to be recorded by its General Register Office tentacle. Prior to this, it was a church affair. I can't be the only one who finds the institution of state marriage creepy. Why do people want to notify the beast that they are in a relationship with one of the beast's other possessions? Why does the beast insist on knowing and recording them? I can just about go along with the idea of it recording births and deaths, but relationships? That's freaky.

We should repeal the marriage acts and excise all concept of marriage in all aspects of law except contract law. Marriage should be privatised and left to churches and temples and drive-thrus in Las Vegas. The law should only deal with contracts and should otherwise treat people as individuals. Let happy clappy churches marry gays, let the one true and indivisible church marry only practising catholics, and let's get the state's great big creepy nose out of where it never should have been in the first place.

Let's deregulate and privatise marriage: Abolish the register of marriages. Decriminalise bigamy. Decriminalise incest.

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Faceproof - Case 008 (Shaun Foley)

2011-02-05T00:20:00.001Z

Barman Shaun Foley, 45

The court heard that Foley tried to cover up his killing by rushing into a nearby pub and telling customers he had seen her run to the edge and jump over.

Guilty.

Next...

See other Faceproof cases

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Andrew Neil's Posh And Posher & The Return Of Public Schools

2011-02-01T20:14:00.011Z

Thankful for Labour

Andrew Neil's 'Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain' brilliantly demonstrates the shameful failure of the comprehensive system versus the grammar/secondary modern/technical system it replaced. Since the near abolition of the grammar schools, the hitherto advancing meritocracy in Britain unwound. Private school pupils accounted for a decreasing proportion of places at Oxbridge and other top universities, MPs, cabinet ministers, judges and other top positions in society. The grammar schools allowed children from poor and middle-income backgrounds to ascend to the top of society if they had the drive, the ambition and the talent.

Not any more. Politics, especially, is an increasingly public-school dominated profession. I don't know the statistics, but I'm willing to bet those educated in state schools are a shrinking proportion of the high fliers in the City and business, too. The blame lies squarely with public-school educated Baroness Williams, the Hon. Anthony Wedgewood-Benn and Charles Anthony Raven Crosland and also grammar school boy Harold Wilson for letting them change his mind and abolish grammar schools. The route to the top taken by so many was swiftly kicked away by the 'egalitarians' in the Labour Party who clearly hated the idea that, in state schools, some did not win prizes. According to his wife, public school educated Secretary of State for Education Anthony Crosland said:

"If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England."

The binary grammar/secondary modern divide was arbitrary and divisive. But abolishing it was the opposite of what should have been done. The problem wasn't that there was more than one variety of state school. It wasn't that there were too many divisions. It was that there weren't enough. Secondary Moderns should have been reformed along similar lines to the Academies programme started under Tony Blair and being expanded and fleshed out by the current administration. But to destroy the grammar schools was the biggest kick in the teeth the British elite had given the rest (and the nation as a whole) in a long time.

It should come as no surprise that public school educated pupils go on to prosper at the top of society. Intelligence and talent are a large part genetic. The talented and intelligent people who earn enough money to send their sprogs to a private school are likely to have talented and intelligent children. In addition, they have their network of rich friends from school who will be useful to them as they progress their careers.

But they also have something else that's very important. At their private schools they are surrounded by other bright, talented pupils. Their school friends are all going to be bright and talented (most private schools are fiercely academically selective and competitive). They are likely to be in an institution with a strong ethos and history of academic rigour and success, one with a well-trodden route into Oxbridge and the tops of the professions. They are at schools where studying hard is the norm and where taking initiative and running and creating things is often encouraged and expected.

Until the abolition of the grammars, that was something poor and middle-income but bright and motivated kids had. At his Russell Group university, the Idle Pen Pusher was struck by the obvious confidence and swagger of the public school and grammar school students. It's a confidence begotten of that school and home environment where striving and success are encouraged and expected. I am pretty certain that if I would have been to either type of school I'd probably have been more ambitious and hard-working. I did briefly attend a foreign private school, but the majority was at a failing inner London comprehensive school plagued with problems. I had no notion of why it might be so at the time, but the couple of other pupils I was friends with there were the same couple whose parents owned their homes. There was no network of bright friends to go into adult life with. In our classes, there were 3 or 4 of us who considered each other clever out of the 100 or 150 pupils in the year group. There were another 4 or 5 we considered of mediocre intelligence but smart enough to be friends with. The rest were thought painfully stupid. And this was the top class. Those who were in the streams below frankly didn't bear thinking about. And yes, we were arrogant.

One thing that arrogance lead to was, well, idleness. Time and time again, we learnt that we would get top marks and praise simply for the most cursory of efforts. Indeed, the young IPP thought it impure to revise for exams at it would detract from the thrill of getting an A without trying. I have no doubt that such laziness wouldn't have been tolerated at a grammar or private school. It wasn't at the primary and private secondary school I briefly went to. I can even remember being in class in the British state school when I returned and being shocked that my fellow pupils were talking and messing about without punishment, and shocked at how undemanding the work was.

I am lucky to have had the earlier schooling that I did have and a parent who encourged me to try, do and go for what life has to offer. But many have home environments where aspiration is met with a negative attitude and soul-sapping and initiative-crushing though possibly well-meaning questions about the wisdom of a lofty aim. With a low-aspiration homelife where sitting in front of inane and equally low-aspiration soap operas is combined with an unchallenging school environment without the network of bright, ambitious but ordinary pupils who will encourage academic competition at school and be useful contacts after school, how much less likely is success for the gifted but ordinary when he faces all those comparative disadvantages vis a vis the bright public-school educated contemporary?

Britain has sacrificed the interests of those bright ordinary pupils because it didn't want them to have an advantage over ordinary pupils who aren't bright. That much has been achieved. This is why, against the grain of cultural change over the past 20 years or so, those who are fortunate enough to have parents who can afford to send them to public school are once again regaining their grip beyond what their talent merits.

Well done, Labour. Well done.

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Faceproof - Case 007 (Cllr John Friary)

2011-01-31T20:25:00.005Z

Cllr Friary clasping himself

Councillor John Friary is a Labour councillor in London. According to his blog, he is Southwark Council's cabinet member for 'Community Safety':

I am a Labour Councillor for Brunswick Park Ward and cabinet member for Community Safety in the London Borough of Southwark. I have been an Elected Member since May 1994 and in May 2010 was elected to serve a fifth term until May 2014. I am a Health & Safety Advisor for the London Metropolitan University and a GMB Trades Union Shop Steward.

But he's also had his collar felt by the police on child 'grooming' allegations:

Sources have told the Evening Standard that Peter John, leader of the Southwark Labour Party, told councillors the alleged incident involved an underage girl and "child grooming offences".
Mr Friary, who is the governor of a Camberwell primary school and has campaigned with Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell - both south London MPs and members of the shadow cabinet - is alleged to have made contact with the child over the internet.
He held several accounts on social networking sites including Facebook and Bebo, which have been taken down.

I think it's worth repeating that a 51yo man has a Bebo account... Hollleeeey crap!

Guilty as fuck. Next...

See other Faceproof cases

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Russell Napier's Crash

2011-01-27T23:41:00.004Z

The Fed has given up inflation targeting. Greenspan is dead. They're targeting credit, not inflation, to make sure it keeps growing at around GDP, so we don't have a painful deleveraging. The talk about inflation is meaningless lipservice. Likewise with the Bank of England. They're shovelling money into the economy irrespective of inflation, which will continue to be above target. The good new is all this money will continue to find its way into asset prices, which will grow nicely in the short term. Until China's inflationary pressures (fewer new workers as the mobile population (u35) starts to nosedive) lead it to stop buying Western treasuries. At which point Western equities and, particularly, bonds will collapse and the deleveraging will happen and there'll be a prolonged, unpleasant recession. Bonds will slide in the meantime and so will never again reach the real value they hold now.

So said the author of 'Anatomy of the Bear', Russell Napier. I think I might read the book, so fascinating and funny was his lecture.

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But Melanie Phillips Is Right About The Gay Lobby

2011-01-25T21:18:00.004Z

Melanie Phillips has stirred up the Twitteratti into a storm for criticising the success of the gay lobby in respect of three recent gay-related stories.

1. The gay couple who demanded use of a Bed & Breakfast's accommodation on terms the owners wouldn't agree to and then used the courts to seize their property as punishment for their disagreement.

2. The discontent and alleged threats from other members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to resign from the council if Hans-Christian Raabe, an allegedly fundamentalist Christian GP who disapproves of homosexuality and believes it to be linked to drugs and alcohol misuse, sexually transmitted infections and unhappiness.

3. The news that gay aspects are going to be specifically promoted to teachers by studying gay population data from the census and having gay characters in problems to be solved.

Melanie wrapped them up, along with the charging of Dale McAlpine for speechcrime when he publicly said homosexuality was a sin and news that DEFRA spent £100 000 on a report into how efforts to boost coastal fish stocks would affect minority communities - including homosexuals and Welsh speakers, into a critique of the gay lobby.

The problem is that, hyperbole aside, she's right. The gay lobby has morphed from a movement to end illegitimate state discrimination into a broadly malign force in society attempting to curtail and extinguish liberty in the name of equality as measured by its proponents.

The liberty of Christian property owners to exclude from their property a gay couple has been extinguished in the name of equality for such couples who demand other people's property on terms they dictate to be fair. Those who demand Dr Raabe must not serve on the drugs advisory council on account of his opinions about things which aren't within the remit of the council's work display a depressing intolerance for individuality and difference. There shouldn't be an advisory council, all drugs should be legalized, and how 'harmful' a drug is and whether or not its use qualifies as 'misuse' is of no legitimate business to the state. But his opinions on homosexuality (which as far as the objective ones I've read are concerned are hard to disagree with) ought to have no bearing on his place on the council.

I'm not sure I have an opinion on the issue of kids having (suitable anodyne) gay characters and aspects introduced to them in lessons. I suspect it's harmless but isn't this the kind of thing that should be left to teachers, schools and parents? Why is central government fiddling about with this kind of minutiae in some Maoist Great Leap Forward?

I'm not saying that there aren't a few remaining legitimate issues for the gay lobby to concern itself with. For example, I find the institution of marriage creepy and dystopian when monitored and organised by the state. We should abolish it immediately and the state should treat everyone as individuals and leave to contract law any enforcement of marriage agreements. But as long as the state keeps its chilling register of personal relationships then it should be equally open to gay relationships. But there is no morally legitimate 'right' to adoption nor to 'equal' treatment by others and these illiberal attacks on freedom are usually the basis for campaigns by gay lobby groups.

Only the state should be legally obliged to treat people equally and until the gay lobby realises that, it is they who represent the greater threat to liberty and Melanie Phillips who looks more like the freedom fighter.

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Dependence Day by Mark Steyn

2011-01-24T22:35:00.005Z

Made in China...

Mark Steyn lays into modern British culture in this article for The New Criterion magazine. He worries about the US following our worrying lead and heading for a sharp decline relative for the English-speaking peoples and, consequently, the West in general. He's a fascinating writer and it's quite long but definitely worth reading. Some say China, India, Russia et al can only eclipse the Anglosphere by becoming more civilised, more liberal than us. Is that correct, or is Steyn right? I don't know...

H/t Daniel Knowles.

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Britain's Banks: Too Big To Save?

2011-01-18T22:57:00.005Z

Too Big To Fail?

The Idle Pen Pusher watched the BBC's in-house clever simpleton Robert Peston question whether Britain's banks are too big to save. There isn't an answer to this, as the question itself is wrong. All companies are too big to save.

Banks are as big as they are because of regulation and government. It's because big government leads to big business that we have big banks, not least because banks get big because they think the bigger they are the more likely they will be rescued if they screw up.

The problem is that it's unthinkable in practical terms to imagine a government allowing a bank to collapse. Not only would there be legions of retail customers with lost savings and jeapardised mortgages and credit cards and the like, but also think of businesses which might be pushed into bankruptcy for no other reason than a temporary freeze on their banking. And that's to say nothing of securitizations and other underwriting performed by the bank's investment division and all the chaos that might cause.

But none of that means taxpayers should bailout a banks capitalists. A special, tighter system of bankruptcy for those institutions government is too spineless to allow to go bust, viz. banks and certain other financial institutions.

We need a law that obliges a regulator to devise a set of criteria which would define when an institution is close to bankruptcy. When an institution meets this criteria, the regulator (or perhaps a different regulator) would then be authorised to take over the company for the purpose of conservatively continuing the business at the expense of capital providers. Unviable divisions should be orderly wound down, profitable businesses should be sold as quickly as possible. The business should be treated as bankrupt legally. Employment contracts should be honoured, but bonuses should be treated as null and void.

Any losses incurred from the disposal of the business should be borne in this order:

1) Shareholders. All share equity should be completely wiped out before any other class of stakeholder suffers a loss.
2) Bondholders.
3) Employee bonus liabilities.
4) Other creditors. (Landlords, suppliers, etc.)
5) HM Treasury.
6) Customers and non-bonus employee liabilities.

It is important that shareholders, bondholders and employee bonus payees take a full loss first. This will restore the incentive to be cautious and eliminate the overwhelming bulk of the moral hazard extant in today's banking system. In my scheme, taxpayers would take any remaining hit over customers and ordinary employees, in other words the very people who government couldn't realistically let suffer from a bank-run and collapse. It would keep the networks running, the branches open and the brand going. But it would wipe out shareholders and bondholders who failed to ensure their company was well run. While imperfect, being clear about this would lend credibility to the regime and send a chill down the spines of the others. That, after all, is one of the crucial two halves of capitalism. The other half being the thrill of the win. Capitalism needs both to thrive.

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Local Council Slogans - 1

2011-01-18T00:49:00.003Z

The IPP has had to look at endless council websites and documents and so I've saved my sanity by recording their inane slogans, which I'm going to relay in batches of five...

...driving for success (Erewash)
Where everyone matters (Sheffield)
An 'excellent' council, aiming higher! (Chorley)
Great lives, excellent services (Tameside)
The brighter borough (Wandsworth)

The inverted commas and exclamation marks are original.

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Happy Birthday Me

2011-01-13T23:02:00.004Z

The Idle Pen Pusher is two years old today. Since my last birthday, I am no longer either idle or a pen pusher but I'm not sure quite where that leaves me. We have finally got rid of the awful Gordon Brown but his replacement is far from perfect. A lot has happened during my second year:

I've started Tweeting! I deplored Harriet Harperson's bossy Equalities Act and the diversity police accompanying it. I supported UKIP at the election as the least bad vote for liberty, but acknowledged BNP leader Nick Griffin did better than people pretended on Newsnight. Staying on race, I also looked at David James Smith's strange article about his dual heritage family in Lewes for the Sunday Times.

