Pollbomb

nicked from bella gerens

All right, all you readers out there. Time for a pollbomb.

At publicservice.co.uk (Public Sector & Government News), they're running a weekly poll in which the question is:

Should public sector workers have to pay more to maintain the value of their pensions?

You won't be surprised to hear that the 'No' votes are winning.

Can we round up enough 'Yes' votes to make them think pubic sector workers are all in favour of paying higher pension contributions? It would save the rest of us money, after all. And they deserve our spiteful little tricks.

Join me! Vote for higher pension pay-ins for pubic sector workers. The poll is on the home page, in the right-hand sidebar.

The Debt Clock starts ticking

NB I am not the Devil

The vast figure above, ticking ever upwards, is the national debt - right now, at this very minute. It's been borrowed by politicians to fund their blunders and foolishness, but it is you and I as taxpayers who will have to pay it off. If, like me, you're furious that we are being saddled with the vast burden, you're going to enjoy the TPA's latest campaign - the UK Debt Clock Tour.

We've built a gigantic digital clock mounted on a lorry that counts up the national debt in real time at a breakneck pace - over £5,000 a second.

Over the next two weeks it's going to be touring the country, travelling over 1,300 miles to take the message about the vast scale of the national debt, and exactly why it is such a problem, to the people.

If you'd like to get your own Debt Clock widget, as shown above, click this link to get the code for your blog or website.

For more information on the Debt Clock, the dates and locations of the tour and the national debt itself, visit www.debt-clock.org

UN persecutes sceptics

A number of commenters have berated me for not focusing on the coming General Election—to which my reply is "what's the fucking point?"

It's an argument that I'm sure EUReferendum would agree with, but even were we not in the EU, Britain would, no doubt, still be affected by the attempts at forming a burgeoning world government.

As a taster of what's to come—whichever bunch of statist wankers are running the British government on May 7th—Climate Skeptic has helpfully highlighted this piece of delight from the UN.

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace—alongside genocide and crimes against humanity—is being launched in the UK.

The proposal for the United Nations to accept "ecocide" as a fifth "crime against peace", which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins.

The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.

Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute "climate deniers" who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.

"Ecocide"? Why not just go the whole hog and refer to it as the fucking Gaiacaust?

It's typical though: here they are, losing the battle on the facts, on the science—and simply because we sceptics keep inconveniently telling the truth and now, after fuck knows how long, we are finally being heard. So, what's their solution?

Is it to re-examine the facts, to carry out more studies and to do more, you know, actual science? Nope. Regardless of whether or not their position is based in any kind of reality, these people hold their cause as an article of faith.

And what do these morons do when you faith in under attack? That's right... Pretty much the same as the Catholic Church did with the Spanish Inquisition—prosecute and destroy those people pointing out that the evidence shows that the Earth goes around the sun.

This is yet another indicator of the totalitarian nature of these disgusting Green cunts, and just goes to prove that the only thing worse than a fanatic Gaia-worshipper is a fanatical Gaia-worshipper who is also a bastard lawyer.

And if this comes to pass, will any of our political parties protect our freedoms?

Will they fuck.

The shorter Christopher Booker...

"We're fucked."

But, do go and read the whole, barn-storming column—though I suggest that you have some high-quality happy pills next to you whilst you do so. But as a taster, here are Booker's definitions of the four salient points—the "shadows"—that hang over this election.

Four huge shadows hang over this claustrophobic election, about which the three main parties will be trying to say as little as possible. The first, obviously, as part of the catastrophic legacy of 13 years of Labour misrule, is the barely imaginable scale of the deficit in public spending.

This is now growing so fast that it is difficult to find ways of bringing home how stupendous it has become. The Taxpayers' Alliance has tried to do it by pointing out that public debt is rising by £447,575,342— virtually half a billion pounds—every day. With the Government's own projections showing that within four years the National Debt will have doubled to £1.4 trillion, I recently used figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to show that by 2014, in only four years' time, it will be costing us the equivalent of £60 a week for every household in the land just to pay the interest on the debt—let alone paying off the debt itself.
...


The second shadow over this election is the unprecedented damage done to our politics by the expenses scandal, which has degraded the standing of Parliament to its lowest point in history. More than anything, these revelations have reinforced the realisation that we are ruled by a political class in which the three main parties are blurred indistinguishably together, almost wholly divorced from the concerns of the rest of us. Never have MPs or peers been so diminished in stature, at the very time when the bloated apparatus of the state has been intruding on our lives more obviously than at any time before.

