Why? No, really, why?
There's an important question that needs to be answered here:
Theresa May's housing adviser backs a controversial campaign to force landowners to offer huge discounts on the price of their land, it can be revealed.
Toby Lloyd, who was hired by Mrs May in April, called for an overhaul of compulsory purchase laws months before his appointment to Downing Street.
Writing on the website of Shelter, Mr Lloyd, then head of policy at the housing and homelessness charity, said the government should be able to buy up land at its "true market value", rather than current rates, which generally include a speculative uplift based on planning permission the site could gain for future development.
No, not that silliness about option value upon future development potential. What does anyone think market prices are if they're not an attempt to look into the future?
Rather, hiring someone from Shelter?
Sure, we can take Mancur Olson to be right here,democratic politics is simply about who gets to dip their ladle into the gravy. Thus pressure groups like Shelter are just the front men for one specific interest group - presumably those who would gain jobs, prominence and gongs from there being more money for state subsidised house building.
And yes, Spads and the like are going to be hired from those interest groups as Mancur points out. But hiring one from the enemy camp?
That's the question that needs answering, why is a Tory government hiring someone from Shelter? It's as absurd as Momentum asking one of us to advise upon utility renationalisation.
What on Earth are they doing there at Number 10?
Venezuela Campaign: Sanctions
Supporters of the Venezuelan regime promote the idea that sanctions on Venezuela are responsible for its current economic woes, and that if the US and EU would withdraw these sanctions then everything would return to normal. This belief is categorically untrue and those who advocate it are at best disingenuous. This article will examine sanctions on Venezuela, and the reasons why they have had nothing to do with Venezuela’s economic catastrophe.
The EU began sanctions against Venezuela in November 2017 with an arms embargo, and escalated its sanctions with asset freezes and travel bans on seven Venezuelan officials in January and eleven in June 2018. To argue that an arms embargo and targeted sanctions on 18 people are responsible for a Venezuelan economic crisis which began in 2012 is absurd. An arms embargo does not prevent toilet paper and medicine reaching Venezuela.
The US sanctions started with an Act of Congress in 2014, followed by an executive order in March 2015, both solely concerned with assets freezes and limits on US entry of Venezuelan officials involved in violence and illegality.
Further US sanctions in August 2017, March 2018, and May 2018 forbid US citizens from buying Venezuelan government or state oil company debt, or buying the (largely imaginary) Petro cryptocurrency. Notably, the sanctions do not ban the import of goods into Venezuela nor the import of Venezuelan oil or other goods into the US. Their economic effect is minuscule, notably because no-one in their right mind would buy Venezuelan debt now, as the country is completely bankrupt. The executive order banning the purchase of debt outright was only issued a few months ago. Even if it had some minor economic effect, how could it have caused a deep crisis that was already spiraling out of control in 2015?
Blaming the US and EU for sanctioning Venezuela and causing its collapse is fantasy. Not only did the US and EU only sanction Venezuela very recently, but most sanctions affect only corrupt and violent regime members, with the few economic ones having no real effect. If the US wished to cause serious economic harm to Venezuela it would stop buying its oil. Regardless, that option will soon cease to exist, as the Venezuelan regime’s incompetence will shortly succeed destroying its entire oil industry. There are many factors in Venezuela’s downfall, that much is strikingly obvious to any observer: corruption, oil dependence, Dutch disease, and irresponsible economic policies. But sanctions are not one.
More information on the Venezuela Campaign can be found on their website.
An entirely lovely conjunction of stories about housing
The Guardian wants to tell us that freedom from the planning permission system is a very bad idea indeed. The ability to convert office space into flats, without the encumbrance of bureaucratic permission, leads to, well, leads to:
The conversion appears to have gone ahead as planned, which means each of the six upper floors is now made up of 10 self-contained studio flats. So that’s 60 flats. The architect’s drawings describe 18 of the studios as “singles” and 42 as “doubles”.
According to the plans, the smallest singles are just 13 sq metres – that’s a room just a fraction smaller than 12ft by 12ft – while the smallest doubles are 14.7 sq metres. Yet the government’s own space standard – known as the “nationally described space standard” – states that the minimum floor area for a new one-bedroom one-person home (including conversions) is 37 sq metres, and for a one-bed two person home it is 50 sq metres. While these minimum sizes are not compulsory, they do apply in London, but only to schemes that go through the planning system.
Apparently the provision of 60 housing units by side swerving the planning system is an outrage. We would say that having to side swerve the system to produce the required housing units tells us we need to reform, or ditch, the planning system.
