Thursday 30 May 2013

Abolishing the Department of Culture, Media & Sport - a welcome start...

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John Major was a huge sports fan married to an opera enthusiast - setting up a ministry of culture and sport rather fitted his outlook (and that of David Mellor, another sport and classical music maven - plus some other peccadilloes best not mentioned in a family blog). But it's an indulgence, there's nothing here that merits such attention (a bit like agriculture, really) and the hints that the DCMS might be for the scrap heap are welcome:

Shadow culture minister Dan Jarvis tweeted last night that "well placed sources in Whitehall" suggested that "#CSR13 may scrap @DCMS - with Culture, Media & Sport going to other Govt depts". 

These seems quite a good idea - the savings won't be huge but it's a start that will hopefully lead to the scrapping and merging of other departments. We don't need a department for business and we certainly don't need three departments with an interest in the environment. This process reduces the number of ministers (and their legions of spin doctors and special advisors) as well as the grand panjandrums of the Whitehall departments concerned.

Not surprisingly Labour and the luvvies (now that's a band name for you) think such public shrinking of the state a terrible thing:

As in 2012, Labour has pledged to oppose the move, with Jarvis warning that it would be "driven by short-term expediency, rather than the desire to plan for the long-term". He told me: "abolishing the department wouldn't be in the long-term interests of sports, or the arts, or the constituent parts of the culture brief. With the importance that they represent to people's daily lives, they deserve that focal point that sits at cabinet." He added: "the DCMS brief, based on its economic contribution alone, well deserves its own department."

This translates and "hey, that's my next job you're abolishing there".

However (boo, hiss) the abolition has been denied:

Unsurprisingly, Dan Jarvis doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is absolutely no truth in these rumours.

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Tuesday 28 May 2013

My (irrational but understandable) reason for not liking lawyers

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There are many reasons why England's legal profession needs reform and just maybe the changes to legal aid - whether warranted or not - perhaps might begin to open up this debate. For me though there's a more fundamental problem, one that perhaps makes me unsuited to making proposals for reforming the operation of the law.

You see I really don't like lawyers. Not individually, I've met plenty of lawyers who I've got on with well (I nearly said fine there but that's something you get off with rather than on with). No it's the collectivity of lawyers, the legal profession, that I dislike. There's the occult secret language riddled with pointless Latin. There's the arrogance of believing that no-one who isn't a lawyer can make a judgement. And there's the endless mummery, pomp and pontification, the moots and the semantics.

But these are the faults of other professions - perhaps without the overbearing arrogance of the law but faults nonetheless. And that's not where my loathing of lawyers comes from. That started on the day of my graduation from Hull University back in 1982.

It was an exciting day. My parents (who didn't own a car) had come up from London for the ceremony. We were all besuited, gowned and sporting (if that's the right word) our mortar boards. Lots of slightly nervy chatter, adjusting of clothing (we didn't wear suits often after all) as we awaited the little moment of glory when in front of friends and family we troop up to the stage to get our degree.

And amongst all this the University Chancellor, Lord Wilberforce would address the assembled graduates sending them out into the world with the ringing cheer, support and endorsement of the university community. Except he didn't do this. The Noble Lord spent the entirety of his speech telling 1500 graduates in subjects like English Literature, Geography, Economics, French History and South East Asian Studies what an incredible boon and benefit is was to have a degree in law. We were told how important lawyers were, how lawyers should run business, control the civil service and generally be in charge of everything.

As the speech unfolded, we awaited the moment when Milord might deign to address the 98% of graduates who didn't study law and weren't about to study law. But no, it got worse. No praise for the value of economics, history or English just a sullen, booming conclusion that law stood above all other subjects, more valuable and more important.

And we clapped. Because that's what you do on these occasions.

Since that day I've disliked lawyers.

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Very rich hobby farmer wants poor people to pay more for food

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We've known for a while that our future king is, how do we put this? Ah, yes - rather too much of a hippie for his own (and our) good. All the talking to plants, alternative medicine, organic farming and old-fashioned architecture is rather sweet. But when he talks about food and the food industry he displays the arrogance of being, not merely a hippie, but a very wealthy hippie.


Charles said the drive to make food cheaper for consumers and to earn companies bigger profits was sucking real value out of the food production system – value that was critical to its sustainability.

Now Charles might not be living in a recession but the rest of us are and telling us that food should be more expensive is really quite objectionable. Especially when it's wrapped up in all those trendy, middle-class green movement words like "resilience" and "sustainability". Worse still, our king-to-be has discovered nannying fussbucketry and the blaming of obesity on the food industry rather than on people choosing to eat too much.

What is most striking (and this is very typical of this sort of wealthy man greenery - Transition Towns being a fine example) is that Charles is chiefly interested in the producer - those farmers - rather than the consumer.

"It has also led to a very destructive effect on farming. We are losing farmers fast. Young people do not want to go into such an unrewarding profession.

"In the UK, I have been warning of this for some time and recently set up apprenticeship schemes to try to alleviate the problem, but the fact remains that at the moment the average age of British farmers is 58, and rising."

