Thursday 31 December 2015

Free speech, fussbucketry and other things I won't shut up about in 2016 (sorry but a happy new year)

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The ineffective puritanism of modern public health

Perhaps, we will shift back to a more balanced approach to these issues. Less judging, less hectoring. Or maybe we'll sleepwalk into a ghastly, oppressive world where the New Puritans police our behaviour for its adherence to the received orthodoxy of believe about pleasures. I am not all that hopeful right now.

How lies - by pharma companies and tobacco businesses - are used to try and kill vaping

Biebert has identified Big Pharma, anti-smoking groups and government as the real forces at work to discourage electronic cigarettes and vaping. Biebert, who neither vapes nor smokes, was first drawn to the topic after reading about the famous ‘formaldehyde in ecigs’ claim. Beibert had friends that had switched from smoking to vaping and when he looked into the formaldehyde in ecigs study, the lie was obvious. That got him wondering.

Why free speech is really really important and the only winners in its removal are those with power

"In simple terms: one, I don't think we should be spending public money on finding out whether we can ban the EDL.

"Secondly, free speech and free assembly matters and if we can't have these things our society is worse for it."

How the lack of real accountability in the NHS kills any attempt to make it more efficient or more effective

The idea that the NHS is run by ‘the people’, as a joint endeavour, is a romantic fantasy. The NHS is an elite project, and this could not be otherwise. Collective choice is not a substitute for individual choice and ‘voice’ is not a substitute for ‘exit’. The illusory ‘accountability’ mediated through the political process cannot come anywhere near the accountability of a marketplace, or of a properly designed quasi-market setting, in which providers stand and fall with the choices consumers make, and depend on them for their very economic survival.

How free markets, free trade and capitalism are making the world - day after day - a healthier, wealthier, happier and more equal place

It was Schumpeter who pointed out that capitalism and the free market revolution didn’t mean all that much to Elizabeth I. She already had knitted stockings (in fact, we know the day she got her first pair). The great genius of capitalism is that it ended up with every factory girl possessing knitted stockings. That’s actually the defining feature of the system, that it ends up making everything just extraordinarily cheap–exactly the thing we want in order to be able to improve the lives of the poor. Just as it did our own forefathers of course. Because our forefathers were, almost all of them for almost all of history in exactly that $2 a day poverty that we now define as absolute poverty.

In between this stuff there'll be the usual bits about urbanism, the stupidity of planning, daft environmentalism, a bit of Bradford and - of course, of course - some mushrooms. I might even find a little time to say something about why we should leave the EU. Hopefully some of you will stay the course. Whatever you do, have a good 2016 if you possibly can.

It goes without saying that I'm grateful so many of you kept coming back here - prompted by a few great blogs including that commie fellow Chris Dillow's 'Stumbling & Mumbling', Dick Puddlecote and Chris Snowdon as well as the legion of folk who arrive from Twitter and Facebook.

So whatever you're doing this evening, do it in style and I pray it includes some binge drinking, over-eating, staying up too late, making a noise and enjoying the fabulous munificence of this great world we've got to live on. And I hope you don't let the nannies, the fussbuckets, the puritans, the health fascists and the greeny-greeny, back-to-the-mud huts brigade ruin your year. Above all please try to be polite while saying the things you want to say about the things that matter to you. Don't let the tyranny of those - like the Labour's leader on Bradford Council - who want to stifle your right to speak freely.

Happy New Year. And have a good one.

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Wednesday 30 December 2015

Whose NHS is it really?

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We hear it time and time again. Repeated almost ad nauseum.

"Save Our NHS"

"It's Our NHS"

"Protect Our NHS"

All this, in the ultimate marrying of popular culture and political sloganising results in a bunch of NHS employees forming a choir (helped by the chap off the BBC), releasing a sinlge and getting the Christmas Number One. Helped along the way by Justin Bieber and every second tearful person on social media.

On Christmas Day, five minutes before the Queen’s speech, a video displaying the best of our NHS was played on BBC1’s Top of the Pops. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, ran the messages on the screen as scenes of the NHS in action played out. It was a poignant moment for all who were involved in running the campaign - our song had got to No 1.

I'm really pleased for the people who were involved in this 'campaign'. It's always fantastic to see a project succeed, a message crack through the shell of public resistance, make a difference. But it got me thinking about 'Our NHS' and whether it sends out the right message. For sure we can show thousands of examples of how the brilliance of doctors, nurses and other medical folk, the smiling faces of families as their loved one pulls through, of mums delighted as their child's eyes open again, and of seemingly miraculous applications of medical technology to saves lives.

But is this really what "Our NHS" is about? Surely those same live saving, uplifting scenes are commonplace in every hospital everywhere? Aren't medical miracles performed by doctors and nurses in France, in Germany, in Spain - even in India? Places where "Our NHS" doesn't exist? And all these places - all these systems - are less than perfect, filled with error and mistake, lacking in resources and subject to failure? Just like the NHS.

The word 'our' implies possession - collective possession for sure but still possession. I wonder whether I - as a mere customer - can truly call the NHS mine. I do not control or influence its actions or activities beyond that moment when I put a cross in a box on a ballot paper every five years. I have no choice - there is only one NHS, that's it, like it or lump it. Decisions about when it's open or closed, about where it's located, about what services are available - these decisions are political decisions made (in theory if not in fact or reality) by those MPs we elect. We no more possess the NHS than possess the police force or the army. It is a huge, unaccountable bureaucracy directed by ministers and the officials they (sort of) employ. It really isn't ours yet the lie that this is the case is central to sustaining the NHS as Britain's sacred organisation.

