Pommygranate

Eliot Spitzer - Client Nine

2008-03-12T15:42:00.004+11:00

"I think he would like to become President. Yes, it's in his nature."

Mr. Spitzer Senior on son, Eliot - Harvard Law Student, anti-business crusader, Attorney General of New York, Governor of New York, FAP (Future American President) and err, Client Nine.

It is somewhat ironic that his downfall will be caused by something as trivial as visiting call girls (though obviously not trivial to poor Mrs. Spitzer) after the carnage he has caused to American business.

A fascinating examination of Spitzer's record can be found here. It's a long piece but well worth the read.

"What's truly stunning is [Spitzer's] ability to force reform—to root out institutionalized sleaziness with lightning speed. . . . Congress and federal regulatory agencies such as the SEC take years, if they're lucky, to shape an industry or reshape its basic practices. . . . Yet Spitzer, an elected official from a single state, has turned entire industries upside down."

Fortune magazine

Here's how

"In order to enforce his morality, Spitzer frequently uses an old law that allows him to criminalize behavior not obviously illegal and, by threatening business executives with prison and economic ruination, mandate such reforms as may spring from his moral sense. The law that Spitzer has employed for this purpose is New York's 1921 Martin Act. It empowers [New York's attorney general] to subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state; to keep an investigation totally secret or to make it totally public; and to choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants. People called in for question during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. . . . Now for the scary part: To win a case, the AG doesn't have to prove that the defendant intended to defraud anyone, that a transaction took place, or that anyone actually was defrauded at Spitzer has employed for these purposes is New York's 1921 Martin Act."

By using this intrusive Act, Spitzer has been able to go after and beat the Wall Street Research industry (targetting Merrill in particular), the Insurance industry (targetting Marsh) and finally, the Mutual Fund industry. On the back of these mighty scalps and his 'champion of the people' approach, he was voted Governor of New York in January 2007.

This is how he and his team work,

1. Denounce the realities of business, especially the pursuit of economic self-interest, as ethically sordid—in this case, denounce the reality that hustle and hype are the Brownian motion of commerce, from the rug merchants of the Middle East to the stockbrokers of Wall Street.

2. Universal Fiduciality. Ignore the rule of "caveat emptor" and the responsibility of market participants to look out for themselves. In the name of equality, insist that business leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to all their customers, investors, workers—indeed, to the public at large.

3. The Bloody Shirt. Find a handful of acts that cross the line into inexcusable (though not necessarily illegal) behavior. In this case, Spitzer found a few e-mails where hype had passed into lying.

4. Extra-legal Punishment.Use these examples of deplorable (though perhaps legal) behavior to publicly smear and threaten an entire company and its top executives, putting it and them under a cloud and driving down the company's market value.

5. Play the Good Cop. Offer a lenient penalty in exchange for the right to dictate corporate policy.

6. Repeat as Needed. Use the above sequence of steps as often as necessary to restructure an entire industry in conformity with the morality of Eliot Spitzer.

7. A Virtue-cratic Takeover. Make it clear that Eliot Spitzer and his morally superior minions are now in charge. Executives may be allowed to pretend they are running their companies.

A wonderful conclusion to finish ;

"Spitzer's master premise is Jacobinism, the notion that the liberty of human beings must be curbed by government virtue-crats acting in the name of morality. Despite all we have learned from public-choice theory, Spitzer truly believes that power-seekers like himself will create more ethical arrangements than will people who are acting in their own self-interest and who are curbed only by laws against force and fraud. As he asserted last year, since market capitalism is not "perfection itself," government must "put the brakes" on free markets, in order to "maintain a just and equitable society." The historical record of those Robespierres who begin by complaining that the free actions of human beings are not perfect, and who go on to "perfect" them through the coercive instruments of government, is not an encouraging one."

Disproportionate Response

2008-03-07T13:19:00.006+11:00

Yesterday a group of schoolchildren in West Jerusalem were in class making preparations to celebrate the new month on the Jewish calendar when a Palestinian gunmen walked in and opened fire, killing eight and wounding nine. None were older than sixteen.

The Hamas government described the killer as 'heroic'. Said Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, "this heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier and its murder of civilians.''

The usual suspects (the EU and the UN) will no doubt scream once again with rage at Israel's forthcoming 'disproportionate response' to this latest atrocity. But how does one even begin to negotiate with a government that calls the murder of 15 year-old school kids 'heroic'?

School kids.

Both the statement from the EU and the UN start with "although Israel has the right to self-defence under international law.." and end with "but Israel is also obliged to protect the civilian population of Gaza." In case you don't speak Suprantionalese, i'll translate into English - 'Israel has no right to respond in any way whatsoever'.

Also, what would a 'proportionate response' look like? Does the EU and the UN therefore think it's acceptable for the Israelis to kill eight schoolchildren in retaliation? After all, that would be 'proportionate'. Of course not. We all know that the Israelis don't target civilians but terrorists. Yes, it is a tragedy that innocent Palestinians get caught up in the cross fire, but this is because Hamas terrorists hide amongst their civilian population firing hundreds of Qasam rockets on a daily basis, deliberately putting their lives in danger.

Israellycool has the details.

Watermelons

2008-02-21T07:54:00.004+11:00

Love the environment? check.

Always recycle, place litter in bins, turn the lights off? check

Wanna do your bit for Mother Earth? check

Thought that voting Green might be the answer? check

Before you do so, you might want to read their policies first. This is from the British Green Party's Policy page.

It starts so promisingly.

'We believe in people taking control of their own lives.'

Gotta love that. But here's the rest,

Economy

'Stop Britain's public services from being forced open to international competition and privatisation.

Measure economic benefits in terms of quality of life, development of people and care for the environment, as well as money in the bank. (Ed - that must be the Happiness Index, where Happiness = Reality/Expectations)

Campaign for a binding legal framework for corporate social responsibility.

Raise the rate of Corporation Tax to 40% (from 30%)

Ban supermarkets from further store openings.

Place restrictions on global free trade

Education

'The Greens believe in education being for the public good, and publicly-funded.'

Transport

'Re-nationalisation of Britain's railways and re-regulation of our buses.'

Peace and Justice

'Poverty and oppression still fuel conflict and nurture extremism. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine still long for real peace. (Ed - this is a real White Thing - claiming to speak on behalf of other cultures)

Progress is not the inequality that comes from half the world living on less than £1.70 a day.' (Ed - but hasn't free trade and capitalism just dragged 600 million people out of this trap?)

Home & Community

'Stopping motorways and urban sprawl from disfiguring hills and forests that have inspired generations of musicians, writers, poets and painters.'

Food We Can Trust

'We want a GM-free Britain.

Farm animals have a right not to suffer. (Ed - does this mean they are against halal meat?)

Banning food imports from poor African countries. 'Caroline Lucas won support from many farmers for highlighting the absurd trade where British food products are flown half way round the world to countries which sell exactly the same type of products back to us.'

Clean Green Energy

'Investing in sources of energy like offshore wind farms, wave and solar power that don't cause global warming.

We call for the return of the fuel-duty escalator, scrapped after the fuel protests, so that petrol and diesel become progressively more expensive year by year.

Real Progress means stopping the nuclear industry.'

Animal Rights

'We want an end to animal experimentation.'

By the People, for the People

'We believe in people taking control of their own lives. But that doesn't mean that the State has no role to play: what is the function of Government if not to regulate the economy in favour of the majority and of the long-term interests of the world we live in?'

What, indeed.

This political party looks a little like this one.

'Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short'

2008-02-19T19:54:00.002+11:00

19 year-old aboriginal, Ashley Brooks, broke into the house of a 75 year-old great-grandmother, stole $60 from her wallet and then proceeded to beat her so severely that she was in a coma for 12 days, writes Andrew Bolt. Judge David Parsons described Ashley Wayne Brooks' attack on Barbara Durea as sickening. He sentenced him to a two-year youth justice order. Judge Parsons said Brooks was avoiding jail "because of his youth and slight build, he would not fare well in an adult prison." and because Brooks hasn't "had much of a chance to date."

Meanwhile, Queensland judge, Sarah Bradley, (the one who previously called a mentally disabled ten-year old victim of gang rape a 'willing participant') has allowed a white teacher, who sexually abused an 11 year-old Torres Strait boy, time to prepare evidence for his case that he was educating him in 'traditional Islander practices'.

I struggle to remain calm when reading of cases such as these. I have to assume that either

i) Judges Parsons and Bradley hate aboriginals

ii) they view indigenous people as sub-human and hence not responsible for their actions.

Their refusal to punish these appalling crimes will not affect me living in my nice, wealthy suburb of Sydney. But it will condemn women living in indigenous communities to a life of rape, violence and early death.

McCain; The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

2008-01-31T12:43:00.000+11:00

With Guiliani out of the Presidential race, the choice now comes down to Obama, Hilary, Romney, Huckabee, Paul or McCain. For classical liberals, this is no easy decision. Ron Paul should be the obvious candidate but his history is too murky too ignore, his character questionable and his merry band of supporters too kooky to brush aside.

Michael Tanner at Cato has an interesting post about John McCain. Now that he is the clear front-runner for the GOP nomination, it is worth taking a closer look at the man.
Tanner makes the following points (my summary).

The Good:
1. He is a true fiscal conservative. He is well known as an opponent of earmarks and pork barrel spending and an advocate of entitlement reform. He was early an ardent support of personal accounts for Social Security, and has pushed for serious Medicare reform, including means-testing. Almost alone among Republicans, he opposed the disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit.

2. He has offered the best health care reform plan of any of the candidates.

3. During his time in the Senate, he has never voted for a tax increase. While he has taken much heat for voting against the Bush tax cuts, he now calls for making those tax cuts permanent.

4. He is a strong and unapologetic free trader.

The Bad:
1. John McCain frequently makes Dr. Strangelove look like a peacenik. He’s a true believer in the neoconservative goal of remaking the world to fit our desires and beliefs. At best on foreign policy he would be a competent Bush. At worst, he appears a recipe for perpetual conflict.

2. On domestic policy, he has shown a disturbing predilection for elevating every personal pet peeve, from steroids in baseball to airplane service quality, to a federal issue. And, he has embraced heavily regulatory environmental policies and compulsory national service.

3. He tends to support federal power over federalism, executive authority over legislative, and generally leans toward the imperial presidency.

The Ugly:
1. John McCain appears to have little more than contempt for the First Amendment and free speech generally. He is the principal author of a campaign finance bill that severely restricts political speech. Not content with those restrictions on political speech, he has continually sought to expand regulation to other groups. He has said that he “would rather have a clean government than one where "First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.”

2. Most worrisome of all appears to be McCain’s basic philosophy, which is unapologetically statist, as Matt Welch points out in his new book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. McCain once said “each and every one of us has a duty to serve a cause greater than our own self-interest.” McCain believes that cause to be the good of the collective, often defined as the nation or the national community.

I feel Tanner is harsh on McCain. For instance, it is inconcsistent to call a man who has never voted for a tax increase, who is an avid free-trader, who believes in school vouchers and who has a dislike of government spending as statist.

The charge of his aggressive foreign policy is more accurate but many would argue that the libertarian movement's Achilles Heel is its refusal to defend liberty. His campaign finance bill may be misguided but he is attempting to address an area of US democracy that is broke. To say that he has contempt for free speech is ridiculous.

In addition, he is doesn't pander to the awful Christian Right. He voted in favour of amnesty towards illegals and is generally pro-immigration. I don't like his pro-life stance but he has gone on record as saying that he would not repeal Roe vs Wade, so you wander about the depth of his pro-life convictions.

But more than his policies alone, I cannot but help admiring this man. His conduct and bravery during the Vietnam War and his courage in supporting the surge in Iraq last year when at the time it looked like electoral suicide, points to a man of principle, of honour and of conviction. Though he misguidedly supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq, he was the first to call for Rumsfeld's sacking and has been an ardent opponent of torture.

American liberals have to vote for someone. I would vote McCain.

Big Government Is Bad For Your Wallet

2008-01-30T12:47:00.000+11:00

'Big government is bad for economic growth.'

No shit, Sherlock, i hear you cry.

But this isn't my view, nor one of a neo-liberal free market think tank.

It's from that respected institution and dogged inflation-fighter, the European Central Bank, which has come to this conclusion all by itself. It is papers like this that will help spread the gospel.

The paper concludes that each additional 1% of government spending reduces growth by 0.13%.

One interesting finding. The taxes that have the least harmful effects on growth are income taxes. Those that hinder growth the most are consumption taxes and government subsidies.

Something to chew on.

via UK libertarian and freakonomics-style blogger, Chris Dillow.

Creative Capitalism

2008-01-29T11:00:00.000+11:00

I admire Bill Gates. He has built a huge company from scratch and in so doing has produced hundreds of thousands of jobs and paid a fortune in taxes. He has been instrumental in driving down the cost of computing (and don't tell me that Microsoft is an evil monopoly - every company aspires to be a monopoly) so that almost anyone can have broadband access to the internet. Also, unlike many arch-capitalists, he is clearly concerned with bettering the lot of the world's poor.

So it was with great disappointment that i read his speech last week to the World Economic Forum assembled at Davos (in my previous life as an Emerging Markets bond trader, i've been to one of these and they are the ultimate taxpayer-funded boondoggle), outlining his vision for 'creative capitalism'.

“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well. I like to call this idea creative capitalism."

He gave an interview to the WSJ expanding his thoughts in further detail,

Mr. Gates said that he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid, the part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion." Among the fixes he plans to call for: Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. "Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don't fully benefit from market forces," he plans to say. With today's speech, Mr. Gates adds his high-profile name to the ranks of those who argue that unfettered capitalism can't solve broad social problems. Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work providing small loans to the poor, is traversing the U.S. this month promoting a new book that calls capitalism "half developed" because it focuses only on the profit-oriented side of human nature, not on the satisfaction derived from helping others.

That such an intelligent man can utter such drivel is surprising and sad. He is hugely influential and many free-market agnostics will read his words and conclude that capitalism is a rich man's plaything. They would be so wrong.

What is needed is not 'creative' capitalism but 'more' capitalism. The Soweto slums he identifies are poor because the free market is not being allowed to work. China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Eastern Europe to name but a few have pulled hundreds of millions of people off the bread line simply by abandoning socialism and embracing capitalism.

Additionally, a paper published by William Nordhaus in 2004 showed that only a 'miniscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers'.

Writing for the Globalisation Institute, Tim Worstall remarks that although Gates cites Adam Smith's, 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' as one of the great influences of his vision, he would do well to remember this passage from the follow up to that book, 'Wealth of Nations',

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from a regard to their interest."

A great man but with little vision.

SocGen Boss Speaks Out

2008-01-25T22:49:00.001+11:00

Culture War

2008-01-23T19:58:00.000+11:00

Geert Wilders - Boris Johnson's uglier brother?

The greatest worry for all parents of schoolchildren is bullying. The government agrees and hence all schools must have an anti-bullying policy. All parents know that the worst course of action is to appease bullies. Yet this is precisely what European governments are doing to the Islamic bullies in their communities. For instance,

1. Jacqui Smith, the UK Home Secretary, has declared in truly Orwellian style that all future Islamic terror atrocities will be referred to as 'un-Islamic'. Quite why she seeks to speak on behalf of her Muslim constituents is beyond me. Or quite how she would know is also a mystery. Still, there you have it. Islamic terrorist attacks are now to be known as 'un-Islamic criminal acts'. Terrorists have been defeated by Labour as they have been re-branded criminals. And Ignorance is Truth. It's like calling the Spanish Inquisition 'un-Catholic'.

A survey for Policy Exchange revealed that 1 in 8 young British Muslims support terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and 1in 3 believes that apostates (Muslims who leave their faith) should be killed. So yes - it's not a majority, but it's not exactly a trifling minority either.

2. Next up is the case of Hani Ramadan, a schoolteacher in Geneva. He wrote an article in French newspaper, Le Monde, stating that adulterers should be stoned. He was sacked. However, a Court of Appeals has just reinstated him and awarded him two years pay in damages.

3. And then there's the Dutch. Looking at Holland and its Muslim population is akin to peering ten years into the future for England (and possibly a generation for Australia). Tensions are already elevated in Holland following the murder of Theo van Gogh three years ago by a Muslim extremist for dissing the Koran.

Enter stage left Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party and not a man known for his ability to smooth troubled waters. Geert has made a film about the Koran. No surprises for guessing that it doesn't exactly portray Mohammed and the Koran in a positive light. In fact, Geert himself stated that his film will show the Koran as a "source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror". Right on queue and without a trace of irony, the Grand Mufti of Syria has indicated that Geert will be 'responsible for inciting wars and bloodshed'.

Nothing surprising so far. Just another example of Europe's big, big problem. But here comes the shocker from Dutch Foreign Minister, Maxime Verhagenstated,

"Freedom of expression doesn't mean the right to offend"

Chew on that oh-lovers-of-liberty and start preparing your kids for a real culture war.

Cricket Shambles

2008-01-10T11:12:00.000+11:00

Ten observations on the cricket fiasco from a cricket-loving pommy.

i) Peter Roebuck is an unmitigated, pretentious twat and an embarrassment to my country.

ii) That 70% of SMH readers agree with him is an embarrassment to your country.

iii) The Australian cricket team is one of the world’s outstanding sports teams, if not the best.

iv) Australia play thrilling cricket (contrast the 376 runs scored on Day One with the torturous approach to batting adopted by the Indians) and have done more to pull the crowds back into Test Cricket than any other team.

v) Ricky Ponting is already one of the most successful Test captains of all time. 16 victories on the trot is not shabby.

vi) As a four-time tourist with the Barmy Army (lost all four series), i can safely ascert that every single last fan of this traveling band would give their right eye to see Freddie and Vaughny celebrate with impunity and grind our opponents into the dust if we could replicate a fraction of Punter’s success.

vii) We live in a world of hyper-sensitivity towards race. The captains were given strict prior instructions by the match referee to report any incidents of racial abuse. Ponting had no choice but to report the ‘monkey’ comment. He would have been slaughtered had he urged Symonds not to make a meal out of it. The Test has exposed the stupidity of this sensitivity towards racist remarks. Is it worse to call someone a ‘monkey’ than his mother a ‘whore’?

viii) Sledging is a part of the game. It’s not pleasant nor sporting and the Aussies are the worst. But now talk is of ‘banning sledging’ - the knee-jerk cry of the nanny-state. During Barmy Army tours, we sang this of Shane Warne, hoping it might piss him off and affect his game,

(to the tune of ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ - an old English working class favourite)

Shane Warne is a druggie
He should be in rehab
He took his mummy’s little pill
To try and lose the flab

He took it to lose some weight
From all the pies and beer,
But when the ICC found out
They banned him for a year

It didn’t work. Should the Barmy Army be pre-emptively banned? Is this discriminatory towards fat people or towards druggies?

ix) You never blame the umpire/referee if decisions don’t go your way. This leads to football. Umpiring a game of cricket is impossible, especially with wonderful TV technology to expose your mistakes. Surely all contentious decisions will now have to be referred to the third umpire. Far from holding up the game (which is the current reason the technology is not more widely used), they add to the tension.

x) Given the surprising support for Roebuck’s call to have Ponting sacked, i can only assume that Australians are becoming queasy about winning. Especially against non-white nations. This is not good for your long term sporting outlook.