The cause of that decline isn't that we've stopped consuming farming product (especially if you take Charles' obesity point as true). The decline is because - despite the subsidies and price fixing - many of our farms are uneconomic. And whilst it's tough on the romantic notion of farming (the sort Charles plays at with his tailored tweeds and hand-crafted shepherd's stick) most of us would rather have the cheap food.

And the farming won't go away - it will intensify. Which means fewer input costs to produce the same amount of fine food. If we wibble on about soil and local systems, we are completely missing the point and worse, we'll be making food more expensive and poor people poorer.

So next time you hear this wealthy - very wealthy - hobby farmer calling for higher food prices, just remember who benefits. It isn't you and me - we're going to pay more for our food and drink. Instead it's Charles and his castle-dwelling German farmer friends who'll suck up the higher prices and syphon off the new subsidies. And maybe a few ageing, overworked hill farmers might stay on a year or two longer than they should.

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Monday 27 May 2013

So what shall we ban today then? (A guide for the ambitious nannying fussbucket)

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There is almost nothing - nothing I say - that we couldn't find grounds for controlling, directing and, if you don't behave properly, banning. However, in order to direct your plans for bans here are some helpful hints.

1. Authorities are more open to bans, restrictions or regulations when the thing in question is pleasurable. Indeed, the ban that today's authorities most wish to introduce is a ban on hedonism, on enjoying something just because it's enjoyable

2. If you've found your target for a ban - let's say it's Kendal Mint Cake - you need to find some sort of vague, probably spurious connection to a problem in society (health and crime are the best bets). You don't need evidence just the bold assertion of your case - 'Mint Cake is sold as a healthy product for the outdoors but is really just pure sugar which causes obesity, rotten teeth and hyperactive children'

3. It's better still if you can claim that the product is addictive and still more wonderful if you've an example of the evil effect - "Twenty-four stone teenager Kylie Spottiswood is hooked on the sugar hit of Mint Cake and eats twelve bars a day." You can add to the misery level with quotes from people about how Kylie was an outgoing, vivacious girl until she ate her first Mint Cake - just one and she was hooked on the sugar and mint combination (even better with the chocolate coating)

4. Some expert endorsement is helpful too - there are thousands of quacks and charlatans out there (not to mention some serious ban-fans who actually have medical degrees) so you'll find one to suit, I'm sure. And the newspapers - even the Daily Mail, famed for the rigour of its investigative journalism - seldom check the credentials of experts. A couple of vanity articles in an "open access" journal published from above a laundry in Calcutta doesn't look any different to the average journalist from being published in the New England Journal of Medicine

5. Set up a foundation, petition or even just a website - look official! "The Cumbrian Sugar Sweet Trust - campaigning to protect our children" or some such line (all shiny and pretty on a nice modern Wordpress site) will work wonders. And sign up a few worthies - a couple of local councillors, a retired doctor, a dentist. But remember it's the enraged parents - the mums and dads - who didn't know about the dangers of Mint Cake that are your real target.

6. Tell a story - it doesn't matter how fast and loose you are with actual facts - about the pain and anguish that this evil sugar confectionery has brought on you and you family. And send this story to everyone - MPs, vicars, bishops, government officials, journalists, Nicky Campbell, the Queen, some more journalists, George Monbiot, assorted charities, more journalists. Someone will pick it up and run with it.

And then you've achieved your aim. Not the ban but a temporary and spurious fame (and a chance for an earner or two). Now, whenever the scandal of sugar confections crops up your phone will ring - media appearance (kerching!), you'll get to write heartfelt pieces in national newspapers (kerching!) and maybe, just maybe, there'll be the magazine feature about Kylie and her efforts to return to a normal life (kerching, kerching!!).

Either that or Kendal Mint Cake will sue the pants off you!

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Sunday 26 May 2013

Advertising doesn't create new demand

 

Advertising makes us buy stuff goes the argument. There’s even a name for it; “false demand”


A large number of folks are basically broke today because of the false demand created by commercial advertising. Using monies gathered from bad credit, lousy mortgage loans and lack of savings, they went out to the market place and bought tons of stuff that they didn’t really need, really want, to satisfy the false demand created by the advertisers in this country.


This all sounds right doesn’t it? Advertising is all about making us buy stuff – more advertising sort of forces us into buying things that we don’t need.

The problem is that quite simply this argument is untrue.


“The null hypothesis that advertising does not cause consumption cannot be rejected, but some evidence that consumption may cause advertising is presented.”


Far from advertising being a cause of our consumer society, it is rather a symptom of said society. The research above is general – looking at aggregate advertising expenditure. If we take it down to the specific product level – here for booze and fags:


In an empirical application to data for the alcoholic drinks and tobacco markets in the United Kingdom, it is concluded that aggregate advertising appears to have had little or no effect upon product demand in this sector over the past three decades.


Yet again there is no evidence that advertising creates new demand. Indeed, if you were to sneak into the hallowed Mad-Men halls of the advertising fraternity, you’ll discover that they’ve known this for years. Advertising assumes a static market and seeks to maximise share for the product within that market.

