Brown and Labour: Not adding up

4191

labour-adding-not-adding-up

Gordon Brown, and the Labour Party have some big problems coming their way in the coming elections. Many within Labour have already given up on the next election and some are even calling for Brown to resign for the sake of the Party. Both the Prime Minister and his Party are sinking further in popularity, but don’t seem to be doing much about it.

Brown has tried to rally support through international efforts such as the G20 meetings, but this has been greatly frustrated with the latest meeting of the U.N. and rumors of President Obama’s snubbing of the Prime Minister. Although U.S. President Obama may not have intentionally snubbed Gordon Brown, the media coverage did not help him, nor did the Prime Minister himself in responding to the allegations at all. Brown’s futile attempts to meet with Obama looked more like an unpopular adolescent during middle school, trying to appear ‘cool’ by being seen with the ‘in group’.

The problem that Brown faces is that he is not seen as someone the people can trust. The latest polls from the Guardian show that less than 14% of the population feels that the Labour Party is honest and upfront about the economy. Brown himself is sporting a remarkably low 26% approval rating. The Party just doesn’t seem to be able to add or subtract; if £5 goes in £20 can’t come out. Individuals are expected to balance their own budgets and they have a right to expect their government to do the same. Cries to either decrease spending or even to increase taxes have fallen on deaf ears within the governing party, and it appears Brown may be more concerned about building his own popularity abroad than mending fences at home.

Piling on the guilt

4189

piling-on-the-guilt

Across the steaming bitumen the tyres' tread whispered. Atop this charging mechanised steed sits the lumpen mass of a middle-aged, doe eyed, lycra clad enviro-warrior. Safely cocooned within their bubble of immunity they fly through red lights, relentlessly ignore no entry signs and attempt to run down the slow and stupid on pavements. A vision of the not to distant future if government proposals are to be believed. Life on the streets will be subject to a cycling blitzkrieg; the non-cyclists amongst us will be forced to flee or dive into the nearest government building for sanctuary.

Following on from the pronouncement on cyclists being permitted to ignore no entry signs, comes this consideration: a plan to blame all drivers in accidents with cyclists. Why do we wish to contemplate such a policy? Because of 'climate change'. If we don't take up the mantra that, 'two wheels good, four wheels bad' then we shall all suffer the ill effects of the supposed harmful warming planet.

This idea is counter to the car scrappage scheme. This encourages people to drive, through government sponsored car purchasing. (Mainly introduced at the behest of the influential UK car manufacturers). If they'd have thought it through properly they could have nationalized bicycle production in the UK and regaled us with the factory output figures on an annual/monthly/weekly or even daily basis. These government designed bicycles could then have been foisted upon us, 'for free'. This announcement is yet another clear indictment of a government that doesn't know it's saddle from it's disc brake.

Singing the blues

4186

singing-the-blues

"Oh, no, not that song. I can't stand that song."

Tractor production in the Soviet Union

4195

tractor-production-in-soviet-union

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has just published a 48-page strategy document called Safeguarding our Soils. The driving concern behind the document, as Hilary Benn explains, is that: “good quality soils are essential to achieve Defra’s goals of a thriving farming sector and a sustainable, healthy food supply".

The government plans to sort things out by “improving our evidence base, providing information and guidance to those who are actively managing our soils, and using regulation and incentives". Rarely will you find a worse example of governmental idiocy, arrogance, meddling and incompetence.

It is idiotic because farmers do not need regulation and incentives to encourage them to look after their soil. They have a pretty good reason to do so already – because they have to grow stuff in it.

It is arrogant because the government feign to know more about soil than farmers themselves. Farmers are in the best position to determine the optimal usage of their land, bearing in mind the costs and benefits of different strategies in particular circumstances. If further research is needed, then the farmers who stand to benefit will fund it.

It is meddlesome because the government have no right to tell landowners what to do with their land. If I want to dig up all the fertile, healthy soil in my field and replace it with salty, lifeless dust then that’s my business alone.

And it is incompetent because the farming regulations are an insanely complicated bureaucratic muddle. This new strategy comes on top of the EU Thematic Strategy on Soil Protection, CAP cross compliance, Environmental Stewardship, the England Catchment Sensitive Farming Delivery Initiative and the new Code of Good Agricultural Practice.