Which Candidate Are You Closest To?

2008-01-10T08:17:00.000+11:00

Rudy, Hilary, Obama, McCain etc etc. They all sound good but what do they actually believe in.

Take the test to find out which candidate most closely mirrors your views.

I am closest to Ron Paul and rather strangely furthest from Fred Thompson.

via Iain Dale.

Why You Should Support The LDP

2007-10-19T12:47:00.000+10:00

Comments on the recent LDP posts here have descended into pitched battles on the pros and cons of legalising drugs. This is not a core issue for the party. Unlike the ideological purity of blogging, politics is about compromise. The more votes you target the more conventional your views must be. No-one will like all of the LDP's policies (i certainly don't). However, does anyone here like everything Howard or Rudd or The Greens have to say?

I joined the LDP earlier this year because i was attracted to its two principle messages. If you agree with these two points, then go out and vote for the LDP next month.

1. You are better able to decide how to run your life than the government.
There has been a concerning shift in the attitude of both the major parties in recent times from advising its citizens to ordering them around. Yesterday John Howard referred to the 1 in 4 Australians who enjoy a smoke as 'pariahs'. My local council in Manly wants to ban smokers from lighting up outdoors.

The role of government is to advise its people of the potential harm of certain activities when the science is proven. For instance smoking, skiing, super-sizing your diet, scuba diving and drinking alcohol are all potential killers. They are all also legal activities. Labeling cereals as high in sugar or sticking warning messages on a pack of ciggies is fine. Ordering people not to smoke or to eat junk food is not. The LDP believes that people make better decisions about how to live their lives than the government. It also believes that once you start treating adults like children, they will start behaving like children.

The flipside of greater choice is more responsibility. If you go skiing, or take part in the Sydney-Hobarth yacht race, you are advised to take out insurance. If you, like me, are rather partial to a flame-grilled Whopper, then skip desert. Or exercise. If you want to mix beer and ecstasy, don't go surfing at Bondi or swim with crocodiles after 'half a slab'.

Contrary to a report yesterday that 'individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity', the LDP believes that individuals must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions.

As left-wing UK blogger Chris Dillow writes yesterday,

'It's obvious that the collectivization of responsibility leads to statism, to the view that we should all be treated as children. But the really nasty thing here - which should worry the left as much as right libertarians - is that it disempowers individuals. It's a cliche that, if something is owned by everyone it is in effect owned by none. And this is true of actions as much as anything else. In denying a role for individual responsibility, the statists deny the possibility that "ordinary" people are capable of improving their own lives, and instead invite them to look to their rulers for leadership.'

2. You pay too much tax
The State is a poor planner and manager. Nationalised businesses consistently underperform those in the private sector; micro-managed economies consistently underperform those allowed to develop ad hoc; countries with more economic freedom consistently outperform those with less. The principal roles of government are to enforce our property rights and to protect us from violence. It is not to plan or to manage. We all know what happens to 'Five Year Plans' and 'Great Leaps Forward' .

The LDP believes that the state is too big and that we pay too much tax. Each Australian is on average paying 34% more tax since John Howard came to power - despite an eleven year economic boom! This is a disgraceful and truly unbelievable state of affairs. The recent announcement to hand back $34bn of our money is a step in the right direction and is to be welcomed.

The LDP also believes that the current tax and welfare system does not encourage people to find work, discriminates against the poor and encourages our brightest graduates to seek their fortunes in low tax countries such as Hong Kong (top rate 15%) and Singapore (20%). Our solution is the neat '30/30' policy. You get to keep the first $30,000 of earnings tax-free and pay a flat rate of tax at 30% thereafter. Additionally, welfare is largely replaced by a negative income tax (similar to a Citizen's Basic Income).

I May Be Some Time

2007-08-30T09:24:00.000+10:00

For the usual reasons (life intruding on blogging) i am going to have to take a short break from blogging.

Will still be visiting other blogs and commenting and such like, writing for the Australian Libertarian Society and helping the LDP make some progress in the forthcoming Federal Elections.

Hopefully i won't be too long.

APEC Rally For Free Trade

2007-08-28T08:52:00.000+10:00

In September, Sydney will host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. APEC is an inter-government forum which aims to facilitate economic growth and prosperity, cooperation, trade and investment within the Asia-Pacific region.

A bunch of anti-globalisation and Stop Bush demonstrators plan to march through the city to 'protest against the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The protest will also call for urgent action to stop environmental destruction and for the defence of workers’ rights.'

The LDP will be holding our own demonstration in Martin's Place on Saturday morning in support of free trade. Free trade (not foreign aid) is the only effective means of dragging the world's poor our of poverty. That is why it is vital. The best defence of worker' rights are free trade and a deregulated labour market. Countries with these two policies in place have the lowest unemployment rates and the highest standard of living.

We are no fans of Bush's disastrous policies in Iraq (though Afghanistan is more complex and certainly a more morally valid conflict), but do not share GreenLeft's view that he is 'the world’s leading mass murderer and climate vandal' nor do we 'reject the idea that non-violence is the only tactic that can be used in the battle against oppression.'

A peaceful demonstration is our aim. We are not violent thugs.

The itinery for the day is as follows:-

Saturday 8th September 2007

9:00am - Meet at the corner of York and Market Street on street level above the post office. This is across the intersection from the North-West corner of the Queen Victoria Building (QVB). There will be a short briefing with any last minute updates.

9:20am - Make our way as a group toward Hyde Park.

10:00am - 11:30am - Take our message of freedom to the people.

Please come along and join us if you share these aims.

Update; these are the type of uneducated children who will be chanting school-yard slogans,

'The Liberty and Democracy Party are a bunch of Australian igno-douches halfway between 1st year economics and their first graduate jobs in the p.r./marketing/banking sector. But they’re not all poorly educated assholes.

Some of them are just assholes.

Anyway, the whole globalisation, workplace slavery, environmental degradation, planetary pollution, exponentiation of inequality, stealing land, killing villages, two-party police state bound by economic monotheism thing is going so badly (obviously) that these fans of John Laws think their mighty voices, tiny minds and hunger for media ops are needed at APEC.

So get along and check them out. Take urine.'

Charming.

Time To Shut Down SBS

2007-08-28T07:42:00.000+10:00

Paul Sheehan, writing in the SMH, argues that

'The real question facing the Federal Government, and the overwhelming majority of taxpayers who pay for SBS but rarely watch it, is whether SBS should continue to exist at all.'

(For those outside Australia, the SBS is a state-owned and run free-to-air TV channel roughly equivalent to BBC2). Sheehan continues,

'The Special Broadcasting Service Act should be repealed, the corporation dismantled and sold and its valuable broadcasting spectrum auctioned off. SBS has outlived its charter, and the charter has always been of dubious social utility. (I quote, in part: "As far as practicable, inform, educate and entertain Australians in their preferred languages.")'

'According to SBS projections, during the next five years, the Federal Government will spend almost $1 billion to keep the corporation afloat. And then there's the opportunity costs of the digital spectrum given to SBS by the Howard Government.'

SBS was set up to provide Australians with a multicultural array of TV programs in an era of just two or three stations. Today, by subscribing to Foxtel, one can receive hundreds of such multicultural stations and foreign news 24/7. SBS averages a market share of just 5.4% of network TV viewers. It no longer serves any useful purpose.

The LDP believes that SBS, along with the ABC should be fully privatised.

Governments simply should not be in the business of owning and running TV stations. Their role is to regulate content to ensure standards are met and advertisers' claims are valid. The market is amply served and competition is rife, ensuring a large and diverse selection of TV channels to consumers at a good price.

Like SBS, the ABC has a small national share (now less than 15% of free-to-air channels) but still receives up to $1bn per annum of taxpayers money. This is an anachronistic situation that should be ended.

The money can be better utilised building a Australia's much-needed broadband network or simply handed back to taxpayers to spend on a Foxtel subscription if that is what they want.

Time To Devalue Faith

2007-08-27T08:13:00.001+10:00

Comedian Pat Condell on the growing menace of religious, especially Islamic, intolerance.

'Cultural sensitivity be damned. Some things are more important. Peaceful protest and free speech are not negotiable. Anyone who's offended by that, should damn well stay offended. Personal faith should stay personal.'

via Pub Philosopher

Friday Funny

2007-08-24T08:47:00.000+10:00

click to enlarge
h/t Jonz

Where Does Your University Rank?

2007-08-23T23:04:00.001+10:00

The new 2007 Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings are out.

Harvard tops again (miles ahead of its nearest competitor)
17 of the Top 20 are American, 2 are English (Cambridge and Oxford) and 1 is Japanese
39 of the Top 50 are American
The highest placed Aussie Unis are the Australian National University (57) and the Univ of Melbourne (79)

The criteria are

Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories
Articles published in Nature and Science
Articles in Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index
Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution

Socialism Guarantees Income Inequality

2007-08-23T09:59:00.001+10:00

Isn't income equality the primary goal of socialists?

Well, in that case, why does Freedom (free trade, capitalism, deregulated markets)....

...correlate so perfectly with Social and Income Equality?

Dark green - most equal societies
Light green
Olive
Orange
Pink
Red
Dark red - most unequal societies

So, if socialism guarantees income inequality, then, err, what's its point?

Is Free Trade Working?

2007-08-23T08:28:00.000+10:00

Some food for thought for us supporters of free trade.

Today's protectionist drift is similar to the challenges faced by the architect of the original New Deal. In August 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt declared;

'This Government intends no injury to honest business. The processes we follow in seeking social justice do not, in adding to general prosperity, take from one and give to another. In this modern world, the spreading out of opportunity ought not to consist of robbing Peter to pay Paul. In other words, we are concerned with more than mere subtraction and addition. We are concerned with multiplication also -- multiplication of wealth through cooperative action, wealth in which all can share.'

An interesting article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Kenneth F. Scheve, Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Matthew J. Slaughter, Professor of Economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, accuses globalisation of failing to spread the wealth and recommends higher taxes for the rich to avert a protectionist backlash.

Summary

'Globalization has brought huge overall benefits, but earnings for most U.S. workers -- even those with college degrees -- have been falling recently; inequality is greater now than at any other time in the last 70 years. Whatever the cause, the result has been a surge in protectionism. To save globalization, policymakers must spread its gains more widely. The best way to do that is by redistributing income.'

The authors argue that US policy is turning more protectionist because the US public is turning more protectionist, and the reason is stagnant incomes for all groups except the very richest. The 109th Congress introduced 27 pieces of anti-China legislation, the Doha Trade round is in tatters and other developed nations, particularly France, are upping the anti-foreigner rhetoric.

They then argue that this is a deeply worrying trend as globalisation has been so economically beneficial for both the US (adding $1 trillion to its economy and doubling its worker productivity) and for the developing world, creating an entire new middle class in less than a generation in places such as India and China.

They cite the three commonly expressed opinions as to why globalisation is faltering;

i) the successful lobbying efforts of a few industries that have been hit the hardest (e.g. farmers and manufacturers)

ii) policy makers and the business community have failed to make the case for free trade effectively.

iii) the need to balance economic interests with national security concerns has resulted in a more protectionist stance.

But they go on to dismiss all three arguments and lay the blame squarely at stagnating incomes and the uneven distribution of incomes. They point to data showing an 11% rise in real median wages versus a 58% rise for those in the 90th percentile of income and 121% for those in the 99th percentile. Another way of looking at this data is the CEO/worker ratio which has jumped from 80x in the 1980s to 425x in 2005 (see graph above). the last time data such as this appeared was in 1928 - just before the Great Depression (caused ironically by a rise in protectionism).

A combination of globalised free trade and high immigration is exerting immense pressure on wages of the low-skilled and they know it. Hence politicians (all the Democrat nominees for the Presidency are espousing some protectionist policies) are merely responding to growing resentment amongst the population.

The authors argue that supporters of free trade now face a stark choice; ensure workers share more of the spoils or accept that liberalisation is no longer sustainable. Given how important free trade is for the US economy, they argue that tax breaks must be distributed to the poorest workers to be paid for by the richest. Their solution is to eliminate payroll tax (15%) for those workers earning below the median wage and to increase them for the richest.

Update; Jason Soon points me to this very interesting paper. The authors point out that whilst income inequality is indeed rising, inequality by race and sex are rapidly diminishing, especially for American black and Latino women.

Ten Things You Should Know About Hedge Funds

2007-08-22T14:02:00.001+10:00

Chris Dillow asks why 'market neutral' hedge funds have performed so badly of late. (Market neutral means they are supposed to be indifferent to the ups and downs of the stock market because the are 'neutral' the market by being both long and short stocks.)

Having worked in the industry for many years, perhaps i can enlighten,

i) Hedge Funds are never 'market neutral'. They are generally long stocks with upwards momentum (e.g. commodity stocks, banks) and short those out of favour (conglomerates, healthcare).

ii) They invariably all have the same trades on. When the market turns, they all try and get out at the same time. Officially this is known as 'illiquid markets' or 'dislocation'. Unofficially this is called 'panic'.

iii) In a rising market, they tend to be an awful lot 'longer' than they are 'shorter' (i.e. they own far more stocks than they are 'short'). They should probably be called 'market neutral-ish'.

iv) In the golden days (pre-2003), HFs used to be able to genuinely 'arbitrage' the markets (put on riskless trades) because there were so few hedge funds. Now that every dog and his wife is a HF manager, these arbitrage opportunities are long gone. Now they are just stock pickers with a track record no better than a monkey throwing darts at the WSJ.

v) HFs are not asset managers. They are fee-generating machines with an attached asset management business.

vi) There are Two Golden Rules.
a) Golden Rule No.1 is "Never accept money paying less than '2 and 20'". i.e. never accept fees that don't pay 2% annually plus 20% of all performance. Some good HFs only take 20% excess performance (the return over the risk free rate). But this hard to do so they tend not to.

b) Golden Rule No. 2 is 'Always play with OPM' (other people's money). OPM is much easier to lose and much less painful than your own.

vii) The ultimate fee-machines are 'Fund of Funds'. These really are modern alchemy - they turn client assets into fees. Brilliant and simple. Their after-fee returns are similar to a Treasury bond (5%) but not quite so good.

viii) HF managers all work in three streets in London - Berkely Square, Curzon St and St. James'. They all drink at the same bars, attend the same parties, and are paying alimony to the same divorced wives.

ix) HF managers are all 'long a call option'. This means that they incentivised by their firms to bet the house. If they are right, they are paid on average 10% of whatever they make. This can and often does amount to millions of dollars. If they are wrong, they are fired and re-appear fully refreshed after a month's vacation at another HF.

x) In order to keep the client money rolling in, HFs have to show to the world that they really do make outsized returns. Hence these ever ingenious folk have come up with a unique concept - 'survivor bias'. This means that the HF Indices showing overall returns exclude those HFs that have gone bust (about 1 in 5 each year) so blostering the average returns. Neat, huh?

All HF managers are aware of these ten points and all know the game will soon be up. Hence all are gambling furiously with your money right now before the ref blows the whistle for full-time.

IPCC Myths Attacked

2007-08-22T09:04:00.001+10:00

A quite extraordinarily scathing attack on the IPCC has just been published by four leading Australian scientists.

The Australian Federal Parliament's Standing Committee on Science and Innovation recently completed a report entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, on the subject of "Geosequestration of Carbon Dioxide". However, four members of that committee have issued a "Dissenting Report" which devastates the Committee's major premise — that mankind causes global warming.

The dissenting MPs are former CSIRO scientist Dr. Dennis Jensen, Hon Jackie Kelly, Hon Danna Vale and Mr. David Tollner. Their report was compiled with the assistance of a number of leading scientists, including climate scientist Dr. John Christy, former lead author of the IPCC.

They state at the very outset that,

"We disagree with the report's unequivocal support for the hypothesis that global warming is caused by man—so-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). We are concerned that the Committee's report strays well outside its terms of reference.'

Their objections are as follows;

Conclusion

Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has always been with us, and always will be. Whether human activities are disturbing the climate in dangerous ways has yet to be proven. It is for this reason that we strongly disagree with the absolute statements and position taken in this review regarding AGW. We have taken no evidence regarding the science of AGW, yet a strong position has been taken regarding this.

i) The science related to anthropogenic global warming is not, despite the assurances of some, settled in the scientific community. In particular, Yuri Israel, Vice Chairman of the IPCC, has stated ‘There is no proven link between human activity and global warming’.

ii) The critical area of the fallibility and shortcomings of computer modelling is not mentioned anywhere.

iii) There is no detectable warming in the lower troposphere, the place where the enhanced greenhouse effect is claimed to be evident.

iv) The observed surface warming that is highlighted by the IPCC must therefore have a different cause, which is probably the biasing of the records by urban heat effects.

v) The full IPCC report ...represents a consensus of government representatives rather than of scientists.

vi) There are also other scientific factors that contribute to climate that are not even considered by the IPCC, such as the role of cosmic ray activity in cloud formation.

vii) Warming has also been observed on Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Pluto, Neptune and others. It is the natural property of planets with fluid envelopes to have variability in climate. Thus, at any given time, we may expect about half the planets to be warming. This has nothing to do with human activities.

viii) Science is a discipline which relies on testing hypotheses and exposing flaws, not on consensus, in order to further scientific understanding. Scientific fact is not a democracy. The laws of physics are not subject to the democratic vote of a group of scientists; they cannot be repealed by a popular vote.

ix) The report on geosequestration also gives a false impression of the importance of carbon dioxide on the greenhouse effect. All of the gases mentioned in section 2.5 are minor contributors to greenhouse. Between 75%-95% of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapour and cloud. The understanding of the influence of the latter is low, by the IPCC’s own admission.

x) Doubling CO2 will only increase the natural greenhouse effect less than 2%. This would produce warming of the order of 1 degree Celsius in the absence of negative feedbacks which are the norm in sustainable physical systems.

xi) The IPCC does not explain how that despite the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increasing fairly rapidly following the Second World War, the period between 1940 and 1975 was associated with a reduction in global surface temperatures.

xii) Or why in the nine years since 1998, global temperatures have been relatively stable despite rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

xiii) IPCC states that snow cover and ice extent have decreased. [But] it is generally accepted that the main Antarctic ice cap is, in fact, both cooling and increasing its ice mass.

xiv) Sea levels all over the globe have been rising for centuries; this is not due to anthropogenic global warming, but merely a recovery from the last ice age. A recent analysis has found that no statistically significant ocean warming has occurred over the late 20th century.

xv) It is a pity that the report uses the Stern Review as a basis for the scientific understanding of anthropogenic global warming. Not only has this report been thoroughly debunked in a scientific and economic sense, but Stern acknowledges that he had zero understanding of the issue less than one year before the Stern Review.

xvi) Also it is worth noting that the Stern Review was commissioned because UK Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown did not like the findings of the House of Lords Report into climate change.

xvii) It is a matter of public record that some scientists have withdrawn from the IPCC process because of dissatisfaction with its probity and methods.

xviii) Most of the public statements that promote the dangerous human warming scare are made from a position of ignorance—by political leaders, press commentators and celebrities who share the characteristics of lack of scientific training and lack of an ability to differentiate between sound science and computer-based scaremongering.