I suggested Waterloo be connected with Liverpool Street using the Waterloo & City Line to improve transport options.

I liked David Laws but said he must resign his seat, not just his government job. I said prison fails and suggested reforms. I begged for Ireland to be left to burn.

I gave Osborne's first budget a B and suggested a way to improve the fiscal outlook: tax drugs. I also suggested people to donate their own money to programme which were trimmed if people wanted them to be lavishly funded.

I also looked at my fundamental philosophy in three posts: Tax is violence, government is violence and the legitimacy of law.

Lastly, I started perhaps my favourite occasional series: FaceProof!

Before I thank you for commenting, praising and slagging me off, I'd like to mention two of my favourite bloggers: birthday girl SubRosa who is also 2 today, and birthday boy Devil's Kitchen, who is 6 today.

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But Mirriam O'Reilly Is Too Old

2011-01-11T23:56:00.005Z

Welcome to this week's BBC Countryfile

Ex-Countryfile host Miriam O'Reilly has won an employment tribunal against the BBC on the grounds of ageism.
The 53-year-old claimed she had been unfairly dropped from the rural affairs show when it moved to a primetime Sunday evening slot in April 2009.

O'Reilly, whose sex discrimination case failed, said the outcome had "implications for all broadcasters".

How depressing? If a broadcaster wants to ditch a woman presenter because it feels she is too old, it should have nothing to do with the law. Ceteris paribus (the IPP studied economics, after all) I want to look at young, pretty people on TV. And everywhere else, come to think of it. Not in the role of a grandfather, obviously, but generally better looking and younger is better.

If I switch channels on TV to a program presented by a younger, prettier presenter, that is no one else's business but mine. If a producer sacks a presenter because he's worried about her advancing age and retreating looks losing shallow viewers like me, that's no one's business but theirs. The law should not be involved.

Christian B&Bs should be free to turn away gays, gay bars should be free to hire and admit only gay staff and patrons, Abercrombie & Fitch should be free to hire only impossibly good-looking white college kids, FUBU should be free to hire only 'Us'.

Yes: people should be free to discriminate on race, skin colour, age, looks, height, weight, hair colour, nationality, sexuality and whatever the hell else arbitrary criteria they want. The state, law and justice should be blind. But people should be free.

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The Arrogance of the Whitehall Source

2011-01-10T23:07:00.006Z

Sometimes the Idle Pen Pusher becomes very, very sad when I read the spraying diarrhoea that gushes out from the mouths of the contemptible little cumstains we call our politicians and bureaucrats. London Evening Standard:

"Banks can keep big bonuses by lending more"

Bellowed the headline. According to a 'Whitehall source',

"Reviving lending to small firms is much more important to economic growth than cutting bonus levels."

I am getting a headache just thinking about the none-too-subtly sinister banality of it all. Well, Mr Whitehall Assistant Nobody, of course it's more important. That's because cutting bonus levels would be damaging. If we cut bonus levels, the activity will pack up and go to Zurich, or Dubai, Shanghai, or Mumbai. Or Hong Kong or New York or Tokyo. Anywhere that doesn't impose the baying public's stupidity on the firms involved. And then where would be, when the top 1% in this country pay 25% of income tax revenues?

But, seriously, who the fuck do you, some government official whose job it is to come up with plattitudes for your civil service and politician masters, think you are pontificating as to the right level of lending to small firms? Don't you think banks, who actually face the risk of losing the money, might have a better idea than you? And if not, if you really think you're so smart about it, why not set up a new bank with your own money and cash in on the gap in the market? Your colleagues could join you and maybe give up your final salary goodly pensions and make both society and your own wealth better off? Or maybe you're wrong and there's a reason why banks aren't shoving money at firms as much as they used to. One way to find out, eh?

Big bonuses aren't some kind of naughty thrill banks hand out which could be indulged if they lend to firms whose business cases for the money they want to borrow otherwise fails to impress them. They are completely separate issues. Banks offer bonuses not because they have spare cash hanging around that they'd otherwise dole out to wasteful firms for bad projects. They offer bonuses to encourage staff to make the bank more money and be more successful and more profitable. It's not clever to ban or stamp down on that. And banks shouldn't be forced to hand their cash out to businesses they think are risky and dangerous. Let's be clear: if banks think firms are a safe, profitable bet, they'll lend them money without being forced to by a bureacrat. What we're talking about is bad, risky loans as judged by the banks. Not as judged by the applicants, or as judged by the applicant's MP, but by the banks.

Risky overlending is a big part of why we're in economic doldrums now. Forcing banks to take risky loans in exchange for allowing them to pay the bonuses required to be successful is not terribly sensible.

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George Monbiot's Housing Footprint Fascism

2011-01-07T23:38:00.008Z

Guardianista extraordinaire George Monbiot wrote a truly repugnant article on Tuesday. He called for people to be forced to take in lodgers if they are deemed to have 'spare' rooms. This is because, despite having the smallest and most expensive housing in the West (and the most strict planning regime) he thinks we have a 'surplus housing' issue. But he lives in a 4-bedroom house and has one child, so he would, wouldn't he?

Others have ripped into him pretty well so I won't repeat: Moonbattery, Devil's Kitchen, Tim Worstall, Hauntingthelibrary, Mark Wallace and Matthew Sinclair from the TaxPayers' Alliance.

What I do want to say though is quite how remarkable it is that pretty much every sentence is objectionable and that the language is so depressing. Here's a list of phrases:

The housing fight
under-occupation
under-occupied homes
overload the environment
surplus housing
space that people don't need
While most houses are privately owned, the total housing stock is a common resource
distribution of housing
housing footprints
ecological footprints
Homeshare scheme

Where to start with that nauseating list of little political concept-cumstains? It makes my brain hurt. But his ideas, that economic freedom should be stamped out and that the state should redistribute people into new living arrangements, all for the benefit of some greater good of environmentalism. Fascist and fascism are terms that are bandied about too frequently. But forcing people to share their homes and having the state monitor and assess your home seems like it to me. If this isn't it, I don't know what is:

"if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need... it's up to us to give them no choice, by turning under-occupation into an issue they can't avoid. It cannot be left to the market, as the market works for the rich."

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Diversity Police

2011-01-06T22:35:00.006Z

Pater Pen Pusher (PPP) received a visit from the constabulary over Christmas. The constables came to investigate a disturbance reported by an official of the nearby Indian temple involving PPP. Two uniformed officers and two officers in plain clothes responded to the call from the man of God(s).

At the junction just by the house, PPP was taking photographs of the worshippers parked on the double yellow lines there to stop people from parking dangerously on corners. The worshippers consistently ignore parking restrictions because at the times when the temple is busy, the normally ever-present parking wardens suddenly dissappear. Perhaps unrelatedly, the head of the council's parking service is also a worshipper at the same temple.

The temple is busiest on weekends in the evenings, but often on weekdays too. Typically from the late afternoon until 11pm or midnight, there is a constant stream of car doors opening and slamming shut from the worshippers parking on the double yellow lines meters away from the front of the house, where PPP attempts to sleep and read. Taking photographs is a futile exercise (who is he going to send them to, the head of the parking service?) as they know they are above the law on this matter. But it makes him feel better and might possibly make the occasional worshipper think twice. Of course, when they have slammed their doors, they often chirrup loudly to one another in their native tongue, further adding to PPP's distress.

Upon seeing this, a temple official approximately aged 40 wound down the window of his minivan to ask PPP what he was doing. Receiving a straightforward reply back, the holy man then told my father he was a 'cunt'. PPP graciously returned the compliment verbatim. This obviously upset him as he got out of the van and hit him a few times. Despite his age, PPP is in rude health and strength and returned a couple of blows. He then jumped back in his van and drove it at my father in an attempt at least to make him fear for his physical health and intimidate him and possibly even to actually hurt him, too. An eastern European man who witnessed the events attempted to help him from the holy man. While sympathising, he was with his child and, understandably for someone in a foreign country with his own child and wife to consider, did not want to become involved as a witness.

In a normal society, a man who has initiates a fight with a man in his 60s and then goes on to intentionally, recklessly drive a vehicle at the man with intent to intimidate or maim the old man would probably be quite nervous of police involvement. Not this man, not in Britain. He called the police and complained about my father, calling him 'some crazy old man', according to the good Samaritan who overheard some of the conversation. In our society, four constables are dispatched to deal with my father. They were all very interested in the case, particularly when he told them the temple official seemed 'very upset' in the altercation.

"Can you think of anything you said that might have upset him?" asked a WPc who played the officious role and sounded like a smug child who had a plan to steal his friend's sweets which he was certain would work.
"Oh yes, I think so," replied my father, prompting the officers to become wide eyed as the prize came tantalizingly close to their grasp.
"After he called me a 'cunt', I called him a 'cunt' back."
The disappointment was heavy in the air.
"I see. Was there anything else you said?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Did you call him any other names?"
"No."
Her voice low and dispondant, she tried one more time.
"You didn't perhaps make any racial remarks?"
"No, why would I say that?"

Within a minute, the WPc and her two plain clothes colleagues disappeared leaving a young Pc to express his frustration at not having any powers to enforce parking regulations since Labour transferred responsibility to local authorities a few years ago. He offered plenty of sensible suggestions such as keeping a log and contacting local councillors and some commiseration, as he seemed to realise PPP's frustration.

My father's example is just one of a force which has become a rotten arm of the left's diversity and multicultural agenda. The bizarrely heavy response to a call involving an old man and a temple official and the immediacy with which they completely lost interest once it became clear my father was not going to admit that he had committed racial speech crimes (because he had not, for clarity's sake) was truly sickening. The complete disinterest they showed when my father began to explain how the man had driven a van at him and had attacked him was shocking, even though it is hardly the first time I have found the police to be what they might call 'institutionally racist' in favour of ethnic minorities at the expense of white people.

A few years ago my brother was boarding a bus with his girlfriend. He had recently upbraided a youth of perhaps 16 or 17 years old a few moments before but had thought nothing more of it. But on boarding he was struck at the back of the head and pushed to the floor while 7 or 8 young males of the same age surrounded him in a few moments kicking frenzy while he was on the floor. Delightfully, they also attacked his girlfriend. The bus driver cleared them off and assured him it was all captured on CCTV. He immediately went to the police and reported the crime. But once he mentioned that the assailants were all black, the police immediately became quietly hostile and their previous enthusiasm to persue the case was replaced with annoyance and excuses, several times being asked if he "really wanted to report this" because there "isn't a lot we can do about this kind of thing". Despite the witness of the bus driver, possibly other passengers and the CCTV footage which he offered to go and get from the bus company for them. They didn't want it.

And recently a senior policeman has admitted that the child prostitution rings in the North are overwhelmingly run by Pakistani men who target white schoolgirls and that officials are too concerned about causing racial offence to acknowledge the problem or deal with it.

Britain, as with all cultures, all people and all societies, is racist. The police are racist. Institutionally, the police are racist and the victims (if we ignore the fact that ultimately we are all victims when justice is not blind and impartial) are white people, specifically white British and particularly the white English ('white other' get a few token diversity points. They probably speak a foreign language, after all). They are uninterested in crime per se and are only interested in tackling racism and promoting diversity. Post MacPherson, they want only to solve racist crimes, which to them means bad white people doing nasty things to innocent ethnic minority victims. Switch things round and it doesn't look good for their statistics.

They discourage white people from reporting crimes committed by non-whites because they already feature too disproportionately to official population numbers and they think it makes them look too keen on solving such crimes (and therefore possibly racist in the bad whites/innocent non-white victim sense).

They are too scared to speak honestly about the racial profile of crime, after the scandal caused by former Chief Commissioner Lord Condon when he listed some crime statistics publicly and was accused of racism as a result, the MacPherson report and Lord (Ian) Blair's diversity agenda. Broadcasters' words are monitored by the 600-strong 'Diversity Directorate' and visits are made to journalists who are suspected of speechcrimes.

There are plenty of good officers in the police, just as there are probably a good few racists in the sense of the word that the BBC and senior policemen are comfortable with. But institutionally the truth is the opposite.

The police need to learn that a crime is still a crime even if the victim is white and even if the perpetrator is not. And we need to abolish our incitement to racial hatred laws, and all the others before we find ourselves too far down this unpleasant path to a police state than we would like. Racists (ie, everyone) should be free to say racist things without fear of the criminal justice system. Society, through taboo, is the proper moderator of offence, not the law.

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Faceproof - Case 006 (Chris Jefferies)

2010-12-30T14:17:00.003Z

"Police today seized Joanna Yeates' landlord's car after he was arrested on suspicion of her murder.

The silver Chrysler was loaded up and driven away hours after Chris Jefferies, 65, was taken into custody in a dawn raid.

The bachelor's arrest came hours after he claimed he had watched as three people left Jo’s flat on the night she vanished."

Guilty. Next...

See other Faceproof cases

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Nigel Farage IEA Interview

2010-12-27T12:26:00.004Z

If you've got an hour to spare, watching this video of the IEA's Mark Littlewood interviewing Nigel Farage could be a good way to spend it. As ever, Farage is shouty and a little populist and I find myself wishing he'd pipe down a little, but almost all of what he says is pretty sensible and he's not afraid, even as leader of his party, to criticise his own party's position:

"My party's position is that they're evil and awful and that we have to continue to fight the war on drugs. That isn't my position on drugs, I have to say.... it seems to me that if you add up the amount of police time, the amount of court time, the number of prison places that are taken up by people committing crime, or running criminal gangs, to get the money to buy an illegal substance, there is a rather tempting argument that says decriminalise it, sell it in Boots, let people make their own decisions whether they wanna take this stuff or not.

"I am convinced that the crime rate in this country would fall very sharply if we cut the criinal element out of drugs. Now, im going to have a great probelm persuading my own party that this is the way to go."

Especially with Nigel back as leader, I'm still confident that UKIP remain the best choice for liberty, albeit an imperfect one. Auction off immigration visas and ditch your opposition to tuition fees, Nigel. Then you'll be great!

Listen for Mark's explanation of why UKIP members don't buy AGW

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Vince Cable - John Galt Is A Bully

2010-12-21T00:50:00.004Z

BUSINESS secretary Vince Cable is on the warpath over bankers’ bonuses, announcing yesterday that he doesn’t care if tougher rules cause an exodus of financial firms from the UK.

