The Pin Factory Blog

Eamonn Butler, the ASI's director, has an article on The Free Society's excellent new website, in which he looks at the worrying amount of surveillance we are all subject to these days:

From time to time there are small victories – a judge recently grumbled about street cameras with microphones that enable police and local authority staff to eavesdrop on what it being said on the pavement underneath. But the trend is all to more and more surveillance. Yes, CCTV cameras have no doubt deterred crime in some places and they have certainly solved crime in others. But do they make me feel safe? Not on your nellie.

Well, quite. As Eamonn continues:

[I]t’s not as if all this surveillance is being used to protect us against hardened terrorists anyway.

No, it's fly-tippers and speeding motorists that Big Brother is really on the lookout for.
Throw in all our personal, medical, financial, and (soon) biometric details that the state has access to, add in the fact that the police has the DNA and fingerprints of hundreds of thousands of people who have never even been charged with a criminal offence, and then consider that the movements of our mobile phones are tracked and stored in case the police subsequently want to check our movements. It's clearly a scary future we are heading towards. Needless to say:

[W]e will probably find the state authorities sharing this information with lots of other people. Not deliberately, of course. I’m thinking of the hackers and mafia bosses who will find them to be a very convenient way of cloning someone’s identity. Why should the state have a monopoly on the abuse of personal information?

The whole article is well worth a read. While you're there, have a look around The Free Society's website. They're adding more interesting stuff every day.

Ah, that's what that thing about Berwick becoming part of Scotland is all about. Who gets the offshore oil and gas depends upon which way the border is pointing when it hits the shoreline...

The economics of supermarkets explained. Why would we have so many of them if we didn't actually prefer shopping in them? 

The influence of blogs upon politics may be more indirect than many think. Did the stick that Iain Dale got for standing by his friend, Derek Conway, influence Cameron's decision about the matter? 

With all this talk of rational behaviour in the new economics books: is the Stockholm Syndrome such rational behaviour?

Sad that this continually has to be done but here it is. Another go at expaining the nuclear numbers.

A very useful guide to the UK tax system. 

And finally, a politician talking good sense. The logic of running as a candidate to go to Washington given such a view seems a little off though.

Iain Martin points out the latest glories on offer:

Daily, ministers unveil the latest interfering scheme to tackle a problem either real or imagined. All 14-year-olds are to have their exam results and personal records placed on an electronic database which will follow them through life. It will cut down on fraud, say officials, who neglect to ask if employers have been hit by an epidemic of employees pretending to have a B in GCSE Maths when they actually were awarded a C. So what do civil servants really want to do with all this information? In the Whitehall mind, more data means a better decision, so there must be a use to which it can be put. Officials will think of something.

My own (resolutely non-paranoid as I am) view is that this is simply a way to get everyone enrolled into the National Database. There are those, like myself, who will simply refuse to carry the ID card, and will change citizenship rather than be entered into the Database.  But we will all die off at some point and everyone who has ever been 14 will indeed be in the database and ready to be issued with their barcode tattoo, forehead for the use of.

Sir John Cowperthwaite had the right idea:

Cowperthwaite took the lesson to heart, and while he was in charge, he strictly limited bureaucratic interference in the economy. He wouldn't even let bureaucrats keep figures on the rate of economic growth or the size of GDP. The Cubans won't let anyone get those figures, either. But Cowperthwaite forbade it for an opposite reason. He felt that these numbers were nobody's business.

As Martin says, officials will think of something to do with the information and it will be misused by policy fools. Better to not let them collect it in the first place. 

Something of a sadness that those bureaucrats with the right ideas, like Sir John, were only allowed to operate in colonial outposts rather than here at home. 

38. "It's all very well to talk of freedom, but poor people are not free to buy Rolls Royces."

Actually, the poor are free to buy Rolls-Royces. They are not rich enough to buy them, but they are not prevented from doing so by the whim or will of others. If they had or could get money they could buy luxury goods, but there are some things people are not free to do, be they rich or poor.