We have indeed pointed this out before. Even insisted that such minimal space is part of the solution.
What we find truly fun though is the second story covered in that same column. Or perhaps the conjunction of the two. For we get this:
The research by LABC Warranty, which provides warranties for new-build homes, used data from property websites Rightmove and Zoopla to analyse house sizes within a five-mile radius of 20 UK cities.
It said that in Sheffield, the average floor space of a privately owned home was 61.2 sq metres.
The researchers collected data including the size of the living room, kitchen, master bedroom and bathroom, as well as determining the average number of bedrooms and whether the property had access to a garden. However, it appears the analysis did not include certain areas, such as a hallway or staircase, which means it may underestimate the true picture.
The three cities with the next-smallest average house sizes were Southampton (64.9 sq metres), Bristol (65 sq metres) and Glasgow (65.2 sq metres). Meanwhile, the figures for London, Manchester and Birmingham were 65.7 sq metres, 67.2 sq metres and 69.9 sq metres respectively.
That's the result of what we get from people obeying the planning system. Rabbit hutches which are, by far, the smallest average sizes for housing in Europe. Actually, one of us inhabits a rural cottage on the continent. Originally built for a landless farm labourer, never known to be one of the richer sections of society. It's a good 50% larger than those average sizes above. The British planning system produces housing smaller than that available to a Portuguese peasant near a century ago.
This is not a recommendation for that British planning system now, is it? For that British planning system produces not enough and small housing. Where it's possible to dodge it housing most certainly gets provided in volume. All we need to do now is to obliterate the restrictions against building housing people actually want to live in and we'll be done.
We even have history as a guide for us. Those 1930s semis and detacheds that people vie to live in across the Home Counties, paying that half and million for them, were built in the entire absence of detailed planning as under the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. That was also the last time the private sector produced the 300,000 units a year people say we need.
Time to abolish the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. The plan which will gain us the desired volume of housing that people actually want to live in, where they'd like to live. The solution, as so often, being that government does less.
The Lancet says that zero booze is the healthiest lifestyle - Oh Aye?
The Lancet really surprises with the news that even a little sip of the Demon Booze is the Very Devil:
Overall, the study, which pooled data from 592 studies with 28 million participats, linked alcohol to almost 3 million deaths globally.
The research found it was the seventh leading risk factor for premature death and disease - and the leading cause of death before the age of 50.
Researchers said the analysis found no safe level of alcoholic consumption, suggesting that going teetotal was the only way to avoid associated health risks.
Given that this result is entirely different from everything anyone else has ever found out about booze then well, why? Sure, science does indeed say that new evidence outweighs, disproves, old theories. But that evidence had better be pretty good - the larger the claim the better the evidence needs to be.
We have to say that we're not convinced here. And do note that this is tentative as yet, this critique being possibly subject to later revision.
Conclusion
Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for disease burden worldwide, accounting for nearly 10% of global deaths among populations aged 15–49 years, and poses dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of policy action today. The widely held view of the health benefits of alcohol needs revising, particularly as improved methods and analyses continue to show how much alcohol use contributes to global death and disability. Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none. This level is in conflict with most health guidelines, which espouse health benefits associated with consuming up to two drinks per day. Alcohol use contributes to health loss from many causes and exacts its toll across the lifespan, particularly among men. Policies that focus on reducing population-level consumption will be most effective in reducing the health loss from alcohol use.
That is startlingly different from everything else we think we know about the effects of alcohol. So, why?
What intrigues us is the chart of deaths for the US. Page 2085 (yes, really) here. It lists those causes of death which are - usually that is, whether rightly or wrongly - said to be caused by alcohol consumption. What it doesn't do is list all causes of death. Reading from this listing of the leading US causes of death we note that pneumonia and Alzheimer's aren't there, while they are leading causes of death.
As above, this is tentative. But what it looks like to us is that they've added up all the deaths and diseases which could be attributable to alcohol. OK. And those rise monotonically with alcohol consumption. OK. And they've not looked at all causes of death to see whether alcohol consumption reduces the death rate from any other causes. That being the original claim in the first place, that yes of course booze causes problems even as it also salves some others.
It's as if someone looks at the effects of exercise and notes the costs in twisted ankles and strained backs but not the benefits in strengthened hearts and lower weights.
Again, as we say, this critique of ours is subject to revision as those who know more than we do pile in. But we're deeply, deeply, unconvinced of the finding here. Perhaps the worst of it is that we know very well that there's a political movement to insist that no one should drink at all. We've seen other "research" making similar howlers to try and bolster that case. Meaning that we don't think we can trust research which produces results so amenable to that political campaign.