Blog Commenting To A Tee

2007-08-20T10:23:00.000+10:00

If business meetings were like blog commenting, they would go something like this...

Brilliant.

via Not PC

Top Ten Double Standards About Israel

2007-08-20T09:01:00.000+10:00

(1) Christian fundamentalists who support Israel are religious fanatics; Jewish fundamentalists who oppose Zionism are individuals of deep religious and moral conviction.

(2) Comparing Israelis to Nazis is a poignant political statement; comparing Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler is a gross distortion of history with the intent of demonizing foreign leaders and justifying imperialist military campaigns.

(3) Palestinian nationalism reflects the inherent right of all people to self-determination; Jewish nationalism is an archaic form of tribalism and racial supremacy.

(4) Criticizing academics that legitimize hateful stereotypes of African-Americans and Arab-Americans is a proper response from minority groups who oppose racism; criticizing academics that legitimize hateful stereotypes of Jewish-Americans is an attempt to stifle free speech.

(5) Iran has the right under international law to pursue nuclear power for peaceful purposes; any other country that pursues nuclear power is endangering the environment and increasing the risk of nuclear proliferation.

(6) Jews who cite the lessons of the Holocaust as a rationale for opposing Israel are moralists; Jews who cite the lessons of the Holocaust as a rationale for opposing authoritarian regimes in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq are neocon warmongers.

(7) Israeli policies are said to be tantamount to “genocide”; accusations of genocide in Darfur are a Zionist plot to divide the Muslim community.

(8) The war on terrorism is driven by Islamophobia; the “new anti-semitism” is a myth created to deflect legitimate criticism of Israel.

(9) Efforts to oppose anti-semitism on college campuses undermine academic freedom; academic boycotts against Israel infringe upon academic freedom but serve a greater good.

(10) Burning flags with Muslim symbols is desecration, burning the Israeli flag and the Star of David is political protest.

via The Judeosphere

You Couldn't Make It Up !!

2007-08-18T16:34:00.000+10:00

I'm heading off to Hellthrow for a 24 hour flight back to Sydney. Leave you these gems to warm your cockles in the meantime.

i) A 58 year-old American is suing IBM for $5 million in a wrongful dismissal case after he was fired for visiting adult internet chat rooms while at work. James Pacenza says he was addicted to online chat rooms and that IBM should have offered him sympathy and treatment instead of firing him. He says that his psychological problems as a result of the Vietnam War have left him addicted to sex, especially adult internet chat rooms.

ii) A man who put his genitals in a mousetrap is suing Jackass star, Johnnie Knoxville for $12 million. The stunt went wrong and Caravello "was severely injured when the trap literally went on his manhood".

iii) UK heath and safety officials are terrified about dodgy ladders. They are demanding a 'ladder amnesty".

iv) Barney Baloney, the clown , was prevented from blowing up balloons by a supermarket’s health and safety rules following one child once having a reaction to the latex in balloons.

v) "Doctors and health workers in Scotland have been banned from eating lunch at their desks during Ramadan in case it offends their Muslim colleagues.

vi) The MoD has banned pin-ups on RAF jets in case they offend women and Muslims.

God Bless them all.

'A' Levels - An Ingenious Solution

2007-08-16T19:35:00.001+10:00

So the 'A' level pass rate has moved up again!!! This time from 96.6% to 96.9%. As one radio DJ asked this morning, is there anyone out there who didn't get 3 'A' grades?

However, let's not moan about this increasingly irrelevant exam. Let's instead be positive.

Jamie Whyte, writing in the Times this morning, has an elegant solution to halt grade inflation. It's simple and ingenuous.

'With independent examiners, why should A-level grades inflate?' asks Whyte.

'The answer can be seen by analogy with the consumer credit business. A levels are to universities and students what credit scores are to banks and borrowers. Universities admit students on the basis of A levels and banks make loans on the basis of credit scores. Universities (banks) want A levels (credit scores) to provide accurate information about academic ability (credit worthiness) because admitting weak students (lending to risky customers) and rejecting clever students (declining safe borrowers) are bad for business. But only the best students (safest borrowers) want grades to be accurate. Most benefit by grades being skewed upwards.

'Businesses tend to do what benefits their customers, since otherwise they will lose out to competitors. The credit ratings provided by companies such as Experian are purchased by banks, not borrowers. So we should expect them to be accurate rather than favourable. A-grades are provided by examination boards who charge students for their service and compete for business from schools. So we should expect A levels to be favourable rather than accurate.

'The incentives for grade inflation are worse yet. Imagine that the Government involved itself in consumer credit as it does in education. Imagine that there were a department dedicated to improving the creditworthiness of the population, and that it had a stated target for increasing the number of people granted loans. And imagine, finally, that the Government also regulated credit agencies and the way they assessed credit quality. It would be amazing if credit scores did not inflate like A levels.'

So, on to Whyte's elegant solution

'Examination boards should be legally obliged to sell their products to universities, not students or schools. In all other respects, the provision of grades should be deregulated. Grade inflation would stop immediately. No company trying to sell its grades to Cambridge University would lump half its students into its top grade, as occurs with the further maths A level.'

Give that man a job. Err, how about Schools Minister.

How To Really Make Poverty History

2007-08-16T09:14:00.000+10:00

1. Fire all charity and aid workers. Cancel Third World Aid.

2. Remove all car bumper stickers such as 'Make Poverty History' and 'Fairtrade not Free Trade' and 'Dump The Debt'.

3. Ensure your government implements these four vital steps.

i) Maximise freedom for their citizens.

'The highest form of economic freedom provides an absolute right of property ownership, fully realized freedoms of movement for labor, capital, and goods, and an absolute absence of coercion or constraint of economic liberty beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty itself.'

ii) Ensure the rule of law and order.

iii) Ensure checks and balances are in place to minimise corruption and cronysim.

iv) Refrain from doing anything else.

Norwegian economist Tor Dahl passionately made these arguments in his keynote presentation at the World Future Society's annual meeting. Dahl is the chairman emeritus of the World Confederation of Productivity Science. He asked,

'Why are South Asians more productive outside of India and China? Why do Russians have the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the U.S., but very low per capita income in Russia? Why are Mexicans five times more productive in the U.S. than in Mexico?'

The answer is that productivity flourishes when people are free, safe, and justly treated. Dahl calls this the framework for prosperity. So what's the evidence?

Maximise Freedom
Dahl showed the correlation between the Index of Economic Freedom and each country's GDP. This Index encompasses trade freedom, investment freedom, freedom from corruption, and the protection of property rights. The top 10 countries' scores cluster around 80 on a 100 point scale. The U.S. is No. 4, after Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. The poorest countries are also the least free, e.g., Zimbabwe, Burma, Libya, Turkmenistan, and Chad. They generally scored in the 40s. Around 55% of prosperity (R² = .55) can be attributed to the prevalence of economic freedom.

Ensure the rule of law and order
Dahl then looked at lost years of life per 100,000 population due to hunger, disease and conflict in each country. He got an amazing R² of .51, which he said means that about 51% of prosperity can be attributed to people living in safety. The safest countries included Iceland, Japan, Israel, Singapore, and Australia. The U.S. was number 31 on the list.

Minimise corruption
Using a freedom from corruption index, Dahl got an R² of .83, which he interpreted as meaning that approximately 83% of the variation in prosperity across countries can be explained by good governance. The least corrupt countries included Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and United States. Among the most corrupt were Nigeria, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Moldova.

The least corrupt countries included Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and United States. Among the most corrupt were Nigeria, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Moldova.

via Reason. Additional comment at Jack Lacton

Only a Fool Would Legalise Drugs?

2007-08-16T01:16:00.000+10:00

Herald Sun columnist, Andrew Bolt states

'When fools tell you drugs must be legalised because taking them is a “victimless crime”, tell then how Cody died.'

If you have children, then don't even read this story. It is too horrific and too tragic for words.

But blaming drugs is not the answer.

If you really do take this view, then by definition you must also be in favour of banning alcohol because this particular drug causes far more incidences of violence and abuse than any other.

Climate Clippings

2007-08-15T08:50:00.000+10:00

i) Apparently walking produces more CO2 than driving. So if you are genuinely concerned with saving the planet, sit on your arse all day.

ii) A layman's guide to what is wrong with the IPCC.

iii) You have to admire China's President Hu Jintao's honesty, "The first and overriding priorities of developing countries are sustainable development and poverty eradication,"

iv) More ways to save a teaspoon of CO2 via Google.

v) Global Warming has stopped since 1998.

vi) Britain's Met Office predicts that 'global warming will set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, which was the warmest year on record.'

In April, they published this prediction on the forthcoming English summer, 'the forecast for rainfall is less certain, and currently there are no indications of an increased risk of a particularly dry or particularly wet summer.' It has turned out to be the wettest sumer since 1776.

R-A-C-I-S-T !!!

2007-08-14T10:44:00.000+10:00

According to Muriel Bamblett, Chairwoman of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, the government's radical proposals to tackle alcohol abuse and child abuse in remote Aboriginal communities are

'a government seeking re-election by blowing the dog whistle of racism in the guise of caring for indigenous children... The assessment of the main parties that the Australian public are too racist and too uncaring of indigenous children to actually support governments doing something principled and evidence-based to tackle both the causes and the symptoms of disadvantage that lead to child abuse.'

So Muriel, what has your agency done to prevent this? What is your plan?

Apart from banding around the word racist at all times, that is.

People like Muriel have done incalculable damage to Aboriginal children because they have ensured that the fear of being labeled racist is greater than the desire to prevent child abuse. Yes - it really is as simple as that.

Another Age journalist, Tracee Hutchison, sums up the condescending attitude of the white middle-class Left to Aboriginals by blaming Mandawuy Yunupingu's descent into alcoholism on the government. Is he unaccountable for his own actions, Tracee? Is that because he is Aboriginal? Are Aboriginals therefore inferior to us? Are they incapable of possessing free will, unable to make adult decisions?

I expect more from my children than you do from Aboriginal men. You disgust me. Both of you.

via Andrew Bolt

The Useless 'A' Level

2007-08-13T11:34:00.000+10:00

This week nervous 18 year-olds throughout Britain will receive their 'A' level results and confirmation of which university they will attend for the next three years. Last year the pass mark reached an unprecedented 96%. Will it reach 100% this year or even surpass that figure?

The CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Exam is brutal. It involves three years of after-hours study and three tough exams. Of the 26, 467 candidates globally who sat the Level I paper in August 2006, a measly 40% passed. However, if you do make it through these three years, it will immensely improve your job prospects and earnings power. It is an exam worth having.

Contrast this with the 'A' level, the exam taken by 18 year-olds in the UK, where the overall pass rate is now an astonishing 96%. Oh, and 'A' levels are free, whereas the CFA costs a lot of money to complete. Which would you rather have?

John Maynard Keynes had the answer.

"There is no subtler, or surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debase the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which only one man in a million is able to diagnose."

This phenomenal performance from the country's 18 year-olds comes in the face of plummeting standards at primary school (up to 11 years) as new studies have shown that 4 in 10 primary school children can't read.

A very interesting report in the Sunday Times of a study done for the Office of National Statistics by Durham University states that inflation in 'A' levels is now two grades over an 18 year period. For example a 'C' grade in 1998 is equivalent to an 'A' grade today. In Maths, grade inflation is a whopping 3.5 grades. Last year the overall proportion of 'A's rose to 24.1% of all exams taken, double the figure in 1990.

After years of repeatedly lying about the dumbing down of exams, the government is finally realising that the 'A' level is barely worth the paper it is written on. From next year there will be an A* grade above the present top mark (revaluation of one grade - a step in the right direction) and longer essays, tougher questions and curbs on the number of retakes are being considered.

Would someone please tell Schools Secretary, Ed Balls.

“With sustained improvements in the quality of teaching and increased investment in schools, we should expect exam results to get better.”

and Dr Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority who says:

"Surely the standards debate is tired and stale now? It's only the rightwing fringes that want to return to norm-referencing [which limits the number of passes] and fail 95% of kids so the rest can be seen as achieving. Standards have risen, and there is no doubt about that."

Idiots.

For further comment see Wat Tyler and Tim Worstall.

Which US Presidential Candidate For You?

2007-08-11T16:46:00.000+10:00

Which US Presidential candidate are your views most aligned to? Take this test to find out.

My results;

Giuliani (R) 15
Obama (D) 12
Biden (D) 10
Kucinich (D) 9
Gravel (D) 7
Dodd (D) 5
Paul (R) 5
Clinton (D) 3
McCain (R) 3
Edwards (D) 3
Cox (R) 3
Romney (R) -3

Waiting on Michael Bloomberg, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich.

via Not PC

Why Does Islam Suck At Science?

2007-08-10T13:31:00.000+10:00

A while back i looked at why Jews are so successful, which prompted a very interesting discussion. The corollary of this debate is currently taking place over at Catallaxy about why Islam has failed to make any contribution to modern science.

The statistics as outlined by Pakistani physicist, Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, (picture) in a fascinating article are truly shocking. Pervez Hoodbhoy begins by posing the question,

'With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge?'

no major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for well over seven centuries.
46 Muslim countries contributed just 1.17% of the world's science literature, compared with 0.89% by Israel alone
Pakistan has produced only 8 patents in the past 43 years (Thomas Edison produced 1,000 alone)
no Islamic university made the Top 500 "Academic Ranking of World Universities"
there have been just 8 Muslim Nobel Prize winners, compared to 151 Jews (despite a population differential of 110x)
in the 1000 years since the reign of the caliph Maa'moun, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year

As Hoodbhoy opines, 'One gets the impression that history's clock broke down somewhere during the 14th century and that plans for repair are, at best, vague.'

Why is this so? Hoodbhoy offers some suggestions.

i) 'obedience and rote learning are stressed, and the authority of the teacher is rarely challenged. Debate, analysis, and class discussions are infrequent.'

ii) 'academic and cultural freedoms on campuses are highly restricted in most Muslim countries.'

iii) 'In Pakistani universities, the veil is now ubiquitous, and the last few unveiled women students are under intense pressure to cover up. The imposition of the veil makes a difference. My colleagues and I share a common observation that over time most students—particularly veiled females—have largely lapsed into becoming silent note-takers, are increasingly timid, and are less inclined to ask questions or take part in discussions.'

iv) the inadequacy of traditional Islamic languages—Arabic, Persian, Urdu—is an important contributory reason. About 80% of the world's scientific literature appears first in English, and few traditional languages in the developing world have adequately adapted to new linguistic demands.

Hoodbhoy concludes that for Muslim nations to change this appalling state of affairs, they must

'Shrug off the dead hand of tradition, reject fatalism and absolute belief in authority, accept the legitimacy of temporal laws, value intellectual rigor and scientific honesty, and respect cultural and personal freedoms... elbow out rigid orthodoxy and bring in modern thought, arts, philosophy, democracy, and pluralism.'

Other thoughts?

initial discussion began at Steve Sailor's blog.

The Market's Not Working !!!

2007-08-09T10:52:00.000+10:00

Terje Peterson commenting on eight ways governments justify intervention:-

1. If prices are low call it predatory pricing.
2. If prices are stable and consistent call it collusion.
3. If prices are lower in some places than others call it a lack of proper competition.
4. If prices are cyclical (e.g. petrol) call it evidence of price co-ordination. And make accusations of greed since the price co-ordinators are so mean as to put prices up at precisely the moment when demand is strongest.
5. If alternate suppliers are plentiful refer to the excessive consumer choice as confusing and inefficient.
6. If alternate suppliers are few then call it market failure.
7. If profits are high call it exploitation.
8. If businesses are failing call it wasteful and complain about job loses.

via Tex.

No Whites Need Apply

2007-08-09T08:08:00.001+10:00

Meet Abigail Howarth.

This 18 year-old science student has been banned from applying for a training programme with the Environment Agency because she is white and English. The recruitment agency handling the scheme told Abigail Howarth, 18, that there was no point in her submitting an application because of her ethnic background. But bizarrely she could have applied if she had been white and Welsh, Scottish or Irish.

Abigail applied to a job from an advert in her local paper, which made no mention of the ban on white English applicants, merely noting that candidates from ethnic minorities, such as "Asian, Indian' and "White Other, e.g. Irish, Welsh, Scottish', were encouraged to put themselves forward. Three days later, the recruitment officer, Bola Odusi, replied:

"Thank you for your enquiry unfortunately the traineeship opportunity is targeted towards the ethnic minority group to address their under representations in the professions under the Race Relations Act amended 2000."

She had this to say,

"I would not have minded had I been beaten for the position by somebody better able than me."

Indeed.

The Environment Agency says 387 of its 12,000 workers claim BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) status. A spokesman added: "The Commission for Racial Equality has confirmed we are acting legally."

Positive discrimination is wrong. It undermines the self-esteem of those minorities who have jobs at the Environment Agency and it fosters resentment amongst non-minorities. It also leads to a drop in productivity as the best workers are barred from a job.

How did this become legal?

This opportunity to feature a lovely English girl via Wat Tyler. Tim Worstall adds his own thoughts on Abigail.

Why Is This A Hate Crime?

2007-08-08T21:35:00.000+10:00

How is the Koran in the toilet?

Different to The Chocolate Jesus?

Or The Piss Christ?

Christopher Hitchens on superlative form explains,

"Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books but when I check in to my hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible spinning out of the hotel window, I infringe no law except perhaps the one concerning litter."

As Christopher Hitchens points out, free speech and the First Amendment includes the right to offend and the right to mock -- and the nonsensical notions of Islamists deserve mocking more than most.

Other comment from Not PC, Pub Philosopher and Jack Lacton

The Typical Blog Reader

2007-08-08T09:58:00.001+10:00

Did you know that, according to Blogads, the median political blog reader is white, male , 43 years old and earns $80,000.

At the recent Daily Kos convention, nearly all the 'progressives' who showed up were exactly this stereotype.