Instead of talking about 'our' NHS, those doctors, nurses and so forth should be speaking of 'your' NHS. Where 'your' means the patient, the customers, the 'service user', the ordinary member of the public. If the NHS is to mean what these people claim it means then that is where the ownership should lie. But it doesn't and we are conned into believing that 'Our NHS' somehow means something - our heartstrings are tugged, the emotional buttons are pressed and, lo, the interests of those who really control this organisational behemoth are duly served. All those people who, sparkly-eyed, extol the virtues of 'Our NHS' are patsies for the nearly millionaire consultants, the trust bosses with their jaguars and barn conversions, and the 'system leaders' whose every act is to resist any change to an organisation that, for all the efforts of front line staff, fails far too many people.

It's 'Their NHS' and we shouldn't forget it. The 'Our NHS' campaigns do not serve our interests.

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Sunday 27 December 2015

Local councils do not set foreign policy and the pension funds aren't our money to play politics with

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The government proposes to prevent local councillors from using council funds to conduct political campaigns. And to prevent those same councillors from conducting those political campaigns using the savings of public sector pension fund members.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has confirmed it is drawing up new guidelines to prevent local authorities from mounting their own “boycott and sanction” campaigns.

The directions, which will be issued early in the new year, are expected to make clear that councils’ procurement and investment policies must be consistent with UK government foreign policy.

What is being made very clear here is that local councils - as a part of the UK's government - do not set foreign policy. This isn't simply because we're a bunch of numpties who don't know enough (or have access to the necessary information) to make sensible judgments about foreign policy. It's because if every diddy little town council decided whether or not we liked Israel there's a real confusion out there as to what exactly is UK foreign policy.

So if campaign groups want to change UK foreign policy, the right way to do this is to persuade members of parliament to vote accordingly or, failing that, to get people who will vote according ly elected.

A similar intention - making sure that those councillors don't play politics with the retirement funds of the council's staff - is equally welcome. The duty of the council, as a trustee for those pension fund members, is to secure the best return for those members. If this can be done without investing in Israel, fags, booze or guns that's fine but it has to be clear that any decision isn't a political one determined by the prejudice of councillors not the interests of pension fund members.
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Thursday 24 December 2015

The View from Cullingworth (and Ayn Rand) wishes you all a Happy Christmas!



It's Christmas and we should all be of good cheer. Not everyone is - mostly for sad reasons of loss, fear or illness - and we should send those wishes of happiness to these people. I dislike the line, most popular with bishops, that Christmas is 'a time of hope'. I get the theology - the birth of our saviour must, by its very nature, be a moment of hope. But for me this implies that other times are times of despair, of hopelessness and that is not true. I remain (and believe the evidence supports me here) an optimist about the future of mankind, I do not subscribe the the 'if we don't act now' school of doom-mongering.

Although I'm not any sort of objectivist or 'randian' this little quote from Ayn Rand is among the best summations of the meaning of our modern Christmas. I guess not all folk agree and especially not the humbugs, grinches and grumps who write for the Guardian but I find this pretty cracking:

A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.

The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”—not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only “commercial greed” could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.

Have a great Christmas. Eat too much. Drink a lot. If you smoke get a big fat cigar or some of those fancy coloured Sobranie fags. Listen to cheesy music. Watch rubbish telly. Have the traditional row about who sat on young Josh's toy train. Play board games. And above all (I don't always manage this one) smile with the good cheer that being alive in the best time to be human should bring you.

Enjoy! A a Happy Christmas to you all.

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Wednesday 23 December 2015

We shouldn't be surprised when right-wing politicians stop funding left-wing academics

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The Japanese government isn't all that keen on social science and humanities - preferring what it calls socially useful subjects:

A recent survey of Japanese university presidents found that 26 of 60 national universities with social science and humanities programmes intend to close those departments during the 2016 academic year or after. The closures are a direct response to an extraordinary request from the Japanese government that the universities take “active steps to abolish [social science and humanities departments] or to convert them to serve areas that better meet society’s needs.”

Now I'm not here to defend what the Japanese government has done but rather to ask why, given the nature of these courses, we have got to the place where a national government can deem them less able to meet society's needs. All that sociology, social psychology, political science, literature and history is to be sidelined - I'm guessing for science and engineering, business and languages.

This comes on the back of the decision by the US Congress to pull funding for social sciences from the National Science Foundation:

First, in April the House passed a reauthorization of the National Science Foundation — the America Competes Act (H.R. 1806) — that cuts funding to the social sciences by 45 percent, even as it increases funding to the NSF overall.

The question here is again - why? It's easy for the establishment of social science academia to cry political foul - after all these are political decisions made on partisan grounds - but what they fail to appreciate is just how utterly loathed and detested much of their output is outside their narrow milieu. Frankly you can't expect the political right to support a set of academic disciplines that make it their business to argue that all conservatives are thick or that neoliberalism, capitalism or free markets are at the heart of all society's problems. The reason for this problem is simple - and I would support 'defunding' UK universities on this basis: the academic disciplines concerned are completely dominated by a left-wing, anti-conservative agenda.

While the authors’ political motivations for publishing the paper were obvious, it was the lax attitude on behalf of peer reviewers – Jussim suggested – that was at the heart of the problems within social psychology. The field had become a community in which political values and moral aims were shared, leading to an asymmetry in which studies that reinforced left-wing narratives had come to be disproportionately represented in the literature.