The entire field is so polluted by policy based evidence making that we assume that this is such. A pity really, as The Lancet did do science at one time but that well has rather been polluted.
Chris Snowdon's take is here.
An interesting illustration of the problems with booze
We're all aware that government guidelines on how much alcohol we might drink have something severely wrong with them. The latest report excised teetotallers from the numbers in order to get rid of that inconvenient fact that less booze can be as dangerous as more. The sweet spot of consumption being, in terms of all risks, more than the maximum we're advised to neck.
It's also true that current weekly limits are rapidly approaching what used to be considered a decent lunch. This might be granting too much to the wowsers. At which point we get this, the very latest research:
Alcohol revenue would decline by two-fifths, or £13 billion, if all drinkers were to comply with the recommended consumption limits, according to a study.
The research found that about two-thirds of alcohol sales in England are to heavy drinkers.
Drinkers who consume more than the Government's low-risk guideline of 14 units a week make up 25% of the population but provide 68% of alcohol industry revenue, according to a paper published in the journal Addiction.
The 4% of the population whose drinking is considered harmful - more than 35 units a week for women and more than 50 for men - account for almost a quarter (23%) of revenue, analysis by researchers at the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) and the University of Sheffield's Alcohol Research Group suggests.
The report said the findings "raise serious questions about the conflicts of interest inherent to voluntary schemes and self-regulation".
It's easy enough to see what the next demand is. If voluntary schemes don't - in the minds of the prodnoses - work then there must be statutory and regulatory ones. It is not farfetched to think of alcohol rations, cards to be presented when asking for a snifter. Actually, that's already been suggested.
As to the basic observation, yes, that's how life works. A large portion of internet usage comes from those who use the internet a lot. Great chunks of road mileage come from those who drive a lot. Significant parts of meat consumption come from those on Atkins diets. People who do a lot of a thing tend to be a goodly portion of the thing being done. We'd be surprised to find that the sexually active and promiscuous are having a decent portion of the new sexual partners going on, would we?
However, the thing which really struck us. There we've got - accurately enough too - the amounts which are actually harmful drinking, those 35 and 50 units a week. That is the sort of level, perhaps a little beyond, at which the risks significantly outweigh those of none at all.
So why are the government guidelines 14 units? The answer being that those limits are entirely invented, there's no medical justification at all. Just plucked from the air they are. Or from the prejudices of the anti-booze movement for all should know that alcohol is the very devil.
Now for the important point. Yes, there's an education function to government, it's fair enough that we be told of scientific results. Not drinking from where the latrine flows out is good advice, it's saved many hundreds of millions of lives and it wasn't known before we were all told about it. It's not well enough known in some parts of the world today. But that is where that function ends, informing.
A free society allows properly informed people to do as they wish simply because that's what freedom is, it's the definition of liberty. People desire to drink more booze than is good for them physically? Well?
Aid those who wish to drink less but find they cannot, most certainly, but our livers, ours to pickle if that's that we wish.
What are, quite frankly, lies about safe drinking annoy but what should enrage is this idea that we should be forced, forced, to consume as they think we should. We do actually see signs, protestations, saying "Our Bodies, Ourselves," books with titles like "Our Bodies, Our Souls." Booze is one of those issues over which this is all true.
Madsen Moment – Conservatism
The soul of parties that use the moniker conservative across the Western world appears to be up for grabs. Dr Pirie tackles just what Conservatism really means in this week's Madsen Moment.
Well, yes, but if only we could trust the NHS and public health authorities
There's an analogy to those who cry wolf here:
In the early 2000s, after the link between the MMR vaccine and autism was thoroughly debunked, healthcare professionals, including GPs and our teams, worked hard to re-establish public confidence in vaccinations. It took years to restore, but uptake rates in children receiving the MMR vaccine began to improve and there was a time, not so long ago, when we thought we had eradicated measles entirely.
That is why recent data about the surge in measles cases across Europe will come as distressing news – even to us here in the UK.
It's entirely true that vaccines are one of the great health saving innovations, an essential if we're not to have dying children littering the streets. Those against them are indeed deluded.
No, they're not 100% safe, we'd not have a compensation scheme if that were true. But the damage is perhaps 1 in a million, the damage from not vaccination being perhaps a quarter of all children dying before their fifth birthday. You know, those child mortality rates that were common to our history.
However, it's not just the Woo! from people like Wakefield. We've another problem here, which is how the varied public health authorities mislead themselves, giving that opening for the belief that they tell untruths elsewhere.