If you think about this for a minute, it makes sense. Why should I spend my client’s scarce cash on making the market bigger – promoting sausages rather than Fred’s Grand Yorkshire Sausage, The Champion on Your Plate?

I find it rather odd that otherwise intelligent people don’t take the trouble to understand the basics of something that is both ubiquitous and also the subject of their opprobrium. I wrote this a while ago when pop-philosopher Alain de Botton has an ill-informed go at advertising:


Mr de Botton falls into a very familiar trap when talking about advertising – that its messages are somehow different from the millions of other messages we receive, process and respond to in our lives. And our philosopher goes further to suggest some kind of balancing of advertising – doubtless under the control of Platonic Philosopher Kings or maybe just the vanguard of the ‘general will’.

Advertising messages are mere communications – of course they seek to nudge us, at least insofar as their objective is to affect our behaviour. Most commonly the purpose of advertising is not to sell you something but to persuade you to carry on buying the thing you’re already buying. The promotion of brand loyalty – the core purpose of much advertising – is, if anything, anti-nudge.


To take one example, you want to have the time available to you throughout the day and there’s a handy little invention called the wristwatch. You don’t go in search of buying that watch because of the shiny Omega advertisement on the back page of your magazine. Nor does your search commence because Rolex sponsor the clocks at Wimbledon. Your demand – ‘I want a new watch’ – isn’t created by advertising but the choice of which particular watch you buy may indeed be shaped by those adverts.

The point about the advertising is that, when I think of a watch, I think of a particular brand (more usually a set of brands). That is why we advertise. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s fast food, cars, shoes or jewellery, advertising is always about brand equity – about making sure that your brand is in the consumer’s mind when she is in the market to buy that product.

The quote at the top is straight from the Naomi Klein playbook. It may be the case that our avarice is the root of our economic problems (for the record, I think this is nonsense) but rather than ask about that avarice what we do is shoot the messenger. Many years ago, I was told by the boss of an advertising agency that advertising was a mirror held up to society. And if we don't like what we see then the problem is with society not with advertising.

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Friday 24 May 2013

Misrepresenting, misleading, manipulating? Ah, that would be public health then...

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From Chris Snowden:

Be under no illusions about what this guy is up to. He is prepared to defame academics and misrepresent data in a conscious bid to mislead politicians and manipulate the public. He is not just prepared to do this, he has already done so.

Very sadly, this is the absolute truth about public health. Do go and read about Dr Willett.

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So Mr Murphy thinks the UK is a "finance dependent economy"?

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I ask this because Richard Murphy and the folks at "Tax Justice Network" think that the UK is a finance dependent economy. And of course that doing that moving-money-around business that we've been doing since the 18th century is damaging our economy.

Just for clarity - according to UKTI:

The financial services industry accounted for 10% of UK GDP and 11% of UK tax receipts. 

That's it? We're a 'finance dependent economy' at 10% of GDP?

This, it seems to me, is a load of nonsense (something Mr Murphy seems to specialise in) - especially since manufacturing - you know we don't make things anymore, don't you - accounts for a mere 12% of GDP.

This "Finance Curse" is just ideology looking for a theory and then making up some statistics to fit the resulting bias.

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"Big Oil! How the EU works...a reminder

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There has been a hoo-hah about the proposal to force restauranteurs to sell only factory-produced and approved olive oil. It hasn't quite been described this way rather as a ban on those cute little dipping bowls and in unlabelled bottles. The proposal has been dropped  - a welcome and unusual reaction (I guess that the EU was found out). And this is what the industrial olive oil folk have to say:

Copa-Cogeca, a farming association that represents industrial olive oil producers who would have benefited from the ban by getting a higher price for factory packaged bottles, attacked the climb down.

"It is totally ludicrous that the commission just withdraws this measure due to political pressure - it has been discussed for over a year and passed through all the correct legal procedures," said Pekka Pesonen , the general secretary of Copa-Cogeca.

"Perhaps it wasn't explained well enough. But it was necessary to ban refillable bottles and the traditional aceiteras found on restaurant tables. It is totally unacceptable that the Commission has done a complete U-turn and has succumbed to political pressure like this." 

You will notice a couple of things here - these producers "would have benefited from the ban by getting a higher price" and that the proposal has "been discussed for over a year". Moreover the ban, we're told is "necessary" - presumably for the owners of these industrial oil companies.

This is how the EU works. Organised lobbies corral officials and MEPs to browbeat them with proposals to protect their particular interests. We see this with the car industry and OEM parts, with industrial cheese manufacture in Italy and Greece using PDOs and PGIs, and with the pharmaceuticals business over herbal supplements (and more recently e-cigarettes).

All of this is wrapped up in warm words about 'health', 'safety' and 'protecting business' when, in reality, it is simply a ramp for the interests of the lobby. As a European consumer my interests are not served - and I am the poorer for this - by the failure of those who represent me (politicians, ministers and so forth) to do so. Now this is a feature of government everywhere - you only have to peek at the sugar industry in the USA to know that - but the EU has managed to achieve its perfection.