This example isn't a one off - the literature in sociology, political science, regional studies, and psychology is entirely dominated by a set of left-wing ideological certainties. And researchers cannot - if they want to get published, secure funding or advance an academic career - step beyond this narrowly defined world. It's easier to be a Stalinist communist in most social sciences than a moderate conservative. Until this imbalance - this sustained bias - is addressed, I see absolutely no reason why a conservative would want to support funding social science 'research'. What is remarkable is that Conservatives and conservative-led governments have continued to fund academics who both despise those conservatives and have the means to promote an anti-conservative ideology through their academic discipline.

If social science faculties want to protect themselves better, they should look to their own central failing - an almost complete capture by the ideological left. Until this happens the value of the disciplines within those faculties will continue to decline in the eyes of everyone but those immersed in that part of academia or else entirely wedded to illiberal, anti-democratic and oppressive left-wing ideologies.

UPDATE: Another article setting out the egregious bias and misrepresentation in social psychology concluded:

I think reform is urgently needed because I think there’s a significant risk that the field will be defunded within the next few years. I urge social psychologists to take this risk seriously. In the US, we have a funding monoculture that is largely dependent on a couple of US government agencies. If most of our findings are false, I think policymakers will question why taxpayers should fund our work. There is also strong evidence (PDF) that the field discriminates against non-leftists and conservatives — this alone may prove disastrous for us, especially since the field has taken no action to prevent such discrimination.

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Tuesday 22 December 2015

There will soon be no bananas



Probably. Here from a fantastic article on fungi in The New Yorker:

A particular strain of Fusarium, Tropical Race One, rendered the original globalized banana variety, the Gros Michel, commercially extinct in the first half of the twentieth century. Fortunately, the banana variety that fills our grocery stores today, the Cavendish, was resistant to Tropical Race One, and it eventually replaced the Gros Michel, although not before widespread banana shortages. Unfortunately, the Cavendish is not resistant to Tropical Race Four. The strain emerged in Taiwan in the late nineteen-sixties and has subsequently destroyed the banana industry in China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and put a significant dent in the Australian harvest. Once a plantation is infected, there is no way to save the banana trees, and, because the fungus remains in the soil, the land cannot be used to raise bananas again. The only way to combat F. oxysporum f. sp. cubense is to make sure that it does not spread.

This really isn't a joke. If this Tropical Race Four variety of Fusarium oxysporum reaches the Americas it is simply a matter of time before we have no bananas. As is clear - there is no resistant variety of banana to replace the Cavendish.

Enjoy the friendly yellow fruit while you can.

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Monday 21 December 2015

Corbyn's Labour really does hate the idea of a free press and free speech



Asked whether a Labour government would break up media monopolies, he said: "Yes. We are developing a media policy which would be about breaking up the single ownership of too many sources of information, so that we have a multiplicity of sources. And actually promoting co-operative ownership and access, including local TV and radio stations and newspapers like The Morning Star."

There are many things he says that I find chilling but this statement from Jermey Corbyn is a terrifying attack on the free press and free speech. I know you're all going to talk about how Rupert Murdoch is incredibly evil because he owns lots of media and doesn't vote Labour. I know so many want to pretend - against all the evidence to the contrary - that Murdoch's businesses have some sort of monopoly over the media and the the man himself is Henry H. Potter spinning his scrurvy webs like some sort of sinister spider.

You are wrong. If there is a media monopoly in the UK (and I don't think this is remotely the case) then it is the BBC not News International. This isn't an attack on Aunty but simply an observable truth - in terms of what people out there are watching, the BBC remains the dominant media organisation and this applies especially to news.

What Jeremy Corbyn, in his pretty typical hard left way, is saying is that the private ownership of media with the aim of turning a profit results in distorted news. The argument will run on to suggest that monopolies in media are therefore a problem and need to be broken up. Yet the UK does not have a media environment that features any sort of monopoly (unless you look at the BBC, of course). If you focus just on national newspapers this still isn't true even though Rupert Murdoch 'controls' a goodly chunk of them. And more to the point those newspapers no longer represent people's preferred source of news - we've the TV, the radio, our lap-tops and increasingly assorted apps on our smartphones. Twitter and Facebook are probably more important as news sources than The Times or The Guardian these days.

No, the real reason Jeremy Corbyn wants to control the press is because - as he noted just before that comment above in the Morning Star - it is critical of what his 'caring, sharing new politics' is about. So just like his pals on Bradford council wanting to ban folk they disagree with, Corbyn wants to cripple a diverse media environment through threats of 'break-up', seizure and control. We are reminded again that Labour really does hate the idea of a free press.

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Sunday 20 December 2015

The most significant political moment of 2015

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The most important thing that happened this year in Britain (aside from me getting re-elected) was the election of a majority Conservative Government. I find it odd that all the pundits are gently tiptoeing around this truth and the fact that this is probably the year's most telling and surprising political moment:






Now I didn't see this live on the BBC but instead heard it on the radio as we pulled up to park across the road from Victoria Hall in Keighley. At that moment the first flicker of a smile was on our faces as we realised that nearly all the pollsters, newspaper pundits and TV experts were wrong. What we'd heard on doorstep after doorstep was right - "we don't want that man", "a deal with the SNP would destroy the country", and most commonly, "things are just about OK we can't afford to mess it up".