A third, closely related shadow which the political class has been only too keen to hide away has been the still barely understood extent to which it has handed over the running of our country and the making of our laws to that vast and mysterious new system of government centred on Brussels and Strasbourg. Nothing better exemplified how our politicians are caught by this system, like flies in a spider's web, than the shifty means whereby each of the three main parties weaselled its way out of keeping the manifesto promises of the last election that it would give us a referendum on the EU constitution, otherwise known as the Lisbon "reform treaty". Here was another great surrender of Parliament's power to decide how our country is run, and the MPs of all parties were not only happy to agree to it, but treated us all with contempt as they lied about it.
...


A final huge shadow which will barely be discussed at this election, because the main parties are all but unanimous on it, is the way our politics has become permeated by everything which can be related to global warming, from soaring taxes to the propaganda dished out in our schools, from the wishful thinking that we can spend £100 billion on building thousands more useless wind turbines, to the disastrous distortion of our national energy policy by the "green" obsessions of both the EU and our own political class, which threaten within a few years to turn Britain's lights out. (Although next week I hope to reveal an unexpected way in which this might be averted.)

This flight from reality was never better exemplified than by the 2008 Climate Change Act, committing Britain, uniquely in the world, to reducing its carbon emissions by more than four fifths. Even the Government admits that this will cost us up to £18 billion every year for four decades, making it by far the most costly law in our history. Though its target could only be met by virtually closing down our economy, such is the bubble of unreality in which our political class lives that our MPs voted for this insane law almost unanimously, without having any idea of its practical implications.

It seems to me that, very soon, we will not be worrying about immigration—but emigration, as vast numbers of people flee the wreckage of what was, not so very long ago, a vast economic power, a liberal beacon and a great country.

The Big Questions #1

As some may know, I was on The Big Questions this morning, a sort of populist Sunday morning talkshow. In essence, I was asked to debate the question "should we lower the drink-driving limit from 80mgs to 50mgs"—and to defend the status quo. I'm going to cover the experience in a few posts, for clarity, but there are a few general comments that I'd make...

First, I was incredibly nervous when it came to it. I am not usually so on-edge when doing speaking gigs; but usually I have a reasonable billing (and thus reasonable time to get a nuanced point across). Another factor was that I knew that I was being asked to defend a position that was potentially very emotive—and, sure enough, they wheeled on some couple whose son had been killed in a drink-driving accident (of which more later).

Second, although I had made extensive notes and had, I believed, a well-structured argument, this was thrown out slightly by that fact that, when the section finally came up, they had changed the question to "should we ban any drinking before driving"? Although I had anticipated this as a counter-argument to some of the points that I might raise, I had not expected to have to kick off defending that position.

Third—and this is what this post will deal with—I was ambushed by figures that I had, quite simply, never heard before. These came, most specifically, from Dr Valerie [someone or other] from the British Medical Association.

The first claim that she made was that, with 80mgs in the blood, reaction time was impaired by 12%. Sensibly, I should have asked "so what is the average reaction time, in milliseconds?" because, when I asked her afterwards, she had absolutely no idea. She waffled about lots of extenuating circumstances, blah, blah, which would probably have satisfied the audience—but her not having the figures would have put her on the back foot—as would the audience understanding that 12% of, say, 10 milliseconds is utterly insignificant.

However, the most important claim that she made was that the risk of being involved in an accident with 80mgs of alcohol in your blood (the current limit) was ten times that of someone with none.

I have found out since that this was, quite simply, a lie.

Again, talking to her afterwards, I challenged her assertion and asked her where she had got her data. Valerie had not, in fact, got the data herself (her researcher had) but the graph that she showed me was this one—and seen exactly as below.



On production of this artifact, the conversation went something like this...

"This came from the World Health Organisation. And... Well, I don't have another graph but I know that this has been replicated all over the place." She stabbed at the graph's y-axis saying, "see, there's 20.00."

"Yes," said I. "But that point at 0.8 is nowhere near ten times the likelihood of crashing."

Having noted some of the details, I have tracked down the WHO paper that it came from—the WHO Drinking And Driving, A Road Safety Manual For Decision-makers And Practitioners. Oh yes? Those discredited IPCC synthesis reports are always described as "for decision-makers"—it usually means that they are rather more political documents than nuanced science.