This olive oil ban is overturned (it will be lack, trust me) but ask yourself how many restrictions, bans, privileges and preferences have damaged our interests that haven't made the papers and haven't caused an outcry? The EU may have grown too large for us to take it round the back of the barn and finish it off with an axe but we have to option to leave.

We should take that option.

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Thursday 23 May 2013

On that clever online booze advertising...

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It seems that the evil drinks industry isn't very good at the online stuff:

"The research found that some of the big alcohol brands - and subsectors - are vastly under performing in social video.

"For wine and spirit brands, the opportunity to increase brand awareness and sales conversion rates through social video is huge, as there has been very little mass movement from these brands in creating shareable video content.

"Additionally, leading brands like Diageo and SAB Miller that have very strong market share are lagging behind competitors when it comes to social video share of voice."

Hey ho.

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Wednesday 22 May 2013

On the bankruptcy of our political and media culture

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A striking observation - about the USA but could be the UK or indeed any other 'Western' nation:

Credibility is a capital asset, which may take years to accumulate but can be squandered in an instant; and the events of the last dozen years should have bankrupted any faith we have in our government or media. Once we acknowledge this, we should begin to accept the possible reality of important, well-documented events even if they are not announced on the front pages of our major newspapers. When several huge scandals have erupted into the headlines after years or decades of total media silence, we must wonder what other massive stories may currently be ignored by our media elites.

We could see this as just conspiracy nonsense but if you read what goes before this quote - stuff like the man who designed (with Keynes) the Bretton Woods deal being a Soviet spy or the strange tale of Bernard Kerik - you may let a seed of doubt enter your mind.

Sobering stuff.

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Tell me Sir David who are you going to kill first?

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It seems that (at least according to George Monbiot*) the sainted David Attenborough has been peddling his eugenicist message again:

On the Today programme on Wednesday, Sir David Attenborough named the rising human population as the first of the factors causing the loss of the UK's wildlife. 

We know that Sir David believes in a mythical thing called 'optimum population':

On joining the Optimum Population Trust, Sir David said growth in human numbers was "frightening".

Sir David has been increasingly vocal about the need to reduce the number of people on Earth to protect wildlife. 

What interests me (leaving aside that the current population projections for the world suggest stabilisation by the middle of this century and decline thereafter) is who Sir David wants to kill off.

Is he proposing to sterilise less productive members of society - cripples, people without university degrees, members of parliament? Or are we to expect a sort of Logan's Run:

"The seeds of the Little War were planted in a restless summer during the mid-1960s, with sit-ins and student demonstrations as youth tested its strength. By the early 1970s over 75 percent of the people living on Earth were under 21 years of age. The population continued to climb—and with it the youth percentage..."

Perhaps 21 is too young to pop us off, maybe thirty as in the film or perhaps a more modest 45!  Or will we have be some dystopic variant on the National Lottery - with the prize being sterilisation or even death.

The truth is that Attenborough is perhaps the last of a dinosaur generation - the inheritor of the authoritarian state direction (I hesitate to give it its real name) that so appealed to Keynes, to Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and to that self-indulgent English elite: Shaw, Wells, Tawney, Foot. These people, for all their supposed socialism, saw a load of little peons to be herded about, organised, hectored, lectured and patronised. And if needs be, neutered.

So given it isn't gorillas Sir David plans on killing, who is it?

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*Can I point out that Monbiot's article is (as usual) a pile of factually incorrect dribble

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This really isn't a big surprise

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I'm not making a partisan point here but it shouldn't be a surprise to us that:

The Work Programme is not doing enough to move the hardest-to-help members of society closer to work...

Note the language - 'hardest-to-help' and 'closer to work'. The Work Programme - charged primarily with supporting all those falling off the end of six months with no work - will focus on those cases with the greatest chance of success. And they aren't 'hardest-to-help' or 'furthest from work'.

Think about this for a minute - the limited funds available (we may argue over the size of the pot but it will always be limited) are surely better spent on that 'greatest good for the greatest number' idea?

Which means that:

...those people who are homeless, have mental health issues or drug and alcohol problems...

...will probably miss out.

Maybe, instead of writing letters and trying to browbeat the government into changing the system (to the detriment of somebody else - probably more than one other unemployed person), these large charities might care to spend some of their voluntary income on helping these folk?

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Tuesday 21 May 2013

Ban cars!

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Yes folks it's the latest piece of public health nonsense. The people who brought you "third hand smoke", "obesogenic environments" and "passive drinking" -  a veritable torrent of nannying fussbucketry - now want to do the same for cars:

Private cars cause significant health harm. The impacts include physical inactivity, obesity, death and injury from crashes, cardio-respiratory disease from air pollution, noise, community severance and climate change. The car lobby resists measures that would restrict car use, using tactics similar to the tobacco industry. Decisions about location and design of neighbourhoods have created environments that reinforce and reflect car dependence.