We still had to stand through the seemingly endless process of an election count conducted by Bradford Council - indeed it wasn't until the next day when we arrived at Bradford Brewery for a pint with George Grant the brilliant (if unsuccessful this time) Conservative candidate in Bradford West that the truth of it all sank in - there really was a majority Conservative government that could make the necessary and right choices for Britain. As an aside this moment of reverie was interrupted by a slightly tipsy fellow who tried to pick a fight with my blue rosette. Although no fight ensued, I'm pretty confident that the rosette would have won even unattached to my suit jacket.

It now seems that this unpredicted (well, mostly unpredicted) result not only gave Britain good government but led to the Labour Party exploring the darker parts of its collective psyche and electing a man best known for appearing on platforms with terrorists as its leader. But the election of Jeremy Corbyn, for all the obsession of the left with its supposed significance (especially all the wibble about a "new, caring sharing politics" or whatever), was only possible because David Cameron won an overall majority.

Since that election success - presaged by that exit poll - it almost seems as if the punditry has decided that it was always going to happen this way, that Conservative majority government is the normal course of things (despite it being eighteen long years since the last one), and that other matters are more significant. No-one looks at what Cameron achieved and what it means for us - not just victory in the Scottish independence referendum protecting the integrity of the UK and leaving the SNP dominant in Scotland but hamstrung by its arrogant belief, just like the left's arroagance seven months later, that it had won when it hadn't - but also the prospect of a referendum allowing the country (and the Conservative Party) to lance the boil of its relationship with Europe.

Across the world there were any number of telling political events - the re-election of Alexis Tsipras in Greece, Angela Merkel's embracing of Syrian refugees, Turnbull's defenestration of Tony Abbott - even the final election of Aung Suu Kyi as prime minister of Burma sixty-eight years after the assassination of her father. But the most surprising was Cameron's election victory.

So for Britain, at least, 2015's top politician has to be David Cameron, the most important event his re-election as prime minister with an overall majority, and the killer moment the hesitant - blood drained from his face, unbelieving - announcement of that BBC exit poll at 10pm on 7 May.

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Saturday 19 December 2015

This is not a scandal - it merely shows us the difference between policy and advice



It is reported that 'minsters pressured' the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE as it's illiterately known) on the matter of minimum pricing for booze:

MINISTERS are accused of pressuring an independent health watchdog into dropping support for minimum booze pricing.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence removed backing for the scheme from recent NHS guidelines. It had previously supported it in advice which said slashing OAPs’ drinking could cut dementia.

But a British Medical Journal probe claims the watchdog only made the change after health ministers intervened.

Well actually this allegation - unsurprisingly from the British Medical Journal the house magazine for nannying fussbuckets and health fascists - is completely false.

NICE were clear that they had given advice on this matter and that it wasn't withdrawn (just not repeated - NICE isn't a lobby group). What we have here is departmental officials explaining that policy decisions are for ministers, the people elected to do that job, not advisors. And ministers are entitled to make policy decisions that run counter to the advice they are given by bodies like NICE. It is not the role of an advisory body like NICE to make statements of support for or disagreement with policy when that support or opposition is contrary to the government's position.

I wouldn't expect the fussbuckets to understand this distinction - indeed they usually adopt the position that government should do exactly what they say even when, as is the case with minimum pricing for alcohol or taxing sugar, the negative impact of that policy is very considerable (something the fussbuckets can ignore but which ministers have a duty to consider). What this advice to NICE reminds us is that political decision-making is - or should be - the reserve of the politicians we elect not advisory bodies. And there is no doubt that imposing a price floor or a new tax is a political decision not merely 'public health advice'.

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Thursday 17 December 2015

The strategic maple syrup reserve isn't in the interests of producers or consumers


Do we really need a maple syrup strategic reserve?

Yes folks there really is a strategic maple syrup reserve and it's in Quebec. It's not there for the benefit of the maple syrup producer but rather as a buffer to control market prices. This all lives with the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, a government-sponsored cartel created in 1990 to fix the price and 'improve the marketing' of maple syrup. It's not universally popular even among the producers it's intended to protect:

Backed by the Canadian civil courts, the federation has the monopoly for selling Quebecois maple syrup on the wholesale market, and for exporting it outside the province. It sets the price for how much it pays producers, and it charges them a 12% fee per pound of syrup.

Producers are only allowed to sell independently a very small amount of syrup, to visitors to their farm, or to their local supermarket. And then they still have to pay the 12% commission to the FPAQ.

"We don't own our syrup any more," says Mrs Grenier, who calls the federation the "mafia".

Unwilling to put up with this state of affairs, Mrs Grenier and her husband have in recent years been selling their maple syrup across the border in the neighbouring Canadian province of New Brunswick.

In scenes that could come from a Hollywood drugs movie, they load barrels of syrup on to a truck as quickly as possible, and then race it over the border line under the cover of darkness.

The couple are breaking the law, but say they are fighting for the right to sell their syrup for a price - and to customers - of their own choosing.

Unsurprisingly the results of this cartel are two-fold - first there's folk like Mrs Grenier who want no part of it and smuggle the syrup out of Quebec and second other people in other places start to produce more (and cheaper) syrup:

Quebec has long dominated the maple syrup scene, holding some 80 per cent or more of world production in years past, partly by maintaining a strictly enforced supply-management, marketing and quality-control system. But aggressive U.S. rivals have made inroads, reducing the province’s market share to an average of 72 per cent over the past three years, said Paul Rouillard, deputy director of the 7,300-member federation.