“We’re not going to be bullied,” he said, in relation to companies’ threats to leave the country due to an inability to recruit top talent. He added: “You can’t just give in the whole time.”

The bully is normally the one with the force taking the money off the other one. A puny schoolboy who threatens to leave his school if the big thug makes good on his promise to start taking even more of his lunch money is not a bully. The bully is the guy who weilds power to extract money from others who can't fight back.

Vince Cable, you are the bully.

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Jody McIntyre

2010-12-16T20:04:00.005Z

:-(

I've been, er, mesmerised by this picture all day, which I found over at John McTernan's Telegraph blog on the subject: disgruntled socialist, Middle-East campaigner, tuition-fees protester and cerebral palsy suffererer and wheelchair person Jody McIntyre.

Imagine a Parliament Square full of him and his mates all angry and shouty? The Government's going to require some stomach to press ahead with their cuts...

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Demonstrators & Emancipation

2010-12-12T15:14:00.008Z

Once again, Parliament Square was overrun on Thursday by thousands of police. And protesters and photographers in roughly equal measure. The protesters were again young, many under 18 roused into disquiet by the prospect of their EMA (£30/week bribe to persuade kids who aren't interested in going to attend sixth form) and higher tuition fees when they go to university. There was also the usual crowd of professional protesters who are always at such things baring Socialist Worker placards and nose rings.

Kids "from the slums of London" were there, too, with bandannas over their faces speculating in pidgin English about what crimes they might commit when their handouts are removed (drug dealing and robbery, if you're interested), whose political objections were perhaps a fiction for the cameras as a foil for what seemed like a day of fighting and general trouble-making. Plenty of university students were there, too, being political and demanding their full claim to other people's property.

"We won't pay sky-high fees" said some of the banners.

Unfortunately for students, taxpayers have come to the same conclusion.

Most puzzling were the gangs of ideologically confused anarchist-cum-statists with their faces covered, like the 'slum' children, and also like them clearly intent on general trouble-making. Dressed mainly in black with red, they carried matching flags (one even carried a big Cornish flag) and ran around Westminster with mounted police cavalry following them. Some wore V for Vendetta masks and many wore anarchist symbols but they also had placards calling for a bigger state, in the form of more generous university funding. A peculiar anarchism.

Generally the crowd was pretty sulky and quiet, but then the Idle Pen Pusher didn't venture into the kettled area inside Parliament Square. Like Dan Hannan, I enjoy protests, the air of excitement is, well, exciting. But I don't enjoy them enough to get into the scrum. As usual protesters complained of police brutality and others complained of police softness. From what I saw the police were certainly more intimidating than the protesters. Big men with proper equipment versus kids with whatever they could get their hands on.

I don't like protesters. The protests are invariably asinine and the protesters moronic. But I don't like state might, either. I'm distrustful of power generally and arbitrary power in particular. But part of me did enjoy the fact that those protesting for a bigger, more powerful, more intrusive state literally came up against what the state actually is: violence. It isn't nice, is it, chaps?

What also isn't nice is the disingenuous nature of some of the placards. What annoyed me more than someone pissing on Churchill, more than swinging on the cenotaph, more than smashing up the phone boxes and burning Norway's annual Christmas tree gift was the "WE ARE NOT YOUR SLAVES" placard.

Fuck you, you bunch of extorting shits. You think you're a slave because other people's property isn't going to be extorted for your benefit? You think that because other people are no longer having to work to fund your lifestyle, that makes you a slave? No, it means you can't steal their property (via the state) any more and they are emancipating themselves from your violent grip. Cunts.

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The Honour of Stewart Stevenson

2010-12-11T21:32:00.004Z

I don't know whether there was unacceptable incompetence and how bad it was if so. But it's a mark of his dignity and honour that the Scottish Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson MSP has resigned.

"Although we put in place significant efforts to tackle the event, I feel that I could have done much more"

It used to be common for a Minister of the Crown to resign if there was a major failing of administration in their brief, even if it wasn't really his own fault but a civil servant's. The rot started under Thatcher and got worse under Blair. No matter how many people's details were lost on trains, ministers never resigned. I hope Whitehall and Westminster take note and follow Stevenson's lead when the time comes.

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Faceproof - Case 005 (Julian Assange)

2010-12-07T23:50:00.002Z

Sometimes you don't need to look at the details of a case. You just know someone is guitly or innocent. FaceProof is a series that assesses the guilt of a defendant purely on photographic evidence of his face.

Case number 005:

I don't know the details of his case, other than it's for some kind of WikiRape allegation in Sweden. I haven't bothered to read them. I have a strong suspicion it's some trumped up phoney charge invented to discredit him because of the Wikileaks stuff.

But... he is obviously guilty of something, isn't he? You don't look that creepy without having done some creepy stuff.

See other Faceproof cases

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The Importance of Money

2010-12-05T14:48:00.003Z

Money is of no importance to her

One of the joys of the weekend is the Mail on Sunday's problems page in their women's magazine, You. Today there were two utter delights.

"I am 29 and in love with a man of 40 who is very wealthy and runs his own business. Money is of no importance to me."

Of course not, you just thought you'd mention it. That's all, isn't it?

"He has three children from a previous marriagewhom I adore and they love me. But I am jealous of one of his employees, an attractive 38-year-old. I am pretty and not normally jealous but I worry that he will leave me or cheat on me with her, though he has done nothing to give me cause for my concern. I'm sometimes plagued by thoughts that she is prettier... blah blah blah"

But the second one is even funnier. Are people really this thick?

"I moved in wth my partner three days before our baby was born. Two weeks later I discovered he was having an affair. He said it was not sexual and he ended it. Then I found a lewd picture of this woman on his mobile. Although the affair was over I was devastated. I left him but he begged me to come back. As I love him and we have a child, I returned. Since then he has done everything possible to prove he loves me. I should just be angry with him but I want to hurt her. She is 22, I am 40 and he is 43. I track her on Facebook and have tried to find out where she lives. This girl is far from his equal intellectually, so why would he want to spend time with her?"

Gee! Let me think...

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Do You Understand?

2010-12-03T22:27:00.004Z

'Freeman of the land' is a phrase that sums up the idea that we are subject only to the common law and that civil law (provided by statute) is only applicable if you consent to it. It is all about a contract between your legal personality and the state. If you do not represent the legal personality and accept the government's 'contract' with you, you are not liable.

I can't tell whether this is a sadly forgotten truth of the system or simply a few cranks who've not yet been tackled properly by the institutions of state. Either way (and I hope it's the former), these three videos of the proceedings of a magistrate's court are fascinating...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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Faceproof - Case 004

2010-11-27T16:14:00.005Z

"James Machin was found guilty at Truro Crown Court of 10 sex offences relating to girls under 13. Two others were convicted of sex abuse charges in 2008.

Police described the abuse by the men in the Camborne area, found in a three-year investigation, as "horrific". One victim was five years old.

John Barrett, 49, from the Camborne area, abused two girls, who were aged five and seven when the crimes first started, and passed them on to John Wrey to do the same.

Barrett was jailed for 14 years and 6 months in 2008 for 16 sexual offences.

Wrey, 55, from Hayle, who was arrested at the same time as Barrett, is serving a five-and-a-year sentence for his part in the abuse after he was also convicted in 2008."

Guilty. Can there be any doubt?

See other Faceproof cases

Thanks to the diligent reader who brought this case to my attention on the IPP Facebook page...

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Demo-lition Tuition Fees Protest London

2010-11-24T23:00:00.007Z

The Idle Pen Pusher didn't join the protest terribly actively today, as threatened. I forgot to take my jeans and hoodie and didn't get round to making a placard, so I just wandered up to Parliament Square in my suit and surveyed the handout-demanding shouties. They were incredibly young. The policemen didn't seem young, so I guess it's not simply me getting old. They looked 15-20, with as many under 18 as over.

They sat on Parliament Street and had a picnic while the riot-lite happened on the other side of the police lines. Others shouted and generally had a fun day out:

"What do we want? Free education! When do we want it? Now!"

"No ifs, no buts, no education cuts!"

One young black girl of about 16 was annoyed that the police wouldn't let her through.

"Char!" She cried to her Asian friend.

"Dey wuwn lemme fru, ya know."

The friend exclaimed her solidarity with her disappointment: "Char!"

A few others were arguing with a middle-aged man in a jacket who was, unsuccessfully and inelegantly, trying to impress upon them the need for spending cuts. One of the gang left, relaying the affair by telephone to someone: "Some man's gassin against education, innit.... nah, some Tory man's or sumfing."

The placards were similar to the complaints made on the news, Newsnight and Young People's Question Time tonight: No to sky high fees.

It's as if they all think it's cheap now and is costly only because it's going to be chargeable to the student. Every time I hear some fat teenager complain that higher education is extremely costly and he'd really rather it if someone else picked up his tab I want to strangle them. Don't they realise that horribly large and unpleasant bill now for their education is being paid for by someone else? Don't they realise how unfair this is? And when are they going to stop trying to defend an unfair system on the grounds that the older generation (now in power) benefited from its unfairness at the expense of others, too?

PS - Why do they wear anarchist symbols and masks while agitating with the agents of the state as the protest for a bigger, more intrusive state? Puzzling.

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Taxpayer - PAY MY BILLS!

2010-11-23T23:44:00.002Z

Tomorrow (probably 'today' by the time I get round to posting this) students will protest for more generous gifts from the taxpayer to go towards their bills for education. I might join them. What should my placard say?

I'm thinking of "TAXPAYER: PAY MY BILLS - A loan isn't generous enough"

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Income Tax And The NHS

2010-11-22T00:41:00.003Z

Income tax in 2009/10 raised £140bn.

The Department of Health spent £115bn in 2009/10.

Interesting, isn't it?

If you abolished income tax, how much would be recouped in greater revenues from VAT and other taxes? I'd guess it'd bring the revenue loss down to £115bn. I'm not saying I'd abolish income tax if I had £140bn of tax cuts to make. I'd cut the rate, increase the allowance, merge NI into it and flatten it. I'd use the remaining money to cut other taxes, like corporation tax and stamp duty.

But it just shows what could be done by shifting the NHS into private provision. Imagine how many people unemployed people would be motivated to find jobs if there were no income tax? Imagine how much more money we'd all have? Imagine how much harder we'd work if we kept it all for ourselves?

And that's to say nothing about welfare and benefits. Imagine if we did both? Suppose we kept schooling tax funded. And police, defence and everything else, but just abolished welfare and health. That's £270bn of cuts. We could abolish income tax and corporation tax with that, and national insurance.

Why don't we?

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Let Ireland Burn

2010-11-19T00:04:00.003Z

What's good for the Greek goose is good for the Irish gander. Britain and other countries should ignore Ireland's fiscal pleas and let her default on her debts, if it comes to that. Michael Portillo on This Week is wrong, as was Lionel Barber on Question Time earlier tonight. So too are all the others.

There is lots of talk suggesting an Irish default would be disastrous for the Euro zone. Nonsense. Investors might flee from Spanish and Italian debt, thereby sending the Euro down. So what? If Spanish and Italian treasuries are bust, that's no reason to bail them out, let alone the Irish too. Besides, investors are not going to abandon their Bunds just because the Germans decide not to pay for things they can't afford. It's time investors, particularly banks and finance houses, learned to pay attention to what they're handing over their cash for rather than blithely assuming ordinary taxpayers will pick up the tab if they make a mistake.

And yes, that includes our own banks. We need an orderly mechanism for winding down bankrupt banks, but we do not need to be fleeced to stop our banks from suffering the consequences of having made dud investments in Irish debt. The very idea is, frankly, disgusting and all that talk of 'interlinked economies' and 'bigger picture' is bullshit.

There's a petition against the bailout, if you're interested in adding your name...

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The Log With No Safety Handles

2010-11-16T21:24:00.005Z

Recently, plenty of places in London have started to look a little less like cattle pens, thanks to railings being removed and Japanese style road crossings introduced. There's even a scheme for Exhibition Road in South Kensington to remove all barriers, including the kerbs and leveling the pavement and street into one. So this news about Sutton council in south London removing log benches after one rolled from underneath 75-year old Evelyn Rider is disspiriting.

"Even if the log seats are secured they are still a danger to pensioners like myself. There are no handles to lower or raise yourself and the seats have no back to them."

No fucking joke! And was the fact that the log didn't have 'a back' or 'handles' unknown to you when you decided to sit down on it, Evelyn?

For fuck's sake, what is wrong with people?

Fortunately for those like Evelyn, they have now all been covered with safety railings and safety black and yellow hazard tape to keep the morons off the 'danger'.

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Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story

2010-11-15T22:02:00.004Z

On Thursday Channel 4 broadcast Martin Durkin's documentary Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story. It was excellent. It explained eruditely, punchily and entertainingly some of the issues surrounding government debt, spending and economic growth. Do watch it, it's available here.

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Independent Woman

2010-11-03T22:33:00.005Z

At the gym this evening, the Idle Pen Pusher was listening to the Destiny's Child track 'Independent Woman'. As the lyrics were rattling along about all the things the writer had bought and that she depended on herself:

"The shoes on my feet
I've bought it
The clothes I'm wearing
I've bought it
The rock I'm rockin'
I've bought it
'Cause I depend on me"

I started to wonder what the song would sound like if the group were British:

"The shoes on my feet
I qualified for them
The clothes I'm wearing
I'm entitled to them
The rock I'm rockin'
I know my rights,
'Cause I depend on HB"

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Housing Benefit PLAN

2010-10-30T16:02:00.007+01:00

There has been much anguish lately in the press and on the news about how people may be forced to leave their expensive homes in deirable areas once the £400pw cap is placed on Housing Benefit payments. The Idle Pen Pusher is concerned that, for example, Abdi Nur might have to move back to Brent from his rather handsome £8 000pcm Georgian townhouse in fashionable Notting Hill.

Those who are worried about the effects it will have on people who might have to move to less exclusive neighbourhoods and possibly even commute to work (if they are employed) can now stop worrying. The Prime Location Access Network (PLAN) will accept generous donations from concerned citizens and use them to 'top up' Housing Benefit payments for people living in very expensive properties they can't afford.

Westminster council has 900 families whose current housing benefit is £500pw or more. It will only take five different people each donating just £100 per month for a family to continue to live right in the heart of London, round the corner from all the attractions and buzz of the West End, without having to commute in.

Please give generously, join the group on Facebook and suggest it to any friends who are worried about the Housing Benefit cuts...