Central planning of food production failed in Soviet Russia, it failed in Maoist China and it fails today in Stalinist North Korea. The best thing the government can do to safeguard our soil is to do nothing at all, and in the words of Arthur Young, let “the magic of property turn sand to gold".

The class of '97

4192

the-class-of-97

Back in 1997 many felt the country was on the up, over the past 12 years of New Labour many things have certainly gone in that direction. Our debt levels have climbed from £357bn to £613bn, government expenditure has rocketed from £318.3bn to £631.3bn. There is though one area we can excuse the sarcasm, and that is with GDP which has risen from £815.9bn to £1.439tr (or £497.6bn to £844.2bn excluding government expenditure). How much of that GDP growth is natural or down to the governments pro- active business attitude over the past three administrations is difficult to measure. Back in 1997 if Mystic Meg had gazed into her lottery crystal ball and announced a 101% rise in government spending and a 72% rise in the level of debt would we have sought to constrain their future prolificacy somehow?

It seems that when you appropriate efficient sources of wealth creation and term it as 'investment' few people mind. After all the thieves are promising that the imposed cost will be compensated by the supply of 'world class' services in return. And when these services don't arrive the promise is that more needs to be taken to ensure their delivery. This ends with the word 'cut' being made to sound evil. Yet it would be nothing more than justified compensation for the failure of the past 12 years. Cutting government spending on public services by 50% over the next 12 years will have the same affect as increasing it by 101%: it will be negligible and hardly noticed.

The debt and expenditure has only succeeded in inhibiting progress. Where would this country be now if the government had spent the past 12 years living within their means, not increasing taxation, leaving us to live our lives? The next government should strive to cut taxes and rein in spending, it's the only way to increase government revenues and begin to clear the debt without retarding the populace any more.

These won't be cuts to public spending. They will be compensation payments to the taxpayer for the lies, ineptitude and waste of the New Labour years.

Free to die

4190

free-to-die

On Wednesday Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions, released new guidelines to be used in consideration of cases of assisted suicide. Although they bring no change in the Suicide Act of 1961, they provide a much clearer framework for the likelihood of a prosecution arising from an act of euthanasia. For the most part the guidelines are sensible, measured and sensitive, suggesting that those assisting suicide are unlikely to face prosecution if who they are helping conveyed a “clear, settled and informed wish" to die.

There seems little reason such guidelines could not and should not be incorporated into existing law. As humans, one of the most important rights we feel we possess is that of our right to life. A second is our right to liberty – the freedom to make our own choices, free from the coercion of others. Such important entitlements should not be snatched away from us when we become sick or dependent on others; they should be ours in matters of death just as they are in life. If an individual alone has the ownership of their life, than it is logical that – provided they are in a state to do so – they also have the right to decide when that life should end. And if due to physical weakness a person is unable to commit suicide, than another should be able to assist them in ending their life – not because the assister stands to gain from the act, but because they are doing it on behalf of and in the sole interest of one they care deeply about. As the DPP has signalled, acting with compassion for someone you love is not an action that should be criminalized.

If legalizing assisted suicide causes a rise in the deaths of the terminally ill or incurable, it is simply because those who no longer wished to live are able to end their lives without the worry and guilt of their loved ones being prosecuted for their ‘crime’. Human beings are unique creatures; while some may wish to end their suffering prematurely, many will remain determined to live out the whole of their natural life. Adjusting the law to provide choice will not force the sick to die. People that pressurize and coerce the ill into committing suicide or take advantage of diminished mental capacity have not committed suicide; they wrongly taken another’s life and should be punished for it.

The customer is king

4184

the-customer-is-king

We come top of the National Student Survey because we charge full fees. Full fees not only allow us to fund teaching properly but they also ensure that we treat the students – not the Government – as our clients.

– Terence Kealey 'The league table that has big hitters at the bottom' The Independent

Labour disarray

4196

labour-disarray

The general disarray of the Labour Party continues to amuse those of us on the fringes of politics. Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke MP publicly stated that he believed more than half the Cabinet thought Gordon Brown should go, and that any other party would have eased him out already. Clarke is probably right: Labour's complicated and protracted leadership election procedure is not one that any MP would willingly drag the party through. It's a recipe for looking torn with divisions over a long period. And there's an election coming up, after all.