And the projections are the Quebec will carry on losing market share to US (and other Canadian) producers. Dear readers this is always the result of protectionism and price-fixing. Maple syrup might not be oil or grain but the same rules apply.

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Wednesday 16 December 2015

How to respond when your precious theory is debunked. The case of farting cows.


"Who're you blaming for climate change, matey?"
We should stop eating meat because of climate change. All the cow farts, pig trumps and sheep letting one rip are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions thereby leading to the end of civilisation as we know it closely followed by the earth ceasing to be a viable ecosystem for anything more sophisticated than cheese mould. It is of course nonsense - it's lettuce that should bother us:

Lettuce is “over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon”, according to researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University who analysed the impact per calorie of different foods in terms of energy cost, water use and emissions.

Published in the Environment Systems and Decisions journal, the study goes against the grain of recent calls for humans to quit eating meat to curb climate change.

Collapse of the vegetarian's strongest argument (global warming is because we eat meat). Except for the noble soul who has the job of defending the cow fart argument because the funding of his institution depends on it:

The initial findings of the study were "surprising", according to senior research fellow Anthony Froggatt at Chatham House, an independent think-tank which is currently running a project looking at the link between meat consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Froggatt told the Independent it is "true lettuce can be incredibly water intensive and energy intensive to produce", but such comparative exercises vary hugely depending on how the foods are raised or grown.

"We usually look at proteins rather than calories, and as a general rule it is still the case that reducing meat consumption in favour of plant-based proteins can reduce emissions," he said.

Watch that spin there Froggatt old chap! Especially since his argument that these naughty scientists haven't taken everything into account is quickly debunked too:

But surprisingly, even if people cut out meat and reduced their calories to USDA-recommended levels, their environmental impact would increase across energy use (38 per cent), water (10 per cent) and emissions (6 per cent).

Dang and double dang! Poor Froggatt is left with just the weakest of weak arguments - akin to sticking out his bottom lip, stamping his foot and insisting he is right:

"We do know there is global overconsumption of meat, particularly in countries such as the US," he said. "Looking forward that is set to increase significantly, which will have a significant impact on global warming."

We can expect more along these lines - a narrow focus on what the actual animal does (fart mostly) rather than a proper appraisal of the entire production process. It is, sadly, how science goes these days - look at vaping, at sugar taxes, at overweight girls or indeed almost any public health or climate change research and you'll find assumptions, ad hominem, lousy methods and the reliance on simply repeating a given mantra regardless of the actual evidence.  But then pointing at critics shouting heretic has always been an effective tactic in the short run.


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Tuesday 15 December 2015

Fat girls, thin girls - our confusing message to young women about weight needs to stop.


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For a decade and more we've been told that the fashion industry, with its too-thin models and obsession with superficial image, has presented an unattainable body-image ideal to young people and especially to girls.

Here's an article from The Guardian in 2000:

British doctors yesterday called on the media to use female models with more realistically proportioned bodies instead of "abnormally thin" women who contributed to the rise in the numbers of people suffering from eating disorders.

A report by the British Medical Association claimed that the promotion of rake-thin models such as Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd was creating a distorted body image which young women tried to imitate. It suggested that the media can trigger and perpetuate the disease.

We have, since that time, been regaled with seemingly endless elaborations on this viewpoint - from the use of retouching in photography to cosmetic surgery - all repeating the accusation that the fashion industry presents an 'unhealthy' body image. Not only is there the direct link to eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia but we have suggested links to depression, suicide, underperformance at school and even sexual dysfunction.

Throughout this time a parallel world can be seen - one where girls are ever more overweight. Here, again from The Guardian:

The increase in obesity accelerated sharply in 2004, especially among girls, the survey said. Figures for the 11-15 age group showed the proportion of obese girls grew from 15.4% in 1995 to 22.1% in 2003. But in 2004 it shot up to 26.7%.

Over the same period, the proportion of girls who were overweight, but not enough to qualify as obese, increased from 12.6% to 14.8%. In 2004 a total of 46% of girls and 30.5% of boys were either overweight or obese.

So while we were ever more angst-ridden about Kate Moss being too skinny, the vulnerable cohort of teenaged girls was chowing down and piling on the pounds. If you asked these girls whether they want to look like Kate Moss they give the honest answer - yes - and then order another milkshake. The evidence suggests that skinny models have - at the aggregate level - had no impact at all on the weight of girls.

All this brings us right up to date with the latest piece of ridiculous nannying fussbucketry from Dame Sally Davies, the government's "Chief Medical Officer":

Dame Sally Davies wants the obesity crisis in women to be classed alongside flooding and major outbreaks of disease – as well as the threat from violent extremism.

So - despite the malign impact of Jodie Kidd - the female population are a bunch of unhealthy lard-buckets. So much so that the Chief Medical Officer wants to define it as a national crisis. So much for anything being the fashion industry's fault. But wait:

The use of plus-sized models in advertising campaigns may be fuelling the obesity epidemic, experts have warned.

A new study, by business and marketing researchers, suggested that using images of larger body types 'encourages the idea that being overweight is acceptable'.

Using fewer images of models who are underweight and aesthetically flawless can have a detrimental effect on the public's lifestyle and eating behaviour, researchers said.

Ha - gotcha! We can all relax - the use of fat models makes being fat seem OK meaning that all the girls are obese. Or at least the ones who aren't anorexic or bulimic because they want to look like a contestant on Britain's Next Top Model.