Why? why? why?

For the record; i am browner (spend all day on Manly beach), younger and richer.

Simpsons Movie

2007-08-07T20:30:00.000+10:00

Going to see the new Simpsons movie at the weekend.

Now i really can't wait,

'The anti-environmental thread runs throughout the movie. Lisa's presentation at a town meeting on the pollution in Lake Springfield is called "An Irritating Truth". Lisa and her new boyfriend are presented as self-righteous nags for badgering the town about pollution and environmental efficiency... The movie shows environmentalists as aggressive busybodies, starting on a slippery slope to mass murder in the name of the environment.'

Australian Idol - All Must Not Have Prizes

2007-08-07T08:20:00.001+10:00

"Mum, if everyone is special, that means no-one is special"
Dash Incredible

I have a confession to make.

I love Pop Idol. And Australian Idol is even better than its British namesake. I love Australian Idol for two reasons;

i) being a bit of a singer-songwriter myself in my youth (i emphasise the 'bit'), i appreciate the many genuinely talented young artists they feature on the program.

ii) it is by far and away the most politically incorrect program on TV

"You’ve got looks that would turn heads but you have a voice that would turn stomachs", one particularly talentless blonde was informed.

Not-so photogenic Kalgoorlie teenager Jennifer Farrenkothen was told "You remind me of Pink’s older sister: Stink".

For many young people, this show is obviously the first time in their short lives that they have been told they are not wonderful or gifted or a star. They are informed, brutally, that they are ordinary and will never make it. I am all for building up our children's confidence but wildly inflating a child's opinion of himself will not do him any favours in the long run. The return to earth is crushing if postponed for too long.

The judges are an odd bunch but i assume they all know something about what it takes to become a pop star. One girl with a beautiful voice was told she 'needs to shed the pounds'. This was the best advice anyone could give her because she has the talent to make it. It is refreshing to hear such frank and constructive advice as opposed to the usual lying crap of 'we're all beautiful'.

My one criticism - cut the bullying of the truly talentless. Politely usher them off the program and move on to the next contestant. You don't need to humiliate the genuinely awful.

Artists' Law of Bravery In Action

2007-08-06T22:52:00.000+10:00

Artists' Law of Bravery

'Criticism of a religion is inversely proportional to the probability of its proponents killing you multiplied by their density.'

Meet Sydney-born Van Badham and Jonny Berliner, two artists determined to bravely prove the rule.

They are the writers of a new 50 minute musical, Cash in Christ, premiering this weekend at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival.

Badham wrote the play, which satirises the 'modern capitalist mega-church', to reflect her fears of the rise of that global killer- far right Christian fundamentalism.

"I find the Christian right groups that are enormously powerful in our own culture a larger numerical threat than extreme Islam. Bush is from the religious right and he has the bomb; that terrifies me far more than the potential of other extremists to get their hands on nuclear weapons."

Badham is concerned that despite the many world-wide conflicts involving Lutherans, the increasing prevalence of Methodist suicide bombing to achieve martyrdrom, and the killing of innocent civilians by extremist Presbyterians, they have become immune from criticism.

"In the religious right it is the self-appointed moral majority that sets its own rules, and anybody opposing them is labelled unpatriotic and shouted down."

Badham was angered by the issue of a fatwa on the artist who designed the Chocolate Christ, death threats against Richard Dawkins following publication of 'The God Delusion' and the 24 hour guard necessary to protect artist Andres Serrano after the Piss Christ was exhibited.

"It terrifies me that a few religious groups were able to cause a furore around Jerry Springer – The Opera in Britain." shaked Badham.

She is particularly concerned that Islam has been tarred with the same fundamentalist brush and is keen to redress the balance,

"I've been very sensitive to extremists in other religions, particularly Islam, being demonised."

When conducting research for the show, she chillingly described the Christians she met as 'kind' but she was wise to their trickery and said she 'felt their attitudes might foster religious intolerance.'

Other opinions at A Tangled Web and The Brussels Journal

Should Diversity Be Celebrated?

2007-08-06T10:02:00.000+10:00

'This company is committed to celebrating diversity.'

A line you will see on every single major corporation's mission statement. What you won't see is any persuasive arguments as to why. Studies showing diversity's compelling effects on the bottom line are not distributed far and wide. So why are the benefits of diversity trumpeted by both corporations and Western governments the world over?

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has recently released a research paper based on five years of study showing that

'immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities'

Putnam's research revealed that,

'immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer.'

How does this tie in with the findings of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) which concluded that economies with high levels of trust grow at a faster rate than those where there is lots of mutual suspicion.

I am a strong advocate of economic migration, believing it to have strongly beneficial effects on the host nation and the individuals concerned. But this study gives pause for thought about whether numbers should be limited in the interests of 'social cohesion'.

via Pub Philosopher

Where To Take This Blog?

2007-08-06T08:41:00.001+10:00

I have been daily blogging now for six months. It's a tiring job but immensely rewarding, especially the steady build-up of visitors and the increased activity in the comments.

July saw my best stats to date. 15,000 page views and nearly 10,000 unique visitors. Also, i signed my first paid Blog Ad (see top left and take a look at the essay competition).

But i'm not sure where to go from here.

I feel this blog needs more specialisation, for instance should i focus solely on Australian issues or exclusively on matters concerning the erosion of personal liberty? Should i team up with one or more other similar-minded bloggers? I would welcome any suggestions.

Anyway a huge thank-you to all those of you who read and comment here.

Girls Are Evil - And I Can Prove It

2007-08-05T20:28:00.000+10:00

We all know that girls are a product of time and money. Hence,

Equation 1; Girls = Time x Money

We are also repeatedly told that 'Time is Money'. Hence, substituting 'time' for 'money' in the above equation produces,

Equation 2; Girls = Money x Money

Now bear in mind that 'money is the root of all evil', or

Equation 3; Money = square root (Evil).

Square both sides, and you have

Equation 4; Money x Money = Evil.

Seeing as though we have already deduced in equation 2 that 'Girls = Money x Money',

Girls = Evil

via Not PC

You Can't Ban Bigots

2007-08-03T08:58:00.000+10:00

Governments just cannot resist interfering. Meg Munn, a junior Minister in the Brown govt, has said that,

'Muslim or Christian guest house owners who refuse to accept homosexual couples must impose a sleeping together ban on all other guests.'

According to Munn, if gays are turned away, the only way a Christian or Muslim guest house owner can lawfully stay in business is if he or she offers single bedrooms to all guests.

This is ridiculous for several reasons.

i) It is a gross infringement on private property rights. Your home, you make the rules (provided no-one gets hurt).

ii) If certain religious groups really believe homosexuality is a sin, then that is their (odd and bigoted) lookout. Provided they are not calling for violence against gays, it really is their call as to whether to accept them into their home or not.

iii) It is yet another example of the nannying tendency of govt.

Let the market put the bigots out of business. If a company prefers to hire inferior heterosexuals or a hotelier to ban gays, they will soon go out of business. That is the way the market works. By imposing orders on hoteliers, the govt will only make martyrs out of them.

Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney and a leading Church of England liberal, shows his total lack of understanding of liberty,

"It is nonsense for the Government to allow any loopholes for religious homophobia. Bigotry is bigotry whether it's dressed up in the language of faith or not."

Giles, it is not up to governments to 'allow' bigotry. That is the path to totalitarianism you utter moron.

Other opinions at Stumbling and Mumbling, Devil's Kitchen, and Nation of Shopkeepers.

Blogger Profiles; Jason Soon

2007-08-02T09:43:00.000+10:00

Jason was born in Malaysia but moved to Australia with his parents aged fifteen. He attended the University of Sydney where he studied Economics and Law. He is now with an economic consultancy where among other things he works on regulatory and antitrust economics related issues. His favourite super-hero is, apparently, Batman.

He runs the free market blog, Catallaxy, and his latest article on the benefits of privatisation can be found in the CIS (subscription only).

i) Why Do You Blog?
Blogging combines a number of things that I would have been likely to do in other ways anyway. When I see an article that interests me or gets me thinking or annoys me or any other possible range of reactions above a certain threshold I'm likely forward it on to friends anyway or take note of it mentally or even bookmark it for more careful reading later. Instead I can now blog about it. But aside from chronicling my reactions to a particular piece, sometimes I just like thinking aloud and testing my thoughts among a bunch of people and I also like to hear what other people are thinking about a particular issue. Blogging (with comments) is a nice medium for this.

ii) What is your best and worst blogging experience?
The best blogging experiences I've had is when I've written one of my longer thinkpieces (which I don't have time to do on a regular basis) which I'm intellectually satisfied with and I get comments from readers telling me they got a lot out of them. The worst blogging experiences have been where I've gotten legally threatening emails not for anything I wrote but what others (like commenters) have written on my blog.

iii) What do you most dislike about your blog?
I don't think there's anything I strongly dislike about it. Sometimes the comments threads get a bit unruly and I have to cull things pre-emptively (as a precaution against legal risks as per above) and that can be a bit annoying but that's about it.

iv) Who are your favourite Oz bloggers?
Well I'm excluding my own crew in the interests of avoiding blog self-promotion ...
Andrew Norton, John Humphreys when he's blogging at ALS, yourself (Pommygranate) and Don Arthur when he blogs at Club Troppo (which isn't often nowadays). I would also say Steve Edney at Criticality except he seems to have gone into retirement.

v) Who are your favourite international bloggers?
The Marginal Revolution crew, Greg Mankiw, Steve Sailer, FuturePundit, Art DeVany

vi) What are you reading now?
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

vii) What is your favourite book?
It's difficult to nominate just one. But based on the number of times I've read and re-read it would have to be 'The Constitution of Liberty' by Friedrich Hayek. A close contender would be 'The Fabric of Reality' by David Deutsch though that covers just about everything else not covered by Hayek!

viii) What was the last good film you watched?
Spiderman 3

ix) Which film character do you most relate to?
Nothing readily springs to mind.

x) What major political issue have you changed your mind on?
I used to think inheritance taxes could be a good idea and that we could combine substantial income tax cuts and flattening of income tax with an inheritance tax but now I wonder why bother? Just aim higher in cutting both taxes and spending.

xi) Who are your political heroes?
Assuming that they have to be people who have had some involvement in politics either as politicians or government advisors or in political activism I'd say John Stuart Mill and Milton Friedman,

xii) If you could effect one major policy change in Australia, what would it be?
Sort out our mess of a federal system so that with the exception of some national public goods (like interstate highways) the States are basically responsible for raising their own revenues for whatever spending programmes they want to pursue and they can do this through an income tax (create a greater degree of jurisdictional competition and tax competition in particular).

xiii) If you could have any three dinner guests, who would they be?
Friedrich Hayek, Miles Davis and David Deutsch.

xiv) Do you have any prejudices?
None that I'm aware of.

Sometimes Tragic Accidents Just Happen

2007-08-02T09:37:00.000+10:00

A headteacher of “impeccable character” faces an unlimited fine and further civil action after being convicted over the death of a three-year-old pupil who fell from playground steps while pretending to be Batman.

Kian Williams wandered into the out-of-bounds area of the school in Bangor, Gwynedd, and jumped down the steps, tripping on the last one and landing on his head. He suffered swelling of the brain and died in hospital from pneumonia five weeks later. James Porter, 66, the owner and head of the private school where it happened, was charged with breaching health and safety regulations by failing to ensure the children’s safety.

A jury convicted him after five and a half hours of deliberation on a majority of 11-1.

His real crime?

Being unaware of the latest Health & Safety guidelines and speaking the truth.

Porter, who has run the school with his wife, Sylvia, 61, for over 30 years with an exemplary safety record, had said children should not be “wrapped in cotton wool”.

"They need to learn how to move in any given situation in a way that will protect them from injury.Children are designed to protect themselves, so if they stumble they will protect themselves. If they don’t have that facility, if we simply wrap them in cotton wool, they will never learn that lesson.”

Catherine Leech, the Williams’ solicitor, had this chilling message,

“We hope other schools learn this lesson from this."

Err, what lessons are these, Catherine? That playtime is too dangerous? That ignoring stupid bureaucratic regulations are punishable by career death? This is a tragedy, but it is also a tragic accident.

via Samizdata

A New Australian Political Party

2007-08-02T09:24:00.000+10:00

Australia now has a political party that represents the wishes of those who seek a free economy, less government interference (nannying) in their lives and personal freedom.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is to advertise its intention to register the LDP today. Barring any valid objections, the party will be federally registered in early September.

However, the LDP is no longer the Liberal Democratic Party. It is now the Liberty and Democracy Party. This change became necessary because the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) would not register the party under its old name.

Under S129(1)(da) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 the AEC is not permitted to register a party if its name:

..is one that a reasonable person would think suggests that a connection or relationship exists between the party and a registered party if that connection or relationship does not in fact exist

The AEC said that it believed “a reasonable person might think that Liberal Democrats have some affiliation with the Liberal Party of Australia.”

You can find more information about the party here.

BP Profiles; Ruthie Zaftig

2007-07-27T13:00:00.000+10:00

Described by Crushed as 'earnest and thoughtful - someone I could see myself sitting in a cafe with discussing the Bush administration', here is Ruthie's profile. She blogs here.

I was born and raised in New York, but I've lived in Minnesota for several years, where I attend a state university. My major is journalism, my minor is philosophy. I'm a senior in college, I'm in the midst of applying to grad schools, and I hope to end up back on the east coast within the next few years. I'm a single mother to a two-year-old son. I'm 22 years old.

Why do you blog?
For many of the same reasons that I chose to pursue writing as a career: I enjoy it, I think it's worthwhile, and it's cathartic. I like the (relative) anonymity of this medium, and the fact that I can inject my posts with my own opinion, something I try to avoid in news writing.

Why did you join BlogPower?
I joined blogpower primarily because James asked me to. But it grew into a great way to connect and network with other small bloggers around the world... I've discovered some wonderful blogs and formed some great friendships via blogpower. It was definitely worth it.

How do you find the time to work, raise Little C and blog?
I don't sleep. I sleep about five hours a night, sometimes slightly more or less, but it's always been that way, even before I was a mother. During the school year, my most productive hours are usually between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., when Little C is asleep and I can (theoretically) get lots of work done. Often, too, I blog because I enjoy it more than the work I should be doing, like balancing my checkbook or studying for an exam.

What is your best and worst blogging experience?
I wrote an open letter to NBC after the Virginia Tech shootings that someone linked to from the NBC message boards. Suddenly, I was getting thousands of hits in the span of a couple of hours. A lot of people emailed me about it. Some of them were nasty, but most people had positive things to say, along the lines of, 'thanks for writing this, NBC's producers should read this-- they were out of line.' It suddenly felt like I was writing for the benefit of other people, instead of just for my own indulgence.

I haven't had a particularly bad blogging experience yet. Every so often someone (usually anonymous commenters) will leave a profane or nasty comment, or email me something inappropriate, but that rarely happens. It isn't enough of a problem that I've felt the need to enable comment moderation yet, anyway.

Who are your favourite small bloggers?
I'm not sure what constitutes small, but I enjoy Crushed by Ingsoc, Thunderdragon, Sinclair's Musings. I think Westminster Wisdom is a consistently well-thought-out and clever blog, even when I disagree with its author. I've also recently discovered a blog called Rethink which is easily one of the best blogs I've ever read. (ed - Sinclair's Musings and Rethink are new ones on me - others enjoy them?).

Which sites do you visit every day?
I check my university email, Facebook and NPR's website. I don't always have time to get around to all the blogs I like, which is unfortunate. That process can take up to an hour and a half, because I get absorbed in it.

Why are there so few female bloggers?
Female bloggers have a big share in the market of celebrity/entertainment blogs and then there's the whole 'mommy blogger' phenomenon. Every so often I think my blog dips into that territory. But there seem to be far fewer female bloggers with political, theological, philosophical, or academic blogs.

I think there are so few female political bloggers for a couple of reasons:

1. Women, on the whole, aren't as interested in politics as men are. This isn't true of all women, of course, but anecdotal evidence would suggest that many women find politics simultaneously unsavory and boring, especially women who have their hands full raising families.
2. The blogosphere sometimes nurtures a sort of petty, argumentative culture that many women find off-putting. Women tend to avoid confrontation more than men.

Why Rudy 2008?
When I was a little girl, New York was filthy and dangerous. Now it's visibly cleaner, safer and more vibrant than I ever remembered it. My support of Rudy has very little to do with 9/11, although his leadership during that crisis was something to be proud of. He cut the legs out from under the mafia, nearly single-handedly. He wasn't afraid of the Gambinos or the corrupt unions. Murder rates dropped in half. He's blunt. He's Italian. He's a New Yorker. He reminds me of my grandfather.

Are you an Italian-American or an American?
I'm an American of Italian descent. My family has been in the U.S. for three generations, counting mine, and the fact that we're still so close to our immigrant roots has had a great deal to do with my upbringing and the person I became, but ultimately I'm an American before all else.

What is your favourite post?
I think it would be 'The Postmodern College Student,' which I wrote after reading a couple of books by Francis Schaeffer.

Generation Y; self-indulgent loafers or those with their priorities right?
For the most part, as much as I hate to say it, my generation often disappoints me. I don't know if I'd put it as strongly as 'self-indulgent loafers', not necessarily vaguely principled, but taking the path of least resistance. I read a study a few months ago that concluded that my generation is more narcissistic than any that came before us. That does not surprise me.

What are your favourite three books?
I don't think I could pick three. I've read and re-read Pablo Neruda's 'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair' more times than I can count. 'The Elements of Journalism', (by Kovach and Rosenstiel) is a great book about journalism, easy to read, highly enlightening and totally useful to anyone in my line of work. Anything by C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Tolkien, Isabel Allende, P.J. O'Rourke, Ignazio Silone.

I read the 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' series to my grandfather before he passed away. I would come to visit a couple of times a week and read to him by his bedside, one chapter at a time. So Alexander McCall Smith's books will always have special meaning and fond memories for me too.

What was the last good film you saw?
Stranger than Fiction. I was really surprised by the depth of Will Ferrell's character, and the departure from his usual goofy, one-dimensional frat-boy role. I also liked that all the characters were named for mathematicians, and that one of the characters was a watch.

Which film character do you most relate to?
Miss Kenton in 'The Remains of the Day.'

What major political issue have you changed your mind on?
The death penalty. I've come to the conclusion that I can't be simultaneously pro-life and pro-death penalty. Besides, the system isn't reliable enough for me to feel comfortable allowing a person's life to be ended or saved by it. Better a guilty man live than an innocent man die.

Who are your political heroes?
I'm a big fan of Abraham Lincoln, because he was (somehow) a principled pragmatist. Cesar Chavez, who was a Mexican-American version of Martin Luther King Jr and I'll also say Nelson Mandela.