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Harriet Harperson & The Ginger Rodent

2010-10-30T14:53:00.003+01:00

Harriet Harman has referred to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander a 'ginger rodent', an alarming display of colour prejudice for the woman who led the utterly repugnant Equalities Act through Parliament, which has just come into force. Luckily for her, the list of officially privileged minorities she instituted into law does not include gingers. I don't really have a problem with the use of this language per se. As the picture above conclusively illustrates, he most certainly is ginger. I can see some humour in it. What I do have a problem with, though, is the fact that I can't for the life of me imagine her being so tolerant if the tables were turned and, say, a black Labour MP was referred to as a 'black rodent'.

After all, as this young ginge demonstrates, they have souls too...

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Public Spending Cuts? Or Growth?

2010-10-20T12:14:00.006+01:00

There has been storm about whether or not the budget plans constitute cuts or growth or neither.

For instance, Allister Heath in City AM and John Redwood in the Times (£) have been arguing the case that there are no cuts, or 'relatively modest'. Meanwhile, Will Straw at Left Foot Forward and George Eaton at the New Statesman have rubbished this view. Tim Montgomery at ConservativeHome has also warned that it sounds 'out of touch' to claim the cuts won't happen.

In their own ways, they're all correct. The budget figures can be found here and have been nicely summarised by the Adam Smith Institute's Tom Clougherty.

In cash terms, public spending will rise. But that ignores inflation. If inflation rises at 2%, spending will still rise, but that 2% inflation will wipe out most of it. But the government as a percentage of the whole economy will shrink markedly, from over 47% now to under 40% in 2015/16. George Osborne has just announced that headcount will fall by 490 000 over the parliament, which explains how it can fall as a percentage of GDP while staying the same. Essentially, the state will grow slightly in terms of what it does as measured by how many Mars bars, televisions, cars and taxi rides etc it could buy with the money it spends. However, it is assumed that the people who work for the state both directly and for the companies whose products and services it buys will become more efficient (aka, the economy will grow) which will mean that fewer staff will be needed, both in direct headcount and in those private sector companies contracted.

When people say 'public sector spending' is being cut they're lying. Or maybe just stupid. Spending will grow. But there is a legitimate question when they say the 'public sector' will be cut. So, the question is essentially a political one that pivots on two key political faultlines: ownership of production and the ultimate purpose of the state.

Production ownership. A cut is when something is reduced. So the key question here is who owns the right to the increase in people's productivity? If people themselves own their own productivity and labour, then it is not a 'cut' when the state takes the same output but a smaller proportion of it because you have become more efficient. If, on the other hand, the productivity and labour of the people are owned by the state, it will seem irrelevant that the output you get has stayed the same because your right to a given percentage has been cut. For example, imagine a chicken lays 10 eggs a week you and a friend get 5 eggs each. Next week the chicken lays 20 eggs, but you still only get 5. If your friend owns the chicken and he gives you the eggs as perhaps a charitable gift because you are poor or perhaps as a trade in exchange for something of yours, it will not seem like a cut because you don't own the chicken. However, if you both paid half for the chicken and own it 50/50 each, it will most definitely seem like a cut even though you still got the same number of eggs. So it is because the left assumes our labour is owned by the state while the right assumes we own ourselves that they differ as to whether or not the coalition's plans constitute a cut.

Purpose of government. Related to this is the purpose of government. The left believe it is there to control, mould and even create society and provide jobs. The (liberal) right believes it is there to safeguard and perhaps provide a framework for an autonomous society and provide services. Public sector jobs will be cut. Public sector services will grow. The overall growth will be very slow compared to what we've been used to and some areas will be cut while other areas will grow rapidly. But overall public sector services will grow. So is the public sector the value of the services it provides? If so, it's growing. Or is it the aount of people's time it consumes? If so, it's a cut.

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Question Time Star Of The Week

2010-10-17T22:23:00.008+01:00

Star of the Week

Question Time on Thursday came from Cheltenham. Occasionally, a someone asks a great question and this was one such week with this question from the young man pictured regarding the grants proposed to be given to (adult) students -in addition to the loans for living expenses available to all- whose relatives earn under given sums:

"If everybody earns same amount of money after they graduate from universities why should people from poorer backgrounds pay less if they're still earning the same amount of money as people from middle class and upper class backgrounds do?"

Fortunately, it was answered by the joint winners of this week's Moron of the Week award, first off Liberal Democrat Baron Willis of Knaresborough:

"They pay it back in terms of how much they earn! So if u go to, er, to Oxford but you decide not to go into the City for instance where you would have well paid job where you'd very quickly rise above the 21 000 and go on, clearly you'd pay more because there'd be an interest rate on that, but if in fact you went to Oxford and instead of being a lecturer you actually became a social worker and you were working on a very, very low salary, then unless you got over 21 000 you wouldnt pay anything back."

David Dimbleby is not the moron many of his guests are and attempted to bring things back into some sense, asking:

"Well what I think he's talking about is if you come from a lower-paid household you get more money up-front and you then don't have to repay it if you do well."

To which Lord Willis's partner in moronic crime, Dr Maria Misra, a lecturer of modern history not at Bolton Community College of Knowledge, not even at Oxford Brookes University, but at the Oxford University, the ancient seat of learning which jostles with Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cambridge for the mantle of best university in the world, whined out this bovine drivel:

"Really the question is whether you're likely to get to Oxford once they've instituted market fees"

With this supremely annoying 'really worried' face:

Dimbleby then conceded defeat and moved on to the next question. Well, whoever you are, IPP Star of the Week, well done for your question. It might have been ignored by the panel but it was a damn good one.

Why should we give people tax-funded grants to pay their tuition fees just because their parents are poor? A soft loan, fine. But a handout to an adult because their parents aren't rich? No.

Read more Morons of the Week here...

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NHS Appointments & Morality

2010-10-16T00:37:00.007+01:00

A month or so back, the Idle Pen Pusher had a conversation with a couple of friends about the morality of claiming benefits and other interactions with the state that has been gnawing at my conscience ever since, the more so the more I've thought about it. I had been toying with the idea of claiming Job Seekers' Allowance, more than anything to experience what it's like to be officially unemployed rather than merely jobless and to have to explain myself to a witless bureaucrat and queue up with the other benefit claimants. For more or less a year now, I have simply been idle and have not been pushing many pens.

I resigned my pointless, overpaid joke of a job in the public sector because, more than anything, the reality of working for the beast disgusted me. I hated waking up and going to bed knowing I was actively co-operating with a violent, coercive organisation whose funds, and my salary, were extorted under pain of imprisonment or worse for no better reason than the mob voted in a group of people to control the means of violence for the ends of funding organisations like my former employer. Frankly, when I allowed myself to think about it, what I was doing by way of working for them and accepting the tainted money sickened me.

I knew I wanted to abolish my employer. My particular job was largely a pointless waste of time. Necessary for the purposes it served, but ultimately damaging to society. That wasn't the problem. Some government is necessary and any government will create such jobs just as the private sector does. I would not be prepared to use requisite force to compel men to surrender their property in order to fund its work, nor would I sanction others to do it in my name. But by accepting their money, by carrying out their orders, that is what I was doing. Working for them did not imply I agreed with the existence of the organisation, but it implied I consented to its legitimacy and that necessarily means I consented to the legitimacy of the ever-present threat of violence underwriting every single penny derived from taxation.

You can't work for the government, with any legitimate sense of intellectual self-respect and moral integrity unless you can say that you agree that people should be forced into paying for the function you carry out and, this is crucial, that you give your consent to the use of lethal force against anyone who resists that force. If you're not willing -ultimately- for people to be murdered if they defend themselves sufficiently robustly against the application of force used to seize their property to fund your salary, you cannot claim to have any moral integrity while you receive the blood money that is your government pay-cheque. The best you can hope for is to be guilty of rank hypocrisy. So I quit.

There are opposing arguments.

They simply hire someone else - the state won't stop doing what it does simply because one little pen pusher takes a moral stance and quits working for it. But the same argument applies to the work of hitmen. The fact your recruiter would hire someone else if you didn't kill his target doesn't morally absolve you if you do the job.

Everyone else is at it - almost everyone is suckling at nanny's teet. In addition to the 6 million being paid to work for the state and another 6 million being paid to not work, there are pensioners who take a state pension, employees of charities and other bodies which are effectively arms of the state and then employees of companies which accept government orders or whose apparent utility is at least partly reliant on the objectionable use of state force (health and safety, 'green' energy, pharmacy etc) all give their tacit consent to the deeds done for their benefit. But copying others' immoral behaviour is even less of an excuse than following immoral orders. Murder is commonplace in some parts of the world. Its frequency does not make it less morally inexcusable. And so it is for those benefiting from illegitimate use of state force.

An eye for an eye - my life has been cheapened and the things I buy made expensive by the state. It has extorted vast sums from me to sate the thieving greed of the electorate and their official pickpockets. It has prevented me, by threat of force, from buying medicines from a pharmacist without the permission of doctors. It has made me, by threat of force, pay for wasteful schemes to increase the price of my electricity. It has grossly distorted the property market meaning at all times in my life my residence has been more expensive and poorer quality than it would have been without its rules, as always by threat of force. Perhaps it is time it reclaimed back some of what was mine? Perhaps it is no bad thing that the electorate suffers my claims on its resources, transacted and enforced by the state? But this is group punishment. All will be punished by my co-operation, not just the greedy. Should those who avoid the state's corrupting influence suffer as collateral damage in a raid on those who lent it their support?

But all this can't apply to cash benefits alone. Drawing salaries, actively co-operating with corrupt frameworks and taking cash handouts all for your personal gain are immoral, but it can't just be cash handouts, can it? There are only two reasons why you would accept cash. One is to spend it now, the other is to spend it later. Its only use is the things for which you can exchange it. It can't, therefore, make any sense to say it's immoral to take a benefit in the form of cash while it's fine to take a non-cash benefit, with the payment going straight from the the government to the supplier, by-passing my own pocket. The fact I haven't handled the money does not make a difference to the morality of the method of financing the purchase. Either way, it will be financied from a taxpayer by extortion under threat of force.

All this has made me feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of ever using the NHS again. I strongly object to forcing another person to pay for my consultation with a doctor. The blunt truth is that I have been a hypocrite every time I've used the NHS while claiming to object to using force to seize someone else's property to pay for it, as has everyone else who can't say "yes, people should be murdered if they don't give up the cash to pay for my library visit/doctor's consultation/child's education/etc" while happily taking it. Now I've allowed myself to put what it is that I would doing in such unambiguously blunt and uncomfortable language, can I rejoin the huddled hypocrites (and the occasional thug who'd answer "yes") in an NHS waiting room again? I don't know.

PS - If a doctor swears an oath to "first, do no harm", how does he reconcile that with the application of force that he consents to by accepting an NHS paycheque?

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Left Foot Forward & Honesty

2010-10-15T16:09:00.005+01:00

Left Foot Forward

In response to an excellent report by the Adam Smith Institute reviewing the need, benefit and opportunity for privitisation of government owned businesses, Liam R Thompson has written a depressingly bungled commentary over at Left Foot Forward, a blog that likes to tell us they "provide evidence-based analysis". Hmmm:

"Not content with a public sector due to be cut back massively during this Parliament, right-wing think tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) today published a report advocating the privatisation of, well, practically everything."

Really? Let's look first at the assertion the public sector is "due to be cut back massively during this Parliament" then we'll look at whether the ASI's report does indeed proprose privatising "practically everything" as claimed.

"Cut back massively": Total Managed Expenditure is expected to total £696bn this year (2010/11), according to the Emergency Budget. In 2015/16, the end of the Parliament, it is projected to be £756bn. That's not a 'massive cut' in the public sector. It's not even a 'tiny cut'. It's an increase. Even when you account for inflation, the figures don't change much. The projection for 2015/16 at after discounting for inflation is £671bn, a cut of 3.6% phased in over 5 years, equivalent to 0.7% per year. On this definition, it is certainly a 'cut'. Though it's hard to justify the 'massive' bit when you're talking about a cut of less than 4%. Also worth noting is that what is being cut is capital expenditure. In every single year, in both cash terms and after adjusting for inflation, current expenditure will rise.

"Practically everything": The report proposes £90bn worth of privatisations. This certainly doesn't account for prctically everything. It doesn't include the London Underground or real estate, which the National Asset Register valued in 2007 at £337bn. Indeed, it merely suggests "every effort should be made to sell off surplus land and buildings" and guesses at a figure of 10%. It ignores prisons, schools, hospitals, clinics, pensions, police forces, embassies, libraries, employment centres or its unemployment and sickness insurance schemes. So not even close to "practically everything". Just the blindingly obvious targets for a change of ownership.

So, off to a bad start with the first sentence. Not surprisingly, with such a disinterested attitude to an accurate understanding of the truth, the rest of the post is similarly muddle-headed. For instance, he refers to the 2008 banking crisis as a "market failure" which "forced" a bailout.

Where to start with that? Firstly, the crash was caused by government, and it was a symptom of government failure, not market failure. And as many argued at the time and since, including the Idle Pen Pusher (though not in this guise), the bailout was a horrendous waste of money and a terrible signal to bankers about what will happen to them if they make mistakes in future. A special, fast, emergency insolvency scheme might have justified to prevent a run by retail depositors, but nothing more. It was, and remains a disgrace that taxpayers were forced (literally) to bail out shareholders and bondholders at failed banks by loathsome egomaniac politicians convinced of their powers to "save the world".

Then there's this:

The report waxes lyrical about the first great wave of privatisation under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Somewhat strangely, the report forgets to mention how North Sea oil revenues propped-up the Thatcher Governments and how ropey it is to fund revenue expenditure by selling assets, which after all, you can only sell off once."

Why on earth he thinks, if that is the right word, that is is strange that a report about privatisation "fails to mention" that Britain enjoyed an oil boom in the 1980s is beyond me. And the report says nothing about whether the proceeds ought to be considered as funding expenditure as he implies or, the more logical assumption, that they be used to reduce the debt burden. Sure you can only sell something once, but -interest aside- you only have to pay down your debt once, too.

I believe in liberty, so I'm never going to make much common cause with Left Foot Forward on the benefits of a mighty and active state, but I do expect better than that and at least some sense and, particularly, honesty about what it is they're saying. Even from them...

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Happy Bonfire Day

2010-10-14T15:17:00.004+01:00

The government has today published its Public Body Review.

"The Government proposes to reform 481 bodies. Of these, 192 will cease to be public bodies and their functions will either be brought back into Government, devolved to local government, moved out of Government or abolished altogether."

