Privacy for parliamentarians

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privacy-for-parliamentarians

Recently, the pseudo-celebrity MP, Lemit Opik, called for stronger privacy rules protecting MPs. No doubt many would highlight the irony of an MP with a string of celebrity partners calling for greater levels of privacy, but let's leave cheeky girls aside for now. There is a moral issue here regarding the fine line between political transparency and the right of those in public life.
 
Mr Opik said "For a long time I believed the cost of public life was public attention, which at times does not please the subject of the coverage, but which nevertheless goes with the territory." This is a crucial point in the debate. There needs to be a culture within politics that MP and Lords are working for us, that they are employees of the people. As such, those entering politics need to accept that parts of their life will be on public display because it could eventually impact on us.
 
The expenses scandal has revealed and emphasised the need for greater transparency with financial matters. Essentially, the MPs proved that they could not be trusted with our money – this intrusion into our representatives lives by the media only had positive outcomes. It gave the MPs a warning that they couldn’t continue living unchecked at our expense, whilst it gave the electorate the wake-up call that we need to play a role in seeing where our money goes.
 
But there is a valid case that the intrusion of the media into the lives of MPs has gone too far and is inflicting upon the rights of MPs. Granted, if MPs were left with so little privacy that it severely impacted on their lives, we would put off the best candidates from entering politics, resulting in a sub-standard system.
 
There needs to be a fine balance struck regarding privacy in public life. In my opinion, there can never be too much transparency when it comes to financial matters, we must know where our money is being spent. But, everybody should be entitled to a degree of privacy – I don’t need to know where an MP goes on holiday.

The Mises Institute

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the-mises-institute

On this day in 1982, the Ludwig von Mises Institute was founded. Hats off for the sterling (or should I say gold) work that they undertake.

The environmental dark ages

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the-environmental-dark-ages

To hear some environmentalists speak you would think that we are currently in the environmental dark ages. The ever expanding economy (current hiccup exempted) means that we are using up ever more resources, spewing out ever more pollution and generally leading the way to Hell in a handcart.

That they say this when the air and the waters are cleaner than they have been for many centuries, when resources, judged by their price, are cheaper and thus more abundant than ever, causes no little amusement.

However, it is their next step which is so dangerous. We must localise all production, not eat food from outside our own region: depending upon who you talk to it might be from outside your own garden, town, county or bioregion but international trade is certainly very naughty indeed. In fact, we shouldn't be getting anything at all from other countries, let alone the other side of the world.

Localism in government is to be admired, localism in production and consumption rather less so.

A new book on the end of the Roman Empire points to this as the defining economic mark of that age:

An emphasis on "localization" as the fundamental change following the fall of the Roman Empire, and numerous micro-studies of exactly how that localization occurred.  Cities shrank, trade networks dried up, etc.

Not for nothing do we decribe that time as The Dark Ages. Last time around it came about because of the collapse (for whatever reasons) of a political power. Let's not inflict it upon ourselves in the name of environmentalism, eh?

Letters from the Lakes

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letters-from-the-lakes

One problem with being on holiday (although, clearly, I'm not really complaining) is that you get much longer to read the papers. And for someone with libertarian leanings, that means that every leisurely breakfast is inevitably accompanied by news of countless new government initiatives – most of which are pointless, intrusive, expensive, or all of the above. Deeply depressing stuff.

If I had a shorter fuse I'd probably end up hurling my cornflakes at the wall. As it is, I just feel compelled to write letters to the editor. Below are a couple of unpublished ones I sent to The Times while wandering around the Lake District.

On the idea of 'minimum space requirements for new housing...

Sir, Rebecca O’Connor reports that new-build British homes are among the smallest in the world. I can well believe it. But couldn’t this have something to do with our planning system, which forces developers to meet minimum density requirements and obliges them to set aside land for loss-making ‘affordable housing’? Whatever the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment might think, we don’t need more regulation to fix this problem. We just need to free developers to build the sorts of homes that people actually want to live in.

And on Mexico's drug war...

Sir, Your leading article of August 11 is misguided. Decades of bitter experience have shown that no amount of military might can win a ‘War on Drugs’. Indeed, all such interventions actually achieve is to raise the market price of these substances, and give the cartels an even greater prize to fight over. The human cost of this failure is enormous. Surely it is time to accept that the only sensible solution is to take narcotics out of the hands of gangsters, and legalize, licence and regulate their production and sale. As well as depriving criminals of a lucrative market, this would have considerable health and social benefits, reducing the incidence of overdoses and poisoning, and making treatment of addicts much easier. Empirical evidence from Portugal, which decriminalized drugs in 2001, bears this out.

In future, I think I'm just going to stick to the sports pages.
 

Monster in the media

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monster-in-the-media

Its not just in music and radio that the BBC distorts the market and creates an unfair playing field. It has the same effect on the UK's online space. Even though the BBC is neither a newspaper nor magazine it competes with its huge online prescence, paid for by the taxpayer via the TV tax.

The Conservatives have been complaining about this Gorilla in the room before:

Back in 2003, John Whittingdale, the Shadow Culture Secretary of the time, said that the website should be closed down. Last year, Phillip Davies, another Conservative, said: "Basically the BBC with its massive licence fee does completely distort the market and makes it virtually impossible for its competitors." But given bbc.co.uk's popularity, closing it down would not be a sensible option for any government.

