Adam Smith Institute

Last week on Tuesday evening a mother of two was threatened with violence during a burglary, whilst her husband was away at work. This had happened before in the area, and not just on one separate occasion but on a total of 6 (5 of which happened to colleagues of the mother's husband). The organization which they work for is now looking into arranging their own private security service to guard the property of their employees when they are away. All of this raises a simple question: where were the police?

It is not hard to imagine that the police force in question may have gone out on strike early, but in fact they hadn't. They were doing exactly what every other police force in the UK does, reacting to crime, rather than preventing it. The police force in Britain today does little of what we would demand of them. This modern force, that we allegedly have at our disposal, has become not much more than a political puppet shackled by the minutiae of centralized bureaucracy. This is the main reason why they failed to piece together the obvious pattern emerging in the case of the above burglaries.

The police themselves are culpable of nothing less than a simple dereliction of their basic duty: to protect the public. We want them to patrol our communities and prosecute successfully those that commit crimes. The public of Britain would hardly be in the wrong if they demanded that the police, should they strike, stay out. If other organizations are employing private security services due to the shortcomings of the state run offerings, then let competition burst forth. We could then have communities policed as they demanded and not for some politicians folly, and a reduction in the council tax bill as a service is privatized.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the mother and father in question were Alex Curran and Steven Gerrard.

But, but, what are we going to tell the children? That Santa has been banged up for multiple violations of the law?

Not one of the legal profession's finest hours : the use of blogs to get cases from the relatives of accident victims. Inventive, certainly, but not perhaps something to be all that proud of.

(Sweary alert) Yes, there are those in the environmental movement who really do think this way . 

Some photos: bring on the global warming, please , and just how vicious is that Russian bear ?  

Why environmentalism is even better than Marxism! 

An amusing story of blogs and copyright. Start here then here . And just for good measure, the Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics .

And finally , what the police actually spend their time doing. 

There is an interesting article in The Economist this week, which states "The Conservatives are doing well, but not well enough." That's probably a fair assessment.

The point is that despite the government's recent woes, and the sustained poll lead they have produced for Cameron's opposition, the Tories have not managed to really pull away from Labour. As The Economist notes, in 1995 Labour were scoring 60 percent, more than 30 percent ahead of the Tories. By contrast, Cameron's Conservatives are only averaging a ten-point lead, with 41 percent to Labour's 31. Of course, that is their best lead since 1992 and it represents a truly remarkable turn around from just a few months ago. But thanks to the structural unfairness of the British electoral system (the Conservatives need many more votes than Labour to win the same number of parliamentary seats) it is not yet enough to be sure of victory.

The main question for the Tories is, what can they do to propel themselves further ahead? The Economist points to two issues. The first is personnel - the shadow cabinet as a whole needs to perform better. Too many of them are completely unknown to the wider public, and do not seem to be particularly proactive. This is foolish: the Conservatives cannot simply hope for the government to lose the next election, they will have to work tirelessly to win it.

The second issue is policy. The problem is not, as is often suggested, that there isn't enough of it, or that it isn't detailed or radical enough. In fact, Cameron's policy commissions have provided him with a wealth of promising ideas, particularly on education and welfare reform (which may prove to be the most important challenges facing the next government). But what the Conservatives have not yet developed is an overarching theme or narrative that holds everything together and makes people understand just what a Tory government will be all about.

Ultimately, people vote for a vision, not for a handful of good policies. The challenge that remains for the Conservatives is making their vision the most attractive one on the market.

How do you ostracise 30 million people? One simple way is to explain that, "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom... freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." This is what Mitt Romney fundamentally did when he uttered those lines in his speech on the presidency and its relationship to belief. The Economist this week draws attention to the fact that there is a forgotten mass of people within the US who's votes are hardly ever courted.

Currently around 10 percent of Americans class themselves as being agnostic or atheist, a figure that has doubled in ten years. Unfortunately for them though they are a disparate group, and they are increasingly being forgotten. Especially as politicians are becoming more than happy to clothe themselves in religiosity as a way of proving that they are trustworthy and honest. (Even though the innumerable scandals prove that many are ordinary fallible human beings.)

Those who have no religious belief need to join together and begin to ask tough questions of those seeking election to office. There is a rightful place in the political arena for them, especially as a voice against those who seek to hold back scientific advances in the name of religion.

Mitt Romney et al. need to realise, as George Bush did, that even people without faith are Americans and that they, and their views, need to be incorporated into campaigns and politics. Religious belief, or lack of it, should never be a reason for exclusion from the political process. Having said that, we are surely light years away from ever seeing an unbelieving president.

We don't always make fun of Polly Toynbee around here but this is too good to not mention: the lump of indignation fallacy . This is good too .

On iron fertilisation of the oceans as a way of sequestering CO2: might we in fact already have done the experiment? The iron contained in coal burnt by all those ships a century ago?