Anyway, you can find the graph that she was referring to in the section entitled Chapter 1: Why is a drinking and driving programme necessary [PDF, 397kb] which is not a title that fills me with the confidence that this is going to be, in any way, unbiased. For those who cannot be bothered to download the damn thing, here's how the graph appears in situ.



The first thing to understand is that this is a relative crash risk: if you drink no alcohol at all, the risk of crashing is, quite obviously, not zero—otherwise alcohol would be a factor in 100% of road crashes, rather than the 6% (2008) that it actually is.

The second point is that this is the outcome of a number of studies, starting with one in Michigan, US, in 1964, but is the one featured in the most recent of those, from 2002.

In 196 a case-control study was carried out in Michigan in the United States known as the Grand Rapids study (15). It showed that drivers who had consumed alcohol had a much higher risk of involvement in crashes than those with a zero BAC, and that this risk increased rapidly with increasing blood alcohol levels. These results were corroborated and improved upon by studies in the 1980s, 1990s and in 2002 (16–18). These studies provided the basis for setting legal blood alcohol limits and breath content limits in many countries around the world.

The real point to note is the second paragraph of the accompanying explanation... [Emphasis mine.]

The studies found that the relative risk of crash involvement starts to increase significantly at a blood alcohol concentration level of 0.0 g/dl and that at 0.10 g/100 ml the crash risk relative to a zero BAC is approximately 5, while at a BAC of 0.2 g/100 ml the crash risk is more than 1 0 times the risk relative to a zero BAC (see Figure 1.2).

In other words, at 100mgs, the risk of crashing is five times higher than at baseline. Valerie from the BMA was claiming an increase of ten times at 80mgs—which is, to say the least, a little creative.

Or, as I like to call it, a lie.

One of the things that we would obviously like to know is, roughly, what is the baseline? Presumably it is not zero, because five, or even ten, times zero is zero. So, in actual percentages, what is your average chance of crashing when you are sober? If you get in your car and drive somewhere, what is the chance that you will have an accident?

I have had an inordinate amount of trouble trying to quantify this: if I could even find an estimate for the number of road journeys made every year, that would help. If anyone knows where to find such figures, please, let me know.

Otherwise, I shall proceed to try to piece the bits together in my next post...

Telling it like it is

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) spells out quite clearly the problem facing the next government.

New research by the IEA shows that if the Conservatives or other parties do not want to raise taxes they must cut spending plans by £167bn. Today’s report Cutting public spending by £167bn: A modest but necessary aim sets out clearly the scale of the problem the UK is facing.

Mark Littlewood, Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:

“In the lead up to the political parties launching their manifestos this finding should be a massive wake up call.”

“So far we have heard precious little from any party about the need to make substantial cuts. However, if they aren’t intending to cut public spending dramatically they must be planning on raising taxes. Perhaps unsurprisingly we are yet to hear this acknowledgement from any politicians.”

“The current arguments about whether or not to raise National Insurance by a fraction are grossly inadequate. Cuts must be made far in excess of ‘efficiency savings’ or the British public may be sure their taxes will rise substantially to plug the gap..."

£167 billion is, roughly speaking, the amount of money that the government has had to borrow in the last year. That's £167,000,000,000 or one hundred and sixty seven thousand million pounds.

This simply cannot go on and, as Guido so neatly illustrated, the Tories have so far committed to concrete cuts of a derisory £6 billion.

The people of this country are going to have to realise that the molly-coddling and pampering that they have become used to, in this great social democracy that they've embraced, is going to have to end. It. Is. Not. Sustainable.

And there's no point is trying to delay the pain: it is going to have to end and, if not now, then very soon.

Quote of the day...

... comes from the now inappropriately-named White Sun Of The Desert (he was once based in the Middle East and is now in Sakhalin).

Socialism wasn’t some poor, helpless unborn infant cruelly aborted by evil capitalists, it was a fucking huge great alpha male abomination which during the prime of its life ran rampage with a bottle of vodka mixed with amphetamines in one hand and a heavy machine gun in the other.

It's worth reading the whole succinct post...

Annual ASI Bloggers' Bash: a plague on all their houses (no question mark necessary)

I am glad to see that The Englishman, amongst others, will be popping along to this little event...

Dear blogger,

On Thursday, 29th April, we will be holding our annual Bloggers’ Bash.
Details are as follows:

Bloggers’ Bash 2010
A plague on all their houses?