The trouble is that the BBC is trying to do all things media and its site suffers for it. Its not just the Conservatives that are concerned about this either:

Do we really have to count on the BBC to reveal that "Blue Square Premier side Tamworth have completed the signing of former West Brom youngster Anthony Bruce"? Surely this would be better left to theTamworth Herald's website, or the Blue Square Premier's site, or theNon-League Paper. Tamworth are, after all, a non-league football team which last season had an average gate of only 815.

Harry Underwood has it right. This is why Murdoch is mad enough to start charging for content.

The political animal

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the-political-animal

Some rather rare animals here on the Telegraph website. Junksmith wonders how they missed the 'honest politician' off the list.

Welfare isn't working

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welfare-isnt-working

Further evidence of how ineffective our welfare system is at galvanising people into finding jobs can be seen on Channel 4 over the coming weeks. The programme 'Benefit Busters' (Episode 1 from Thursday can be seen here) follows the work of A4E as they attempt to return those on benefits to the workforce. The first episode focused on lone mothers as they undertook a 6 week course titled 'Elevate'. The company receives £100 per week per participant and a bonus should they find a job.

The programme shone a light on the unintended consequences of welfare. One participant openly stated that as benefit recipients, "they got too much for doing nothing" and that benefits, "did not give people the initiative" to act over their own lives. Even though they successfully placed the course's participants one lone mother had to go back on benefits due to the difference between a low wage job and a life on benefits. A politician view the latter problem and promptly recommend that the minimum wage be increased, there would be relatively few of them who would grasp the fact that taxes considerably eat into the earnings of the poor. Those in minimum wage jobs who can be rewarded with more money on benefits need to have their allowance levels raised so they are removed from paying tax.

We are paying for attitudes to work to be repaired following the damage that welfare has imparted upon its recipients. This is why we should be looking at reforming the welfare system (as we have suggested here in Working Welfare). The Channel 4 series continues next week looking at the long-term unemployed and examining their approach to life. From this series it is plain to see that government welfare destroys lives.

The 46 million myth

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the-46-million-myth

As my colleagues Steve Bettison and Tom Papworth have pointed out in previous blogs, the frequently quoted figure of 46 million uninsured Americans is something of a myth. To restate some salient facts:

• 9.7 million of these uninsured are not US citizens.
• 14 million of them are eligible for the government programmes Medicaid or SCHIP, but not registered. If they ever presented at an 'emergency room' they would be signed up.
• 17.6 million of those without insurance earn more than $50,000 per year. 10 million of them earn more than $75,000. That means that around 38 percent of the uninsured probably make enough to afford health insurance, but for some reason choose not to buy it.
• 18.3 million of the uninsured are under 34. Many of those may simply think, mistakenly or otherwise, that they do not need health insurance.

It is also worth pointed out once again that the 46 million figure does not mean that 46 million people are permanently without insurance. Indeed, it is estimated that 10-20 million are only temporarily without coverage. In many instances, that could be because the US tax system creates huge distortions in favour of employment-based health insurance – something which causes problems when people switch jobs.

Clearly, some people will fall into more than one of the categories I've outlined, so you can't you can't just subtract all of those numbers from 46 million to give you a fair figure. However, most people seem to think that 10 million or thereabouts would be an accurate reflection of reality. Back in 2003, a Blue Cross survey found the 8.2 million Americans were actually without health coverage in the long run because they are too poor to afford private insurance but earn too much to get government assistance.

Quite plainly, that is still a problem, but it is not a problem that suggests huge government intervention is needed (which is probably why President Obama prefers the 46 million figure). Interestingly, research from the University of Minnesota has suggested that if the US government simply permitted its citizens to purchase health insurance across state lines, 12 million more people would be able to afford insurance.

Pitt on freedom

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pitt-on-freedom

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

William Pitt (1783).

Fabricated evidence

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fabricated-evidence

Tory MP Damien Green has claimed a ‘small but significant victory for freedom’ as he has successfully campaigned to have his DNA records deleted from the national Police database. Damien Green is correct, this is a ‘small’ victory, but it’s hardly significant – the deletion of one DNA record, for entirely political reasons, is nowhere near far enough.

The Home Office seem very proud of their national DNA database, which isn’t surprising considering they have spent £300million (the equivalent of 10,000 police salaries) of our money developing it. This is probably why senior policemen have been told to continue logging the DNA of innocent people, despite a Human Rights ruling from the European Court. Their website boasts that our database is the largest in the world, holding the records of 5.2% of the population – Maybe this is a reflection of our governments inability to prevent crime, rather than their data collecting prowess.

The most fundamental problem with the DNA database as it stands is that there are around 850,000 records which should be deleted. These belong to people who were never convicted or tried and should therefore be considered innocent. It seems wholly against freedom and liberty for somebody’s DNA to be held on a database, accessible to many public servants just because a policeman considered them the ‘type of person’ that might one day commit a crime.

Not only is this expansion of this database an unnatural infliction upon our freedom, it is also an increasing security risk. This government’s track record of ensuring the security of individuals personal data is pathetic at best. Recent evidence suggests that DNA within blood and saliva can now be fabricated and cloned. This scientific advancement could eventually destroy the utility and reliability of DNA evidence in criminal investigations. Although this could prove to be a step backwards for policing, at least it may signal the end of the dreaded DNA database.