If you could have any three dinner guests, who would they be?
Jesus, the theologian Francis Schaeffer (he died the year before I was born, and even though I know his wife I've always wanted to meet him), and my late grandfather.

What would be your 5 Desert Island albums?
James Morrison: Undiscovered
Nek: Una Parte di Me
Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Maroon 5: Songs About Jane
Maroon 5: It Won't Be Soon Before Long

Generation Y

2007-07-27T10:47:00.002+10:00

More young people aged between 18-34 voted in Big Brother than in the last General Election.

An appalling indictment on the state of British politics and politicians? Make it more relevant to 'yoof' suggests the Guardian by introducing online voting and Presidential style debates. But whatever you do, 'curb your inclination to condemn the new generation of voters as lazy'.

Well my inclinations are not so easily curbed. Criticising 'young people' is one of the last taboos but the only conclusion one can draw from this fact is how badly it reflects on Generation Y (roughly those born between 1976 and 2000).

There is an old Chinese saying of 'rice paddy to rice paddy in three generations' i.e the first generation of poor workers (Baby Boomers) takes risk and with little to lose succeeds in creating wealth. The second generation (Generation X), brought up by parents who experienced poverty are constantly reminded of the need to work hard and save, succeed only in maintaining the family fortune but not in expanding it (as this would require risk). Then, the third generation (Generation Y), raised indulgently by helicopter parents who never knew hardship, reject the work ethic, place their hedonistic lifestyles first and fritter it all away.

Are we at the third stage of a natural cycle of prosperity that began after World War II? I think we are but thanks to globalisation and immigration, help is at hand.

In science, there is a deadly process known innocently as a 'positive feedback loop'. The vast majority of interactions in nature are 'negative feedback loops'. For example, your brain sends signals to your hypothalamus when the body is low on carbohydrate and you eat. During the eating process, your hypothalamus relays signals back to the brain, indicating that enough calories have been ingested, you feel full and you stop eating. A positive feedback loop feeds on itself to increase the action as opposed to reducing it, for example in a nuclear reactor.

One of the consequences of the State's malign involvement in education has been the failure of its schools to educate children. As a result, children are leaving school knowing less about the world. Politicians then appear who can appeal to this dumbed-down audience and play on their ignorant concerns. Television also dumbs itself down to ensure viewers and news programs become news-lite, celeb-focused or get shifted to unsocial hours. This in turn produces an even more ignorant generation. This positive feedback loop can reduce educational standards in our schools incredibly quickly.

What can be done to reverse this dumbing trend?

i) Get the State out of the business of managing education. Its role should be one of funding only.
ii) Open immigration. Whilst our Anglo kids are exploring their inner selves by shovelling elephant shit in Kenya, hordes of Indian, Eastern European and Chinese kids, whose parents knew only hardship, are taking their place on the prosperity pecking order.

Once the Trust Fund runs dry, the cycle will begin again. But for now, it sure is painful to watch this indulgent, pampered, Prozac-dependent generation.

Fat Friends

2007-07-26T10:47:00.000+10:00

Overweight? Can't slim down? Looking for someone else to blame? Then help is at hand.

A new study by the Harvard Medical School, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that obesity is "socially contagious", demonstrating that if your friend becomes obese your chances of becoming obese go up by 57%.

So in addition to blaming your glands, or your large bones, you can now blame your mates too!

An alternative and radical theory for obesity was put forward by Dr. Bleedinobvious, who stated that 'people who are overweight eat too much and take too little exercise'. But blaming someone else is so much easier.

Why I'll Never Be A Hard-Core Libertarian

2007-07-25T09:39:00.000+10:00

A proposal by England's chief medical officer,Sir Liam Donaldson, to introduce a system of 'presumed consent' to tackle organ shortages and endorsed by the British Medical Association, has been met with outrage by the liberal blogosphere.

Conservative shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, rightly said

"The state does not own our bodies or have a right to take organs after death."

And a system of presumed consent has already been rejected by MPs when they voted on the Human Tissues Act in 2004.

But here's the problem;

Due to advances in medical technology, young people are not dying young anymore. Hence the pool of suitable organs is shrinking. Only 46% of families consent to organ donation resulting in about 360 deaths per year from failures to find a suitable donor. And efforts to persuade more people to either carry donor cards or sign up to the NHS Organ Donor Register has failed, according to Sir Liam. Only 20% of the population are on the register, despite the fact that surveys showed that as many as 70% of people wanted to donate their organs after death.

i.e. apathy is the problem not principle.

Two European countries offer evidence of what will happen if donor consent is presumed.

i) Spain; donation rates have almost doubled since a system of presumed consent was introduced in 1990. Spain runs a so-called "soft" opt-out system, where even if the person has not themselves opted out of donation while alive, the views of relatives are sought and they can refuse consent.

ii) Austria runs a very strict system where the views of relatives are not taken into account at all. After Vienna passed the presumed consent law in 1982, the donation rate quadrupled and by 1990 the number of kidney transplants performed was nearly equal to those on the waiting list.

To the outraged libertarians;

i) people can opt out if they do not wish their organs to be used. No-one is being forced to donate organs.

ii) even if the person forgets to opt out, the views of their families are still sought.

iii) 360 lives may be saved by this simple piece of legislation.

I fail to be outraged.

The Saltie Is Back!

2007-07-24T10:19:00.000+10:00

The northeast coast of Australia is facing an explosion in its population of saltwater crocodiles, which are protected by law but are becoming a menace to swimmers, surfers and the inhabitants of some towns’ outer suburbs.

An endangered species in the 1960s, by 1974 the Saltwater Crocodile was finally protected by authorities. Today, a combination of a successful hunting ban and a decline in the number of dingoes (which eat their eggs), has seen their numbers return to levels not seen since the the time of the settlers in 1788.

However, the problem is now so serious that there are calls for the country’s strict gun laws to be relaxed and hunters to be given open season on crocodiles.

Bob Katter, an independent MP, said that crocodile numbers had reached“plague proportions” and the huge reptiles were moving into places where they had never been seen before.

Locals have reported man-eating crocodiles basking near popular swimming spots and boat ramps. In Cairns and Townsville they have even been seen sunning themselves on surf beaches.

"There are some 50,000 people living on river banks and shoreline between Townsville and Cairns. If you’re going into these areas you really need to take some sort of firearm to protect yourselves,” Katter said.

Crocodiles have killed about a dozen people in Queensland in the past 10 years, half of them tourists from other countries.

via Australian Politics

Kids, don't try this at home,

London - MultiCulti Paradise or a Ghetto?

2007-07-24T09:54:00.000+10:00

Celebrating diversity in London?

Interestingly an ethnic map of Sydney and Paris would look the exact opposite.

via A Tangled Web.

An Open Letter

2007-07-23T18:23:00.000+10:00

Matthew Carter (above), a binman from Burnley has been banned from wearing a St George's Cross bandana by Pendle Council, who stated it could be offensive and racist.

This is an open letter to all those would approve of this action.

Dear Sir or Madam

I despise you.

I despise your petty, vindictive rules and your tedious way of life.

I despise you for dreaming up and enforcing rules such as these. Rules that make people shake with anger and seek solace in the arms of truly unsavoury folk.

I despise you for making this man feel guilty about taking pride in his own country.

I despise you for presuming to tell me what I can and cannot do. How dare you tell me that I cannot smoke or drink myself to an early grave. Should i wish to dine at McDonalds or mainline Class A drugs of an evening, that is my look out not yours. I care little for you, why do you care for me? Is it my health that concerns you or is it really the power to order me around?

I despise you for the destruction you have caused to Australia's Aboriginal communities with your cradle-to-grave welfare and your paternalist condescension. But i despise you more for not having the guts to admit your appalling mistakes. And yet now you seek to impose this morally bankrupt creed on the rest of us.

I despise you for infantilising grown men, in particular the working class, the entire continent of Africa and our migrant communities. Kipling could not have been more proud of your adoption of his 'White Man's Burden' mantra. Try for once treating adults as adults and you might be surprised at the results.

I despise organisations such as Oxfam, Greenpeace and the WWF, unelected institutions that seek to impose their nannying, dogmatic beliefs wherever they go, that do little more than provide gap-year jobs for the sons and daughters of middle class bankers and lawyers.

I despise you for trashing the good names of words such as 'diversity', 'tolerance', 'respect', 'progress', 'charity' and 'community'. Words and concepts that have made this country such a magnet for others have now become little more than Orwellian IngSoc. '1984' was written as a warning not a fucking instruction manual.

I despise you for your dishonest corruption of the environment - the single greatest gift to mankind. You have lied about its imminent demise, you have arrogantly presumed mankind is is to blame and that nature revolves around man, you have sown the seeds of guilt and doubt and made people turn and inform on one another. All in the name of a science that is as unproven as your fascism.

I despise you for presuming to know best how I should raise my children. Well, I treat my children to junk food, I let them watch TV and I discipline them for stepping out of line.

I despise your attempts to censor my right to speak, all in the name of not giving offence. Well, you offend me deeply, you mealy-mouthed jumped up middle class prick.

I despise you for your attempts to destroy families and communities all in the name of 'progress' and 'change'. In business, they teach you not to try to fix what isn't broken, but you wouldn't know this, as the closest you have come to creating wealth is sucking the interest out of Daddy's Trust Fund.

I despise you for your double standards and hypocrisy; you viciously attack and ridicule some Gods and Prophets whilst choosing to ignore the nihilistic actions of others.

I despise you for sowing doubt in the fields of right and wrong. 'Thou shalt not kill' or ''do no harm to your neighbour' are universal morals, not cultural artefacts of a bygone era.

But most of all i despise you for carrying out these destructive, nihilistic actions in the name of progress, of the poor, of charity, of selflessness, of helping one's neighbour, of doing one's bit. No such moral reasons are in your thoughts. It is power that drives you, intereference that delights you and bossiness that appeals to you.

C.S.Lewis once remarked that 'of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies'. How prophetic these words seem today.

So let me tell you, you Fairtrade-coffee drinking, tofu-munching goody-two-shoes, the single biggest problem facing the planet is not Global Poverty or Environmental Annihilation, nor is it No Child Left Behind, but your arrogance to presume to interfere and poke your beak into every aspect of my life, and the viciously smug puritanism of your totalitarian creed.

Now just fuck off and leave me alone.

Pommy

Posh Spice in Hollywood

2007-07-21T08:33:00.000+10:00

I watched crash-TV the other night; the excrutiating Posh Spice 'Coming To America' show.

Stolen from the inestimable Theospark (don't click his site if you are at work or are offended by pictures of scantily clad women).

Friedman Friday

2007-07-20T08:54:00.000+10:00

In honour of the great man, once a week i will scour the blogosphere for stories that might bring a wry smile.

i) Markets are like weeds. Despite the best efforts of government bureaucracies to nail them down, they will spring up where you least expect them. Hit & Run reports that due to punitive and unfair driving laws, a market has opened up for French licence points .

ii) Chris Dillow thinks that us liberty-lovers are complete pussies at marketing our cause. He has five suggestions for us to become more evangelical.

iii) The man who is neither a Bishop nor a Hill makes a promising start at a UK Bill of Rights.

iv) New blogger, Mark Wadsworth, discovers that British single mums are paying a 70% tax rate.

v) We all know that 'it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner', but the argument against corporate social responsibility (CSR) is so much more powerful when sung... I give you the Milton Friedman choir.

'The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits'
Milton Friedman

vi) Question; What is the only telecoms market in the world without any government regulation? Answer; Somalia. And guess what - it's thriving. Funny that. The BBC are astonished,
'but how do you establish a phone company in a country where there is no government? In some respects, it is actually easier. There is no need to get a licence and there is no state-run monopoly which prevents new competitors being established. And of course there is no-one to demand any taxes, which is one reason why prices are so low.'

mmm.... penny dropping?

Tomorrow Is Harry Potter Day

2007-07-20T07:50:00.000+10:00

And who says our society has become emasculated and feeble?

"I wouldn't want my kids to read it, and after all these years they die. They become so involved it becomes a little hard to take. I wouldn't want my 12-year-old to feel cheated, almost. I know they have to learn about a certain part of life but today's children grow up too fast. They should be entitled to enjoy it and dream about it when they are finished reading it."

Esther Segelman, a Miami Beach mother of eight.

'J K Rowling has said two major characters will die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Speculation is rife that hallowed Harry Potter himself may meet his maker.

This could be devastating for some impressionable children who have grown up with the bespectacled boy wizard for the past 10 years.'

Oh, purleeeeasee.

My boy can barely contain himself and he can't even read yet.

The World's Top Blogger

2007-07-20T07:43:00.001+10:00

100 million page views in 600 days....

Chinese actress-turned-director, Xu Jinglei, is the world's most widely read blogger.

Her blog.

Xu won international acclaim when she won the best director award for Letter From An Unknown Woman at the 2004 San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain.

100 million...working on it.

Government Subsidies Don't Work!

2007-07-19T09:32:00.000+10:00

John Howard announced yesterday that the government will provide $1,000 per household so that up to 225,000 homes can upgrade to an energy-saving solar hot water system.

For fuck's sake, laboratory rats learn faster than governments.

Subsidies don't work. They merely enable producers to lift prices. Here are three real life examples from personal experience;

i) We have decided to install a water tank. We are lucky to have both a garden and a decent sized swimming pool. In the summer, the pool water evaporates at the rate of 1,000 litres per week. Given that Australia has a water shortage and that i am still a guest in this great country, we have decided to 'do our bit' by installing a 5,000 litre rainwater tank. This decision is not remotely driven by economics as despite our using a disgraceful 500 litres/day of water (i still dispute that, Sydney Water), the government charges me a derisory $1.26 per thousand litres. One witty plumber described the situation as 'like buying your own cow rather than getting milk from a supermarket'.

Households who set up a water tank are entitled to a subsidy of up to $1,500 depending on the size of the tank. The total cost of installing a tank is about $4,000. My tank guy, Jim, a pleasant ocker Aussie, had this to say,

"this is wonderful news for us as it means we can now raise our prices".

Nationals Member for Lockyer, Ian Rickuss, did some research on the rising price of rainwater tanks since the introduction of subsidies and the drought, and discovered that prices had gone up by between 40% to 75% from June 2006 to May 2007. He has since referred the manufacturers to the Office of Fair Trading for the crime of err, 'profiteering'.

( I swear to you that i haven't made this up).

Unsurprisingly, the Greens want to double the size of the rebate.

ii) With the rising price of crude oil, petrol is getting more expensive. Hence we recently looked into converting our car to LPG (net about 25% cheaper than unleaded petrol) and supposedly greener (cuts emissions by around 20%). Last year the Liberals announced a subsidy of $2,000 to help motorists convert their cars. Labor small business spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, thinks Howard should go even further.

Not surprisingly, industry body, LPG Australia, welcomed the move.

"The government subsidies for new LPG vehicles and conversions are a sensible response to current petrol price trends because they recognise that LPG Autogas is a readily available alternative fuel,"

Autogas Supplies converter, David Tangey, also supported the $1.6 billion tax-payer package adding that his company was going through its busiest patch in its 20 years.

In December 2003, the cost of converting your car to LPG was a maximum $2,500.
I got three quotes for our car. The cheapest was $4,400.

No wonder Dave's happy.

iii) We have two young children, and hence use Sydney's marvelous childcare centres. The daily cost is now around $50. If you earn less than $110,000, the government will hand you a significant rebate (can be up to 40% for lower earners). Despite the government already shelling out an annual $2.4 billion, there are now calls for child care fees to become entirely tax deductible.

A Parliamentary paper from 2004 raises this insightful question,

'There is the possibility that child care fees may rise and that much of the extra support available from the CCTR [rebate] will be soaked up by these higher fees.'

Really? No shit sherlock.

Child care fees rose 12.4% in 2006, four times the rate of inflation.

There can only be three explanations for continuing with these useless subsidies,

i) government officials have shares in tank, solar heating and child care businesses.
ii) government officials are stupid.
iii) government officials know subsidies don't work but the pressure to be 'seen to be doing something' is too overwhelming.

For their sake, i hope it's option (iii).

Blogger Profiles; Crushed By Ingsoc

2007-07-18T09:11:00.000+10:00

Crushed by Ingsoc blogs here. A political blogger and self-proclaimed left-libertarian, CBI is one of my favourite reads. Thanks for being the first 'profiles' victim.

Background
I can honestly say I have few regrets in life. That doesn't mean that there aren't many things I might have done differently if I had my time again, but to regret past mistakes, is to regret who you are now.I think there are a lot of things in life you only truly understand when the scales fall from your eyes. Trying to understand the world around me and interpret it has always been one of my main life objectives. I'd like to leave this life with as much understanding of what it was I went through in the process as I can. Everyday I learn something new, or see something differently is a day, that has acheived something for me.

i) Why do you blog?
I guess it gives you the chance to show people the world as you see it, in a way you wouldn't in the flesh. It's a good medium for exchanging ideas, or seeing things you mightn't otherwise see. I spend considerably more time reading blogs than reading my paper and I guess many bloggers are the same.

ii) What is your best and worst blogging experience?

To me the best blogging experience is simply meeting intelligent people with points of view to offer. To me, the great people I have met and share views with regularly are the best bit.

Worst Experience? Difficult one that. I had an anonymous comment from someone who knew who I was a while back.

iii) What do you most dislike about your blog?

I'm never quite happy with it's appearance. I do keep moving things and altering things. There are a few things I want to do but can't quite get to grips with.

iv) Who are your favourite small bloggers?
It's difficult to say who's small and who isn't. Bags Rants springs to mind immediately as an underrated blog. I have a lot of respect for Ruthie, that she finds the time to blog at all, Ian Appleby is probably one of the most courteous of bloggers, Liz of Finding Life Hard, actually one of the cheeriest. There are other blogs that give me daily wisdom, like Alexys Fairfield.

v) Which site do you always visit every day?

There are quite a number I visit at least once a day. With Nourishing Obscurity, you have to go several times a day, because new posts appear all the time. Welshcakes has a steady output as well. I think generally I visit the blogs most often where the author responds to all comments, rather than just posts and never responds to opinion.

vi) Why did you choose the name Crushed By Ingsoc?
I found 1984 to have kind of happened, but cleverly disguised. I think Oligarchical Collectivism pretty much sums up the realities of our so called liberal democracies, and INGSOC sums up the prevailing mindset. Doublethink is a daily activity we all perform. We accept the mindnumbingly stupid, so as not to appear out of line.

vii) What are you reading now?
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch, a book on Judaism,
Seven Million Years of Human Evolution, by Douglas Palmer
and I'm rereading the Conan stories.

viii) What is your favourite book?
Lord of the Rings. Easily.

ix) What was the last good film you watched?
Dead Men's Shoes, which I watched a week or so ago.

x) Which film character do you most relate to?
Jack/Tyler in Fight Club.

xi) What major political issue have you changed your mind on?
Scottish Independence and the death penalty.

xii) Who are your political heroes?