Perhaps adapatation to a low carbon economy won't be all that difficult (given enough time)?  

Iain Dale's decided to, umm, well, you've got to admit it's a pretty neat idea , don't you? 

The Victorian principles of policing :  Netsmith didn't recognise any of them in the modern forces but perhaps you can do better?

So just how well paid are public sector chief executives? As compared with private sector ones ? 

And finally, those who speak Spanish might like to go here , those who don't, read this . 

Venezuelan Interior Minister Pedro Carreno was momentarily at a loss for words when a journalist interrupted his speech and asked if it was not contradictory to criticize capitalism while wearing Gucci shoes and a tie made by Parisian luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton.

Snigger. 

Not long ago Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star, was the great hope of many US Republicans, who excitedly compared him to Ronald Reagan and willed him to run for president. But since announcing his candidacy, Thompson's campaign has been lacklustre at best. Yet the criticism most often levelled at Thompson – that he is just a TV personality – is unfair.

If anything, his policy platform and his commitment to small government principles are stronger than his competitors', while it is his media skills that have proved surprisingly disappointing.

His tax plan illustrates this perfectly. Having announced the policy on Fox News, he didn't make a single public appearance for three days and his plan sank without trace, which is a great shame, since it is extremely promising and would undoubtedly appeal to Republican voters if only they knew about it. Thompson would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts (which have done much to keep the US economy afloat) and reduce corporation tax from 35 to 27 percent – a vital move for America's global competitiveness. The death tax would be abolished, as would the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was meant to hit the rich but now catches countless middle-income Americans in its net.

Best of all, Thompson proposes a new, alternative income tax code, which people could choose to opt into. Instead of the complexities of the existing system, people could choose a simple $15,000 personal allowance, paying 10 percent on their next $35,000, and 25 percent on everything over $50,000.

Eventually, I suspect most people would opt for this simpler tax code, and the US would have shifted to a simpler, flatter tax system without ever fighting major political battles over the removal of popular complexities. It's a clever policy, and one that could work this side of the Atlantic too.

It goes to show: Fred Thompson has plenty of potential. He just needs to raise his game before it's too late.

Kimberly Strassel, in the Wall Street Journal, and Quin Hillyer, in the American Spectator, have good pieces on Thompson here and here.

Peter, who was in a lot of pain, called his doctor's office for an appointment.
"I'm sorry," said the receptionist, "but we can't fit you in for at least two weeks."
"Two weeks!" the man replied. "But I could be dead by then."
The receptionist replied, "No problem, sir. If your wife calls the surgery we can cancel the appointment." 

Police are said to be 'puzzled' that John Darwin's sons, Anthony and Mark, have decided to take legal advice and speak to them only through a lawyer. It is 'very strange' said a police spokesman.

Strange? You must be joking. It's perfectly sensible.

John Darwin went missing a few years back after supposedly taking his canoe on the sea in North-East England. His sudden re-appearance this month led to his (and his wife's) arrest on the suspicion that his disappearance was in fact a deliberate attempt to escape his debts. Police want to interview the sons as possible witnesses.

Well, either they knew about it, or they didn't. Either way, if I was them, I'd do the same and call the lawyers. I was brought up to trust the police as my friend. The Yorkshire Ripper enquiry - where information was kept on file cards rather then computers, and the police interviewed the guilty man nine times without figuring he had anything to hide - made me realize they were incompetent. More recently, their arresting folk on terrorist charges for cycling on a footpath or shouting at the Home Secretary made me realize they couldn't be trusted with the huge power politicians had voted them. And their willingness to charge someone with kidnapping who had made a citizen's arrest of a window-smashing thug made me realize that they were only interested in getting easy convictions so that they could meet their Home Office targets.

'Ask a policeman' I was taught. Now I wouldn't even ask them how to cross the road, never mind give them my name and address. Their brand has been polluted. Pity - it's not their fault. It's the rotten public-sector system they work under, and the political targets they have to work to. Sad.

Only someone entirely a cynic, hatefully so, could believe that this story from 1907 has anything at all to do with the expansion of the public payroll over the past decade.

Similarly, we would have to be silly to think that there are such examples of rent-seeking here in the UK. 

If we are indeed to do anything about climate change then it's clear that a carbon tax provides the fewest opportunities for such rent-seeking. 

Originally these tariffs were simply rent seeking. But now that 99% of shoes bought in the US are imported, they don't even cover that function, they're simply a particularly nasty regressive tax.

Staying with the US tax system, has it become more or less progressive in recent years do you think? Given that average tax rates for the poorer groups have fallen further than those for the richer, perhaps it has become more progressive? 

Coming soon to an internet near you. The confiscation of any equipment being used to breach copyright. So that's Google's servers running Blogger for chop then, eh?

