Free education

2263

free-education

It is rare that one can agree with any views of the modern trade union movement. So when they talk a semblance of sense it is worth mentioning. This rare concurrence of views comes in the teaching union's response to news that schools in England are to be held to account on a wide range of measures of pupil 'well-being'.

Schools will have to provide information on how well they promote healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle, how well they give good guidance on sex and relationships and discourage smoking, alcohol consumption and drug use. This will be taken in the form of surveys of parent and pupil opinion.

Children's minister Baroness Delyth Morgan said: "School-level indicators will help schools to assess how well they are promoting the well-being of their pupils. They will build on data about pupils' attainment and progress, so that wider aspects of children's lives can be benchmarked nationally."

Head of education at the NUT, John Bangs, rightly responded saying: "The danger is we get into a mechanistic evaluation but with highly subjective information on pupils' perceptions"; going on to call the plans "the height of absurdity - the logical end of an absurd evaluation structure." Quite right, but let's not forget that the teaching unions are just trying to cover their teacher’s backs, their primary concern is not for pupils and parents.

More centralization, more standardization and more testing have not rescued (nor ever will) state run education. The much-publicized Conservative policy to 'free' education goes some of the way, but in truth the poisonous ties politics holds over education will need to be further cut. And it is not enough to devolve power to local politicians as some demand; freedom requires that parents are free to set up and send their children to schools completely outside of the state system, with no interference from the politicians.

Blog Review 746

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blog-review-746

Not everything we're being told about the credit markets freezing up happens to be quite true. Certainly, the commercial paper market still seems to exist.

On the other hand, if letters of credit become hard to get then we might as well reinstate the Corn Laws.

Worth remembering for those insisting upon "regulation". It's often a spur to those who would do an end run around said regulation. No, really, it is.

Instead of a bail out how about a bail in? Those currently making a mint from the taxpayers share the pain say?

The vagaries of tax law and corporate structure mean that US inequality of income may well be not quite what people think it is.

How much you tax the rich isn't really the same as how much you help the poor.

And finally, essentially English.

In thrall to some long dead economist

2269

in-thrall-to-some-long-dead-economist

As Keynes suggested, most practical men are indeed in thrall to the ideas of some long dead economist and current events are proving him nearly correct. For the economist all are currently looking to is Milton Friedman. The scramble is to stop the financial system imploding and the reason why we want to do that is laid out in this republished chapter of one of his academic works. It wasn't the collapse of Wall Street in 1929 that led to the Great Depression, it was the collapse of the banking system in 1931 and 2 that did. That collapsing financial system led to a credit crunch in the real economy, a fall in the money supply and so the deflation that followed.

If you look around at a hard core monetarist like Tim Congdon, or a more Keynsian Democrat like Brad DeLong, or perhaps here, or half the Guardian (that half not calling for the end of capitalism) all are saying very much the same thing. Either we get the banks back on their feet and lending to each other again or we cut interest rates strongly or we start to suffer from deflation. The reasoning being that all are working from Friedman's script: that just as inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, so is deflation.

It has to be said that there's something amusing about those Guardianistas and the cries for immediate sweeping cuts in interest rates. They're all calling this the end of neoliberalism and yet they're following the advice that would have been given by the economist they anathematise as the High Priest of that very creed. Following indeed perhaps his most contentious point, that the Depression wasn't caused by a lack of demand and thus wasn't solved by Keynes and his measures.

In fact, what the proposed solutions all seem to be saying is that we are all monetarists now.

Plane thinking

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plane-thinking

The decision to allow the expansion of Stansted and London City Airports makes good economic sense in the current climate. Granted, there will be some costs, mainly environmental, but these will be outweighed by the benefits on a much greater scale. It would have been foolish to stop this expansion.

The current overcrowding and delays at airports acts as an indication that they are inefficient and need improving. The market should be left to satisfy this consumer demand.

The expansion of the airports will facilitate economic growth (or at least help slow the decline of growth) by increasing the UK’s international competitiveness. Protestors are underestimating the significance of local multiplier effects from the expansions. With forecasts of large unemployment growth in the next two years, allowing airports to expand to meet demand is one thing that would would create sustainable jobs in the long term, and may also local businesses will benefit.

There is no ideal solution to this dilemma but the costs and benefits of this project are clear. If the local area is already blighted by noise and air pollution then there will be diminishing marginal costs to it from an expansion. Over time the market should enable the enterprise of greener and cleaner flight technologies to satisfy societies needs.

Drinkers unite!

2264

drinkers-unite

Here's a guest blog from our friends at The Drinker's Alliance:

So the latest edict from politicians in London and Edinburgh is that they should decide how much alcohol should cost to try to control how much we all drink.  Despite all the legislation already out there to deal with shops that sell to the underage, or bars and clubs that contribute to anti-social behaviour, politicians seem to think that writing even more laws that punish everyone is the solution.
 