I seem to recall that tobacco was 'unique' as a product and that no other product was so exceptionally damaging. So why is it that the judgemental little authoritarians in the public health fraternity keep finding more things they wish to ban? That they advocate:

Car dependence is a potent example of an issue that ecological public health should address. The public health community should advocate strongly for effective policies that reduce car use and increase active travel. 

How long before they start banning car ads 'targeting children'? And adding health warnings to cars? Sock puppet organisations  - Traffic Concern or some such wibble - will spring up and the lobby the councils and government departments that fund them?

Will we have laws restricting engine size, saying we can only own one car, rationing petrol - all in the cause of making us healthy (whether the policies work or not - it's the campaign that matter).

 And just before we dismiss the article as just another bit of daft academic nonsense - the lead author works for the NHS.

Monday 20 May 2013

There is no moral basis for taxation...

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This isn't an argument against tax but a simple statement of fact. We pay taxes because we have to and, possibly, because we get some sort of benefit from the payment of those taxes. And in paying those taxes it is entirely proper for us to arrange our affairs so as to pay only the tax that is due and nothing more. I would add that it is for the tax authorities - and no-one else least of all parliament - to assess what we pay and determine whether we have complied with the rules parliament has prescribed.

If parliament believes that I do not pay enough taxes (and assuming that I am not guilty of evading taxes which is a crime) then parliament has it within its power to change the rules that determine how much tax I pay. None of this is about any sort of moral duty or responsibility. Taxation is merely expedient - the means whereby government secures the revenues that government needs to carry out its purpose.

It rather worries me that - for reasons of political opportunity rather than good government - politicians (aided by their friends and relations in the broadcast media) have decided to whip up some sort of mob, to conduct a sort of moral crusade targeted primarily at large corporations.

Why does it worry me? Quite simply because corporations - businesses of one sort or another - are what will lift us out from the ire of recession. It won't be government however much they wish to scatter the magic fairy dust from the basement of the Bank of England across the land. It won't be shiny new value-destroying railways, ridiculous floating airports or delving ever more tunnels under London (there is something wonderfully Swiftian about today's infrastructure schemes) that will provide that elusive growth.

Yet every politician is now dragged into condemnation of tax 'avoidance' - from committees of MPs asking impertinent questions of people who actually contribute to the economy (unlike those MPs) to cabinet ministers writing pleading letters to jurisdictions with tax regimes that have met with disapproval. All to pretend that somehow this attack will help make the economy better and, worse still, accompanied by words like 'evil', 'corrupt' and 'immoral'.

There is no moral basis for taxation - government imposes a levy on our incomes, wealth and expenditure because it can do just that. But this is not a moral act and seeking to reduce how much tax we pay is therefore not immoral. What we see in a ghastly ignorant mob egged on by politicians and other hacks who point at businesses and successful men crying: "look there, wealth and money! We should have more of that for us to spend. These people are moral pygmies for not paying more tax than they owe!"

And the business people are dragged before the media - the court of mob rule - and accused of what? Essentially of complying with the rules set down by parliament, the European Union and contained in solemn treaties between sovereign nations.

Put yourself in the place of those businesses - international in scope and purview. Do you decide to develop your UK business? Or do you go somewhere else? Perhaps China, Brazil or Indonesia - places where the government welcomes your acumen, investment, jobs and wealth.

There is so moral basis for taxation - saying so is stupid and damages our economy.

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Sunday 19 May 2013

Thoughts on work, welfare and Bradford...

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So I'm sat at the breakfast table in a North Yorkshire B&B where, by happenstance, everyone present has a current or past connection with Bradford. The conversation chitters back and forth, what people do (or don't do), memories of Bradford and inevitably a discussion about Bradford's 'problems' such as they are.

What struck me however wasn't the shared concern about Bradford but the near universal view that, at the heart of the problems - 'grooming' of young girls, crime, city centre decline, the persistent failure of estates like Ravenscliffe, Holme Wood and Allerton - sits the benefits system. Not immigration, not the corruption of youth by radical clerics and not even the legacy of industrial decline. The benefits system.

The discussion touched on using pregnancy as a route to housing, on why Bradfordian's don't take jobs killing chickens despite the lack of work and how the Asian community now seems to have a more enterprising outlook that the white population. And we kept coming back to there being no - or insufficient - incentive for someone to take that chicken-killing job.

What my fellow politicians need to understand is that, if we proceed to ignore these views and listen to the welfare industry's special pleading, we reveal ourselves to be just as out-of-touch as that industry. Everyone but us seem to see a world filled with people living off benefits, cash earnings and petty crime - a world of smuggled booze and fags where social and family arrangements are determined by the best way to maximise income from benefits rather than by the desire to support a future generation to success.

Those people sat round that table may be wrong - for sure we aren't representative. But those voices remind me that the need for benefits reform isn't about saving money. It's not about cuts. And it's not about "demonising the poor" as so many advocates of welfarism claim. No.

We need benefits reform so as to give the people - and especially the young people - of Bradford's inner city and Bradford's estates the right chances and incentives to succeed, to get to a place where an Incommunities flat in Buttershaw isn't the only choice.

