Royal Mail – Industrial relations from another era
The current postal strike brings back bad memories. The union-dominated economy of the 1970s was – with a few exceptions – laid to rest by the Thatcherite view that customers were paramount. What should be done as Royal Mail, like the coal industry of the 1980s, inexorably declines on the back of competition for the delivery of mostly unwanted junk-mail and by the surge in e-mail?
Germany plans to do it, Japan has already done it, France plans to do it, and even the states where the only true alternative to a de facto social democratic government is a pure socialistic one – Denmark and Sweden – are at it too. I am here referring to the fact that these countries are all cutting or intending to cut taxes as a way of boosting domestic production and employment rates. By lowering taxes the government lets taxpayers keep more of what is theirs, while also promoting private investments. In contrast, the British government has found its own way to 'boost' productivity: unlike everybody else, it is hoping to do so by increasing income taxes.
The UN general assembly is 
Walking through Oxford Street and looking at this years Christmas decoration is dispiriting. You immediately get the feeling something is missing. The overhead street decoration has no Christmas symbolism anymore; a boring umbrella has replaced the Christmas tree. I kept scratching my head: are there people out there who bother about this stuff?From paedophilia to speeding, bureaucrats need a sense of proportion over the risks
Watford Borough Council’s decision to ban parents from the playground in case they are paedophiles are another case of the Bully State gone mad. We’ve seen it in the past week with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (whose .gov web address shows it to be anything but independent), telling piano teachers and others that they ought to get CRB checks, or parents might ask why not.
So now we are living in a Britain where all adults are presumed to be paedophiles unless they can prove themselves otherwise. It’s the precautionary principle gone mad. If you can’t prove something safe, you have to treat it as dangerous. That thinking also gave us the EU’s Reach directive, which prescribed in-depth tests on “hazardous chemicals” – such as salt – before they could be licensed for our use.
Why do bureaucrats act like this? Because there is no upside for them. A business person will take a risk because the chance of failure is balanced by the chance of making a fortune. Civil servants aren’t rewarded with fortunes when their decisions go right, but they are sidelined or barred from promotion when they go wrong. So they focus on stopping the downside, not boosting the upside.
That is why we are being softened up for a 20mph speed limit in towns, particularly near schools. Yes, pedestrians are much less likely to be killed at this speed than 30mph. But today we have a third of the child road deaths that we had in 1922, when the national speed limit was 20mph. Why? Because parents warn their kids about traffic. They remove their kids from the risk. What the bureaucrats want to do is to remove the risk from the kids.
But we take risks for a reason. There are benefits too. With a 0mph limit you could eliminate road accidents entirely. But at huge cost to the community.
Why does Network Rail spend billions on train safety systems? Because train crashes are spectacular news, while car crashes aren’t. In 2007 about 24 people were killed on the railways, including pedestrians at level crossings. Nearly 3,000 died on the roads, but that’s less obvious.
Seat belts are another celebrated case. Strapped into their cars (which are advertised for their safety), drivers feel safe. So they drive more riskily, and more pedestrians are killed and injured. We’d be better installing a huge spike in the middle of each steering wheel. Accidents would plummet.
We take risks for a reason. Life would be impossible without it. The idea of a risk-free world is futile. And unless we – parents, children, drivers, and everyone – are exposed to risk, we will never learn to cope with it.
Published on Telegraph.co.uk here.