Speakers:
Paul Staines—Guido Fawkes' blog
Tim Worstall—It is all obvious or trivial except…
Perry de Havilland—Samizdata.net

29th April 2010, 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Plentiful beers & lagers will be served
23 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BL
RSVP: events@adamsmith.org

Whilst it's entirely possible that my attempts to drag the Briff down there for a piss-up might not be sucessful, both the wife and I (and maybe a few of your other favourite Kitchen contributors) shall be wandering along to the Adam Smith Institute for this little shindig.

Maybe we'll see you there...

Adobe is hiring! (Mac users need not apply)

As some will know, Adobe is the software development company that makes such applications as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign—all those applications that professional graphic designers rely on. One such application is Flash and the next release of that application was going to allow programmers to compile Flash applications for the iPhone—only Apple has just scuppered that in their new iPhone OS 4 SDK (which delivers, amongst other things, multi-tasking—eliminating one of my gripes about the iPad).

Incensed, Adobe developer Jim Dowdell tweeted thusly...

I know that a number of good people work at Apple. If you're seeking a more ethical company, Adobe is hiring: adobe.com/aboutadobe/careeropp

Really? Gosh—let's go and have a look at the recruitment page that Jim is pointing those Apple developers to, shall we? Hang on, what's this...? [Emphasis mine.]

Adobe has a new talent acquisition system. This system is optimized for performance on IE 6 or IE 7, running on Windows XP. Unfortunately it is not supported on Firefox, nor is it supported on a Mac at this time.

Way to go, Adobe! Here's a software development company whose "talent acquisition system" software, apparently, doesn't even work on standards-based browsers.

Further, a developer at Adobe—a company which was started by ex-Apple employees and became a big company through, initially, selling Mac-only software—is urging Apple employees to apply for jobs through a system that doesn't support Macs.

Nice one, Jim, you moron.

DISCLAIMER: I own an insignificant number of Apple shares—currently sitting at $241.79...

Jesus's voting intentions

In the last couple of days, two remarkably silly articles have been posted by two remarkably silly Christians—each claiming that Jesus would vote for their respective parties. The first, by Andy Flannagan (who is something called a Christian Socialist), claims that Jesus might vote Labour in this General Election; the second, a fisking of the first by the sanctimonious Tim Montgomerie, claims that Jesus might, in fact, support the Tories.

Articles like this have always struck me as being utterly ridiculous. Although I am not a believer, like most middle-class children I suffered my fair share of religious teachings and it always seemed to me that Jesus was outside of Earthly politics: whenever presented with a political question, Jesus always tried to emphasise that such things were not important—he was concerned only with the soul of the individual.

Indeed, it is this point that my wife—who happens to be a Christian—has pointed out in her comprehensive post on the matter.

But Jesus was not a social worker. Jesus was, according to Christians, the Son of God, and according to most Christians, true God from true God, of one being with the Father. I would expect the Director of the Christian Socialist Movement to be at least as well versed in the theological tenets of Christianity as any Catholic child who goes to Mass regularly enough to have learned the Nicene Creed. Why is this relevant? Because Jesus’s teachings, whatever they may suggest to us about the proper ordering of human interaction, were ultimately eschatological: that is, concerned with the final outcomes of death, judgment, and the destiny of the human soul. His advice is to individuals: how to purify the soul in anticipation of meeting God. Actions, such as caring for the poor, working for one’s sustenance, and treating others as equals, are merely the outward manifestation of a genuinely held personal belief that the most sinless soul is the one that wishes only good, wishes no harm, and accepts God’s love as a gift given in spite of our imperfections, not because of our good works.

Good actions that are driven by the desire to perfect an earthly society, rather than the individual soul, are the hallmark of the non-Christian. I am not saying this is a bad thing; far from it, actually. But advocating good works for the sake of perfecting society is not a religious attitude, and Christianity is a religion, not a charity club. And the desire to perfect the soul before God is what differentiates a Christian from a nice person – and we all know the world is full of nice people who are not Christians.

So this characterisation of Jesus and Christianity as being focused on improving society actually strips both of their essentially religious nature. Doing good works is wonderful, because it makes life on earth liveable; but the distinguishing feature of Christianity is that of the perfection of the soul in preparation for death on earth; and each of us dies alone, and will face judgment alone in front of God, with Christ co-substantial and co-eternal at His right hand.

All of this would imply (to me, at least) that Jesus was, in fact, far closer to being a libertarian than either Tory or Socialist: in fact, more than this, Jesus was pretty much an Objectivist.

As Bella has said, the true Christian way is the perfection of one's own soul: one should do good works—helping those less fortunate than oneself or fulfilling the potential of one's God-given talents (or both)—because these are objectively good. And being objectively good, these action will contribute to the purification of your soul.