I suppose people like Rousseau and Paine who developed rational approaches to government that continue to inspire. As far as politicians go, I admire Eamonn De Valera as a politician, but Churchill would probably be the greatest statesman I could think of.

xiii) If you could have any three dinner guests, who would they be?

Jesus, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzche.

xiv) Do you have any prejudices?
Yes. I'm prejudiced against Aston Villa supporters.

xv) What would be your 5 Desert Island Albums?
Violator- Depeche Mode

Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd

The Doors Live in New York

OK Computer- Radiohead

Substance- New Order

with copyright thanks to Norm.

A Handy Baseball Bat

2007-07-18T08:20:00.000+10:00

PG elsewhere

I was (bizarrely) interviewed by Radio 4's The Today program yesterday on why i keep a baseball bat by my bed.

Sadly they edited out the part where i said i would keep a handgun were it legal.

Hit the 07:00 - 07:30 link and it's at 20 mins, 20 seconds.

Has Ricky Gervais Lost The Plot

2007-07-17T08:53:00.000+10:00

Yes, says The Mirror,

'It's hard to say exactly when Ricky Gervais stopped being the endearing, ingenious wit behind The Office and became the tiresome embarrassment he is today. There were the endless, nauseatingly matey, appearances on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross; his mediocre episode of The Simpsons ; his mutual appreciation society with overrated US comics Ben Stiller and Larry David. His cameo in A Night At the Museum (with Stiller) was sub-sitcom standard and, like The Simpsons, another example of him re-hashing Brent. After years refusing to "do" The David Brent Dance, these days you can hardly stop him.He was at it again during The Concert for Diana, where the sight of Gervais dying on his feet confirmed his demise.'

No, replies The Spectator

'The miracle of the man is that he has managed to escape the role of David Brent – one of the greatest comic characters of all time – to produce another excellent series (Extras), establish himself as a top-rank stand-up, produce the best podcasts I have ever heard, and write a series of splendid children’s books (the Flanimals). Having been at Live Earth on Saturday, I do not remotely recognise Shelley’s description of Gervais’s performance – nor did he “die on his feet” at the Diana Concert where, forced by technical trouble to improvise for much longer than he expected, he kept the stadium in stitches with – yes – the Brent dance. He is without question the most talented British comedian since Peter Cook and John Cleese and deserves better than this sort of nonsense.'

Did he really die at the Diana Concert?

Internment To Return To The UK?

2007-07-17T07:34:00.000+10:00

Did this senior police office really say this? Surely it's a wind-up?

'We are now arguing for judicially supervised detention for as long as it takes. We need to go there [unlimited detention] and I think that politicians of all parties and the public have great faith in the judiciary to make sure that's used in the most proportionate way possible."

Ken Jones, the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers in England and Wales.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, said:

“We elect politicians to determine legislation and we expect chief constables to uphold the rule of law, not campaign for internment.”

Quite, Shami.

A reminder of the erosion of Habeus Corpus over the years;

Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 - 2 days
The Terrorism Act 2000 - 7 days
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 - 14 days
The Criminal Justice Act 2006 - 28 days

Gordon Brown is now said to favour extending detention to 90 days.

Also seen at The Last Ditch
Laban Tall has a nice quote from Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples writing about the 1679 Parliament.

"This short-lived legislature left behind it a monument. It passed a Habeas Corpus Act which confirmed and strengthened the freedom of the individual against arbitrary arrest by the executive government. No Englishman, however great or however humble, could be imprisoned for more than a few days without grounds being shown against him in open court according to the settled law of the land. The descent into despotism which has engulfed so many leading nations in the present age has made the virtue of this enactment, sprung from English political genius, apparent even to the most thoughtless, the most ignorant, the most base."

A Top Weather Gizmo

2007-07-16T13:13:00.000+10:00

What a fantastic weather and geographical gizmo.

Did you know that in the past 24 hours, there has been

a major forest fire in Oregon
an earthquake in Honshu, Japan measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale...
...and one measuring 6.4 in Alaska
a volcano has erupted in Halmehera, Indonesia
a flood in Gujurat, India affecting 72 villages
and in Perth, there has been an epidemic hazard (?)

Nope, neither did I.

A Climate Changer's wetdream.

The Changing Face of the Working Class

2007-07-16T06:23:00.000+10:00

Every journalist, celebrity and politician worth their salt claims to be of working class origins. In fact there are more claims from this lot to have started life in the bosom of a decent but poor working class family than there are poor, decent working class families. It is now very fashionable and trendy to originate from such stock as it demonstrates one possesses a certain moral fibre and intellect.

Two years ago, Michael Collins wrote a book called 'The Likes of Us', which asked the question,

'Why have the white working class gone from being the salt of the earth to the scum of the earth'?

Matthew Parris writing in the Spectator provides an answer with a must-read article.

Parris starts by describing a visit made by Radio 4 presenter, John Humphrys, to his old neighbourhood in Cardiff.

'Humphrys reflected sadly on the contrast between the lack of self-respect and mutual respect, and of ambition, he encountered this time, and the proud and self-reliant working-class society he remembered from his youth.'

Like Collins, Parris ponders why this should be so.

'And I wonder too whether, perverse as this may sound, the plight of the poorest in modern Britain is a result of, rather than a reproach to, social mobility.'

In other words, in a truly meritocratic society (which all political parties support - in Australia and in the UK), those with get-up-and-go, do just that, and those lacking drive, ambition or wit remain behind in 'sink estates and social housing - concentrated pockets of deprivation.'

Importantly, Parris highlights that the make-up of the classes is vastly different today than in the post-War years,

'Plenty of people in the working class were cleverer and more capable than plenty in the middle or upper classes, and knew it. Your class-affiliation was not a grading of calibre, character or talent. The existence of social barriers (though permeable) to upward mobility sharpened self-definition and a sense of belonging and shared responsibility.

The same, incidentally, could also be said of the upper classes, where even the dimmest and most useless were found a place.....They were not allowed to sink to their natural level, which might have been under the arches at Charing Cross...today's underclass are neither the equivalent of nor the successors to the old British working class.'

The more encouraging news, though, is that the numbers of this 'underclass' (welfare dependents, the long-term sick, career criminals and drug addicts) are much smaller than those of the traditional working class - perhaps just 5% of the population.

TinTin Banned - Sales Rocket

2007-07-15T17:24:00.000+10:00

Is the tide finally turning against Political Correctness?

Sales of comic book, Tintin in the Congo, have rocketed 3,800%, reaching No. 6 on the 'Amazon Hot 100 Books', since Britain's Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) claimed it was racist.

Borders, a British chain of bookstores, said Wednesday it had yanked copies of Tintin in the Congo from its children's sections following these comments from the CRE,

"This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the 'savage natives' look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles. How and why do Borders think that it's okay to peddle such hideous racist prejudicial material?"

Tintin in the Congo, which first appeared in Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle as a comic strip in 1930-1931, is part of the series The Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian author and illustrator Herge.

But its tale of boy reporter Tintin's trip with his dog Snowy to what was then the Belgian Congo is seen as controversial by some because of its depiction of colonialism and racism, as well as casual violence towards animals. Herge later said the book was merely a reflection of the naive views of the time.

Update; 'field' in the comments section provides some less than savoury background on the author, Herge. However, just because it makes us queasy today to look back at what was considered acceptable language 80 years ago, does not mean we should ban it and pretend views like these were never aired. Erasing history is what they do in the book '1984' - not in real life.

Other bloggers' opinions;
A Tangled Web
Tim Worstall
The Brussels Journal

Prince Charlies

2007-07-15T07:26:00.000+10:00

via Laban Tall and Mick Hartley

Atrax Robustus

2007-07-15T04:24:00.000+10:00

Look who joined us for a swim in our pool this weekend...

From Wikipedia;

'The Sydney Funnel Web spider should not be handled without taking substantial precautions, because their fangs have been known to penetrate soft shoes...deaths may occur within a period ranging from 15 minutes to three days....'

Australia's wildlife is very culturally diverse - there are thousands of the bastards that would kill you in a heartbeat. However, the funnel web spider is different. Most of the nasties run a mile if they see you coming. If you disturb one of these hoodlums, it will rear up on its hind legs and take you on - despite only growing to 3 inches.

Killing Babies Will Reduce CO2

2007-07-14T06:57:00.000+10:00

“Each new UK birth, through the inevitable resource consumption and pollution that UK affluence generates, is responsible for about 160 times as much climate-related environmental damage as a new birth in Ethiopia.”

Professor John Guillebaud of the Optimal Population Trust calling on the UK government to urge families (order families?) to "stop at two children".

Is this the logical extension of the hairshirt Global Warming crowd?

And here's the Catch 22.

The best way to reduce fertility is through economic development (mothers from rich countries have less babies). But getting to rich country status involves burning more CO2.

via Samizdata

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-07-13T19:53:00.001+10:00

"The Great Global Warming Swindle does not represent the views of the ABC. It is an independent film and is only opinion."

That much is clear. Last night, the ABC aired the 'misleading and scientifically flawed' documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, by Martin Durkin.

The purpose of this post is not to discuss the merits of Durkin's arguments as the film is not new and has been available on YouTube for ages, but to take a look at the reaction in Australia.

In a nutshell, TGGWS is to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth as Chalk is to Cheese.

Since it first aired on Channel 4 earlier this year, the chorus of voices trying to drown out or discredit its message has been overwhelming. Hence the editors at ABC made a very brave decision to air the documentary. However they sensibly (for their careers, that is) hedged themselves by

i) issuing the disclaimer at the top of this post

ii) discrediting Durkin, by showing previous documentaries he had worked on including one on silicon breast implants, that ABC gratuitously saw as a great opportunity to show footage of naked busty women.

iii) discrediting Channel 4 for commissioning the program, describing them as having a history of producing controversial material (not a million miles off the mark, i have to say)

iv) aggressively questioning Martin Durkin. Jones' interview with Durkin was excellent (even if he did have to fly all the way to London to film it!). He did what all good journalists should do to all controversial film-makers - he tried to pull his film apart. It is sad that the ABC have not felt the need to subject Al Gore and Stern to the same rigorous cross-examination.

v) discrediting the scientists featured in the film. For example, Fred Singer, who has questioned the relationship between sunlight and skin cancer ( i don't know the science behind this one but i thought this was largely agreed) and second hand smoke and lung cancer (definitely not agreed), was portrayed as some sort of moonbat.

Following this sledgehammer approach, the program gave way to a panel discussion whereby firmly entrenched people expressed firmly entrenched views. When the panel attempted to besmirch the reputation of Richard Lindzen, one of the scientists in the film, because he 'smoked three cigarettes during our last meeting' i realised i was not about to learn anything new. We didn't really learn a great deal more from this panel except that Tony Jones has less understanding of the science of global warming than my Aunt Gladys.

A commendable decision by the ABC, a good day for the sceptics, a good day for science (as a scientist myself it was wonderful to hear one of the green scientists on the panel utter the immortal words, 'I am a scientist. It is my job to be sceptical!') and a good day for freedom of speech, something head honcho Ben Stewart of Greenpeace needs to remember,

"We have a policy at Greenpeace that we no longer debate people who don’t accept the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change. It’s similar to the policy undertaken by cancer specialists who used to debate the tobacco industry but discontinued doing so."

However not everyone was happy. The biggest casualty of the program has been the hapless MIT scientist, Carl Wunsch, who saw his career disappearing faster than an Antarctic iceberg when he first watched the film. He was furious with the ABC's decision to run the program, saying

"Anybody who tells you they know what is going to happen 20 years from now, 100 years from now, is not a good scientist. The science can only say, at this stage, that there are certain possibilities that we are aware of."

Well, err, quite, Carl. But isn't this the precise point the program was making?

Other bloggers with opinions
Jack Lacton
Tim Blair's Army
The Road To Surfdom
Larvatus Prodeo
John Quiggin

The Perfect Riposte To A Greenie

2007-07-11T11:40:00.000+10:00

He may be a pretentious snob and an unmitigated wanker, but AA Gill sure can write,

"But let me tell you, you Peruvian-hatted puritan apostles of grassy nihilism, the single hottest problem facing the planet is not global warming, but the viciously smug fundamentalist prohibitionists of the green movement. Those wholemealy-mouthed ecologists, who devoutly wish to reduce everyone else’s existence to a self-righteous nose-drip probity that never moves more than four miles from the communal yurt, never eats anything that hasn’t been grown in the communal dung and never thinks anything that isn’t collectively miserabilist, are going to destroy life as we know it faster than an equator of traffic jams, a continent of unlagged lofts and a squadron of circling jumbos.

What is stopping vast numbers of perfectly decent concerned folk getting with the programme is the eye-rolling, dismissive loathing of the people yelling at them to get with the programme. Frankly, they would rather go up in smoke than share a tent with you lot"

This was his response, at a literary festival, when asked if he could any longer be considered Green as he uses aeroplanes to travel.

My, i wish i'd thought of that.

via Tim Blair.

'The Ugliest Face of Capitalism'

2007-07-10T23:47:00.000+10:00

One of my wife's favourite movies is the modern day Cinderella story of Pretty Woman. The lead male character, played by Richard Gere, is a private equity financier. He buys companies, plys them full of debt, and then asset strips them, selling the parts for more than he paid for the whole. The principle female character, a hooker played by Julia Roberts, says they are the one and the same - 'We both screw people for money'.

During my visit to the Mother Country, I have been surprised by the amount of media coverage of the private equity (PE) industry. And it's not to sing their praises.

The sticking points appear to be

the low tax rates they attract on profits
the miniscule amount of corporate tax they pay
the 'cloak and dagger' nature of the industry
that they load companies full of debt and then asset strip them
the egregious sums of money that accrue to the partners

Having worked in the industry for many years (i used to work for a hedge fund that provided private equity firms with leveraged finance), i have some insight into these issues.

i) Do they pay too little tax?
In a word, yes. There is no need for PE firms to only be subject to Capital Gains Tax on their earnings (which if held for two years reduces to 10%). The much earlier seed financing of Venture Capital has a legitimate case to argue for tax breaks but PE firms don't invest in small businesses. Nicholas Ferguson, head of SVG Capital, remarked that it was unfair that private equity partners should pay less tax than their cleaners, saying

"generous tax breaks were designed not to make private equity executives very rich but to encourage investment and entrepreneurship".

He is right. The tax break on 'carry' must end.

ii) Do they pay too little Corporate Tax?
No. In a nutshell PE works by buying under-geared (too little debt) but cash-generating businesses and plying them full of debt. As interest payments on debt are fully off-settable against profits, they are highly tax-efficient and often PE companies end up paying no Corporate Tax at all. However, this tax break is open to all companies, both public and private. And Corporate Tax is a very poor form of tax.

iii) Is it a 'black box' industry?
No. PE owned companies are privately owned, are not listed on Stock Exchanges and therefore not subject to the intense media and shareholder scrutiny that applies to all public listed companies. That they don't have to answer to the tyranny of quarterly reporting or to comply with th onerous Sarbanes-Oxley laws enables them to take a longer term view of the business and to actually focus on making money. Is this a good thing? Well, Polly Toynbee has a predictably old-fashioned view,

'They rarely appear in public to be called to account. How often do you see one on Newsnight?'

Polly neatly demonstrates that her ignorance of finance is matched only be the envy of her politics. PE firms are private. They do not need to be in public to be held to account. They most certainly do not need to be on Newsnight defending themselves against hysterical journalists.

However they do have to provide full disclosure (often quarterly) of their business to the bond and bank market so it's not to true to describe them as black boxes.

iv) Don't they just load companies full of debt and then asset strip them?
Yes and no. PE firms do load their companies with debt. That much is true. Often to eye-watering levels (banks are now happily funding business models with debt levels of up to 10x EBITDA or earnings). However, they are not asset strippers. The most common strategy i came across was quite the opposite - 'buy-and-build'. This is where a PE firm buys, say, a publishing business, then buys a market research company, combines the two, takes out costs and refloats on the Stock Market at a fat premium.

v) Don't they earn obscene sums of money?
Yes, they most certainly do. And this is what the debate is really all about. The fact that they turn around failing businesses, that they buy gems from fund managers too sleepy to notice them, and the fact that they add jobs in the long term, is all irrelevant against the charge of excessive wealth generation for a few greedy evil capitalists.

Dave Calhoun was recruited from GE to run VNU, a Dutch media group for a reported $100m package.

And this is where i take issue. Capitalism makes people richer. Only the most dogmatic head-in-the-sand socialist would now dispute that. However, it does so at a very uneven rate. I think people are prepared to accept the likes of Richard Branson becoming billionaires because they have risked their own money time and time again, created thousands of jobs and have paid millions in taxes. However, they are not prepared to accept the likes of Dave Calhoun earning $100mm for three years work as he is taking minimal risk and he is not building a business.

And it is in this area, individual wealth creation, that the PE model is most at risk. When the credit cycle turns, as it inevitably will, this industry will take a beating.

Sources; Eclipse of the Public Corporation, by Michael Jensen
'The Business of Making Money' - The Economist
Title 'the Ugliest Face of Capitalism is a quote from ex-Guardian editor, Seamus Milne

Need A New T-Shirt?

2007-07-10T17:13:00.000+10:00

Nice T-shirt gift ideas from red molotov

As sported by Perry de Havilland

The North-South Gap

2007-07-10T07:26:00.000+10:00

“You can ask a Northerner for directions, but unless you already know the positions of key piles of rubble, canals, coal mines, railway crossings, and where factories used to stand, you're better off trying to find it yourself.”

~ Noel Coward on the Grim North

Here is an astonishing statistic;

In the 33 years between 1971 and 2004, The North (Northeast and NorthWest England and Yorkshire) has created just 10,100 new jobs (net).

The number of new jobs created in the South during this same period was 2.73 million.

And here's another;

Public spending in Northern Ireland now accounts for 76% of the economy.

Source; The Times

Why Cutting Tax Works

2007-07-08T14:09:00.000+10:00

Income taxes have to be lowered, in particular marginal income tax rates (the tax paid on the last $$ earned). Not so that the rich can get richer, and not so that health and education spending can be cut.

I believe in cutting taxes because

it incentivises people to work
it incentivises people to take risk
it increases freedom for individuals
it is fairer
it raises revenue for the government. That's not a typo.