They cannot smoke with impunity in a public bar, or demonstrate within the vicinity of Parliament. Being banned from doing something is about curbs on freedom. Being able to afford something is about power over circumstance.

A person who lacks the resources to buy something might hope to raise the money by saving, working, borrowing, or winning it. Most of us buy things we couldn't at one time afford. It wasn't that we were thwarted by the will of those in a position to stop us, only that we lacked the necessary means.

There is a crucial difference between being held back by circumstance and being restrained by the superior power of others. In the first case you have aspirations beyond your present abilities, but in the second case you are subject to the arbitrary dictates of an authority which makes you live as it sees fit, rather than as you want to do.

A free society allows people to make their own decisions, rather than have them subject to the whims of those in power. There are things they cannot do, not because they are unfree, but because they are unable. People are free to jump unaided over the Eiffel Tower, but are not able to do so. The difference is that people can overcome a lack of means more readily than gravity. In a free society they can hope to prosper, and to do the things hitherto beyond them. In an unfree society they cannot.

I agree with both Madsen Pirie and Nigel Evans. It's going to be May 2010 before there's an election. Here's my reasoning: Gordon Brown is a cautious man. He's not just one who plans long and carefully; that would be admirable. Instead he's one who goes into a tizzy when things don't go exactly to plan. His bottling out of an autumn election at the last minute was characteristic. It wasn't George Osborne on the death tax, it was a poll of the key marginals which frightened him.

As PM he gets to choose, barring accidents. He'll want a time when he has a sustainable lead in the polls, a long-term one that cannot be overturned in the heat of an election campaign. There isn't going to be such a lead. The economy has turned against him, and people are feeling poorer because of too many price increases. The reputation for economic competence foundered on the Northern Rock, and any remaining reputation for probity disappeared into the pockets of anonymous and third party Labour donors.

No lasting poll lead translates into no election until he hits the wire in spring 2010 and has to call one. Then he loses and David Cameron becomes prime minister. Simple, really. Pity it's all going to take so long.

The big blogging news this weekend is the beginning and near immediate end of Max Grogarty's blogging career at The Guardian. The original piece (and the comments can be both exceedingly harsh and most amusing) the editor's response,  Clive Davis, Rafael Behr (and again). Yes, contacts matter, even at The Guardian, which so decrys the old boy network in other areas of life.

Rather to Netsmith's surprise (did they ever solve that one about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?) philosophy has answered some questions.

As ever, good economics doesn't seem to mix well with politics. The economically sensible thing to do about climate change doesn't seem to interest the politicians. 

So just how tough is it to get ahead in the US if you are destitute? Surprisingly easy it seems. 

Adam Smith proved right once again. Peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice really are the secrets to growth. 

Netsmith could (perhaps rightly) be criticised for obsessing over the European Union. But the licencing of journalists, who is one and who is not, being decided by the EU, well, is it obsessive to be concerned by that? Or the language used here? 

And finally, perhaps the lawyers are making too much here? 

Reading this Telegraph piece about why we should all be celebrating Ralph Vaughan Williams and the 50th anniversary of his death I was thinking, yes, why not?

He cycled all over Surrey to rehearse village choirs for his beloved Leith Hill Festival, where all manner of people - very few of them rich or educated - came together to sing the great choral masterpieces.

One of my sisters has been doing similar work for decades with the good people of Dorset: the other sings in such things as the Bach Choir, an uncle trained generations of midlanders in the vocal arts. Quite, why shouldn't there be a national celebration of the life and work of the man who gave us such favourites as The Lark Ascending? Issuing a set of postage stamps seems a pretty good idea, the Post Office does after all make a profit on such things.