Perhaps what's needed here is a bit of balance. Instead of giving young women an message that they're too fat one day and too thin the next we should maybe try being honest about all this weight and health stuff. Such as that people who, on our standard measure, are overweight are likely to live longer than those at so-called 'normal' weight. And that so long as such folk are fit and active there really aren't any negatives to being what the nannying fussbuckets call "overweight".

What we need to stop is this implication that there's some sort of perfect weight - somewhere between Cara Delavigne and Adele. Instead we should focus on how active (not sporty but active) people are and whether their diet is balanced. We don't need sugar taxes, advertising bans or lectures from Dame Sally Davies. What we need is some common sense and a sensible, affirmative message to young women (and young men for that matter) about how to get healthy and stay healthy.

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Monday 14 December 2015

Sorry, Policy Network, but development control is not the planning system

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How people misunderstand the planning system:

If the planning system were the key constraint then one would expect to see housing start statistics on par with the number of agreed permissions, but clearly this has not been the case. Moreover, this means that since 2006 a large proportion of plots with planning permission has accumulated and not been used. Based on the data compiled, this figure is now close to 800,000 units and continues to rise. If local authorities grant permission for a similar amount of plots in 2015 as they did last year, then England already has over a million plots with planning permission to build on.

This is all true. But it doesn't describe the efficiency or effectiveness of the planning system. What it describes is the efficiency of our development control process and the fact that land with a planning permission is more valuable than land without a planning permission. So the idiots who don't see planning as the problem then propose a process whereby the uplift in value from agriculture to housing doesn't fall to the landowner but to "the community". All this means is that people stop seeing the sale of agricultural land for housing as worthwhile - we have less land than we have now on which to develop. Moreover the developers are unable to use the land value as the collateral for development finance - meaning that financing costs rise considerably removing a chunk of the supposed community benefit.

The problem is more profound than this though because a lot of the sites that aren't being developed aren't agricultural land but urban brownfield. And much of this is in places where people don't want to live (and therefore where housing values are low). I know of one development on a previously developed urban site where local housing values - around £120,000-150,000 for a typical three-bed family home - simply don't allow for a viable development even where land value is zero. Developers won't develop at a loss and won't develop in places where they feel they would find it difficult to sell the homes they build.

If you focus on development control then there doesn't appear to be a problem. But if you look at the local plan process - the land allocation part of the system - then we see too little land allocated in high demand areas and too much land allocated in low demand areas. Mostly because our system of objectively assessing need takes no heed of market signals - the things that make a three-bed semi in Sevenoaks cost £625,000 while one in Bradford is just £155,000. And this problem is entirely - or as near as makes no difference - down to the planning system.

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Sunday 13 December 2015

Freedom of Information requests are a pain. That is the whole point of them.

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My colleagues at the Local Government Association have decided they want something done about Freedom of Information requests:

Freedom of information requests are a ‘burden’ on local authorities, and their use should be subject to tighter controls according to council leaders. The Local Government Association (LGA) has suggested fees for requests should be introduced and the time councils have to spend responding to them lowered from 18 hours to eight

No. Just no. The whole point about the Freedom of Information Act is that it provides the means for the public to hold the bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians to account. And this is because that information held by local councils is public information - meaning that the public should have access to said information. As a matter of right not as some big favour granted them by some stuck-up bureaucrat.

If Councils are bothered about Freedom of Information requests being a burden, then the proper response isn't to dream up some cod 'public interest' test but the make a whole lot more information publicly available, accessible and searchable. If you do that then the public doesn't have to go to the trouble of crafting requests that the Council responds to - instead they can go directly to the data they need.
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Tuesday 8 December 2015

Gay people drink on a night out, too! Who knew?

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And booze companies craft promotions to appeal to gay drinkers:

THE lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is increasingly being targeted by drinks promotions in bars and clubs and by alcohol companies, according to new research.

Concerns were raised that alcohol was found to be a central part of a night out on the commercial scene for LGBT people, with fears that this is being exploited by drinks manufacturers.

I am deeply shocked that drinks companies are targeting promotions towards a section of the adult population. How dare they.

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Monday 7 December 2015

Britain's voting system isn't corrupt and the register doesn't exclude millions of voters.



Between UKIP frothing about postal voting and Corbyn's fanboys screeching about individual registration there's a load of nonsense talked about the UK's electoral registration system. The former are telling us that voting in any place featuring Asian Muslim voters is so corrupt as to be meaningless (or words to that effect):

The leader also claimed to see boxes where 99 per cent of the votes were for Labour's Jim McMahon – who branded Ukip supporters "rejects" last year.

He said: "It means effectively – in some of these seats where people don't speak English, but they're signed up to postal votes – effectively the electoral process is now dead."

Leaving aside how the Express calls Nigel Farage "The Leader", let's be clear about some things that went off in the recent Oldham by-election.

Firstly there was almost certainly some postal vote fraud (if by this we mean that some ballots weren't secret and a few might have been completed by someone other than the registered voter). Not very much for the simple reason that most voters and nearly all candidates aren't dumb enough to commit such a fraud.

Secondly the UKIP claim that 99% of the votes in any box were for one party is almost certainly complete nonsense. I've been watching election counts off and on for thirty odd years. I've watched literally thousands of ballot boxes opened up onto the table - including in places like Luton and Bradford where allegations about dodgy voting are legion. And I've never seen a box where all - or nearly all - the votes are for one candidate.

