The Pin Factory Blog

The local priest came across Paddy who had stumbled out of the town tavern.

"Paddy," he said, " I'm afraid I'll not be seeing you in Heaven one day."

"Really, Father?" slurred Paddy. "What have you done?"

Across the country Santa's magical sleigh ride has been grounded because of health and safety, but the immediate culprits are not who you think. It seems a number of insurance companies are worried that the combined effort of riding through towns and villages while waving to children will cause the old man to tumble out of the sleigh and hurt himself. In West Midlands, Santa now must harness himself into his seat. In Northumberland, the town of Alnwick has been forced to forgo the sleigh altogether in favour of a bus. Usually, we blame these kind of frustrating and paternalistic policies on the government and Health and Safety. This time, two private insurance companies demanded that the two towns make the changes or face such high premiums that the event couldn’t go on. The companies held their ground, claiming the restrictions "protect him from the speed of his own sleigh," which, incidentally, runs at about 5mph.

This may seem odd, until we remember that it's only because of government regulation that the towns have to have insurance in the first place. The insurance industry is now taking cues from a government that encourages a culture of protectionism. The government operates under an ethos of paternalism, that it is better to keep the children indoors than let them outside to skin their knees. Out of this comes a society required to have insurance against hazard and more likely to sue when things to do go wrong. The growing philosophy of people, beginning in America and working its way over here, is that when something goes wrong there must be someone to blame and some financial compensation owed. Because of this, people expect some government or organization to hold them up when they fall, therefore more people buy insurance, more people make claims on that insurance, and premiums increase. And eventually, the regular enjoyments of life, like Santa and his sleigh, become regulated literally harnessed beyond recognition.

Now we hear that there are some of you who are living in idleness, doing no work themselves but interfering with eveyone else's. In the Lord Jesus Christ, we order and call on people of this kind to go on quietly working and earning the food that they eat.

– St Paul to the Thessalonians 2, 3:10-12.

Vince Cable MP, on Gordon Brown's "flawed approach to goverment": 

I call it "bureaucratic centralism". He has a belief in the secular equivalent of papal infallibility: a near-religious faith in the capacity of central government and its army of civil servants to improve our lives and never make mistakes. When Gordon Brown quotes the sage of Kirkcaldy, Adam Smith, Smith must be turning in his grave. Smith was Britain's – perhaps the world's – greatest economist who understood two centuries ago the perils of big government...

Indeed. Read the rest of Cable's Mail on Sunday article here. 

It's always amusing to see the wheels coming off one political cart or another. As Guido proves with a letter he's "found", British politics hasn't been this much fun since the mid-1990s.

Iain Dale's also making hay. It's things like this that make farce so enjoyable to watch: even when they try to do the right thing they still manage to break the law.

Another most enjoyable peek into the level of competence with which we are governed. If you were an advisor to DfID, and wanted to ask for some help on economic development from one of the world's leading development economists, wouldn't you check his name?

Of course, no discussion of political fatuity is complete without a discussion of the War on Drugs.

But we can't only blame the politicians: apparently 29% of Britons still trust the European Commission. 

Speaking of whom, there seems to be something of a move to a one party state there. 

And finally, a most incorrect joke. 

Timothy Garton Ash had an interesting article in The Guardian this week, on the subject of religion in a free society. His argument is that for religious diversity to work we need to spell out more clearly the essentials of a free society.

Freedom of expression must be reclaimed from political correctness. Freedom of religion and equality before the law must be reasserted. Doing this requires a secular public sphere but the question is, what does that mean in practice?

It should not mean every trace of religion has to be purged. Displaying Christmas manger scenes in public buildings, for instance, or exhibiting the Ten Commandments in a law court does not strike me as problematic. It merely reflects the heritage of a country's culture and laws and, in reality, does no harm.

As Garton Ash says, it is practical questions that matter more than the theory of secularism. How to apply it to faith schools, for instance, or the teaching of evolution, the Mohammed cartoons, the building of new mosques or the hijab?

I have no problem with faith schools receiving public funding, but they should not discriminate between applicants, and religious instruction should be optional, separate from the standard timetable, and funded by the church, not the taxpayer. The theory of evolution should be taught in science lessons, though not perhaps as an absolute truth. Intelligent design, on the other hand, has no place in science lessons. This is not to say it's invalid, just that it's not a scientific theory and should not be taught as such.

The Mohammed cartoons are a straightforward example of freedom of expression. Living in a free society means you have the right to offend, and the right to be offended (but not to incite or threaten violence). New mosques and the hijab, on the other hand, are matters of equal treatment and religious freedom. People should be free to pursue their faith as they see fit, so long they don't harm others in the process.

This whole debate is one that liberalism is well equipped to deal with.

I had a check-up today. The doctor said I was fit enough to go five rounds with a grizzly bear. Provided it was stuffed, that is.

I have to admit that things like this make me laugh like a drain :

It has become the home improvement of choice for the environmentally aware, but erecting a wind turbine on the side of your house could create more carbon dioxide than it actually saves, a study into their performance will reveal today.

Clearly, I have a slightly warped sense of humour.

The point is though that the amount of electricity generated, and thus the emissions "saved", is too small. It doesn't make up for the emissions involved in the manufacture of the machinery in the first place. Thus, outside places like Wick (I knew the place had to be good for something), having such a windmill increases, rather than reduces, total emissions.  Clearly not what we want to happen at all.

Now of course, given that David Cameron is the only man in the Kingdom known to actually have one, the total effect isn't all that large.  However, there's a deeper point at issue here. If we're going to try to save emissions by using this or that technology, then we've got to make sure that we actually do the cost benefit analysis. For example, we are repeatedly told that nuclear has, over the whole fuel cycle, CO 2 emissions: something which is absolutely true. What does not follow is that we shouldn't use nuclear to reduce emissions. For such emissions are lower than those from coal and gas (as should be obvious). More than that though, they're actually about the same as those from onshore wind power, and less than half those from solar PV. To say that we shouldn't use nuclear because of such emissions is also to say that we shouldn't use the other two for the same reason: not quite what those drawing our attention to the CO2 and nuclear issue really want us to conclude.

There's something sad about the readers of this blog. Election-night News and the Projection Puzzle became (albeit briefly) one of the best sellers on our online bookstore. It's about American election forecasts, of course: an odd science, since once the first vote is cast in New Hampshire, the result's usually known, and everyone in California might as well go home. Hanging chads notwithstanding. But you US-poll fanatics might find it interesting.

If, however, you're a mainstream reader looking for a good stocking-filler for your political geek friends, I would recommend Politipedia: A Compendium of Useful and Curious Facts about British Politics by Nick Inman (£6.49+pp). It's the ultimate quirky reference book for students of the Westminster village. It covers backbench revolts, cliches, Downing Street, techniques for saying nothing in interviews, nicknames, quangos, think tanks, and Yes Minister.

Click on the links to go to the Adam Smtih Institute bookshop.