We've told, vehemently, that smoking, drinking and obesity cost the NHS money - they don't they save it. That there's an epidemic of rising child obesity - when no one is actually measuring child obesity in the first place. That sugar consumption is rising and causing our ills - it ain't, it's falling. Vaping should be limited or banned because Big Tobacco when it's the best anti-tobacco smoking aid yet devised. A few grammes too much salt will murder us all in our beds when those without kidney problems do in fact have self-regulation mechanisms in the body which work rather well.
On the basis of no more than these misunderstandings - to be extremely polite about what we're being told about some of them - the diet of the entire nation is to be reformulated.
And that's before we get to the decades long insistence that animal fats are the root of all dietary evil, recently replaced with a well, err, umm, that might have been an error (*Ahem*, *foot shuffle*).
All of which is a bit of a problem, isn't it? Our public health "authorities" have been telling us untruths - at the very least - on a number of subjects. Which rather undermines their authority when we meet real untruths from the other side, as with the desirability of vaccination.
The solution being obvious here. If they were to wind their necks in and only comment upon or do those things which are absolutely true then we'd all listen to them a bit more. Given that, you know, they' be being truthful all the time?
Another way to put this is that the anti-vaccination idiocy gains traction precisely because of the over reach and error of the public health maniacs. Stop it people, you're damaging the health of the nation.
Paying the blood price is the way to end donation shortages
Blood has a tendency to make people quite squeamish, and talking about money has the same effect on the British. But it's important that we talk about both. Saying that you can’t put a price on blood or plasma has created the shortages we see today. This then forces the United Kingdom to purchase blood and plasma from the United States. This is still placing a monetary price on blood or plasma in a way that is less visible to the everyday british citizen.
People’s lives end up being lost because there is simply no need or pressure to donate blood if you don't have a loved one who needs it or you've never needed it. Often by the time you realise that you or someone close to you needs blood it’s too late. In the western world the donor rate is around 3-4%, across the EU as a whole it stands at just 3.4%, while in the US the blood donation rate is three times higher at 10%.
The non-monetary cost of life that undersupply creates seems a lot greater than the cost of paying an individual to donate their blood. This is forcing the UK to buy blood from other countries instead of paying their own citizens – including from the US where donors can be paid. Blood would end up being cheaper and British citizens better off if we were able to pay them for their blood. While publicly subsidising blood donation at home to avoid purchasing in from overseas may appear protectionist but the UK’s state run NHS means blood purchases are by necessity from the public purse. The real issue is that it is illegal to pay for blood directly from the source but it’s not illegal to buy it from countries that have a surplus. Often this surplus is from paying their citizens to donate - like in the United States for example.
There are already many requirements in place for blood donations including age, health standards, medication and lifestyle decisions that carry risk such as drug use. This is a starting point for regulation to ensure the safety of donors. There are also restrictions in place that prevent how often you can donate blood and plasma which means it cannot be a primary source of income for people. This makes the price a motivating factor to donate but ensures that those on low incomes are not abused by a private collector of blood.
This is all a short term solution to the limited supply of blood donations as science progresses. There are many other solutions on the horizon including xenotransfusion, blood substitutes, cultured blood supplies and other means to support people who need blood either regularly or in the case of an emergency. Through xenotransfusion we can use animals, such as pigs, to harvest blood the same way as we do in humans without affecting the well being and quality of life of the animal.
Right now though we’re in a position where we’re asked to pay a price for blood donations. We have the option to pay our citizens, pay other countries for their surplus, or people pay in the costs of their lives.
New export strategy is a good start but imports too much of the old model
The new UK export strategy has much to commend it. The incoming top team has listened carefully to business representatives and summarized those views as Annex A testifies. The revised 35% of GDP target (up from 30% now) is realistic, not least because no date has been set for achieving it. Export shares of GDP vary somewhat from source to source but the World Bank found in 2016 that most of the large EU countries clustered around 30% with Poland and Germany well ahead at 52% and 46% respectively. Germany’s world ranking is 49 with all the high shares held by small economies.
In other words, we could get to 35% without any change to exports simply by reducing our imports, or GDP as a whole, as some claim Brexit will achieve.
The new strategy is also realistic in focusing government on doing what only government can do, namely:
- Encourage and inspire businesses that can export but have not started or are just beginning; placing a particular focus on peer-to-peer learning;
- Inform businesses by providing information, advice and practical assistance on exporting;
- Connect UK businesses to overseas buyers, markets and each other, using our sector expertise and our networks in the UK and overseas; and
- Place finance at the heart of our offer.