It's a great start, but it's only that: a start. There are plenty of useless qangos which will continue burning our money rather doing their bit for the bonfire. I've looked at just one department, Business, Innovation & Skills, and its 44 public bodies. They're proposing to merge 6 and 14 are no longer public bodies. Nine are 'under consideration'. The remaining 15 are to remain and, looking only at them, I've found these obvious candidate for the fire:

Capital for Enterprise, Ltd
This is what banks and venture capitalists are for.

Export Credit Guarantee Department and...
- Export Guarantees Advisory Council
- UK Trade International
Why should taxpayers be subsidising insurance for exporters? Let exporters buy it on the open market. No welfare for business!

Low Pay Commission
Waffling and 'factfinding' is what politicians are for. No need for them, too.

Royal Mail Holdings Plc
Why wait? Privatise it now

Technology Strategy Board
We don't need bureaucrats opining about technological strategies.

We are clearly going to need regular bonfires, but despite the above, I'm quite content (for now) with the progress they're already making....

PS - Like the Facebook page The Bonfire of the Qangos if you're use Facebook!

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Browne's Tuition Fees

2010-10-12T18:12:00.006+01:00

This government has plenty of faults. But it also seems to be doing some great things, not least in education. Today Lord Browne has published his recommendations and they are superb:

* Abolish cap on tuition fees
* Government to pay fees upfront
* Students to repay fees at rate of 9% above £21 000
* Universal £3 750 loans available for living expenses
* Means tested £3 250 grants for those from households of incomes under £25 000, with partial grants to those from households who earn more than that but under £60 000
* Interest rates to be set at inflation plus 2.2%
* Loans written off after 30 years

The proposals have even been welcomed by Vince Cable as "fair and progressive". Naturally, the 'million plus' lobby group of former polytechnics is against the change, knowing that it will expose their weakness in the market if the country's best universities are set free to excel. Ten years ago the Idle Pen Pusher argued for a plan pretty much identical in nature to this at his university Labour Club (it didn't go down well). I disagree with elements of it: I'd have a lower threshold, a higher repayment rate and I wouldn't give grants to poor students, but all those things will probably be politically necessary and it seems churlish to quibble about what would be ideal when the plan as presented is already such a massive improvement on the status quo and so close to being ideal.

Browne's reforms will transfer power from government to students. The extra income will not only arrest the decline of British academia but reverse it, allowing our vaguely world-class Russell Group institutions the financial resources to attract the best students and faculty and truly compete with the Americans once again. Students will be buying tuition not with taxpayers' money that they don't care about, but with loans that they know they'll have to pay back. They'll spend their money more wisely. Universities, on the other hand, will have to up their game if want to continue to survive. The losers will be universities which offer poor value and don't wish to improve, and students who don't care about how money is spent on their education. Sadly, the lazy student days spent idling away on amusing persuits are ending but that's only because those who enjoyed them only ever thought they were worth someone else's money. For everyone else, students, universities and taxpayers, the reforms are a huge boost.

If they implement Browne's reforms and take the Adam Smith Institute's advice to allow profit to enter the free schools market, this coalition government could permanently and radically transform British education in both schools and universities for the better. Let's hope they do it.

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From Obscurity To Mediocrity & Beyond

2010-10-12T16:04:00.005+01:00

Click image to enlarge...

As you can see from the chart of Wikio blog rankings, the Idle Pen Pusher is steadily ascending the dizzying heights of blogging mediocrity. I am now the 2061st blog according to their algorithms. Each month I've been rising up the rankings. Due for a fall next month?

2061 (Oct)
3604 (Sep)
4784 (Aug)
18577 (Jul)
19453 (Jun)
20504 (May)

If you like one of my posts, spread the word. Share it on your Twitter/Facebook/Myspace etc accounts by clicking the 'share' button below. Or just generally become a Twitter 'follower' using the buttons to the left or add me to your Google reader or other RSS feed reader. Or 'like' my Facebook page. Or don't, if you don't want to... in the time it took to write all that I've stopped caring!

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Katharine Birbalsingh's Education

2010-10-12T02:02:00.012+01:00

Long time readers will know the Idle Pen Pusher has long been a fan of Miss Snuffleupagus's blog, To Miss With Love. In fact, the origins of this blog lie in its comments section. She blogged openly (in style and content, she was anonymous), eloquently and honestly about the decay in the British education system. She wrote charmingly of her pupils and colleagues and the problems she encountered. Katharine Birbalsingh is a deputy head of a Church of England 'academy' school in inner London and gave a speech to the Conservative party conference on the need to raise standards and change the culture. A Canadian of Indian-Jamaican parentage who studied at Oxford, she spoke of how the Marxist Today-reading lefty she was at uni died while teaching in the schools dominated by leftist thought and culture. You can watch it below.

That got her suspended for two days pending a 'review of her position'. You really need to watch it to realise how absurd it is. She has since been reinstated, not least because of the groundswell of support for her in the media. It gives you an idea of how the left will respond to the threat of sensible, sound ideas. There's a Facebook group dedicated to her support should she need it, but -for now- it looks like she won't...

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My Freedom & Your Idea

2010-10-12T01:05:00.003+01:00

After days of stiff painfully muscles from my personally trained work out on Thursday, I went back to my charity-run gym yesterday (Monday) evening. I had forgotten the headphones to my phone so I couldn't listen to my music and I had to listen to other people. This wasn't a good start. After my stretches, I started to do a few of the routines recommended by the personal trainer but I couldn't concentrate. All I could think of was that I was letting someone else bounce me into doing something I wouldn't otherwise have done, because they thought it was best.

The charity-run gym had withdrawn popular equipment, causing congestion and queues, in order to shift clients onto free weights and benches. I like the machines. They are individual and surround you with metal that marks out a defined personal space and it's easier to ignore everyone else. Free weights don't give you that: you're in a big communal space where people move about and there's a shade more social interaction. But the really grating thing is knowing someone is trying to get you to do something differently, because they think it's in your best interests. Not theirs, but yours.

With these thoughts swilling around my head as I laid on a mat doing an exercise I didn't particularly want to do, with an irritating (and slightly unmanly!) piece of equipment beside me after my last exercise, and with the sound of the overly enthusiastic little Chinese chap next to me doing all sorts of exotic stretches and holds, I muttered profanities and stormed off to the sauna to let my blood pressure float back down while I mulled over switching to a gym with shareholders who wouldn't put up with this crap. In the sauna I told myself not to be a ninny and get back out and complete the workout, but I decided to do only the things I would have done anyway because doing the stuff the personal trainer suggested would simply have pissed me off again and made me feel like the serf I am.

I came across a quote today which seemed remarkably apt in light of my explosive hatred for those who I felt were trying to tell me what to do, especially if it's not done with blunt language:

My freedom is more important than your great idea.

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Progress And Profit

2010-10-07T23:13:00.005+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher's gym (or 'wellness centre', as they insist on calling it) has recently been renovated. Old machines have been replaced by new ones, the changing rooms, sauna and steam room have been replaced and the whole place has been given a fresh lick of paint. The most useful alteration was the paint job.

Most of the changes have been either unnecessary or for the worse. The glass partitions in the showers are now translucent rather than opaque. Why? Two of the popular resistance machines have been replaced with a single newer replacement. This means having to wait in queues. Meanwhile, there are a pair of machines called 'hip abduction' (scary?) that I've never seen anyone ever use. Those newer replacements of the popular machines are actually worse, too. The metal bars that make the contruction have rounded tops which may look futuristic but you can't rest your water bottle on them. They also have translucent plastic covers over the weight stacks. Safety first! Presumably some idiot put his fingers between the weights of the older, 'unsafe' machines.

That's not all. The stretching area has been renovated and now is covered with mirrored walls (instead of just one wall) so which ever way you look, you have to look at yourself. To do this, they removed the ballet bars, which, despite the unfortunate name, were useful. They also put up posters boasting of the half a million pounds they spunked on the renovation. Why? I recently had a free personal training session when I complained about the above, in order to help adjust my routine to the new equipment. Apparently, other equipment is better for us than the popular old equipment they cut back on.

My gym isn't a council one. It's private. But it's run by a healthcare charity that bought it up a year or two ago. I am unhappy. I am considering switching to a rival gym that is further away. Would a profit-seeking operator have spent half a million pounds to piss off its customers (the personal trainer told me mine wasn't the only complaint)? Probably not. This is why capitalism and individual private profit is vitally important to our prosperity, not just competition. A competitive society containing only charities and do-gooders would be a grim one. It all reminds me of that CS Lewis quote:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

UPDATE

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Child Benefit - Do It, George!

2010-10-05T13:26:00.003+01:00

The proposal to stop paying Child Benefit to higher rate taxpayers (those earning above about £43 000 pa) is causing a storm across the political spectrum. Guardian deputy comments editor Joseph Harker whines that it's a "tax on aspiration" and how hard it will hit his 5-child household.

"For the super-rich, or even those earning over £100,000, this may be an affordable pay cut. But for those earning just above the £44,000 mark, it will have massive implications."

It doesn't take a genius to deduce that Mr Harker probably therefore earns above £44 000 but below £100 000. But when are Guardian types going to learn that cutting spending is not a 'tax'? On a similar vein, Subrosa asks whether loss of child benefit can be construed as 'loss of income'. Hmmm. Yes, it is, but I do agree with her sentiment, nonetheless. As I noted yesterday, Nicola Smith at Left Foot Forward gloriously argues that stopping benefits to high-income households hits the poor hardest. Commentators from Yvette Cooper to the Telegraph's David Hughes have spouted nonsense about it 'targeting' stay-at-home mothers. Balls, you might say: it targets higher rate taxpayers.

Unlike Janet Daley, Melissa Kite at the Telegraph doesn't sympathise with the Pizza Express beneficiaries. I agree. Tim Ambler at the ASI blog and Christie Malry at FCA Blog raise some valid concerns, though:

1) The mechanism for restriction. How will it be done? An honesty box on tax returns?
2) Changes of circumstance. What if, mid year, you become a higher rate tax payer? Or what if, say, your baby-father becomes one and doesn't tell you?
3) Household incomes. A couple with one earner on £50 000 and a stay-at-home mum gets nothing, while a couple both working earning £40 000 each, £80 000 in total, still get the Child Benefit. And what about if a lodger is a higher rate payer? Does that count?
4) Marginal distortions. There is to be no taper. You simply lose the entire benefit when you even if you earn only £1 above the threshold. This will create bizarre incentives for people not to work or even request a pay cut in order to increase their household income.
5) Delayed implementation. It's being planned for 2013. Why? Do it now.
6) Bureacracy of compliance. Another question for tax forms and another page for Tolley's. Not to mention staff to monitor and check it for fraud.

Despite all the above, George Osborne should press ahead. He shouldn't wait till 2013, he should do in the next budget. It'll save a billion and a half pounds for taxpayers and every billion pounds counts. It might seem a small amount, but 'billions make trillions', as they used to say. The marginal distortions are something we should accept in return for the savings. Means testing would be too complicated. Child Benefit should be abolished and integrated into Iain Duncan Smith's universal credit. But for now, this is a sensible transitional move towards self-reliance and a balanced budget.

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Cutting Welfare To The Rich Hits The Poor Hardest

2010-10-04T16:57:00.005+01:00

So says Nicola Smith at Left Foot Forward re the coalition plan to stop paying Child Benefit to those earning over £44 000. This is the nub of her rationale:

"Once middle and higher earners are completely excluded from state welfare the generosity of the system begins to deteriorate as political pressure for its maintenance reduces."

Yes, really. No, I'm not making it up. Click the link above and see it yourself. Only on the left, eh? Maybe we should double Child Benefit payments to the rich? Perhaps that would benefit the poor most!

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Commonwealth Games Shambles

2010-10-04T16:04:00.004+01:00

Turning on the television to watch George Osborne's speech this afternoon the Idle Pen Pusher saw some Commonwealth Games swimming coverage. The swimmers were lined up by one end of the pool standing on blocks while a line of officials, one by each contestant, carried out some function which has escaped me. What I do remember, though, is the comically jaunty regimental fashion with which the officials conducted themselves. They had obviously been given some training as they turned to the side in sharp, military-style robotic moves. The problem was they didn't line up or face the same way or turn at the same time or even in order. As they walked away some marched swinging their arms with the pride of an officer in the Household Cavalry on parade while others almost mooched away. The discrepancy was startling.

A total shambles. Still, it made me smirk with delight. They should have gone to the Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club to see how it should be done. This, to say nothing of the collapsing bridge and roof the other week, goes to show just how far India still has to go before it will dominate the world with China as per the fantasies of Western lefties everywhere...

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Ecofascism 10-10

2010-10-01T17:26:00.005+01:00

I don't think the video below is a spoof. It appears to be genuine. It shows you what they mean when they say "your choice" and "no pressure", doesn't it?

Preumably, they think it's a joke. They don't think they really believe kids and adults who fail to be brainwashed by eco-crap should be executed. But what do they think should happen to those who ignore recycling rules, and then defend themselves against state agents who come to enforce the law?

H/t Christian May via Iain Dale

UPDATE: The video was removed from their site and an apology issued within 24 hours.

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Question Time Moron Of The Week

2010-10-01T13:40:00.007+01:00

Question Time last night came from Manchester with MPs Diane Abbot, Simon Hughes and Grant Shapps with historian David Starkey and actor Brian Cox. David Starkey was his usual entertaining and sound self and Grant Shapps was pretty sensible. Even Simon Hughes wasn't particularly objectionable, at least not in what he was saying. Diane Abbot was, waffling on about African countries when discussing the IMF for example. The audience had plenty of banality to offer to the programme but this week's Moron of the Week award goes to Brian Cox, not least for this impressive stream of fecal consciousness in response to the question of whether the huge deficit and attendant damage was caused under Labour's watch:

"Well I think it was well before, the financial crisis has been going on for a long, long time and I think to lay it at the door of one party or even another party isn't really fair as I dont think it's true. I think that people have been getting greedier and greedier and greedier. And also I have to pose the questions about the IMF.

I'm not altogther sure the IMF is at all or would be at all concerned about the social impact. I think the IMF needs to be reformed, for a start. I think our whole monetary value needs to be reformed, I think we're living in the dark ages as far as that's concerned. We have allowed people to get rich at the expense of others, and that seems to be wrong. And it's time there was an equation, the balance was, was, was shifted.

And given the, the, the speed of the cuts, yes the cuts have to happen. But it's you have to be careful about the kneejerk reaction of the cuts because if you cut too much the whole fabric will collapse and that's what I, that's what I..."

At which point the chair had appeared to have had enough.