At the same time, those things that are objectively bad—theft, murder, sloth, etc.—will stain your soul and any Christian should avoid doing them. But since it is your own, personal soul that is in the balance, failing to realise your own potential is also bad—especially if that is achieved through bad means.

In other words, failing to be the very best that you can be—especially through cowardice or sloth—will count against your soul when it comes to judgement; Ayn Rand's Objectivist outlook praises those who make the most of their talents when those talents are used to create—a philosophy that Jesus would, I am sure, also approve of.

Similarly, Rand opined that one should only give to charity if this action had value to you, not simply because you had been asked for charity for such charity might actively harm the recipient (for a crude analysis of how this might happen, simply look at the marginal deduction rates on benefits—rates that incentivise people not to work and, thus, not to fulfill their potential).

This, too, chimes with the Christian route: you should give to charity because you wish to purify your own soul, because it has value to you, not simply because others are doing so. And to give charity when that action will harm the recipient will have no value at all, for it is the good outcomes that are measured in heaven, not your intention in the giving.

And, of course, to force people to "give" to charity under threat of violence is no virtue at all.

So, your humble Devil would submit that Jesus would vote for neither Labour nor Tories; indeed, he would not vote at all. Jesus might, however, be a fan of Ayn Rand.

The very model of a climate scientist

To accompany Milibandias, here's another poem from the keyboard of one of Bishop Hill's commenters.

I am the very model of a modern climatologist
I’m partly statistician, partly palaeo-phrenologist
I’ve temperature readings from thermometers coniferous
my data are the same (or not, well, maybe) as Keith Briffa has
I bought them from a bloke who brought them hotfoot from Siberia
and mixed them with some algae from the mud in Lake Superior.
When counting different isotopes I’m really in my element
and sucking up to journalists from Guardian Environment
I know what makes the treerings from Siberia to the Rockies tick
And I can make spaghetti and transform it to a hockeystick.
My data’s got dark matter that would shatter a cosmologist
I am the very model of a modern climatologist

Nice.

The Devil rides out (on the BBC)

Your humble Devil is in Peckham tomorrow, to take part in a debate on drink-driving, as part of BBC1's The Big Question. They are focusing on the North review of drink-driving laws—which is looking at dropping the alcohol limit—and whether this would be a "good" thing. As such, your humble Devil is spending some time researching current figures...

On Wednesday (hopefully—I've just about managed to clear my diary), I shall be having a five minute interview with The Daily Politics, as Andrew Neil does a short piece on the Libertarian Party as part of the BBC's focus on smaller political parties.

Provided I can stop myself from swearing, can a starring role in a major Hollywood blockbuster be far away...?

What an industrious little chap!

David Cameron has cited his experiences at Eton to back up his National Citizen Service scheme.

The Conservative leader recounted how he completed a similar scheme while at school. “I was in the cadet force and enjoyed that,” he said. “I also did visits to elderly, vulnerable people in Windsor — did their shopping and things like that.”

Interesting. So, here's the way that said scheme worked at Eton...

In one's penultimate year (that is, the first year of A Levels), one had to choose whether one would go into the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) or do Social Service. Your humble Devil—harbouring no army fantasies nor being tremendously good at heavy lifting or anything approaching vigorous exercise—chose the latter option.

One or two afternoons a week, we would wander to our assigned social service project. Mine was, as it happens, helping kids in a Slough school for the disabled (or "learning difficulties", as its known now); ostensibly, we would help them with reading, etc. but much of the time it was simply to help the teachers to keep order amongst the children for a little while.

Social service wasn't too onerous—certainly less so than spending our weekends hiding in ditches or the other entertainments enjoyed by those in the CCF—and, to be frank, much of the time we spent nowhere near as much time doing it as we should because there simply wasn't enough for us to do.

As such, myself—and another couple of pupils assigned to the same school—took advantage of the other main reason for choosing social service: we dropped into a pub on the way back and had a few drinks. It was quite relaxing really...

Naturally, I wouldn't doubt Dave's word—and, of course, it might have been different then—but I would be extraordinarily surprised if he had done the CCF ("the cadet force") and social service ("visits to elderly").

In any case, the compulsion part of the scheme certainly didn't exist in the next year—although, of course, many people remained in the CCF (and many went on to join the forces). It should be noted, however, that within the bounds of the school rules, all of this was compulsory: you had to choose one or the other.