The finance side (UKEF) has long been a strength of the Government’s export support and having an ex-banker (John Mahon) appointed to lead this strategy must be welcomed. Encouraging firms to export, or export more, and networking from the UK into chosen export markets are fundamental and good to see at the top of the agenda.
But, I am sorry to have to say, there are four concerns:
- The Secretary of State rightly calls this plan “ambitious”. The 42 pages of things that the Department will do, along with other Whitehall Departments, trade associations, export providers (they mean consultants), Trade Commissioners, Export Champions, the Export Strategy Partnership Group and other organisations, look like a spider’s web of confusion. As reported in Annex A, the difficulty firms have encountered in navigating the existing complexity is one of the main reasons the previous strategies did not work. The new strategy seems to be even more bureaucratic. Networking overseas is vital to exporting but this UK-based plethora reminds one of Gerard Hoffnung’s Concerto for Solo Violin and Massed Conductors. Most of it could be swept away and replaced by partnering the British Chambers of Commerce.
- Baroness Fairhead’s admirable Foreword makes it plain that firms export, government does not. The strategy should be governed by providing what business needs, not imposing top down plans. Yet the strategy is to prioritise (p.13) resources according to DIT Regional Trade Plans confected by Trade Commissioners, Ambassadors and High Commissioners. Admirable diplomats as these people undoubtedly are, how will they know the minds of exporters better than exporters do? Elsewhere the strategy is to push the wishes of DfID and developing countries ahead of what UK exporters may want. Whitehall fat cats do not change their spots.
- Similarly, DIT seems to have absolute faith in supplying potential exporters via the “Great” digital platform despite continued evidence of its inadequacy. There has long been an academic debate about whether exporters should begin with economic and market analyses and formal plans or getting into the most likely market(s) and networking. The simple truth is that one cannot plan the unknown. How can one possibly estimate the number of widgets that can be sold into a market when that capacity, as much as anything, depends on how it is marketed. No digital platform will ever be able to do that, no matter how much is spent on it. Many countries do make good use of databases but they're best used as a supplement to networks and introductions, which are the true cornerstone of any real business relationship.
- Finally, the strategy does acknowledge that financial incentives are needed because most small firms consider, rightly or wrongly, that they have neither the time nor the finances resources to export. It addresses that merely by telling firms to look elsewhere for those incentives themselves: “assessing the potential for financial incentives such as vouchers, grants and loans, and by improving signposting to the relevant export support in the public and private sector.” Baileys Irish Cream was only launched because of the then Irish Government’s tax incentive and the Portuguese government used to make generous allowance for firms engaged in trade. Surely it is obvious that a government free of the EU should be providing the necessary tax or other financial inducements at home to motivate potential exporters.
This new export strategy has good features but when it gets down to the nitty gritty too much of it is the same old. Baroness Fairbairn misquotes the modern version of Abraham Lincoln’s governing principle (Government should only do what only government can do) by missing out the crucial first “only”. From that omission, flow all the excesses in this strategy which is not the radical focused provision that we need. But maybe, just maybe, we are getting there.
As we've been saying, advancing technology saves the NHS money
Some of us here are men of a certain age, those others of us male here hope to reach that maturity. So, this is good news:
Anew five-minute steam treatment for an enlarged prostate has been hailed as a breakthrough by NHS surgeons following tests on British patients.
The simple procedure was found to shrink glands on average by 36 per cent - but while the result is similar to other treatments, it has far less side effects.
The process, conducted by surgeons at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London and Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on 150 men, involves injecting an enlarged prostate with jets of steam without the need for surgery.
Current procedures, while effective, can lead to loss of sexual function,bleeding and incontinence with patients kept in hospitals for days at a time.
It was reported that health watchdogs are ready to give it the green light for NHS use.
This is indeed the sort of thing that men of a certain age welcome. Also those who desire to reach age.
However, we're all aware of the current mantra. That as technology marches on the NHS needs ever more money to be able to deploy those new technologies. This is though just the standard bleating from a bureaucracy that they must have more of our money. For look at what the effects upon costs are of our new technology:
Professor Hashim Ahmed, a consultant urological surgeon at Imperial, said other hospitals are poised to roll out the treatment as soon as they get the okay from health watchdog NICE.
"It frees up huge NHS resources because you need much less theatre time," he told the Daily Mail. "You are also opening up tens of thousands of days of bed occupation around the country."
As is true of new technologies in general - it's cheaper. For that's rather what a new technology is, being able to do that old task with fewer inputs, to be able to do it cheaper.
This technological revolution is going to reduce the costs of the NHS, not increase, and don't let anyone tell you different.