Read more Morons of the Week here...

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Immigration, Electoral Fraud & Sayeeda Warsi

2010-09-30T21:43:00.005+01:00

Good on Sayeeda Warsi for saying publicly what so many people say privately: election-rigging is disproportionately perpetrated by Asian members of the Labour Party.

When the Idle Pen Pusher reads about electoral fraud, the names involved are usually Patels, Khans and Mohammads. The crimes against our democracy are usually carried out for the benefit of the Labour Party. It's usually in such places as inner east London, outer west London, and Nothern and Midlands cities. This is not surprising. Immigrants have a different culture, almost always one with a lesser respect for the rule of law and democracy than ours. Multiculturalism encourages immigrants to retain their culture. You have to be quite stupid to think encouraging this would only affect people's identies and behaviour in terms of wearing different clothing, eating different food and speaking different languages. Quite stupid, or a leftie.

We have also been busy dismantling the very practices, procedures and institutions which the Victorians instituted and which went a long way to creating our culture of fair play and democratic integrity. The secret ballot marked in a private booth in a public place, monitored by impartial officials with heavy penalties for fraud and serious attempts to prevent it are the reasons why there isn't much electoral fraud in Britain.

An electoral reform we need: abolish postal voting. This would go a long way to stop the practice from spreading to the wider population and to stamp out cultural diversity in electoral practices, surely something we should all agree with?

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Self Ownership & Prof Anne Phillips

2010-09-30T00:51:00.009+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher spent Wednesday night attending a public lecture at the LSE entitled "‘It’s My Body and I’ll Do What I Like With It’: bodies as objects and possessions" delivered by the Gender Institute's Professor of Gender and Political Theory, Anne Phillips. I guffawed a few times, it has to be said, but it was a fascinating amble through the professor's candidly uncertain beliefs in relation to such topics as markets in body parts, prostitution and self ownership. In summary, the body is special and different from other commodities, but it cannot be denied that markets have produced better outcomes than prohibition, viz. open prostitution and Iran's kidney market.

One crucial idea seemed to stop the professor from accepting that the body is the property of the mind that it is attached to, and can be sold and hired out in whatsoever way that owner chooses: looting. Professor Phillips, you see, believes in looting all other property, but it appears she draws the line at the state compulsorily 'redistributing' one of her two kidneys, for example, to someone with no working kidney. Life would be fairer if Anne and Gideon earned a similar amount of money. As they don't, Anne favours using the state to confiscate some of Gideon's earnings to make like fairer for Anne and accepts it if the state confiscates her property to 'redistribute' it to Gideon. She doesn't, however, accept the state forcibly confiscating one of Anne's functioning kidneys to redistribute it to Gideon, who has none.

How to square this circle? The body is special. Property rights don't quite apply in the same way. When we say 'my body' we should think of the possessive pronomial in the way we use it when we say 'my child' rather than 'my car'. The child is in my trust, but I do not have the right to hire him out or sell him. I wanted to point out that 'my' always means ownership except when it refers to a natural person, but I didn't get the chance.

Of course, the answer to this connundrum is simple: my body is my property. I can do what the hell I like to it and you have no morally justifiable right to use force to stop me. It's wrong to steal my kidneys to 'redistribute' them to someone you consider worthier than me. It's also wrong to steal my time or money to redistribute to someone you think needs it more than I do.

No one has a morally justifiable right to force me to have sex or prevent me from selling my body for sexual services, to take my kidneys or any body parts or to prevent me from selling them, to force me to imbibe a substance or to prevent me from doing so. No one has a morally justifiable right to help themselves to a portion of the fruits of my labour, the things my mind and body create in exchange for that of someone else's.

Update: You can listen to a podcast of the lecture here.

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Cut Corporation Tax

2010-09-29T01:04:00.005+01:00

In May last year, I explained why Corporation Tax is wrong in principle and must be abolished:

1. It falls on workers and consumers, not shareholders.
2. It’s taxing the same thing twice. Dividends (the whole point of profits) are taxed when paid to shareholders.
3. It makes society poorer and less efficient.
4. It rewards waste and punishes success. It only applies to companies which efficiently use their resources.
5. It fuels corporate over-borrowing. Companies borrow instead of issuing shares because of it.

This year has seen a number of British companies relocate overseas, not least to minimise their tax burden. WPP, Brit Insurance, Regus, Ineos, Henderson, Shire, Informa and, this week, Wolseley to Switzerland. HSBC and Standard Chartered are known to be considering it, too.

The deficit may mean it might not be wise to abolish Corporation Tax immediately, at least assuming we're going to remain spending at the current rate. But with the EU average at 23% and our rate at 28%, George Osborne's 1% annual cuts are inadequate. It should be cut to 20% to halt the exodus and reduced further in future to attract companies, jobs and tax revenues back.

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Drugs And The Deficit

2010-09-27T12:54:00.004+01:00

TV's latest left-wing wunderkind, Chukka Umunna MP, has called in Litmus for tax rises to account for 50% of the efforts to close the deficit so as to keep public sector spending bloated.

He's right, but not in the way he thinks. We should abolish the bank levy, not triple it. We shouldn't be taxing assets ('mansion tax') or draw silly distinctions on types of income (bankers' bonuses supertax). And a per plane levy on air travel should replace the per passenger one, not complement it.
But there is a huge slice of the economy which isn't taxed and should be: drugs.

The Home Office estimates the market to be worth between £4 and £6.6bn in 2003/04. If we assume a tax take of 50% (because, like alcohol and tobacco, they would almost certainly be subject to tax rates higher than average across the economy) of £6bn (on the assumption that the market's grown since 03/04), that's £3bn in revenues.

VAT on sales, income and corporation tax on earnings and profits and excise duties on the products themselves. £10/gram on cocaine, perhaps? £1/pill for ecstasy? £5/eighth oz for cannabis? I have no idea, but such levels could probably be imposed without increasing the typical retail price from current levels due to the massive efficiency gains to be made on supply chains. The could be shipped in normal containers rather than paying thousands of pounds for some unfortunate to swallow bags of them and fly them in here in their stomachs, for example.

And then there's the effect on spending. Suddenly you wouldn't need so many prison cells, court rooms and police officers. We could release everyone convicted of possession immediately and, at a stroke, free up overcrowded jails for those who have committed the kind of crimes which have victims.

And drugs isn't the only area, either. Let's fully legalise prostitution, too, and make brothels subject to VAT and protitutes to income tax.

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Tories Shouldn't Smirk At Ed Miliband's Victory

2010-09-25T21:55:00.007+01:00

David Miliband won the vote of Labour party members and MPs in the party's leadership election but lost due to the heavy support of union members for brother Ed. This may serve as a totem of the power unions have over the party. But Tories who are telling themselves he's as uncharismatic as Gordon Brown should stop their delusions.

Ed Miliband is reasonably normal for a politician. He's English, middle class and comfortable in front of the camera. He's no Blair, but he's no Brown either. His comprehensive education and middle-class accent will be more popular than the plummy Old Etonian and Old Wet he will face at the next election. Lots of people will lose their public sector jobs over the next few years and the benefit will be a disaster that won't happen. They won't have cushy, overpaid jobs any more and Ed's lefty message will resonate with them. What's more, his slightly more left wing views will shift the range of mainstream opinions to the left, which will make left wing Tories seem more reasonable and mainstream compared to right wing Tories.

Ed Miliband could well be the next Prime Minister. He doesn't need to win many seats to make it happen. Tories should stop deluding themselves otherwise if they want to make sure it doesn't.

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Faceproof - Case 003

2010-09-24T15:27:00.002+01:00

Sometimes you don't need to look at the details of a case. You just know someone is guitly or innocent. FaceProof is a series that assesses the guilt of a defendant purely on photographic evidence of his face. Case number 003:

"Michael Williams admitted inciting sexual activity, grooming and distributing indecent images.

The 29-year-old, of Tresooth Lane, Penryn, approached children on Facebook and Bebo, Truro Crown Court heard."

Guilty. Can there be any doubt?

Previous case: 002

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Question Time Moron Of The Week

2010-09-24T10:51:00.006+01:00

Question Time is back with a moronic vengeance. Caroline Flint, Vince Cable, Ian Hislop and Mehdi Hasan were there representing the left while John Redwood was the token right winger. Mehdi Hasan was head and shoulders beneath the rest for his sheer loathsomeness. Despite being among an audience full of scousers, he managed to win the Idle Pen Pusher's Moron of the Week accolade. Every time he shuffled around uncomfortably on his full size seat to open his unappealing podgy little facial hole, under his looting socialist bug eyes, he gave offence to anyone interested in liberty. His attempts to appear intelligent were palpable, garbling his grammar while crisply pronouncing his syllables. What is it with lefties always trying, too hard, to appear 'clever'?

"This coalition has done very little to rein in bankers' pay and bonuses"

What the fuck? The state has done very little to 'rein in' private sector pay? Go fuck yourself, Mehdi. Bankers' pay is none of your business, unless you own bank shares. If you don't like pay, buy some shares and propose a resolution at the company AGM.

"Why was Will Hutton asked to look at public sector pay but not private sector pay."

Because it's none of the state's business.

"You say 'they're not lending' and people clap. Why don't you make them lend?"

Because he's not (quite) as stupid as you, Mr Hasan. Make someone else lend their money to someone else because you think they should? And what about the other ideas you wanted, taxing banks' balance sheets, for example. What the fuck do you think that would do to lending? Increasing capital requirements. What do you think that will do? Moron.

Read more Morons of the Week here...

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Those Who Insult Allah...

2010-09-23T13:45:00.004+01:00

Officers detained two men on September 15 and four more yesterday and all six were bailed pending further inquiries, Northumbria Police said.

''The arrests followed the burning of what are believed to have been two Korans in Gateshead on September 11,'' the spokesman said.

Incredible. The Idle Pen Pusher is stunned. Is now the time for liberals to start burning books, for no other reason than civil disobedience against the blue uniforms who apparently tell us we will be arrested if we insult Allah? Have we finally passed into a police state?

What the fuck is happening when a man can be arrested -in England- for burning his own property?

I am drawn back to that sublime affirmation of British liberty from arbitrary rule, the US Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

In other news, the man who burned a Koran in New York last week has been fired from his NYC Transit job.

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Citzens Or Livestock?

2010-09-23T00:04:00.004+01:00

A commenter left this powerful video in the Government Is Violence post. The thrust: the earliest states were owners of slaves, human livestock. The rulers were aggressive, violent farmers who enslaved the weak as serfs. Farmers have turned to free range livestock management techniques to increase the productivity in terms of taste and reducing self-harming behaviour. Our farmers too have granted us liberties in order to make us more productive livestock. A political map of the world is a map of farms. We live in a farm, not a country. Capitalism, liberalism, socialism, conservatism - all livestock management techniques. We are given choices about which technique can be chosen. The option to close down the farm is never offered.

Powerful stuff. It doesn't address what to do with people who do use violence against others. But powerful stuff nonetheless.

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Yes, Violence. That's Right, Violence

2010-09-22T09:49:00.007+01:00

"I own a multimillion pound company" harrumphed the husband, "and I can tell you if you worked for my company you'd be out like that. You really haven't got a clue."

All because the Idle Pen Pusher insisted that the state will use violence against you if you dare to defend your liberty against the force of its blue-uniformed heavies.

"Violence! He thinks he's suffered violence from the government because he has to do his bit and pay tax." Putting on the most mocking voice he could summon, he asked "When have you ever suffered violence?"

I've always feared it more than my tax is worth, I countered, so had always backed down before it came to that. Which simply elicited more laughter from my small group of late-middle aged interlocutors.

But I had questions of my own. "What the hell do you think happens if you don't pay your taxes? And what happens if you resist arrest and defend your liberty?"

Sadly, we got stuck there. "You'll get arrested", was the answer to every question about what might happen if you physically stopped someone from arresting you. Telling wife that, on the contrary, it was she who was naive rather than me if she thought she wouldn't suffer force and, ultimately, violence, if she didn't pay her taxes and defended her liberty probably didn't help, either.

I couldn't even get them to agree that law is a collections of orders from one group of people to everyone else threatening them with punishment unless it's obeyed. Why does my blunt language cause such angry offence? "That's ridiculous. Laws are rules there for society to make it work."

"So, you don't drive on the right just to save yourself from harm? To avoid a crash and because you're afraid of the law? Nothing higher than that?" asked the husband, checking that his multi-million pound business owning mind had understood me correctly. It had.

I'll say it again. Tax is violence. And yes that word is strong and no it's not normally associated with tax. But it should be.

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Economic Growth & Government

2010-09-21T01:26:00.004+01:00

What is economic growth and how do we maximise it? Growth is the speed the economy is expanding and represents the increase in our collective traded wealth.

The economy is a measure of the product of two factors:
1) how much of our time we spend on other people in exchange for other people's time through the medium of money and,
2) how efficiently we spend that time.

So, time spent on others as an informal barter such as a pair of parents who babysit each others' children is not measured, nor that given to others for free, such as a grandparent who babysits purely to benefit the parents. But a professional baby-sitter's time is included.

But how efficiently the time is spent is also crucial. An economy with 10 workers that produces 100 Gizmos is smaller than an economy with faster workers who produce 200. If each Gizmo is worth $10 then the size of the first economy is $1 000 (or $100/head), but the second economy is $2 000 (or $200/head).

So economic growth is either achieved by spending more of our collective time on other people for financial benefit or by spending our time more efficiently. Let's look at the second option first.

Our economy has grown so much since pre-industrial times because we use our time so much more efficiently than we used to. This is due in a large part to automation of task with technological devices and specialisation. The tractor has removed the need for as many of us to work in the fields to provide the food we need so labourers switched to manufacturing and service work instead. The production line means that the same number of people can produce far more than they used to be able to. These things, and all the other myriad technological innovation and inventions have made us more efficient and richer, producing far more with the same time and effort. But it's not just the big things.

Millions and millions of tiny barely perceptible innovations have played their part. Take Avery address labels. Five years ago they were precut and preconfigured for printing, but that was it. Today, you tear a strip away from the back of the plastic which reveals about a centimetre of the sticky side of each label. This makes it easier and faster for anyone affixing labels to envelopes as they don't have to fiddle around with each label to peel it off the backing paper. This may sound laughably minor, but offices, factories and other workplaces are full of examples of tiny little innovations like this which all add up to making us richer and economic growth.