But perhaps he was, in fact, some kind of saint with a lot of time on his hands. Who knows...?

UPDATE: commenter Asa points out that, in fact, it was perfectly possible to do both.

Hello! Just thought I'd offer my experience as a similarly schooled chap to Dave, I did the cadet force for a year (GCSE time) and the year after (before sixth form) had to either continue as nco cadet or do community service (which I chose)

My mistake—I was interested in neither as I spent almost all of my last three years wielding an oxy-acetelene torch in the Art Schools.

Independent fame at last

Your humble Devil is flattered to have been characterised—alongside a few other notable blogging chaps and chapettes—so succinctly by the Independent's Michael Bywater...

The bloke from The Devil's Kitchen is doing it by saying "fuck" a lot, and who can blame him?

Quite. Mind you, it's customary in blogging circles to link to those blogs which one mentions.

And so, in the spirit of my described trait (to which I'll add some bad-tempered churlishness), I'd like to ask Michael a question: where the fuck's my link...?

Anyway, your humble Devil will be back tomorrow for some blogging fun. Probably.

UPDATE: The Longrider comments on Bywater's snide little sideswipe...

The general gist, though is that we aren’t in the same league as professional journalists. We aren’t. We tend to be a little more careful with our facts and if we get it wrong, will openly correct our copy. We engage with readers and, generally, exercise higher standard of ethical behaviour.

When it comes down to it, the professional journalist is only a fag paper away from the politician when it comes to disinformation, failure to check facts, misleading statistics, propaganda and downright lies – so, yes, I am not in the same league at all and would need to scrub myself down with sulphuric acid and a steel loofah if I ever became contaminated by one.

Harsh but, I think, entirely fair. Although I think he misses another salient point: we bloggers will investigate stories that the journos wouldn't touch, such as ClimateGate.

Milibandias

His Ecclesiastical Eminence obviously gets a high class of commenter, for one of them has been moved to pen this rather excellent parody of Ozymandias.

I met a traveller from a distant shire
Who said: A vast and pointless shaft of steel
Stands on a hill top… Near it, in the mire,
Half sunk, a shattered turbine lies, whose wheels
And riven blades and snarls of coloured wire
Tell that its owners well their mission read
Which did not last nor, nowhere to be seen,
The hand that paid them and the empty head.
And scrawled around the base these lines are clear:
‘My name is Millibandias, greenest Green.
Look on my works, ye doubters, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round this display
Of reckless cost and loss, blotless and fair,
The green and pleasant landscape rolls away.

Ah, such sweet poetry...

Libertarian Roundup #11

The Libertarian Alliance wants to start a civil irritation campaign. Please support them!

In which the Appalling Strangeness reviews a book.

The Salted Slug says that Dave is utterly clueless. Leg-Iron shows how he's going to finance this abomination.

Leg-Iron says we won't be allowed to wrap up warmly in winter any more. And also why we have so much CCTV.

Anna Raccoon has a terrifying piece on what happens when the government runs "Care in the Community". And shows just what a great job the government is doing with cutting costs.

Counting Cats is just as impressed with Dave's "Big Society" plan as everyone else has been.

Obnoxio The Clown consolidates the libertarian viewpoint on "gay B&B scandal".

Jeff Randall mercilessly dissects the mendacity of modern politics.

Charlotte Gore is blogging again!

Capitalists@Work has Brownadder coming fourth.

Toodle-pip!

When Green loons realise that they've made a mistake...

... they move their threatening articles off their websites and post, instead, a mealy-mouthed apology from someone called Ananth.

Well, we’ve taken down that post from our website. It’s very easy to misconstrue that line, take it out of context and suggest it means something wholly different from the practice of peaceful civil disobedience, which is what the post was about. Anyone who knows Gene knows he’s an entirely peaceful guy. In the interest of transparency we have moved it off site to this location, where you can read the offending quotes in context and judge for yourself:

We got this one wrong, no doubt about it. I’m holding up my hands on behalf of the organisation and saying sorry for that. Peaceful action is at the very core of what we do, so any language that even comes close to suggesting that’s not the case is something we cannot support.

Uh huh.

Of course, in the interests of transparency, Anthony Watts has archived the article in situ, so that you can constantly remind yourself of the kid of thing that Greenpeace "cannot support" but did anyway.

Gene in his blog asks: “What do you do when patient petitioning, protest marches and court orders fail? What do you do when all the protocols and cheat codes of democracy fail? This is what you do: you reclaim the language of democracy from the twisted bunch that have hijacked, cannibalized and subverted it.”