Thirdly and finally Oldham almost certainly saw (or didn't see) acts of personation - doing the Nigel Kennedy as we call it. But, like abuse of postal voting, these acts, however illegal, had no material bearing on the outcome. For what's it's worth, the result in Oldham was because Labour chose a good candidate with strong local presence (something UKIP didn't do) plus the reality that there is zero reasons why any Asian Muslim would vote for UKIP.

The electoral commission conducted a comprehensive review of electoral fraud - published in January 2014 - and concluded that, yes it happens but it's pretty rare even in places where there are lots of allegations of said fraud (like Bradford).

The thing with postal vote fraud is that there was just one event where it was widespread (I recall one candidate talking of another candidate - nothing like a bit of hearsay - farming hundreds of votes) and that was the bizarre decision of the then Blair government to 'trial' all-postal elections in 2004. Bringing about results like this one:



OK, I don't know if all that was down to vote farming but a striking result, no? And we know 2004 was a problem because nearly a quarter of those convicted of electoral fraud since 1994 were from that year's election. Since 2004 there's been no postal-only elections (choosing the Labour leader aside) removing the opportunity for the sort of wholesale vote farming that some say went on that year.

The electoral commission's conclusion about the significance of electoral fraud - and postal vote fraud in particular - is spot on:




Which brings us to the other issue - the one the left is so agitated about - individual registration.

It is believed that the Tories’ individual electoral registration (IER) reforms mean that 1.9 million people could fall off the electoral register in under six weeks’ time. Momentum claim that a further 8 million adults may not be on the register at all, meaning that 10 million will not be able to use their vote in next May’s elections.

Again there is some truth in this statement. Nearly two million names could fall off the electoral register under individual registration but this is mostly because those people don't exist, have moved, are registered somewhere else or simply aren't interested in being on said register. But the misinformation continues - here's Gloria de Piero MP who is leading Labour's charge on the issue:

We know what kinds of voters are more likely to be missing: they are private renters, people from BAME communities, the unemployed and lower-paid manual workers. But perhaps the greatest divide is between the older and the younger generation. Some 95% of over-65s are on the electoral register, yet the proportion of 18 to 24-year-olds is just 70%

In one respect there's nothing new here. Under the household registration system the young, ethnic minorities, private renters and the lower paid were 'under-registered' so all the new system has done is reveal the truth about the accuracy (or rather inaccuracy) of Britain's electoral registers. And much of the blame for this rests (other than with people who aren't bothered) with local authorities and especially councils in urban areas that tend to vote Labour.

Under individual registration people are automatically registered if they are receiving any form of benefit - JSA, ESA, housing benefit, tax credits, pensions or child benefit. So all those unemployed and low-paid that Gloria is worried for have been registered (assuming they're claiming the benefits to which they're entitled). Local councils have also been encouraged to use their other records - council tax and so forth - to transfer people to the new system. The result of this is that around 90% of the existing register transfers across.

And those who haven't transferred? They are people who are not claiming benefits, not the head of a household, not council tax payers and not otherwise known to the authorities (in the nicest way). The biggest such group isn't the BAME, the lower-paid, manual workers or such - it is students. Whereas before students were either registered by Mum or Dad on the form at home or else registered en bloc in student accommodation now they have to actually fill in a form to get a vote. And (surprise, surprise) they don't.

The switch to individual registration is a huge success - the register is more accurate, the (not very common but real) practice of signing up false names is ended, and people are encouraged to take responsibility for their own registration rather than rely on someone else. As a result a load of inaccuracies - 1.9m or so - have been cleared out of the system, local councils have been funded to get a more precise register, and we can have greater confidence in the register as a guide to who is living where. This isn't gerrymandering but a route to an accurate record of the electorate. The problem for Labour is that most of the system's inaccuracies are in places where Labour Councils have done a lousy job keeping an accurate register.

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Saturday 5 December 2015

On those fizzy drinks taxes MPs want...


OK the results are preliminary but a big study  (pdf) (8000 people) into Mexico's 'soda tax' has shown that it hasn't affected overall calorie intake one jot:

Obesity and its costs are high and rising and we know little about the effectiveness of different policy tools. We measure the short term impact of one such tool: taxing high caloric density foods. The results are still preliminary, but the evidence shows that the effects of the Mexican taxes on calories consumed in-home are very small. Results also show that lower SES may pay a higher percentage of their income from these taxes.

And that last sentence tells us that the poor ("lower SES") are the ones paying the tax. So Jamie Oliver, nannying MPs and the legions of public health fussbuckets are proposing a tax that won't solve the problem (an overstated problem but that's by the by) but will disproportionately fall on the least well off.

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Friday 4 December 2015

Things that aren't really true.

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Like this...

The most important factor is women’s education. Already today, an Ethiopian woman with secondary education has on average only 1.6 children, compared to a woman with no education who has 6 children.

We're told this again and again but raised levels of female education are a consequence of another more important change - raised levels of income and the end of subsistence farming. If people are poor (and scratching a living from a tiny, unfertile plot of land on less than a dollar a day is what we're talking about here) then having lots of children makes economic sense.

This isn't an argument against sending girls to school more an observation that parents don't send girls to school if they need human resources to scrat a living from the land. The work them and marry them off as soon as they can produce babies. So when Oxfam and others idealise marginal farming systems despite the ecological damage they do, they also prevent the growth that means fertility rates will fall.