What is it that prompts people to discover more efficient ways of doing things? Partly it's the joy of making the world better. Partly, it can be naked self-interest either in the form of status and recognition or financial reward. Government agencies can provide a framework for status and recognition. Government employees often work for the pure joy of improving the world, too. So efficiency improvements and economic growth can spring from within government. But what government does very badly is financial reward. It is especially bad for two reasons.

The first is that it stands in between the consumer and the producer and so weakens the price signals to management and employees. Governments pay regard to what swing voters in marginal constituencies demand rather than the consumers of the product. Pay and incentives are determined not by commercial logic but political logic.

The second is that the tax raised in order to pay for the government's services itself weakens further the incentives for people to trade with each other and work. It might make sense for someone to babysit someone else's child for, say, £20. The prospective baby-sitter might think that £20 is worth it, but anything less would not be enough. The parents might also think giving the babysitter £20 is worth it, but any more would be too much. Both lives are improved by the trade. So what happens when the government taxes it. Suppose it adds a 10% sales tax on the trade and a 10% income tax on the babysitter. The parents would have to pay £22, £20 plus 10% tax. The baby-sitter would receive only £18, the £20 received less 10% income tax. The baby sitter would not think it was worth working for only £18 and the parents would not think hiring the baby sitter was worth £22. This means the trade would not happen - at least not legally. The economy would be smaller as a result.

This doesn't always happen. The baby sitter might be prepared to work for anything above £15 and the parents might be prepared to pay anything up to £25. In this case both are made £5 richer by the trade and it would still happen even with the taxes. It would be less of a bargain for both, each becoming only £3 better off after the taxes. But what if taxes were increased to 30%? Once again, the trade would not happen. The baby sitter would only receive £14 (£20 less 30% income tax) and the parent would have to pay £26 (£20 plus 30% sales tax). Too little for the babysitter and too expensive for the parents.

So the more services the government provides, the more it shinks the economy and slows economic growth. Both because taxes stop viable economic activity from being worthwhile to the people involved and because government ownership of a business weakens the financial incentive for owners and managers to improve efficiency, relying only on recognition and innate desire to see things improved for its own sake. The more services the government provides, the more it both shrinks the economy and reduces further growth. The more of the economy controlled by government, the more of it is exempt from the full power of personal financial incentives for individuals to improve their efficiency and the more damaging the impact of the tax required to fund it.

The lessons are obvious: smaller governments (almost always) = faster economic growth and a richer population. The bigger the cuts to government spending, the bigger the cuts to the restrictions on the economy and therefore the better for the economy.

And that's just the practical argument. If the practical economic damage government spending does isn't enough, there's also the moral argument about what the law should be for and that government is violence and tax is violence, too.

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Protest The Pope

2010-09-20T10:50:00.006+01:00

On Saturday the Idle Pen Pusher ambled down Whitehall to Parliament Square against a throng of spent protesters leaving their 'Protest The Pope' march which had culminated in speeches outside Downing Street prior to my arrival. The crowd was as could have been expected from an event promoted by Stephen Fry, Johann Hari and Peter Tatchell: lots of weary looking, portly, shaven-headed men of a certain age huffing their way home. With them were a range of protesting types; 'free thinkers' in flowing robes, dreadlocked professional protesters in shapeless greeny-brown Robin Hood attire and grey haired sensible women normally found volunteering in charity shops (not Cafod, presumably - more Oxfam). Sadly, I didn't notice any angry Protestants aghast at popery.

A few nights previously I had been reading about vigourous demonstrations (I don't think they were quite riots, but close) on that very same street following Catholic emancipation laws a couple of hundred prior, apparently with seas of protesters carrying 'no poppery' banners. I have to say I was rather disappointed not to have seen any crusty old Ian Paisley types frothing at the mouth. It did make me wish I had made myself one. I couldn't make up my mind whether I wished I was carrying an anti-catholic religious banner more or a Vatican flag. My rolled up copy of the Spectator served to keep me feeling like an observer of the crowd rather than part of it without any need for flags or banners.

There were plenty of banners on display, though. And lots of lapel badges and slogan t-shirts, too. Most were contemptibly moronic and puerile. Perhaps the most laughable were the "Vatican Promotes Segregated Schools" ones. I mean, wow. Something to get really worked up about, eh? Others accused His Holiness of being a Nazi, a paedophile, or both. And how is "Papal polices make women 2nd-class" meant to make sense? Honestly, both were official banners. There were some amusing ones, though: "Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers" make me chuckle. Ed West saw one that read "Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings".

In contrast to the huffy agitators on Whitehall, the well-wishers on Horse Guards Road and The Mall were a rather more genteel, cheerier bunch. Sensibly clad in solid shoes with grandchildren in tow, the faithful and curious lined the barricades to Hyde Park from Parliament Square. I joined them after a long walk to find a free spot at the front and saw the pontiff wave serenely at me as his famous Merc inched past at the speed of a milk float. All along the route, a hundred or so people ran along with the car, many to take pictures, some -I think- for the sheer thrill of staying in the vicinity of the Christ's representative on Earth.

Although I was wondering why on earth I was standing at a barricade waiting for an 83-year-old man to slowly drive past me and wave from behind his bullet-proof glass, I have to admit I was quietly charmed by his stoic, grandfatherly grin. He might have spoken nonsense about atheists who "pick and choose their morals" (damn right!) but he looked like he knew his visit was successful, in some contrast with the prissy foolishness of those like Hari calling on the police to arrest him.

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250 IPP Rants & Twitter

2010-09-18T13:57:00.007+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher has recently posted his 250th rant. To commemorate this landmark (land?) I've decided to join Twitter. The Twitter account will link to the blog and perhaps serve as a vent for pithy comments when I can't be bothered to write a proper post about them (they can take hours!) Naturally, my account name there is also IdlePenPusher if you want to have a look.

I'm also on Facebook. Why not 'like' my page on there, too, while you're at it?

Since my last review on my first birthday, I've urged people to vote for liberty in the form of the imperfect UK Independence Party, assessed the quietly benign prospects for the coalition, called for David Laws to resign his seat (would you believe that my call went unheeded? Well, it did. Yes, I was surprised, too) and hummed along to a song made of Lady Thatcher samples, Maggie's Last Party.

I said we should let Greece burn in her own mess and we should leave the EU. I may have said last one a few times, I'll probably say it again, too. I bemoaned more housing market regulation and the higher rents that will result, but proposed five spending reforms. I complained that prison fails, that sadly we want be raped (fiscally speaking) and spat at the stupidity of the Mail's bone-headed campaign to force banks to lend money to bad risks.

On the Falklands I opined there was nothing to discuss: the end of the story is that they are British.

Straying into (political) philosophy, I wrote three of my favourite posts: that tax is violence, that as a consequence all government is violence, but that sometimes, just sometimes, violence is necessary and that is the basis for the legitimacy of law. In theory, obviously, if (usually) not in practice.

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Faceproof - Case 002

2010-09-17T15:52:00.003+01:00

Sometimes you don't need to look at the details of a case. You just know someone is guitly or innocent. FaceProof is a series that assesses the guilt of a defendant purely on photographic evidence of his face. Case number 002:

"A Broadmoor patient who confessed to killing two women in East Sussex in 1998 and eating flesh from one of them has been jailed for at least 21 years."

A diligent reader sent this story about Sussex flesh-eating murderer Graham Fisher to the IPP for a verdict: Guilty. Obviously.

Previous case: 001

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Stephen Fry and Pope Benedict XVI in Britain

2010-09-17T01:32:00.008+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher is a lapsed Catholic. Brought up half-heartedly Catholic by one religious parent and one atheist, I started to doubt at about 14. I am not 'lapsed' in the sense of clinging onto some kind of possibility of a God; I disbelieve. I am 'lapsed' because I am atheist. I find the likelihood of there being a God inestimably remote. Frankly, I regard religious belief as an intellectual and character flaw on the part of the believer (sometimes a very minor chink, sometimes something much more serious, depending on the precise nature of the belief and all it entails). On the Dawkins spectrum of theistic probability, I regard myself as at level 6 out of regard for my incomplete understanding of the universe.

And I am still annoyed by all the anti-Catholic and, especially, anti-Ratzinger nonsense circulating. Richard Dawkins, Peter Tatchell, Stephen Fry and the usual suspects are going out protesting against the pope's visit. It's started with a terse letter to the Guardian signed by the above and the Independent's repugnant Johann Hari amongst others stating that the Vatican has 'promoted' segregated education as one of the reasons why the pope ought not to be afforded a state visit to the UK. It then insists the Holy See is not a state. Stephen Fry, in the BBC interview (see video below), calls it an 'accident of words' because, he asks, "where's its olympics team?"

"It is in no real sense a sovereign state. At all." He adds. It has an "absolute monarchy", he says. I think I know what he really means: It's tiny and we could smite it if we chose to, therefore we cannot respect its independence and sovereignty. Can he mean anything else?

Sure, religion is, on balance, bad. It does more harm than good and we'd be better off without it. But it does do good. Why does it work up all the wrong sorts so much? Even some otherwise sound, sensible types seem to be excessively bothered by it. It's one form of belief which subjugates the individual to the greater good, but it's not the worst, let alone the only one.

I'm not saying people shouldn't protest against things like their abortion and condom policies and the child abuse scandals. But I can't help feeling that white, European Benedict XVI is just an easy target for fashionable people with trendy politics. I suppose I can't blame them. I'd feel much safer slapping the face of a man who believes in turning the other cheek than one who believes he'd be rewarded with 72 virgins for murdering you if you insulted his deity.

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Sarah Palin, Terry Jones & The Ground Zero Mosque

2010-09-11T19:18:00.008+01:00

She sums the Terry Jones business up pretty well in her Facebook note:

"People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero."

She's also posted on Twitter about a cleric standing for the Afghan parliament who's called for American children to be murdered to avenge for the burned books. Presumably murdering American adults wouldn't be a sufficiently proportionate response to the act of burning a book. They make for a curious demonstration of how your typical Christian crazy differs from your typical Muslim crazy, don't they?

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Political Spectrum

2010-09-11T17:33:00.003+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher has taken a political quiz. The results are unsurprising, although plenty of the questions are vague. The questions are better than those in the last one I took, however. For example, this one asks if gay marriages should be banned. I answered no, which more accurately represents my views than the previous test I took which asked something along the lines of whether marriage should be extended to gay couples. I answered no to that, too, as the current marriage arrangements should be scrapped entirely and the state should keep no records of who's in a relationship with whom. Any marriage ceremonies should be private affairs arranged by social institutions. Not the state.

I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 7.94, Libertarian: 7.27

Political Spectrum Quiz

The red cross represents where I am on the spectrum: pretty liberal both on the economic (horizontal) axis and pretty liberal on the social (vertical) axis. The blue cross is aggregate of results from those aged 18-29, the green 30-39 and the purple 40-49. It neatly illustrates the gradual shift to more economic liberalism and social illiberalism as people get older. The results for those in their 50s, 60s and over 70 do not move any more to the economic right. They do, however, become successively more socially illiberal. The over 70s are the only group above the half-way line.

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Micro Management And Required Knowledge

2010-09-10T18:00:00.007+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher is having what could count as a discussion with WDH here and at his blog, English Mail Coach. Various issues have been touched on but the crux for him for everything is the amount of detailed knowledge of the minutiae of every little bit of society. He's chosen to focus on education policy and the idea of introducing a measure of liberty and choice in education provision, specifically the Libertarian Party's educaiton policy, viz. a Swedish style vouncher system with the freedom for parents to 'top up' if a school charges more than the voucher amount, the freedom for profit-seeking companies to run schools and removing the local education authorities' power to veto new schools.

What bothers WDH so much is that I'm unconcerned about how a parent might conceptualise the education he seeks for his child into the categories of 'product', 'shareholder' etc. So fixated with these terms is he that he seems unable to even accept the possibility that a school might also be a business:

"we must always be conscious of the limitations of this analogy. Parents do not simply regard their children in terms of investment capital, nor, as you have comprehensively demonstrated can we easily describe the 'profits' resulting from education - certainly not in terms of monetary value."

Christ. All. Mighty. No, parents don't consider their children 'investment capital' with regard to buying education for them in a school any more than they do so when buying them toys at a toy shop. Assuming the school is run by a profit-seeking person, the business is the school. The school is not like a business. It is not an analogy. It is a business. The product is the education provided to the parent, delivered to the child, in exchange for the revenue the parent, via the voucher and possibly their own funds too, gives to the business. The costs to the business are the premises, staff etc and the 'profit' is the amount the business accrues in sales in excess of those costs. The 'dividend' is that financial consideration, the 'monetary value' as you put it, which the management of the business returns to the holders of equity. So yes, it's head-slappingly easy to describe the 'profits' in 'monetary value'. You just subtract the costs from the sales and that number is it.

Why the hell is that so difficult to grasp?

Sure, most schools in the UK aren't run for profit at the moment, but then at one point neither were cars, telephones and steel. They too were once considered a special case. I don't care whether it's a company or a charity, or a mutual running the business of a school. The LPUK policy doesn't specify, either. But they are businesses even now. Except the state is the owner and they don't run to make a profit.

He frets: "In the case of education neither you nor the Libertarian Party have been able to provide a clear definition of the product schools are attempting to sell."

He worries: "You certainly haven't been able to come up with a mechanism as to how consumers will judge of the quality of the education on offer."

He panics: "Let us instead imagine that there was a free school say 2 miles away. Who shall be running it? How many teachers will leave the security and comfort of the established order to venture their careers on this untried venture?"

I am not attempting to run a school. To be frank, it's not my fucking business who runs a school: I'm neither a parent nor a school owner recruiting someone to run it. I am suggesting a means of relaxing political control, though. None of your questions are even relevant to this discussion. They are relevant to a prospectus. They are relevant to a parent. They are relevant to someone running a school. They are not relevant to a discussion about politics nor are they ones with which politicians have any business interfering.

Answers: who runs the schools is whoever runs the schools which parents, through their custom, choose. How many teachers leave will be the number who are persuaded by the management of any new schools. But these are emphatically not relevant. Imagine if not a single teacher left: the policy would have no impact. No school would be affected. No new school could set up. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Now imagine some did leave. Some new schools are set up. Ones which teachers presumably think are better than the ones they left. The parents might agree, in which cases we have better schools. The parents might think they're worse, in which case they won't stay open long. So no great loss.