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Friday 17 May 2013

Hubris and sympathetic magic - the essence of macroeconomics




The model is broken. So therefore we have to understand how the (broken) model really works and then everything will be fine. In essence this is the nature of the current debate about the economy – no-one really understands how the thing works and so, as we usually do when faced with something large and inexplicable, we behave like the blind men and the elephant.

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

So it is with macroeconomics. Different sets of economists stand over their models of the economy – each one more Heath Robinson than the next – and argue that the results tickering out from the machine tell us the right things to do. Raise interest rates here, increase money supply there says one set of machine-minders.

Nooo! We hear another crew scream – more taxes, public investment and perhaps a little dose of inflation. That will do the job. All the while, over the wall the third crew say their combination of levers and pulleys provides the only proven and correct system of economic management. And so on along the line from Central Bank to International Body, from think tank to accountancy firm and from college to university – each set of overlookers, underlookers and sagger-maker’s bottom knockers proclaims that their results are proof of how we can make the economy work better.

Every now and then – more by luck than through skill and knowledge – one or other set of economists gets something right. For a moment it appears that a particular combination of lever-pulling and knot-tying is the way to run the economy. The leaders of the team receive great prizes, backs are slapped and the Kings and Princes grant the machine-minders money. And all the other teams, for a short while, shuffle into line by using the specified combination of levers and knots.

All this is just a combination of hubris and sympathetic magic. We witness the combining of the false belief that the economy can be “managed” with the misplaced view that because when we pulled lever seven last Wednesday and the ‘right’ result ensued, this will happen every time we pull lever seven. The truth, of course, is that the pulling of lever seven and that ‘right’ result coincided because of mere happenstance.

There is an old shopkeeper saying – ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’. It is the very antithesis of all this self-confident macroeconomic legerdemain. Rather than trying to design a great unifying theory of the economy (one of those Heath Robinson machines), we might be better looking at the simple process by which value is created. This has nothing to do with money, with central banks or with government but everything to do with providing other people with benefits.

No, not the benefits that are cash entitlements paid by government but the benefits that us advertising folk talk about. You know, the ‘sizzle not the sausage’. We don’t buy things just because they are things, we want them because of what they do for us – feed us, clothe us, shelter us, entertain us, please us.  There are no macroeconomic policy levers here just people adding value by offering others benefits and in doing so giving themselves the means to secure the value – the benefits – they want.

All those economic model minders, all those predictors of the economy, all those lever pullers seem oblivious to this simple idea of value. They have become obsessed with money and the meaning of money, convinced that if only the correct dragon’s teeth are sown takes the economy will thrive and value will spring fully armed from out the ground. It seems to me that these people are the inheritors of those priests and wizards who call on the gods and magic to ensure that the sun rose in the morning and the crops grew in the spring.

The economists and policymongers inhabit grand temples, are granted the ear of kings and princes and are looked on in awe by lesser folk. But their ideas contain only a little more truth or hope of future goodness than did those of the old priest who said the corn must be planted on a full moon or that the rains will come if the right dance was danced.

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Wednesday 15 May 2013

Of course Public Health don't want us to understand it...



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This quote sums up everything wrong with Public Health:

But Greg Fell, consultant in public health, who was leading the discussion, said the idea of an Easy Read version had been considered but rejected.
He said there was a concern that it could be too “reductionist”.

Even the explanation of why it's incomprehensible is difficult to understand! And just for flavour:

“It is recommended that we make greater, but still intelligent and parsimonious, use of the wealth of epidemiological data that can be found within existing but as yet untapped sources of data.”

Suck on that ordinary member of the public!

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It's capitalism not "fair" trade that lifts people out of poverty...

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It always depresses me to see people who are essentially caring led down a path that really isn't in the interests of those they care about:

An early signatory to the petition, Mrs Palframan has been invited by the Fairtrade Foundation to help hand in the petition to the Prime Minister. 

And the petition well Mrs Palframan sums it up:

“Despite producing 70 per cent of the world’s food, over half the world’s hungriest people are smallholder farmers who struggle to earn a living from their crops.

“Unless they receive support and improvements to terms of trade, they will remain in crisis due to an unjust food system.

“The farmers still only get a tiny proportion of what we pay for our food and agriculture needs to be made much more sustainable to create food security.” 

The truth, of course, is that these farmers are subsistence farmers - living mostly off the things they raise or grow and selling what small surplus they have for the small amounts of cash they need.  The problem is that people such as the Fairtrade Foundation and Oxfam wish to keep these poor farmers scrabbling in their tiny, unsustainable smallholdings. I'm guessing that, Mrs Palfreman, living in Ilkley as she does, isn't struggling to feed her family from a tiny small holding on the side of the moor! So why does she want to keep people in faraway places in that condition rather than seeing them get the same chances we have?

We've seen the fastest reduction in world poverty in our history over the last decade - over a billion people saved from poverty. This is brilliant but can we remember that it wasn't fair trade, in wasn't aid and it wasn't the hectoring of Oxfam that did this. If we'd followed their prescription that massive decline in poverty would not have happened.