And finally , in the comments at Guido's, Stanislav, a young polish plumber. Not PC, foul language and very, very funny.

The Sutton Trust has just released a report on the way in which social mobility has been flatlining since 1970. All of the newspapers seem to be taking the same line (with varying degres of stridency, I agree) which is that this shows how ossified society is and isn't it all an outrage, a crying shame. The FT, The Indy, Times, Telegraph. Oddly, it's the Guardian which gives the best report:

The brightest children in Britain's poorest homes are outperformed by the least gifted children from wealthy homes by the age of seven, according to research. It concludes that social class is still the biggest predictor of school achievement, the likelihood of getting a degree and even a child's behaviour, suggesting that the advantages of being born in a privileged home have not changed in 30 years.

I'm entirely willing to believe that coming from a privileged home does indeed increase your chances of succeeding via the education system: given the manifest deficiencies of that system, that anyone without a strong home and family background gets anything at all out of it surprises me.

What I'm much less sure about is that this is in fact a good proxy for social mobility: for a start, we're not actually interested in social mobility at all, we're interested in economic mobility and income and class have never been closely linked in England. The report does acknowledge this in a way:

A key assumption is that, as demonstrated by previous studies, earlier educational and behaviourial outcomes for children are a good (and reasonably constant) predictor of their future earnings as adults.

Still that won't worry anyone, will it? "Research" has shown that the UK lags the civilised world in social mobility and that'll be good for a few thousand jeremiads. Just a pity that what the research does show is that the £77 billion a year we spend on the education system isn't being well spent, but then we knew that, didn't we?

A man arrives at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asks, "Religion?"
The man says, "Methodist"
St. Peter looks down his list, and says, "Go to room twenty-eight, but be very quiet as you pass room eight."
Another man arrives at the gates of heaven. "Religion?"
"Baptist"
"Go to room eighteen, but be very quiet as you pass room eight."
A third man arrives at the gates. "Religion?"
"Jewish"
"Go to room eleven, but be very quiet as you pass room eight."
The man replies, "I can understand there being different rooms for different religions, but why must I be quiet when I pass room eight?"
St Peter replies, "The Jehovah's Witnesses are in room eight, and they think they're the only ones here."

The Prime Minister still likes to crow over making the Bank of England independent when he was chancellor. He is keen to take credit for every success, but when the fan gets clogged his McCavity alter ego is assumed. In any case, recent occurrences have shown the Bank's independence to be purely cosmetic: they are culpable when inflation targets are missed, but when they try to avoid moral hazard by not bailing out Northern Rock, the Treasury takes over.

What the Northern Rock debacle has illustrated is the weakness of Brown's tripartite system of financial regulation (divide and rule) where the boundaries are blurred and the Treasury maintains close control. This kind of regulation is a feature of the government's approach to everything from the NHS to quangos – and it doesn't work. Everyone who is anyone in the City knew Northern Rock was in trouble months before it collapsed through the most normal of banking failures: borrowing short and lending long. Why did the situation get so out of hand?

Another failing was highlighted by the Bank of England's decision not to inject liquidity into the markets over the summer, as the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve chose to. As James Harding put it in The Times:

Was this because it was not sufficiently in touch with the financial markets? Was it because the Financial Services Authority knew what was needed but, under Gordon Brown’s model of tripartite regulation, did not have the authority to make it happen? Was it because the Bank is mandated to meet inflation targets but, unlike the Fed, does not have an equal responsibility for nurturing growth?

I'm pleased to see that Ross Clark's witty exposee of the ridiculous rules and regulations we live by – How to Label a Goat – has gone into a well-deserved second edition printing.

Buy it here, from the ASI bookshop.

On a more worthy front, though, this week I'm recommending William Wilberforce, the new biography of the great anti-slavery campaigner, written by former Conservative leader (and fellow Yorkshireman) William Hague MP. It documents well the parliamentary tribulations he had to go to, which of course the author understands, being in the business himself. Wilberforce's campaign really was the work of a lifetime.

Click here to order it. 

Yes, I was rather surprised , someone sensible praising a Johann Hari article. Fortunately, reconsideration and thus good sense prevails in the comments.

Wat Tyler with another explanation of why we don't want Government spending our money. This time it's the Thames Gateway plans, but the reason is the same, they're simply not very good at getting anything for the spending. 

More tax news from the US : it's a surprisingly progressive tax system they have, much more so than many assume.

Perhaps a little Panglossian but war is set to be eradicated by liberal capitalism? 

Greg Mankiw laid out what he sees as the areas of disagreement between left and right in economics. Here's the Austrian counter . 

Dan Hannan and EU Referendum on the events in the European Parliament yesterday. At least one person's private film of the episode was attempted to be confiscated: apparently dissention cannot be shown publically.

And finally , this is a very British indeed manner of showing displeasure with Johnny Foreigner.