This is what those of us arguing for liberty have to face. A frightened, worried opposition who insist that politicians pretend they know the details of every facet of human life and control our every move for our own good, who cannot bear the idea of people being left to their own devices to solve their problems for themselves. As I've said before, we want to be spanked. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to show such people that controlling things from the centre is not the answer? That the faults of the market are faults of people and that those errors occur when people are compelling people to do things too - and not only will they make errors but they will makes them on a grander scale because only the individual knows what he wants and the more decisions you take away from him and the more you force him to bend to your will, even though you think you know better than him, the less his life will be as he wants it?

Answers on a postcard. Or in the comments...

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Browser Market Share

2010-09-09T23:49:00.006+01:00

Click image to enlarge

The graph above and the data table below are the figures for the browsers used by visitors to the Idle Pen Pusher. I don't draw too much from them as there are all sorts of reasons why they won't reflect overall browser usage - but nonetheless the trends are interesting. In 2009 the story was Firefox's ascent to over 50% of the market and the decline of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In 2010 the story looks like Firefox's loss of market share to both Safari and Chrome. Both Firefox and IE have lower shares of the IPP reading market than they did in the first few months of 2009. Safari has doubled to 10% and Chrome has shot into 3rd place at 12.5%.

Isn't competition great?

		IE	Firefox	Safari	Opera	Netfront	Chrome
2009	Q1	42.33	44.28	6.63	1.04	2.09	0
2009	Q2	41.25	46.01	4.03	0.74	3.62	3.37
2009	Q3	36.11	50.31	5.92	2.42	1.29	2.93
2009	Q4	30.58	52.91	6.75	3.25	0.05	6.02
2010	Q1	34.13	46.4	7.84	1.75	0.18	9.46
2010	Q2	33.11	43.44	8.46	1.6	0.08	12.7
2010	Q3*	36.73	38.36	10.68	1.51	0.04	12.37

*To date.
Firefox figures include Mozilla. Opera includes Opera mini.

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Schools And Choice - The English Mail Coach

2010-09-08T23:44:00.007+01:00

The Idle Pen Pusher commented on a post about the Libertarian Party at a blog called 'The English Mail Coach'.

I've reproduced my original comment on the post below:

I can't remember how I came to this article but what a resounding disappointment it is. Expecting an intelligent critique of LPUK's policies, instead I read a litany of bovine remarks about a list of mainly sensible policies. And on the one occasion where you did highlight a stupid policy, monetary reform, there was no mention of the glaringly obvious contradiction of why it is that a party which believes in freedom above all things the state should prohibit people from lending their money to a bank whose business model involves lending some of that money on to another person. Why not?

There are no real obligations within Libertarianism, only the obligation to mind your own business. Nor are there rights.

Really? Libertarians don't believe in the right to a fair trial, or to due process, or equality before the law, or to free speech, or freedom from torture and arbitrary government? Do none of them believe in society, in mutuality, in the benevolence of voluntary co-operation and interaction?

"The problem with such a system is that it assumes most parents take an active interest in the day to day running of their child’s education. They do not. It also assumes that most families possess the financial and logistical resources to ‘take their business elsewhere’ should a school prove unsatisfactory. Again, they do not. In rural areas especially the bog-standard local comprehensive might be the only establishment on offer, and not everyone can afford to relocate should they so desire."

I really hope this was written in a fit of sneering elf-regard for the comprehensiveness of your assault on liberty and that you didn't actually think about that before writing it. You don't really believe that successful businesses don't care about marginal sales, do you? You don't really believe that the prospect of a school losing 10 or 20% of its income should it get sloppy and upset its most active parents might give the school something to think about? And you can't honestly believe that the sink schools most in need of competition are those out in rural areas, can you?

"It has not of course occurred to them that ‘Mankind’ has had many a chance to prove its inherent charitableness and failed - witness the extreme reluctance of American business owners to provide health insurance for their employees - or that none of this is particularly compatible with the celebrated self-interest of the free marketeer."

This is another one I hope you didn't actually think about before writing. Why would American business owners' failure to 'provide' health insurance cover of a standard you specify (presumably based on standards American politicians have set) be evidence of man's inherant charitable nature? And if it's about charity, then why ought they 'provide' such health insurance to their employees rather than to the poor or the needy in general? What on earth has their business relationship with their employees got to do with their charity? Perhaps American business owners are reluctant ('extreme' or otherwise) to pay their employees in the form of health insurance because those employees would rather have the cash value instead? They don't tend to 'provide' housing, food and entertainment either. Is this further proof of their uncharitable ways? Or simply that being paid cash and deciding for yourself what house you live in, what food you want and what health insurance suits you best is a better option than having some copany buyer make those choices for you?

Wouldn't a better place to look for man's instinct for charity come from statistics that show Britons give far more than Europeans to charity, and Americans give far more than we do?

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=236671

WDH, the blog's author replied and I've copied it below:

Idle Pen Pusher,

I think we have here an excellent instance of why it's always an idea to read the other comments before venturing your own remarks.

You don't really believe that successful businesses don't care about marginal sales, do you? You don't really believe that the prospect of a school losing 10 or 20% of its income should it get sloppy and upset its most active parents might give the school something to think about?

Here in a sentence we find Libertarianism's fundamental indebtedness to Marxism. You think every social phenomenon can be explained in terms of the market operations. But guess what? Failing schools don't have 'active parents', it's a very significant reason why they're failing in the first place.

When you think more carefully about schools you realise the market metaphor is just that: a metaphor, not a literal description of how state education works, or could work. If parents are shareholders or customers then what is the dividend, or the product? GCSEs and A-levels? Apart from a middle-class minority who are already doing remarkably well without your voucher system, most parents simply do not have particularly high academic expectations for their children.

Since Libertarians are so evidently bereft of real world experience when it comes to state education let me furnish you with an example.

The year I took my GCSEs (2005) with one exception, the entire class at my school failed Graphic Design. There were something like a dozen Ungraded papers, a handful 'E's and 'D's and one A, from a kid whose parent was a graphic designer. How many parental complaints were there at the Annual General Governor's Meeting that year?

One. Did it result in a change of school policy? No. This year, five years on, my sister informs me everyone in the class received Ungraded papers. So where are these 'active' parents who pay such close attention to discipline, teaching quality and results?

Scroll up the comments page and you'll see the other problem with this argument. Schools are already dependent on 'parental choice' for their income since their level of funding is dependent on the number of children in attendance. That's why expulsion is so rare in state education. So why aren't parents already exercising their power of choice, why isn't this imagined 10% to 20% already threatening to withdraw its children?

Interestingly when it comes to the sixth form we already have a working model of what parental choice looks like. My comprehensive school had a sixth form so abysmal that there have been years when they actually refused to publish their A-Level results. This has resulted in a middle class brain drain to a very successful sixth form college about 20 miles away. But has the competition led to a marked increase in standards at the comprehensive, as Libertarianism predicts it should? The answer is no, it has not. The school loses huge amounts of government funding every year because it can't hold onto to its A-level students but the sixth form doesn't get better it gets worse. Staff become demoralised, the remaining students apathetic the end result being that standards are depressed even further.

Wouldn't a better place to look for man's instinct for charity come from statistics that show Britons give far more than Europeans to charity, and Americans give far more than we do?

Um...what? Only if you define 'Mankind' as Britain and America and Europe as somehow subhuman. All that proves is that the relative charitableness of different nations. Not an inherent charitableness in human nature. If anything it proves the charity is culturally determined rather than spontaneously occurring.

Little thought experiment. How would the Great Depression have played out if Roosevelt had sat back and relied on private philanthropy to solve America's problems?

How to respond to all that, eh? Well - here goes...

"You think every social phenomenon can be explained in terms of the market operations. But guess what? Failing schools don't have 'active parents', it's a very significant reason why they're failing in the first place."

Right - so we agree that your system is a failure. That's a reason not to experiment with something else? But more importantly, there are not 'active parents' and 'inactive parents'. No matter how pushy and aspirational a school's parents are in general or how placid and indifferent to their childrens' education, those parents will not all have the same beliefs and motivation. Some will be more active than others, even if they don't fit your definition of 'active'. And they will be sensitive to 'the market operations', if by that you mean what I do, ie allowing new schools to be opened and giving parents the option to send their children to them, if they consider them to be a better option. This doesn't even have to mean current pupils switching to a new school. You might be right that not a single parent would want to remove their child from an awful school if given the option. They're already settled there and it might involve buying new uniforms, etc etc. But that might not apply to new pupils. The next group of parents deciding where to send their kids just might decide to choose another school.

"When you think more carefully about schools you realise the market metaphor is just that: a metaphor, not a literal description of how state education works, or could work."

It's certainly not how the state system works at the moment. But it is how it should work, and when you think more carefully about it, you will realise it's how it could work, too. All you need to do is look at the independent schools sector to see it.

"If parents are shareholders or customers then what is the dividend, or the product? GCSEs and A-levels?"

The 'dividend' is cash distributed to shareholders. The 'product' is whatever parents and school wish to see it as. A sound education, presumably. The parents are the 'customers'. The 'shareholders' are the shareholders. But there need not be any shareholders anyway. Just as in most independent schools, many private hospitals (Bupa, Nuffield etc) and some department stores (John Lewis) and even banks (building societies), there need not be a profit-maximising limited company model with shareholders anyway.

"Apart from a middle-class minority who are already doing remarkably well without your voucher system, most parents simply do not have particularly high academic expectations for their children."

You're really quite naive if you believe there aren't any parents who are dissatisfied with the quality of their childrens' education. But even suppose you are right. Suppose everyone is either thrilled or disinterested in the quality of their own child's education. If that's so, what would any school have to fear from new schools opening?

"The year I took my GCSEs (2005) with one exception, the entire class at my school failed Graphic Design.

"The year I took my GCSEs (2005) with one exception, the entire class at my school failed Graphic Design. There were something like a dozen Ungraded papers, a handful 'E's and 'D's and one A, from a kid whose parent was a graphic designer. How many parental complaints were there at the Annual General Governor's Meeting that year? One. Did it result in a change of school policy? No. This year, five years on, my sister informs me everyone in the class received Ungraded papers. So where are these 'active' parents who pay such close attention to discipline, teaching quality and results?"

What an excellent description of why a voucher system together with freedom to open new schools would almost certainly improve matters. Imagine if instead of the current system where 'complaints' are pointless, a parent could move their child to a new different school - perhaps one with a competent graphic design teacher. Imagine if just one parent had have moved their child. Your school probably had a very tight budget. What effect do you suppose the threat of that would have had on the management of the school? A little more than the pointless complaint of a parent who, in the current system, can do very little.

"So why aren't parents already exercising their power of choice, why isn't this imagined 10% to 20% already threatening to withdraw its children?"

Because the educational establishment has screwed the system so that schools are primarily there to provide good jobs for school staff. Because it's too difficult to open new schools. Because in many areas there are more pupils than places. Or perhaps places only at another Lada Academy. Where do you move them to?

"Interestingly when it comes to the sixth form we already have a working model of what parental choice looks like. My comprehensive school had a sixth form so abysmal that there have been years when they actually refused to publish their A-Level results. This has resulted in a middle class brain drain to a very successful sixth form college about 20 miles away"

Well - it looks like you found your elusive "imagined 10% or 20%". Seems they're not so imagined after all! Imagine the effect it'd have if someone could open a school half a mile away instead of 20? But how wonderful that all those brains had a better education than they might have, eh?

"But has the competition led to a marked increase in standards at the comprehensive, as Libertarianism predicts it should? The answer is no, it has not. The school loses huge amounts of government funding every year because it can't hold onto to its A-level students but the sixth form doesn't get better it gets worse. Staff become demoralised, the remaining students apathetic the end result being that standards are depressed even further."

Don't you wonder who is giving the school the money to waste on providing shit education that people travel 20 miles to avoid? Why haven't they gone bust? Why haven't they closed and allowed another opertator to come in and have a shot at making a better fist of things? Oh, because the state keeps proping up the failures. With our money. And if you were crap at your job and people travelled 20 miles to get a better service someplace else, wouldn't you be 'demoralised' too? And more to the point, if you weren't, why the hell not?

"Little thought experiment. How would the Great Depression have played out if Roosevelt had sat back and relied on private philanthropy to solve America's problems?"

Short answer: there wouldn't have been a Great Depression if it weren't for the government trying to 'fix' things. Read this pamphlet to find out why.

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Liberal Guilt and Personal Responsibility

2010-09-07T00:21:00.006+01:00

I don't know if Guardian journalist Theo Hobson grew up with a proper name, Richard or James, perhaps, and changed it when he realised he suffered from liberal guilt as a way of atoning for the sins of his forefathers. Slavery, empire, cultural imperialism - that kind of thing. Perhaps it was the somewhat more regular Theodore which was shortened to sound less stuffy and more Grauniad. Who knows?

But Theo wrote an article last week for the Graun suggesting the real divide in politics is between those who suffer from liberal guilt and those who don't.

Liberal guilt is nothing to be ashamed of. It's really just the political expression of that rather old-fashioned thing, conscience.
To "suffer" from liberal guilt means that you are somewhat uneasy about all sorts of awkward things that it is tempting to harden your heart against, like global injustice, global warming, racism. It means that you are troubled by the stubborn persistence of our class system, though you personally have done fine by it. It means you sometimes worry that you might be prejudiced against all sorts of people. It means that your vague patriotism is laced with uncertainty about whether our ancient constitution is able to be truly inclusive. It means, for goodness sake, that you fail to be completely fatly smugly relaxed about this problematic world we inhabit. Is that really so shameful and wet, so laughably mentally effeminate?
If this little parade of privileged anxiety fills you with derision, then you are a Tory.

The Idle Pen Pusher is not exactly a Tory (although I suppose I am if the only alternative is to be a whiner of Theo's variety). But I did vomit little squishy chunks of contempt when I read that. What is 'global injustice' and how does it differ from injustice? He's right about the divide however. Lefties do take personal responsibility for the ills of the world. Those who are right don't. Contrary to his characterisation, those on the right do care about problems in the world. They certainly do more to solve them and improve matters. But ultimately they tend to believe it's not their problem. They tend to believe in personal responsibility for their own actions, not for those of their ancestors or those of a similar skin tone, gender, income level, nationality etc.

The divide is not between those who care and those who do not. It is between those who like the world to know they care, those whose caring is very conspicuous and those who are more interested in improving situations where it's possible and viable to do so but who otherwise are content to enjoy the beauty and joy of life without needing to be seen to be experiencing the socially superior emotions on those problems.

The article is worth reading in full, though you may have to grit your teeth very hard at points, not least here:

There is really no excuse for failing to feel liberal guilt about global warming. No excuse. It is a fact that our affluent lifestyles are endangering the planet, to some maddeningly unknown degree.

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