The other bad news is polling evidence from Populus shows that Labour faces a landslide in London, its 7 point lead having deteriorated into a 12 point deficit. If that 9.5% swing worked uniformly across the capital, Brown's team would lose 17 of their 44 seats. High profile MPs like Jon Cruddas, with a 7,605 majority, would be gone. And the Conservatives are even ahead in parts of the North of England – that's how far Labour's land has slipped.

And it's quite possible that the landslide will get even bigger. Polling has now become so reliable that everyone has a pretty good idea of who's going to win an election long before it's even called. And that feeds on itself. It's like the 'must have' Christmas toy – kids with cred want a Bizzi-Blaster, so the Bizzi-Blaster gets reported as this year's 'must have', whereupon more kids think it must be really cool and want one too. Shops sell out of Bizzi-Blasters, which just adds to the parents' panic that they need to move fast. Of this are bubbles made (Paul Ormerod is good on this).

Something of the same now happens in elections. In 1997 everyone knew Labour was going to win because they seemed united, polished, slick, and normal – unlike the Tories in every sense. And who wants to vote for the losing side? Tory voters deserted to Labour, or stayed at home. It's beginning to look the same in reverse for 2010. Who will want to vote for the slow-motion train crash that is Gordon Brown's government? Populus asked me what I thought the outcome of the next election would be (they flatteringly have me down as an 'opinion former', so how can I resist?) I thought, and said 'Tory Landslide'. Perhaps, in this world of instant polls and 24hr news, landslides are how elections are going to work from now on.

Pondering on Schumpeter

4182

pondering-on-schumpeter

I've been brushing up by Schumpeter as part of my research on other subjects, and I have been interested to re-discover his views on the future of capitalism. Like Marx, he thought it didn't have much of a future, but for quite different reasons.

Marx thought it would end in giant, exploitative monopolies and then revolution. Schumpeter, by contrast, thought capitalism would drift into a sort of corporatism, where businesses went along with, and perhaps unwittingly promoted, values that were hostile to capitalism itself. (Think about all the cash that big business spends on sponsoring left-wing think-tanks, or sponsoring university chairs for academics who don't have an ounce of feeling for free markets.) So, he thought, the intellectual tide would turn against capitalism, and soggy socialist ideas would rise. People would vote for parties that promised higher welfare spending than greater competition and market freedom. More widespread state-funded education would fuel people's resentment that the market was under-rewarding them (think of all those angry poets and political thinkers). And there would be more and more calls to 'improve' or 'restrain' business with more and more regulation. So capitalism simply finds the life being drained out of it.

Sound familiar? I would say that this has already happened.

3 years and 9 months for Ramsay Scott

4181

3-years-and-9-months-for-ramsay-scott

Take pity on Ramsay Scott, a 21 year-old man sentenced on Wednesday to 3 years and 9 months in prison for firearms possession. The student, who has been diagnosed as suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome or a schizoid personality disorder, had bought £20,000 worth of gun components on the internet, and amassed a collection including pistols, sub-machine gun parts and ammunition.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Scott had ever harmed anyone else with these weapons, nor that he had any intention of doing so. As Lord Uist remarked to the High Court in Edinburgh on sentencing him:

It is probably impossible to say what, if anything, you would have done with the weapons had the police not intervened.

He explained that Scott was guilty not because he had actually hurt someone else, but because:

There must have been at least the possibility that you would have used them to cause injury to others.

The law that supports this judgment is grossly unfair in three respects.

Firstly, no free society should lock up its citizens unless it can prove that they have harmed, or intend to harm, others. It is not enough for politicians and judges to talk about the ‘danger of guns’ or the ‘good of society’; they must justify making a free individual, Ramsay Scott, a man who has harmed no one, into a captive of the state for almost four years. If this principle is lost, then many of our freedoms go with it.

Secondly, if the government is going to lock up people for owning harmful objects, it should arrest anyone who has a carving knife, a petrol can or a pair of fists. It is not enough to argue that guns are ‘weapons’ or ‘designed to kill’: the evidence suggests that to Scott they were nothing more than a hobby; they were no more a weapon than his cricket bat.

Thirdly, the punishment is far severer than those handed down to terrible men who have actually harmed others. On the same day as Scott received his sentence, an unnamed 15-year old boy was sentenced to two years by Sheffield Crown Court after punching a man and killing him for not giving him a cigarette, while in Northern Ireland, Ciaran McFall was jailed for three years and 6 months by Antrim Crown Court for sexually assaulting a 13-year old girl.

The Firearms Act should be repealed.