Like so many Government-led debates, the average punter who enjoys a pint or a bottle of wine with friends, continues to be ignored.
The Drinkers Alliance, is a new platform recently launched to give everyone a chance to make their views heard on the debate on alcohol. 
While opinion polls show that the public oppose higher taxes and support action to deal with problem drinking, politicians in London and Edinburgh are proposing measures that will punish everyone.  And all this when the Government’s own statistics show alcohol consumption is actually going down!  Some of the ideas currently being debated are:

• Increasing the age of sale of alcohol in shops from 18 to 21
• Introducing a minimum price for alcohol
• Restricting where alcohol can be positioned within shops
• Introducing separate check-out queues for alcohol
• Banning under 18s from serving alcohol at all in shops

These won’t make any difference to problem drinkers and will just be a massive hassle for everyone else.  And they won’t do anything to actually enforce the laws we have or try to teach young people about the dangers of alcohol.

The Drinker's Alliance encourages ordinary people to get involved in the public debate on alcohol by providing tools to make their voices heard to politicians and the media. It’s really easy to sign up and you’ll be kept up to date on the campaign with regular emails and blogs. The Drinker's Alliance is here to give you a voice in the debate so sign up now and take a few minutes to invite your friends.

Make sure your voice is heard and don’t let the politicians ignore the ordinary drinker.
 

Quote of the week

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quote-of-the-week

Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

Ludwig von Mises

Blog Review 745

2268

blog-review-745

There is evidence that regulation was indeed resonsible for this mortgage mess: or at least, the response to the regulation, the regulatory arbitrage.

It would appear that at least one Minister has said in the past that depositors in Icelandic banks would indeed be covered.

A reading list to help you understand current events. Netsmith strongly supports the first one.

This could be a vaulable addition to websites for the coming week.

Something a little different, why can't the British be more like the French?

Something for the weekend. On the new discoveries about the origins of HIV.

And finally, yes, there are jokes to be made.

Banning Marmite

2260

banning-marmite

Of course, we must do anything at all to protect the children, even ban things. Yes, ban Marmite:

After being served at a school's breakfast club, the yeast extract has been removed from the menu for being too salty - and parents are blaming 'Nanny State politicians'.

Well, no, it isn't Nanny State politicians actually. We'd really all be rather in favour of their banning aconite or strychnine from the school menu. The problem is idiocy:

The food industry's Guideline Daily Amount of salt for a child aged five to ten is 4g. A child's serving of Marmite is 2g, providing 0.25g of salt, or six per cent of a child's recommended intake.

As Paracelsus tried to drum into us all those years ago, it is the dose which is the poison. The idiocy doesn't stop here of course. Back awhile there were rules drawn up for what may not be advertised to children on the grounds that some foods are harmful to them. Yes, Marmite got caught up in this as well. For those drawing up the regulations decided that 100g would be the appropriate serving size to use as the basis of their calculations....yes, you've spotted it. Marmite was banned for its salt content for they had decided to use a 50 portion serving size to work out the salt content.

So far so trivial of course (although it is the subsequent lack of advertising revenue which is leading to all those calls for publicly funded childrens 'programming) but it's worth noting in the larger debate.

Say, about the financial markets, something which clearly isn't trivial. Perhaps we should have more regulation. Perhaps we should have less, or simply different such. Whatever the theory of such regulatory measures, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that at least some of those who devise the regulations in our fair land are identifiably and provably idiots.

There, now doesn't that make you feel better about the future and the delights it holds?

The one short straw

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the-one-short-straw

The BBC reports that a thorough review of the NHS in England by the National Audit Office has found "little evidence" that patient’s complaints improved services. In fact, most don’t even bother to kick up a fuss because they don’t think it will make any difference, while those that do find the whole process a bureaucratic mess.

A spokesman for the Patients Association said: “Despite the army of people involved, the NHS is light years away from a genuine complaints service. It lacks compassion, is bureaucratic beyond belief and takes far too long. This is not a "service", it is a sham.'

In response to the report, a spokesman for the Department of Health has stated that: "From next year, we are simplifying the system. Greater emphasis is to be placed on working with the complainant to resolve cases satisfactorily at a local level. We are also requiring NHS organisations and local authorities to publicise the complaints procedure and encourage people to use it. In addition, local organisations will publish information on the number of complaints received and how they have been dealt with."

However, this response fails to address the underlying problem the report highlights. Although the process of complaining is arduous, the real problem is that apathy reigns supreme; patients rightly fail to see how such a vast inefficient bureaucracy can even hope to offer a decent service. As such, what point is there in complaining?

With most people taxed beyond the means of paying for private healthcare, patients are unable to take their custom elsewhere, surely the most common reaction to bad service in the private sector. Foundation Hospitals have failed to address this core problem. Instead, people should be free to divert their money – which the government currently wastes on the NHS – into privately provided healthcare. This would empower many more people to enjoy the undoubted benefits the private system, currently only enjoyed by the very wealthy.

Blog Review 744

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blog-review-744

Can we please get this straight, once and for all? It isn't markets to blame here, it's interference in them?

Yes, we have learned some things and yes, we can make sure we don't have a Depression again.

As long, that is, as we don't do what everyone did last time one threatened.

The information was there for those local councils, if only they'd paid attention to it.

When people call for more regulation precisely what do they mean? The market seems to have regulated the investment banks pretty well.

Our non-market regulators on the other hand really don't seem to have done very well at all.

And finally, as ever, one rule for them, another for us.