What caring people should know is that is was capitalism, free trade, property rights and that evil neoliberalism that saved that billion from poverty. And, if we let it, capitalism will get the rest of the world's poor out of poverty too. And, you know folks, that means that just as we aren't subsistence smallholders all those Africans won't be smallholders either.

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Tuesday 14 May 2013

Things that are true....

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From Longrider:

There is a word for this and that word is stealing. Because that is what socialists do –  steal other peoples money and give it to their friends.

Yep.

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Monday 13 May 2013

Guilt by association...the Telegraph tries to skewer an MP on his predecessor's sins

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The Daily Telegraph reports on the success of Conservative MP, Stephen Phillips:

Stephen Phillips, the member for Sleaford and North Hykeham in the East Midlands, has reportedly been charging clients about £600 per hour in his capacity as a commercial lawyer.
He is believed to be the best-paid politician in Britain as a result, clocking up more than 1,500 hours of non-parliamentary work since July 2011.
Mr Phillips, 43, has received £922,380.20 in barrister's fees since July 2011, in addition to his annual MP’s salary of £65,738...

Now this seems to me wholly admirable. Mr Phillips points out that he does this work when the House isn't sitting (and that it's turnover not profit) plus mentioning how this provides him with a tentative link to the real world.

In my view we need more MPs like Mr Phillips who see it as public service rather than just a job (albeit a quite well paid job).

What I didn't understand, since no-one is accusing Mr Phillips of wrongdoing or dereliction of duty, let alone expenses fiddling, why the newspaper chose to conclude the article by talking about his predecessor Douglas Hogg. Seems to me that this is a rather unpleasant attempt to smear Mr Phillips by associating his working life with the moat-clearing expense of the man he succeeded as MP.

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Not quitting just yet (even though we're selling up)...

A very lovely house you can buy!


...at least while the lunatics are anywhere close to running the shop.

But this doesn't stop people finding that two plus two equals six thousand and seventy six.

Subject: Is Cllr Simon Cooke set to depart local Public Life?

This weekend I was informed that Cllr Cooke has placed his house in Cullingworth, on the market, perhaps some 2 months ago.

The agent is Dacres and details are available on their website. Clearly this is a fact NOT speculation.

If he relocates away from Bradford Metro Area, he will create an eventual vacancy in what is deemed a "safe seat" for the Party. Interest from many potential candidates could be expected.

Additionally a new Deputy Leader will have to emerge for the Bradford Conservative Group.

Cllr Cooke 4 year term of office concludes in May 2015, the expected date of the General Election.

ALAN.
There you go folks! Truth is we wanted a change - there's just two of us in a great big house and the aim of cutting down the bills is, we think, a good one.

So no I'm not quitting just yet - whatever the temptation might be.

In the meantime if you want to buy my house, here are the details:

http://www.dacres.co.uk/pdf.php?vars=propertypdf-sales-dacrps-BIN130245-1367934305

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Sunday 12 May 2013

In praise of tax avoidance...

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It's my money for heaven's sake. All of it. It doesn't belong to you. It isn't there for you to spend it on co-ordinating things or for pretending that you care (when really you care only about your pay cheque just like I do).

There's a case for tax - not a good one but a case. But that case is made worse by the waving of bloody shrouds at people who, quite rightly, morally and properly, seek to make sure they keep as much of the money they earn to spend themselves.

In the end I avoid taxes - just like millions of others - for some important reasons:

1. The government demands too much of what I earn - mostly for no good reason

2. The government is very bad (or too good depending on one's perspective) at spending money

3. In its urge to scam every last farthing the government makes tax ever more complicated and therefore avoidable

4. Avoiding tax reduces the power of that government to stop me from living my life in freedom

Tax avoidance keeps government honest. I've no idea how that government raised up a frothing mob to chase down all the tax avoiders but, if we do one honest and moral thing in our lives, we should face down that mob and keep on avoiding paying taxes. If a tax can be avoided it's your duty to do just that, to weaken the power of government, to give the rise to pathetic baby "anarchists" who want to burn down shops to make them pay more tax, and to make the biggest, loudest raspberry in the general direction of the great waste that is government.

Every time I hear another news report of some business or celebrity caught in the headlights of the mob as "tax avoiders" I want to cheer them, to cry out in their defence and to celebrate their sense at avoiding paying taxes to the uselessness of government.

It seems to me that tax avoidance is a moral duty.

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Saturday 11 May 2013

Quote of the Day...

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Written as a founder member of the Norman Tebbit fan club:

“I joined the Conservative Party in 1946 and I’m not going to be pushed out by adventurers. It’s my party.”

Absolutely Norman - I'm a johnny-come-lately since I only joined in 1976 but David Cameron was still in Prep School. It's my Party too.

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“…Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.” - the force of the tax incentive

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The force is with us.

That is the force of tax incentives it seems:

Chancellor George Osborne met executives from Disney-owned Lucasfilm in London earlier this year to discuss the plans and the production is thought to be eligible for a tax break.