In 2008, the Philharmonia, among other orchestras, is featuring Vaughan Williams's orchestral music - and not just in London. Richard Hickox, a conductor with a fine record of promoting British music here and abroad is conducting The Pilgrim's Progress both in London and Sydney.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Then my genial agreement with the writer's ideas turned a little sour:

But there is no extra funding from the Government - and it takes money to enable the great man's music to be properly rehearsed and performed.

Ah, it's all in fact a plea that the State should pick your and my pockets in order to pay for what someone else desires. In fact, the writer is : 

Hilary Davan Wetton is one of Britain's most versatile and dynamic conductors. He is Musical Director of two major choirs (the City of London Choir and the Guildford Choral Society), the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, and has made a number of acclaimed recordings. He appears frequently as a guest conductor with choirs and orchestras both in Britain and overseas, and performs regularly on Radio 3. He has a real commitment to young people, both through work with youth orchestras and audience building.

Actually, it's worse than that. The writer is insisting that our pockets be picked so that he can be paid to do as he desires. 

I've no doubt that both of my sisters will sing some Ralph Vaughan Williams this year and that my uncle would have if he were still with us. But none of them have ever had the effrontery to ask that you should pay for their pleasures.

37. "We should all boycott multinationals which have children and women working long shifts for low pay in sweatshops."

It is true that conditions in developing world manufacture include those which would not be tolerated in advanced economies. People work long hours in conditions we would not accept, and the labour force sometimes includes children. However, the conditions should not really be compared with those which took a couple of centuries or more to achieve in the developed world, but with the alternatives available in their own countries.

In poor countries children work as a matter of economic necessity. They work mostly in agriculture, or sometimes as scavengers on rubbish dumps. They work long hours for little pay in unsanitary conditions. Some work as child prostitutes. Those who have jobs with multinationals are in many ways the lucky ones, even if the conditions could be described as sweatshops. They get much higher pay than the average in their countries, and have jobs where most of their peer group do not. There are long waiting lists for such jobs, and those already employed there try to gain similar jobs for other members of the family.

The pay is very low by Western standards, but very high compared with what they might make elsewhere in their own countries. For them it is a chance to advance themselves and their families. It is that cheap labour which makes them attractive to multinationals. Without it, they would have no reason to establish factories and create jobs there. If we forced them to have the same pay and conditions we are used to, it would take that opportunity from them.

It took us decades into our industrial development before we could afford to improve pay and conditions. Our aim now should be not to deny opportunities to developing countries, but to shorten the time in which wealth can lead to improved pay and conditions.

In this last week I have been stuck in an underground tunnel for half an hour, had my local tube station shut down for flooding and been trapped behind a ticket barrier in Canary Wharf station for forty minutes with a group of other desperate valentines day commuters. It is at such times that one considers the prospect of purchasing a car to avoid the nightmare that is the daily nightmare on London’s underground system.

In the past it was relatively simple to decide which car to buy, now one has to factor in the latest whim of the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. The latest caprice of Ken is that owners of vehicles emitting more than 225g of carbon dioxide per kilometre will be charged £25 every day. This means an increase for residents of a cost from 80p, an increase of 3000%. As I live and work within the congestion zone, these are clearly not the cars for me. Sadly for the people who have already bought such a car, they have invested in something that will cost them a small fortune to use.

Perhaps a smaller car? From October the smaller band A and B cars will be exempt from charges. Sales rose in response to this upcoming exemption. However, Ken Livingstone may cancel it for band B cars (which emit between 101g and 120g of carbon dioxide per kilometre) because in response to his decision to allow them to travel free of the congestion charge people went out and bought these cars en masse. According to TfL official band B car owners may have to start paying the congestion charge in less than two years.

What is all this uncertainty worth? A recent report by TfL has predicted that emissions charging will reduce CO2 by just 100 tonnes next year, equivalent to 0.001 per cent of total annual emissions from surface transport in London. So the environmental arguments are not even credible by their own CO2 obsessed terms. For my part I will have wait until we have a new mayor before I risk the expense of buying a car.