You never ever read this final point anywhere in the press. But the evidence that cutting income tax actually raises revenue is overwhelming. Here it is;

Several economies that seemed on the verge of bankruptcy in the early eighties were suddenly revived once marginal tax rates were reduced.

i) In 1983, Turkey's marginal tax rates were slashed: the minimum rate dropped from 40% to 25%, the maximum from 75 to 50%. Real economic growth jumped to nearly 7% in the following four years and to 9% in 1990.

ii) South Korea was deep in debt to international banks in 1980, when real output fell 2%. Korea subsequently cut tax rates and expanded deductions three times, and economic growth averaged 9.3% a year from 1981 to 1989.

iii) In the early 1980s Mauritius faced an unemployment rate of 23% and massive emigration. Tax rates were cut from 60% to 35%, and the economy grew by 5.4% a year from 1981 through 1987.

The same pattern was repeated in most major industrial countries.

iv) Economic growth in Britain had averaged only 1.2% for a dozen years before tax rates were cut in 1984 and 1986. The British economy subsequently grew by 4% a year from 1985 to 1989.

v) Economic growth in Japan from 1983 to 1987 had slowed to 3.9%. Japan cut higher tax rates by 15 to 20% in 1988, and economic growth and investment subsequently boomed.

vi) In the 1980s economic growth had slipped to around 1.5% in Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands before each country cut marginal tax rates. In the first year or two of tax reform, economic growth jumped to 4% in Austria, 4.1% in the Netherlands, and 4.3% in Belgium.

vii) The economies of Canada and West Germany likewise experienced brief booms when tax rates were reduced in 1988 and 1989 respectively, but Canada slipped into recession in early 1990 after reversing course with surtaxes and a new sales tax. Germany likewise added surtaxes and sales tax in mid-1991, with immediate adverse effects on the stock market and the value of its currency.

viii) In the United States it is commonly believed that the Reagan administration 'slashed taxes,' particularly for 'the rich.' Actually, real federal receipts increased by 33% from 1980 to 1990. Moreover, the most affluent 5% of all taxpayers paid 45.9% of all federal income taxes in 1988—up from 37.6% in 1979. Apparent "tax cuts"—from a top marginal rate of 70% to 33% — became actual tax increases, particularly for 'the rich.'

ix) In Ireland the highest marginal tax rate on personal income went from 65% in 1984 to 42 % today. The highest corporate rate went from 50% to 20%. The result? - employment soared, government spending fell, government revenues rose, the budget moved into surplus, and the public debt declined.

x) Thanks to reform in the tax code, and a lowering of rates, income from taxes has gone up three and a half times in Pridnestrovie in Moldova.

Conversely, when country's raise top tax rates productive activity ceases, moves abroad, or vanishes into inefficient little "underground" enterprises. The losers are the poorest and those most dependent on the State for help.

Why is there not one single party in the UK demanding lower taxes?

What is the point of David Cameron's Conservatives?

Source; The Library of Economics and Liberty

More Discrimination At The BBC

2007-07-06T18:24:00.001+10:00

In a Times report of the extent of viewer funding of the BBC, one paragraph about BBC bosses' bonuses caught my eye,

'No BBC boss took home a bonus because targets for ethnic-minority recruitment were not met.'

The flip-side of the benign sounding 'ethnic-minority recruitment' is discrimination against non-ethnics. Why are the BBC deliberately choosing staff on the basis of their race and religion? Is this legal? Why are they not simply looking for the best person for the job?

As a taxpayer, i am paying for the BBC. I despise racial discrimination. Why the hell do i have to fund an organsiation that is promoting racial discrimination?

Winning the Propaganda War

2007-07-06T17:50:00.000+10:00

Last night i tuned into Question Time.

The programme was a special Schools Question Time with an audience comprised of 14-22 year-olds. I thought this would be a good opportunity to take the pulse of what are 'youth' are thinking about the world.

The Panel comprised Cabinet Office Minister Ed Miliband, Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion Sayeeda Warsi, Big Brother presenter Davina McCall, writer Douglas Murray and 18-year-old winner of the Schools Question Time panellist competition, Charlie Bell.

At the end of a stupifyingly depressing program, i realised the enormity of the battle those of us who value a small state and individual freedom have. For my sanity, i have to hope that the audience was unrepresentative of young people. If this is not the case, then we are losing the propaganda war.

Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, (what looks like a Civitas-funded organisation) was cast by the BBC as the 'Evil Rightwinger'. He spoke up for the Jews in Israel, he spoke against Hamas, for University tuition fees, against anthropogenic Global Warming and refused to cede that terrorism is 'all our fault' - unlike the panel's two women (Davina and Sayeeda - unbelievably a Conservative Shadow Cabinet Minister) who were so awful it was excrutiating to watch.

Douglas made numerous good points. However, the manner in which he made them was truly atrocious. He instantly alienated the entire audience, spoke in a Lord Snooty accent with real venom against his targets. It was almost as though the BBC had scoured the land for the 'person most like to sully classically liberal thinking'.

If libertarians and liberals are to win the arguments we must start recruiting decent spokespeople. Contrast Douglas' appalling delivery with the chatty and easy manner of Ed Miliband who won over an audience hostile to Iraq with consummate ease.

A wasted opportunity. We have to do better than this.

Other opinions at A Tangled Web

Noel Pearson

2007-07-05T04:17:00.000+10:00

I really, really like this guy.

Noel Pearson on the seven dysfunctions within Indigenous communities in Cape York.

'Lack of child protection, alcohol, drugs, petrol sniffing, gambling, poor school attendance, and dysfunctional housing tenancy arrangements.'

Noel Pearson On Welfare

'Far from participating in a real economy, people in Cape York have been almost completely dependent on passive welfare for over three decades. By removing the incentive to work, passive welfare delivery has embedded dependency, effectively sapping people of motivation and eroding personal responsibility.'

'Welfare is a perpetual drip feed, a completely poisonous situation. We have got to stop seeing welfare as some kind of inalienable right. We have not got the right to sit under the mango tree and do nothing.'

Noel Pearson On Work

'Work is not just a necessity - it's a cultural principle and a value. And it's not just a Lutheran or whitefella value. It's a principle from 40,000 years ago.'

Noel Pearson On Charity

'In particular, those members of the progressive middle class who are involved in the so-called helping industries contribute most to the misery of those whom they believe they are helping.'

Noel Pearson On Housing

'Individuals and families must be given (and must take) greater responsibility for their housing in all its forms. This involves a movement towards a functioning property market based on home ownership.The current system of public housing in Cape York communities is at odds with the goal of personal responsibility for housing. For example, no financial investment is required by the tenants towards construction of their house; rental rates are very low and are frequently not collected; tenancy agreements frequently do not exist or are not enforced; families do not pay for repairs and maintenance even if they cause significant damage.'

Noel Pearson On Alcohol

'The epidemic of alcoholism is now deeply embedded in Cape York communities. Social and cultural relationships between drinkers are expressed, reinforced and reiterated, such that non-drinkers are pressured either to participate or provide money to support the dysfunctional lifestyles of the drinkers. Critically, an effective response must involve restricting alcohol supply.'

'The current health outcomes for Indigenous Australians are unacceptable, with Indigenous life expectancy on average 17 years lower than for non-Indigenous Australians.'

Noel Pearson On Howard's 'Land Grab' Proposals

'I'm amazed that anybody would put the protection of children secondary to anything, particularly when those children are subject to imminent abuse, abuse that takes place on a regular basis that's the subject of binge drinking, week in, week out. I think that those who have objections to immediate intervention have to ask themselves whether they're willing this whole exercise to fail, and geez, if you're willing the whole exercise to fail, what kind of priorities do you have in relation to the wellbeing of Indigenous children?'

'I've got as much objections as anybody to the ideological prejudices of the Howard Government in relation to land, but this question is not about a 'land grab'. The Anderson Wild Report tells us about the scale of Aboriginal children's neglect and abuse. This is what this is about. It's an absolute alibi to try and characterise this debate as being about land grabs and so on. Who wants a land grab in main street Hopevale, for goodness sake?'

Noel Pearson On Education

'In every year level, Indigenous students are between two and four years behind the non-Indigenous average.

The Cape York Institute believes that reform needs to occur on both the “demand” and the “supply” side of education. On the demand side (ie the demand for education by parents), reform efforts need to occur to ensure that parents send their children to school and that children are properly fed, clothed and rested. There should be no excuses for children not attending school. On the supply side of education (ie the education providers), reforms need to be made to deliver better services. This includes ensuring that there is a focus on the basics of literacy and numeracy in the school curriculum, that the very best teachers are employed, and that children’s performance is regularly tracked and additional assistance provided where they are falling behind.'

Noel Pearson On Liberal Do-Gooders

'The greatest impediment to policies that are needed to relieve suffering is the confusion of those parts of the middle class who think themselves progressive.'

Noel Pearson On The Aboriginal Bureaucracy

'I used to think it was just money we needed. But it's not the money - it's the people they can give us. Boston Consulting Group wouldn't know Aboriginal affairs from a bar of soap before we met them. And we achieved more from three months with a high-calibre person from BCG than i've seen from the bureaucracy in three years.'

'The great majority (of the family services and welfare services) have an intense dislike for our program (The Cape York Institute). There's a big industry in Aboriginal dysfunction. There's jobs involved.'

Sources; The Cape York Institute
The Australian
ABC
Lateline

Voters Are Dumb

2007-07-04T20:39:00.000+10:00

Winston Churchill once said that the best advert against democracy was a brief chat with a voter. Brian Caplan, economics professor at George Mason University, has produced evidence in his new book 'The Myth of the Rational Voter', showing the great man was right all along.

Unlike audiences in 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' (who are right 91% of the time) and financial markets (where the 'wisdom of crowds' does seem to often work), Caplan argues that ignorant voters do not vote randomly and have four inherent and ill-informed biases, He accuses populist politicians of preying on these biases to the detriment of the economy.

1. Voters exhibit a strong anti-market bias.
For example when asked why petrol prices have gone up, most voters blamed greedy oil bosses. Most economists pointed to supply and demand. Voters are clearly wrong because how do they explain falling prices?

2. Voters have a strong anti-foreigner bias
Most Americans think the economy is harmed by jobs being sourced from abroad and from immigrants taking 'local' jobs. Both the Democrats (via protectionist policies) and the Republicans (via anti-immigration policies) feed off these misinformed views. Most economists, on the other hand, take the view that a company's ability to source its labour from overseas or utilise cheaper labour from home increases its productivity, raising living standards for all.

3. Voters have a 'make-work' bias
i.e they equate prosperity with employment rather than productivity.

This is best illustrated by an apocryphal story of an economist who visits China under Mao Zedong. He sees hundreds of workers building a dam with shovels. He asks: “Why don't they use a mechanical digger?” “That would put people out of work,” replies the foreman. “Oh,” says the economist, “I thought you were making a dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons.”

For an individual, the make-work bias makes some sense. He prospers if he has a job, and may lose his health insurance if he is laid off. For the nation as a whole, however, what matters is not whether people have jobs, but how they do them. The more people produce, the greater the general prosperity. It helps, therefore, if people shift from less productive occupations to more productive ones.

4. Voters have a bias toward pessimism
Most voters believe their children will be worse off than them, new jobs will be low-paying and that society in general is going to hell in a handbasket. Surprisingly, despite their reputation, economists tend to be more upbeat.

Caplan's solutions are that we rely less on government and more on private choice. He points out that just as industries tend to do better when deregulated or privatised, so religions thrive when disestablished.

Churchill may not have liked democracy but he did add that 'it may be the worst form of government but it's better than all others that have been tried'

Further Reading; Caplan at the Cato Institute
Podcast with Caplan at the Cafe Hayek
Tim Worstall writing at the Adam Smith Institute

source; The Economist

Gordon Brown's New Terror Policy

2007-07-04T18:56:00.000+10:00

Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in connection with the terrorism crisis - an attempt to avoid offending Muslims.

Officials insist that no direct links with Muslim extremists have been publicly confirmed by police investigating the latest attempted terror attacks.

Huh? wtf? really?

Jack Straw was on Newsnight last night advocating an alternate strategy,

Why It Rains In England

2007-07-04T02:56:00.001+10:00

One of the reasons the PG family upped sticks and headed for Sydney last year is that it in Britain, it always rains. Not those two hour drenchings you get in Queensland, but two month drizzles.

Well, now i know why. And it isn't to do with Global Warming or Britain's geographical location.

Oh, no.

It's God's judgment on the immorality and greed of England, the introduction of pro-gay legislation, the environmental damage, our greedy explotation of poorer nations and the decision to ignore Biblical teachings.

Or so says The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle (above). And he should know.

The Rt Rev James Jones (a prior candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury) also threw in his tuppence worth,

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God. However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences"

As did the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London,

"Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

Right.

Good job the Aussies are so well behaved, charitable, moral, religious and environmentally sound. Taxi!

Four Terrorist Myths Detonate

2007-07-03T19:16:00.000+10:00

Cross-posted at the Australian Libertarian Soc.
Welcome Guardian readers!

The British newspapers are unsurprisingly full of stories about Muslims trying to blow up nightclubs to kill the ’slags’ and Jordanian (and now Gold Coast!) doctors setting fire to themselves. The British people, to their immense credit, are busy talking about the comic ineptitude of the terrorists. A wave of laughter is sweeping Britain - probably not the terrorists’ main aim.

However, joking aside, it is clear that London and Glasgow got extremely lucky and will almost certainly not get so lucky again. Many hundreds of lives could so easily have been lost.

The only explosions going off in Britain now are the myths that surround Islamic terrorism.

Myth No. 1 - ‘Young Muslim men are radicalised by poverty and disadvantage’

Not only was Mohammed Siddique (architect of 7/7) a teacher from middle-class stock but it appears that the masterminds behind the latest attacks are all medical students and qualified doctors. Hardly breadline stuff.

Myth No. 2 - ‘Young Muslim men are being radicalised by an aggressive Western foreign policy - or blowback’

Hassan Butt was once a member of radical Islamic group, Al-Muhajiroun. He wrote this fascinating article in the Observer at the weekend,

“When I was still a member of the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

I left the BJN in February 2006, but if I were still fighting for their cause, I’d be laughing once again. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombings, and I were both part of the BJN - I met him on two occasions - and though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.”

Myth No 3 - 'These people are just common criminals. There is no link'

Ex-jihadist, Ed Husain, argues passionately that it is the ideology of Islamism (as opposed to Islam) that needs to be confronted. He castigates Ken Livingstone for his support of Yusuf al Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, whose publicly stated attitude is that suicide bombers are martyrs,

"By confusing regular religious Muslims with fanatical ideologues, Ken blurs the lines between right and wrong, and allows radicalism to flourish within sections of London's Muslim communities."

Myth No.4 - ‘Western governments are exaggerating the risks from terrorism to increase their powers and reduce civil liberties’

Only the most blind and dogmatic can now be unclear of the risks posed by those radical agents of Salafism. They may only be a tiny percentage of total Muslims in the West but their number is significant (MI5 believes there are around 1600 people planning attacks in Britain). Whilst it is imperative that government takes only minimal steps to impede civil liberties, clearly some sort of compromise is inevitable. Powers of detention without trial are going to be raised, phone tapping evidence is now likely to be admitted in court, and the govt will try once again to deport those foreign-born convicted terrorists back to their countries of origin.

This final myth is a particularly challenging one for us lovers of liberty. Whilst our liberties must be paramount (otherwise the terrorists have won), we must also not lose the ability to catch and prosecute those who commit such appalling acts. In short, we will have to concede some loss of liberty.

Women-Only Beach

2007-07-03T17:54:00.000+10:00

Something that caught my eye in the European press is this bizarre story of a new women-only beach that has just opened up in Italy. The birds-beach is in the resort of Riccione, on the Adriatic coast, and is also closed to children but interestingly not to dogs.

The idea for the beach comes, somewhat surprisingly from a man, a local businessman, Fausto Ravaglia,

“This is not a lesbian beach. It is simply for women to be themselves.”

Mr Ravaglia’s 22 year-old daughter, Francesca, runs the Pink Beach,

“Life is still quite tough for women in Italy. Men give us no peace. At Riccione, no one stares at you to see if you’ve got cellulite. You don’t have to tie yourself up in a beach sarong to disguise your imperfections. Men are so critical. We can’t all be Miss Italy”.

The only men tolerated are a hairdresser and the lifeguard.

“You need a man to save women in the sea,” Mr Ravaglia said. “It’s a question of muscles”.

Isn't that, err, a little sexist? On so many levels?

Also spotted by The Thunderdragon

More Terrorist Myth Explosions

2007-07-03T03:35:00.001+10:00

The only things exploding in the UK are the myths that surround why young Muslims turn to terror.

The Evening Standard is reporting that the prime suspects in the 'Crap Terrorists' of Glasgow and London are two University educated, wealthy doctors from Jordan who arrived in the UK in 2005 and have been practicing medicine for the NHS.

Radicalised by poverty?

Nope. Though apparently this is news to our Security Services, which under Project Contest, are sticking by their thesis that religious fundamentalism has nothing to do with the attacks.

Driven to terror by Tony Blair's interventionist policies in Iraq?

Nope. (see story below)

I wonder what the next myth to detonate will be.

Don't Blame Blowback

2007-07-02T17:16:00.000+10:00

For those who like to blame the 'blowback' theory that British foreign policy is radicalising young Muslims and for those who seek comfort in the thought that all we have to do is pull our troops out of Iraq and the attacks will stop, read these words from Hassan Butt, once a British member of radical Islamic group, Al-Muhajiroun.

"When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

Yesterday on Radio 4's Today programme, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: 'What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.'

He then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam.

I left the BJN in February 2006, but if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombings, and I were both part of the BJN - I met him on two occasions - and though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.

How did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting this (flawed) utopian goal? How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion? There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a dualistic model of the world. Many Muslims may or may not agree with secularism but at the moment, formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion. There is no 'rendering unto Caesar' in Islamic theology because state and religion are considered to be one and the same. The centuries-old reasoning of Islamic jurists also extends to the world stage where the rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) have been set down to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

via Harry's Place

Terror Alert Raised to Risible

2007-07-01T17:35:00.000+10:00

New Prime Minister Gordon Brown has raised the Terror Alert in Britain to Risible from Laughable.

Following the crashing of the first car bomber into a lamp-post outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London, the Terror Alert was raised from Useless to Laughable. However, after Hafeez Brainzmissing and co-conspirator, Jihad NaeClue, incinerated themselves at Glasgow airport, the Alert was raised once again, this time to Risible.

Hospitals across the land are witnessing an influx of patients with bruised ribs caused by excessive laughter over the incompetent actions of the 'terrorists'. Pharmacists are reporting a run on rib braces as Brits prepare themselves for the next utterly contemptible attempt at martyrdom.

The Pathetic Terrorists

2007-07-01T07:20:00.001+10:00

Hafeez Brainzmissing, the Iranian-born terrorist who gave himself third degree burns whilst attempting to set fire to the American flag, has been at it again.

Hafeez rammed a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport this afternoon.