Now let's think a little more about what this means. Yes, folks, you've got it - reducing taxes on businesses increases business investment. So why is it does in this favour-mongering, no longer smoke-filled rooms inhabiting manner? Perhaps it's so the Chancellor of the Exchequer can tweet gleefully of his success or maybe it's just a consequence of the lunacy of over-taxing businesses.

It seems to be that the nation is privileging one sort of investment - making blockbuster feature films - over the totality of business choice and investment option. Are we to offer tax incentives to a company that wants to do something more prosaic, perhaps building a recycling plant or setting up a cleaning company?

I am delighted that the jobs and money from this production are to come to the UK. But let's learn the lesson - cutting business taxes helps investment and job creation - if it's good for Disney it's also good for some South Korean company you've never heard of or indeed for the wholly homegrown business. So cutting those taxes makes sense (and will make it a whole lot less likely that businesses will engage is complicated schemes to reduce liability - but that's another story) and it supported by evidence:

...we find that a higher provincial statutory corporate income tax rate is associated with lower private investment and slower economic growth. Our empirical estimates suggest that a 1 percentage point cut in the corporate tax rate is related to a 0.1–0.2 percentage point increase in the annual growth rate.

So George, rather than doing behind doors deals with favoured businesses, just cut corporation tax some more - perhaps, as some argue, to as low as 10%:

At the same time, he could also announce his intention to reduce it even further – to 15% or even 10% once the appropriate anti-avoidance measures are in place. Such a move would have numerous benefits. For one, it would boost business confidence, encourage new investment by businesses (as it would improve net returns) and would send a strong signal that the Coalition is taking the supply-side measures necessary to restore growth. It would also immediately fulfil the Coalition pledge to “create the most competitive corporate tax regime in the G20”.

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Friday 10 May 2013

Lousie Mensch - nannying fussbucket of the month

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Now that she's decamped to the USA, Louise Mensch erstwhile MP for Corby and, I'm told, a Tory has become a fussbucket. A full blown nannying fussbucket.

Strangely - perhaps Louise believes the bully pulpit of the media more effective - the lovely Mrs Mensch is featured often in the British press. And she's on about bossing women about drinking:

Mrs Mensch attacked the British "culture" of drinking, arguing American women are happier and healthier as they do not drink wine as often as their UK counterparts.

I missed that culture of drinking but I guess it's a hangover from the 'chick lit' that Mrs Mensch used to write. The truth - something that passes by the fussbuckets of this world - is that British women are remarkably abstemious:

The ONS said the proportion of men drinking on five or more days a week fell from 23% in 1998 to 16% in 2011 and that of women from 13% to 9%. But the drop only began to be seen after 2007.

So the "have a glass of wine after a hard day" line that Louise Mensch peddles is simply untrue - even if the figures from the ONS are an underestimate and should be doubled that means that over 80% of women simply aren't conforming to this 'Bridget Jones' stereotype and sloshing back the vino big time. For sure, the Americans drink less (roughly half what we do) but there's no evidence that they're any happier or healthier as a result.

So Louise Mensch is beautiful, successful and slim - despite plenty of vino. This doesn't qualify her - not even a little bit - to give advice on alcohol consumption especially not in such a nannying way. Most especially because she is ill-informed about the science and ignorant of how much British women do drink. Worse still Mrs Mensch seems to want us to embrace that horrible puritan American culture that thinks it OK to give 16 year olds a fast car but a terrible thing to let them have a glass of wine.

Frankly she's welcome to it. Stay in girls, have a glass of wine and stick two fingers up at fussbuckets like Mrs Mensch.

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Thursday 9 May 2013

Europe: the problem isn't immigration, it's government

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I gather that today is Europe Day, the national day for the future super-state:

Today, 9 May has become Europe Day, which is the occasion for activities and festivities that bring Europe closer to its citizens and the peoples of the Union closer to one another.

Hang out the bunting, crack open the fizz and watch our overlords march by in a celebration of our glorious shared future!

Forgive me for not celebrating. There are many things that are good and right about Europe - open markets and borders being most of them. But any benefit gained from this has been destroyed by government, by the capture of the European bureaucracy by special interests and by a distorted view of the capitalist economy as being about producers and production rather than consumers and consumption.

As you know, dear reader, I concluded that the UK should leave the EU at the earliest opportunity. This isn't to embrace the cold closed economy favoured by protectionists but to open up our economy to all the world, to learn the lesson that John Cowperthwaite taught Hong Kong:

...in the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.

So, to disappoint my UKIP friends, the reason we should leave the EU is so as to be more free, more open, more able to become rich through free trade, free enterprise and free markets. And since we want to be clear, this doesn't mean some sort of stop on immigration or even some state-directed guesswork as to what makes for a good immigrant and what a bad immigrant.

The problem is too much government. And worse the view that only government can resolve the problems we face. Even when - as with today's currency crisis - the problem itself is almost wholly a consequence of government. Getting out from the EU is just a small step to breaking down government, to dragging it back to a human level where people can understand it and play some small part in making it work for everyone.

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