Oh, that's a bit harsh on Phil Jones and the Hockey Team—where's your tol... Oh, you mean us? You're talking about the sceptics and the way that we've "hijacked, cannibalized and subverted" the language with our demands for such "twisted" things as "evidence".

Well, fuck me sideways.

We need to reclaim the language of democracy and tolerance.

Well, you've done a bang-up job there, Ananth. I must say that it was definitely "the language of democracy and tolerance" that I saw in Gene's article.

A language that is clear and precise.

Oh, Gene's language was very clear and very precise.

A language that does not confuse integrity of protest and civil disobedience with anger. One which establishes the fundamental tenets of protecting the planet for all life forms.

Except, presumably, the "twisted bunch" that Gene is so angry at, eh?

The climate change debate is often characterised by more heat than light, and for that reason we all need to be careful about how we express ourselves.

Of course the anti-science brigade on the web has seized on the line in Gene's post and run with it (and will run and run and run), taken it out of context and run with it some more – it’s what the climate contrarians exist to do.

Um... Maybe that is what we "climate contrarians" exist to do—and thank you for eschewing the word "deniers", Ananth. Truly, you have avoided using the language of "anger".

Or maybe—just maybe—we try to look at the evidence and try to assess, rationally, whether the risk of anthropogenic climate change, and the consequences of it, are severe enough to warrant the millions of deaths that your advocated measures will entail.

Some of us even look to one of your own gods—the IPCC—and their SRES families and note that even that UN body does not believe that the measures that you want to embrace are the best outcome. Or not, at least, for humans.

And not really for the environment either, Ananth. Which country has the cleanest rivers—China or Britain? Which country has the healthiest, and growth of area of, woodlands—the USA or India? Concern for the environment is a rich people's game, Ananth, and thus you should support measures which ensure that everyone in the world gets as rich as possible as quickly as possible—and that means embracing the A1 family of SRE Scenarios, which is summarised as follows.

The A1 storyline is a case of rapid and successful economic development, in which regional average income per capita converge—current distinctions between "poor" and "rich" countries eventually dissolve. The primary dynamics are:

• Strong commitment to market-based solutions.


• High savings and commitment to education at the household level.


• High rates of investment and innovation in education, technology, and institutions at the national and international levels.


• International mobility of people, ideas, and technology.

So, will Greenpeace now endorse this model?

Will it fuck.

The new Green narrative

With the science around catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CACC) starting to unravel and more and more evidence of exaggeration of the consequences coming to light, the eco-loons are scrabbling around frantically for a new narrative with which to fuel the terror needed to sustain their quasi-religious dogma.

And it seems that they have found it, and that narrative can be summed up in two simple words—Godwin's Law.

Don't believe me? Via Bishop Hill, here's arch-Greenie James Lovelock—writing on the 29 March—telling us how we should confront this impending doom. [Emphasis mine.]

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Now, as regular readers of The Kitchen will know, I am no fan of democracy—it simply being the tyranny of the majority expressed in a voting system—but it is the best system that we know for preserving liberty. And why?

Because some demagogue cunt like James Lovelock cannot oppress us in order to pursue his lunatic obsession. Of course, the disadvantage of democracy is that all of our main parties are also oppressing us to pursue their lunatic Green credentials but, then, since so much of said oppression is had down from their EU masters on high, their is little that any of these lily-livered politicos can do about it.

But, just to ram home the point, I shall steal Longrider's words in order to paint a picture of the kind of hideousness that Lovelock is contemplating.

Close your eyes for a moment and picture Gordon Brown deciding that he will now lead a war cabinet – a coalition government of national unity for the foreseeable future and this will be a long war. How does that make you feel? So, should we follow Lovelocks’s thinking and suspend democracy?

Horrible, I think you'll agree. Anyway, I digress...

Lovelock has already espoused the idea that climate change is akin to a Total War situation for, remember, the last time that we suspended democracy in this country was in World War II.

So, imagine my total lack of surprise when, via the prolific Tom Nelson, I find an article by the High Priest of CACC, James Hansen, written on 5 April and also drawing a parallel between CACC and the second world war.

The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century. Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet.

These moral equivalences have been drawn before by loony Green nutters, but now that the big boys have broken cover with their narrative du jour, expect to see a lot more of this "CACC is like fighting the Nazis" bullshit.

That is, of course, if these watermelon bastards—such as Greenpeace—aren't actively threatening you.