Hafeez is now in hospital with more third degree burns, said Scottish Police Chief Constable, Willie Rae.

Viz gave you the Pathetic Sharks.

May i present The Pathetic Terrorists.

Libertarians - Liberals with Larger Vocabularies?

2007-07-01T07:11:00.000+10:00

Are libertarians 'just liberals with slightly larger vocabularies and even larger chips on their shoulders.'?

Kathy Shaidle seems to think so when discussing libertarian website, Reason.

'I know lots of folks equate sophomoric, bitchy sarcasm with brains, but really. If Reason is any indication, the average libertarian is just a cranky, white, able bodied, pot-smoking, childless fellow under 50 who reads too much science fiction and drops the name "Rothbard" a lot, and whose default worldview is "Hates Pretty Much Everything," especially anything corny and old fashioned that might prevent them from having their somewhat grim idea of "fun". Being like Other People is the worst imaginable fate.'

Mmmm.

via Tim Blair.

Shoplifting is Now Legal

2007-07-01T06:02:00.000+10:00

A shopkeeper has been fined £250 and been given a criminal record for fighting back against shoplifters who tried to beat him up.

The thieves kicked shopkeeper, Jacob Smyth, from Cornwall, in the groin and then made off with several cans of spray paint.

Police found the youths guilty of shoplifting and fined them £80 each with no ensuing criminal record.

Had Smyth not pleaded guilty he would have faced six months in jail.

Magistrate, Angy Haslam, conceded Jacob had acted in self-defence but said his reaction was

“aggravated by the fact you kicked the victim on the ground”.

Welcome to the UK - friend of the criminal class.

Back in the Saddle

2007-07-01T02:54:00.001+10:00

Just back from a week in Devon.

Rained every day and the thermometer didn't get above 15C (it's the middle of summer here in England)

If anyone mentions Global Warming to me again, i will get violent.

A Huge Day For Australia's Aboriginals

2007-06-22T06:05:00.000+10:00

Wow! What a huge, bold and radical set of Aboriginal policies.

Paternalist, interventionist, nannying, illiberal, statist. Yes to all. But i applaud these radical new policies to the rafters. Any libertarian that adopts a knee-jerk negative response to these proposals either has a heart of stone or a mind of clay.

In response to the spiralling cases of child sex abuse in remote indigenous communities, Prime Minister John Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough announced radical measures today affecting Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territories.

i) widespeard restrictions on alcohol sales will be enforced for six months

ii) all indigenous children under the age of 16 in the territory will be medically examined.

iii) 50% of welfare payments will be quarantined to prevent all their money being spent on alcohol.

iv) welfare payments will be dependent on children attending school.

v) meals will be provided to children at school, with parents paying for them.

vi) the permit system for common areas and road corridors on Aboriginal lands will be scrapped, and work-for-the-dole participants will be marshalled to clean up Aboriginal communities.

vii) possession of X-rated pornography will be banned and all publicly-funded computers searched for evidence of stored pornography.

viii) there will be an immediate increase in policing efforts.

Howard made no apology for overriding Northern Territory laws to implement his plans, saying,

"Any semblance of maintaining the innocence of childhood is a myth in so many of these communities and we feel very strongly that action of this kind is needed. It is interventionist, it does push aside the role of the territory to some degree - I accept that. But what matters more, the constitutional niceties or the care and protection of young children?"

Looks like Noel Pearson has got most of what he wanted. Good for him.

What a huge day.

Libertarians Call For BBC To Be Abolished!

2007-06-22T05:30:00.000+10:00

The Libertarian Alliance has issued a press release calling for the abolition of the BBC. Not the privatisation, mind, but the sacking of its entire staff and the removal of its licence to broadcast.

It's at times like this when i am surprised that the libertairan movement has even as much as 2% of the popular vote. It won't have for much longer.

Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb,

“The BBC is a propaganda vehicle for the ruling class - that is, for that loose coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, educators, and media and business people who derive wealth and power and status from an enlarged and activist state.

“In its mealy-mouthed, bureaucratic way, the BBC has now admitted that its core function is not to report the news or to entertain the public, but to impose the specific ideological viewpoint known as �political correctness�, an evil axis of anti-liberal, anti-white racist, anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment and collectivist values and coercive social engineering. With the decline of old style Marxism and Socialism this form of illiberal doctrine has gained a growing and hegemonic role throughout much of academia, charities and civil organizations, churches, social and welfare services, most political parties, and government and the civil service. But its main transmission mechanism is via a controlled media, of which the BBC is the natural centre.

“The answer to this admitted bias is not better regulation: all regulation must ultimately be overseen by the same members or clients of the ruling class who produced the bias. It is not privatisation: that will do nothing more than turn a propaganda vehicle for the ruling class into a profitable propaganda vehicle for the ruling class.

“The only answer is full and immediate abolition. The BBC should be taken off air. Its employees should be sacked and its buildings sold off. All its internal records should be destroyed. All its copyrights should be thrown into the public domain.

“But we must begin with the BBC. It must be destroyed - before it destroys us.”

You're making my job an awful lot harder, Sean.

Why Did Salman Rushdie Get Nominated?

2007-06-21T19:24:00.000+10:00

When i read of the proposed knighthood for Salman Rushdie, my first thought was 'poor bastard'. Having lived with armed bodyguards for ten years, he was finally regaining a semblance of a normal life.

My second thought was 'why'? They must have known how inflammatory this would appear; how dangerous to Rushdie's life; how simply in-your-face 'fuck you Muzzers' this would seem.

Err, apparently not.

The committee that recommended Salman Rushdie for a knighthood never imagined that the award would provoke the furious response that it has done in parts of the Muslim world, according to the Guardian.

Gotta be a joke?

It also emerged yesterday that the writers' organisation that led the lobbying for the author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses to be knighted had originally hoped that the honour would lead to better relations between Britain and Asia.

What??!

The arts and media committee that proposed him for a knighthood is chaired by Lord Rothschild, the investment banker and former chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery. The other committee members are Jenny Abramsky, the BBC's director of radio and music; novelist and poet Ben Okri, who is vice-president of the English chapter of PEN International, which campaigns on behalf of writers who face persecution; Andreas Whittam Smith, former editor of the Independent; John Gross, the author and former theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph; and two permanent secretaries, one from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and one from the Scottish executive. Mr Smith said that,

"Very properly, we were concerned only with merit in relation to the level of the award,"

Very properly indeed, but a little reckless to Mr. Rushdie's health?

PEN International, which campaigned on behalf of Rushdie when he was in hiding during the fatwa years, has lobbied consistently for him to be honoured. Yesterday the director of its London chapter, Jonathan Heawood, said that he was taken aback by the scale of the reaction.

"The honour is for services to literature and a very belated recognition that he is a world writer, who was in the vanguard of a writing tradition that exploded in the 80s in south Asia. It seems a shame that a few lines in his fourth novel should have turned him into this hate figure. He has become a Guy Fawkes figure to be thrown on a bonfire whenever it suits a government to divert attention from what is happening in their own countries."

Too true Jonathan. But you really should already know this.

No date has been set for the investiture. Rushdie could become Sir Salman in the next batch of investitures between October and December or early next year. Or the Foreign Office could veto the proposal.

An unusually sensible remark from Will Self,

"Given the furore that The Satanic Verses occasioned, it does strike me that any responsible writer might ask himself whether the fallout from accepting such an honour was really worth the bauble ... it is surely better that writers decline any form of honour."

266 Reasons To Smoke

2007-06-21T11:22:00.000+10:00

A couple of months ago it was reported that there are 266 reasons the state can use to demand entry to your house. This appalling news has been tempered somewhat by today's report that if residents insist on smoking in the presence of council officials the visit will be cancelled and replaced with a meeting at the council offices.

So when the man from the council demands entry to your home under the "Offensive Wallpaper Regulations 2007", all you need do is blow smoke in his face and tell him to bugger off.

And if that's not a reason to take up smoking, I don't know what is.

This gem from Bishop Hill and Tim Worstall.

What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailors?

2007-06-20T23:00:00.000+10:00

Update; i notice that a lot of army personnel are being directed to this article via Google. If you are British Army, then the very warmest of welcomes.

The government report into the captured British sailors has revealed that no-one is to blame and no disciplinary action will be taken!

That's not the verdict of the Army. Last month the Army played the Navy at football. They came prepared with their own special song.

To the tune of 'What shall we do with a drunken sailor'

What shall we do with the captured sailors?
What shall we do with the captured sailors?
What shall we do with the captured sailors?
Ear-lye in the morning

Ooh'ray and Faye is gopping (ed- 'gopping' apparently means 'ugly')
Ooh'ray and Faye is gopping
Ooh'ray and Faye is gopping
Ear-lye in the morning

Take away his ipod and make him blubber
Take away his ipod and make him blubber
Take away his ipod and make him blubber
Ear-lye in the morning

Put him in a suit and make him smile
Put him in a suit and make him smile
Put him in a suit and make him smile
Ear-lye in the morning

Give 'em forty grand and hear them snivel
Give 'em forty grand and hear them snivel
Give 'em forty grand and hear them snivel
Ear-lye in the morning

Give him an alcopop and watch him dribble
Give him an alcopop and watch him dribble
Give him an alcopop and watch him dribble
Ear-lye in the morning

Send the ugly bint right back to tehran
Send the ugly bint right back to tehran
Send the ugly bint right back to tehran
Ear-lye in the morning

Put them on the telly smoking ciggies
Put them on the telly smoking ciggies
Put them on the telly smoking ciggies
Ear-lye in the morning

via Times and the here.

Manhunt 2

2007-06-20T18:55:00.000+10:00

Manhunt 2 has become the only prohibited game in the country after the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) condemned its “unremitting bleakness” and encouragement of “casual sadism”.

It is only the second game to have been refused classification since regulation of video content became compulsory in 1984.

Created by Rockstar Games, the software developer responsible for Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt 2 involves a deranged character who must escape from a mental asylum, find the people who put him there, and then sneak up on them and bludgeon them to death with axes and sledgehammers.

Nice.

Rockstar, which is owned by Take 2 Interactive, an American company, had this to say,

"The adult consumers who will play this game fully understand that it is fictional interactive entertainment and nothing more.”

Bullshit.

The first Manhunt game was withdrawn by some retailers in July 2004 after the parents of a 14-year-old boy who was murdered with a claw hammer claimed that his killer was obsessed with the game. No link was proved, but studies have suggested a link between video game violence and aggressive behaviour in children.

Long may these nihilistic and sadistic games be banned. Of course there are some unstable kids out there who watch them and are influenced by them. Any idiot could tell you that. How the fuck these games developers sleep at night is beyond me.

To Marry Or Not To Marry

2007-06-18T15:09:00.000+10:00

Two pieces of marriage-related news;

i) Labour MP, Frank Field, has discovered that Gordon Brown has been pursuing a policy of hostile discrimination against married couples in the UK. He has shown that for a lone parent to take home £487 per week, he or she must work for 16 hours on the minimum wage; for a married couple to take home the same amount, that number is 116 hours. Such are the punitive rates of marginal tax that have arisen under Brown's attempts not to discriminate against single parents.

ii) The Law Commission, the government's legal reform body, is to publish new proposals to give divorce-rights to non-married but co-habiting couples. The extraordinary implication of this is that if a relationship ends, one partner can sue the other for a significant part of their estate. No weddings required for the gold digging to start.

Fifty years ago, 90% of 16 year-olds were still living with both of their parents; today that number is 62%. Ian Duncan Smith's think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, has produced a raft of data showing the harm this does to children. He said that,

"Family breakdown is one of the great drivers for under-achievement in children".

He is right.

But with the Law Commission doing their utmost to prevent relationships from starting, and the government furiously trying to prevent those who do hook up to actually walk down the aisle, is it all worth it?

The Pros and Cons of Getting Hitched

Pros

i) In the UK, spouses are exempt Inheritance tax. This kicks in at £300,000 at the rate of 40%. However, in Australia, there is no Inheritance Tax.

Net - get married if you're a wealthy Brit.

ii) Divorce laws are highly beneficial to the non-working spouse.

Net - get hitched if you are a gold digger.

The UK Courts will now even award you a share of your spouse's future earnings if you are very lucky.

iii) Married couples are more likely to remain together. 50% of cohabiting couples split up before their child's 5th birthday; that number is just 1 in 12 for married parents. Though, it is probably more likely that cohabiting parents reflect uncertainty in each other rather than in the institution of marriage.

Cons

i) Married couples can only have one principle untaxed residence - unmarrieds can have two.

ii) For those on lower incomes, marriage is excessively punitive (see Frank field example above).

Net - never ever get hitched if you are a low wage earner or a welfare claimant.

iii) The average cost of a wedding has risen to £12,000. Not to mention that African Safari honeymoon for another £8k - call it a round 20 'G's.

iv) British Divorce Laws favour the diggers of gold over the producers.

Net - if you are a Producer, never ever get married in England. If you a Freeloader, insist on a charming English Country marriage.

Not exactly being recommended by the State is it?

The History of Marriage

Some background reading courtesy of the LDP site on Personal Choice,

The oldest evidence of wedding ceremonies date from about 2,300 BC in Mesopotamia. By 2000 BC the concept of committed partnership had spread to the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans.

Contrary to popular belief, the origins of marriage are neither religious nor related to the raising of children. Anthropologists theorize that most primitive marriages were polygamous and had little to do with love, monogamy or religion. Rather, they were a means to expand the land or other assets of a clan, either through the receipt of a dowry or the merger of two clans' assets.

With ownership of property by individuals rather than clans, marriage also became the principal means of ensuring the legitimacy of heirs to whom the property could be transferred. Through marriage a woman became a man's property and her reproduction controlled.

Religious guidelines around marriage were first used as a means of preventing different religious groups from losing wealthy followers by restricting them from marrying into other religions.

As the Church gained power, a priest's blessing became required. By the 8th century, the church used marriage as a ceremony to confer heavenly grace while consolidating earthly power. Only in 1563, at the Council of Trent, was marriage promoted as a holy sacrament.

In Western Europe it was not until the Middle Ages that marriage in churches began to occur. However, church marriages were not the norm until the 17th century and then only for the nobility. Marriage was also used as a tool to unite different royal families' bloodlines, creating alliances that were instrumental in enabling the European monarchies to colonize much of the rest of the world.

A new ideology of marriage arose in industrial countries in the 1800s. Longer life spans, working out of the home, urban living and ideals of equality allowed young couples to experience a period of marriage without young children. This encouraged new criteria for successful marriages: romance, companionship, emotional satisfaction and compatibility.

The role of the government in marriage was negligible until it took on the role of maintaining a register of marriages, a function previously performed mostly by churches. Births and deaths were similarly recorded. In the nineteenth century this began to take on a regulatory aspect. For example, laws that set the minimum age for marriage, stipulated parental consent in certain cases and prohibited bigamy and the marriage of siblings were introduced.

In the twentieth century the government's role in marriage increased dramatically with legislation to manage the ending of marriages, particularly relating to custody of children and division of property.

The New 7 Wonders of the World

2007-06-18T02:00:00.000+10:00

Voting is nearly closed on a massive poll (50 million votes already cast) to determine the new Seven Wonders of the World.

Currently leading the charge are;

The Great Wall of China

The Coliseum at Rome

Machu Picchu

Greece's Acropolis

Mexico's Chichen Itza Pyramid

The Eiffel Tower

Easter Island

Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer

The Taj Mahal
Jordan's Petra.

You can vote here. There's 21 days to go.

Via Not PC

Holiday Reading

2007-06-16T09:00:00.000+10:00

A 24 hour flight back to the Mother Country looms.

To while (is that how you spell it?) away the hours, I shall be picking up a copy of 'The Islamist' by Ed Husain at the airport, an autobiographical account of the author's journey from radical Islamist to subsequent rejection of Islam.

The indefatigable Melanie Philipps has this to say,

“‘The Islamist’ should be sent to every politician at Westminster, put on the desk of every counter-intelligence officer and thrust under the supercilious nose of every journalist who maunders on about ‘Islamophobia’.”

More interestingly, the leading left-wing Asian ('we have an Asian tinge to our stories') blog in the UK, Pickled Politics, has this to say,

Whilst it should be remembered that this is a personal account of the author’s experiences and as such treated with a degree of caution, it is a book worth reading. My own view having read this book is that ignorance coupled with well-intentioned multiculturalism have brought about a situation where some pretty unpleasant groups are allowed to flourish unchecked in ways that would be unthinkable if it were far-right organisations as opposed to Islamist groups.

The unofficial segregation of communities has helped create at atmosphere of mutual suspicion which is bound to lead to violence in some individuals, whether in the form of gang fights or terrorism. That Tony Blair can advocate more faith schools in the current climate beggars belief.

Any other holiday reading suggestions?

Abolish The Minimum Wage

2007-06-15T11:30:00.000+10:00

'Everyone should be guaranteed the right to be paid a decent wage for an honest day's work.'

'Advocates of abolishing the minimum wage are stooges for Big Corp Inc.'

'If there is no minimum wage, greedy employers will be able to exploit desperate workers.'

These three arguments are widely held beliefs by the electorate. Opinion polls show overwelming support in favour of minimum wages and their reasoning sounds so fair and just.

They aren't and the public is wrong.

Here's why.

The minimum wage increases unemployment amongst the poorest section of society. Forbidden to work in the official economy, people whose skill levels command fewer rewards turn instead to unrecorded, cash income. They forgo all pension benefits and the protection of laws governing overtime, sick pay or other working conditions. Worse, they become dependent on dignity-destroying welfare for survival.

A far better solution is to abolish taxes for the lowest paid.

Rafe Champion at Catallaxy points to a paper published by the National Recovery Administration under President Roosevelt (no right wing think-tank, they) highlighting the damage done to black Americans during the 1940s following the introduction in 1933 by FDR of the minimum wage.

The report estimates that over 500,000 black Americans lost their jobs, all from the poorest section of society.

First, two facts.

1. Market wages are roughly equal to discounted marginal labor productivity.

2. Productivity varies from one worker to the next.

Hence, when minimum wages rise, employers are forced to fire their lowest-productivity workers.

An exhaustive study of the effects of minimum wages by David Neumark and William Wascher, published in 2004 by the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, calculated consistent employment losses among 19 to 24-year-olds in 17 industrialized countries. Many studies peg the losses at between 1-3% for every 10% increase in the minimum wage.

Leading minimum wage apologist, law professor, Ellen Dannin, urges her supporters to

"stand your ground, even if you have never taken an economics course"

This absurd position was debunked years ago by Murray Rothbard,

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

Logic and reason are on the side of those who propose abolition of the minimum wage. Emotion and well-meaning compassion are against us. Tough opponents for sure, but for the sake of the poorest members of society, essential to beat.