Educated women, like lower fertility rates, are a consequence of economic growth - the former isn't the cause of the latter.

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Will the gig economy kill planning?

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From California Planning and Development Report:

But how can you possibly plan for and control land uses when every bedroom is a hotel room, and every dining room is a restaurant, and every coffee shop is an office, and conversely every office is a potential living room or dining room or bedroom?

Well exactly. That is if your planning system depends on rigorous and strongly enforced zoning of land use (which is the case in California). And we're not just talking here about planning for housing, employment or physical infrastructure but a whole load of other things where we use control of land use as the starting point - health, education, recreation and waste management for example.

Even the need for road improvements – maybe the biggest driver of planning in California – is based on assumptions about different land uses. Road improvements are based on traffic estimates, which in turn are based on formulas about how much traffic is created by different land uses – single-family homes, apartments, office buildings, restaurants, and so on.

The basis on which much of local government is founded has been undermined by the way in which technology is disrupting service businesses, work patterns and social activity. We really have no idea whether our carefully defined models for estimating employment land demand, housing need or the need for public transport will actually meet the needs for those things. When people commute by Skype and conduct business from the pub on the corner, the assumptions about needs change in a way that the planning system - dependent on spatial determinism - simply can't accommodate.

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Quote of the day - on the accountability of the NHS

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In Christian Niemietz's 'Diagnosis: Overrated' is this observation:

The idea that the NHS is run by ‘the people’, as a joint endeavour, is a romantic fantasy. The NHS is an elite project, and this could not be otherwise. Collective choice is not a substitute for individual choice and ‘voice’ is not a substitute for ‘exit’. The illusory ‘accountability’ mediated through the political process cannot come anywhere near the accountability of a marketplace, or of a properly designed quasi-market setting, in which providers stand and fall with the choices consumers make, and depend on them for their very economic survival.

Anyone with experience of the NHS's sclerotic organisation will know this to be absolutely true.

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Thursday 3 December 2015

In whose name? A comment on democratic will and other such stuff.



"Not in my name is the cry". Petitions are posted, letters are written, placards are badly spelled, frantic facebook rants are posted. "Not in my name".

Well, yes, absolutely. It's not in your name. Never has been in your name. Never will be in your name. That's whole point really. About this representative democracy lark, I mean. It's not done on the basis of individual approval but of collective approval. So long as fifty per cent plus one of the good folk we choose to represent us in parliament say we do it, we do it. What you and I think doesn't matter. We get to keep our powder dry until the next time we get to choose someone to represent us.

You don't think MPs are any good? Fine - that's your absolute right. But they're all we've got - the inadequate, incompetent, venal and self-serving bastion protecting us from rule by faceless bureaucrats, arrogant technocrats and anonymous securicrats. Depressing I know but that's it really which is why we should pay attention to the voting stuff and take it seriously. It's also why those people who say "we don't need any more politicians" are wrong - we need as many politicians as we can get if we want to hold the government to account - from parish councillors to peers of the realm.

Yesterday - and this is what has prompted all the 'not in my name' stuff - MPs voted to approve airstrikes against targets inside Syria. This followed a week or so of frenetic pseudo-debate and a full day of parliamentary debate culminating in that vote. And it's true that MPs, in arriving at a decision, did so with a variety of motives and reasons. Some will have supported (or opposed) airstrikes simply from loyalty to party - my party leader says one thing or the other, therefore I back that position. And this isn't a bad thing - we decry loyalty and trust too readily resulting in a world where such behaviour is assumed to be self-serving, shallow and essentially corrupt. But, for a complicated issue such as whether to take military action, it isn't copping out to take the view that, all things being equal, you'll go along with the foreign minister and defence minister appointed by your Party's government.

Others - and we saw a bit of this yesterday - will have made their decision on the basis of a moral stance ('I'm a pacifist' or 'ISIS is evil and must be stopped') without consideration of tactics. Again we see this described as sophistry or as disingenuous - as if politicians can never support something on grounds of simple conscience. Worse still, people (as they shout 'not in my name' again and again) make a moral judgement about the reasons for people making the choice - if that choice supports our view its noble and brave, if not its because of bullying, political calculation or stupidity (sometimes all three).

I'm not persuaded by the argument for bombing. Not because of any objection to war or crocodile tears over the civilian deaths that will happen whether or not we bomb. No, my concern is that there seems to be no idea as to what the end of all this looks like. I didn't listen to every word yesterday but I didn't hear an argument setting out a strategy aimed at creating a place to which several million refugees can return and live a fulfilling life in peace and happiness. And I didn't see how bombing Raqqa stops terrorists already in the UK, USA or France from machine-gunning or bombing innocents just to wave their murderous islamo-fascist ideology in our liberal democratic faces.

But my argument lost. Maybe for honourable reasons, perhaps because there's internal turmoil in the Labour Party, perhaps because too many MPs, ministers and media folk didn't understand the issues. But mostly because there was a feeling - one echoed outside the febrile world of Westminster - that, following Paris, something had to be done. And targeted bombing is something.

That bombing isn't being done in your name. It's being done by the UK government on the authorisation of parliament. If you didn't like how your MP voted on this then come the next election you get the chance to vote for someone else - it's how our imperfect system works. If you can stomach party politics, you can join one of the parties and make your case from inside. But shouting 'not in my name' is fatuous and serves no purpose except to make you feel a little bit better about the fact that parliament decided to do something you don't like.

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