We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.

And we be many, but you be few.

Sssh, I think I hear Greenpeace at the door! Oh god, they're coming in! What—what do you want...?

"For you, Devil, ze war is over. It is off to ze work camps for you, schnell..."

Noooooooooooo...

TRANSMISSION TERMINATES.

When Green loons start to lose the argument...

... like every thug there's ever been, they like to resort to threats. The anthropogenic climate change (ACC) alarmists have been steadily losing the scientific argument and—whilst the politicians continue to proceed as though none of the contre temps of the last few months have happened—even the media have started to pay attention.

So, given my little introduction, how do you think Greenpeace responded to the latest questioning of their quasi-religious beliefs? With rational science—or with threats?

Bingo!

The proper channels have failed. It's time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism.

If you're one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let's talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.

If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:

We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.

And we be many, but you be few.

And so, as the foundations of their religion start to crumble, the mask starts to slip...

UPDATE: Autonomous Mind has some further analysis...

Farage and the Conservatives

Via Timmy, who is utterly unsurprised, Conservative MP John Redwood is whining about Farage standing against John Bercow.

More importantly it means Mr Farage himself, the most newsworthy of the UKIP slate, is not taking the fight to a leading federalist MP and putting him on the spot as to why he has sold the UK down the river and done so much damage to our democracy by giving away so much power. Surely UKIP should be tearing into Lib Dem and Labour federalists who led the charge to damage our democracy by such huge transfers of decision making? Why isn’t Mr Farage standing against Mr Cable, for example?

For fuck's sake, Redwood, I wish you Conservatives would stop bitching and moaning about how the Tories are the only EUsceptic party in this country—you aren't because you aren't EUsceptic.

• Which party took us into the EU under the auspices of the European Communities Act? The Conservatives.


• Which party signed up to the Single European Act? Oh, will you look at that? It's the Conservatives again.


• Which party signed us up to the Maastricht Treaty? Oh, well, fuck me—it's the Conservative Party yet again!

And let's face it, the only reason that John Major didn't sign us up to the Euro too is because he buggered up the economy so comprehensively that—after crashing out of the ERM—we weren't allowed to.

Remind me, John, at what point have the Conservatives ever stood up and defended Britain's interests against the EU project? And no, Thatcher's hissy-fit over the amount that we pay in does not count—ultimately, she did nothing practical to oppose the process of integration one jot—she just whined about the cost of it.

Ultimately, John, if the Conservatives really are a EUsceptic party then we voters can only conclude that the Tories are all mouth and no fucking trousers.

Union says "no"

[This post was edited after the Andrew Neil debacle.]

NASUWT president Chris Keates: the evil is writ large upon her hideous melting-candle face.

And so here's a typical union leader refusing to put her money where her mouth is.

The Tories want parents and other organisations to have state funds to set up their own schools.
Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove issued the call in a speech to the NASUWT teachers' union conference.

And can you guess what the union response was? Go on—have a guess.

Was it (a) yes, what a wonderful idea: we'll show you how a school should be run, given how much we profess to dislike the constant state interference, or was it (b)...

The union did not want to run a school, [NASUWT president Chris Keates] said. Schools should be "democratically accountable" and not operated for and by "the pushy and the privileged".

Ah. So, schools should not be run for and by "the pushy and the privileged" unless those pushy and privileged are the union members under state sanction.

To describe people like "Ms" Keates as disgusting bottom-feeders seems disrespectful to various families of single-celled organisms but, mostly, it's disrespectful to those parents who might want something better for their children than the state-sanctioned pap supported by the likes of union thugs like Ms Keates.


UPDATE: Chris Keates has previous—feel free to revisit some of her greatest hits...

• The Unions—a clarification


• Destroy the unions


• Where's the evidence?


• Hannah Pool is an idiot

Iain Dale says "all your business are belong to the state"

Iain Dale is complaining about Chris Grayling's contention that B&B; owners—though not hotel owners—should be free to reject gay couples (even though Grayling voted for the legislation that prohibits this. A Tory MP who is a massive hypocrite—who'da thunk it?).

Now, Iain can fight the corner of his own little vested interest all he likes—and, let's face it, he's never pretended to be a libertarian—but he calls this so wrong that it's worth giving his wee face a little slapping.

I fundamentally disagree with him on the main issue. This is not about property rights. If you open your house to paying guests, it is no longer just your house.

BOOM! Wrong! This is why libertarians fundamentally disagree with the smoking ban, whether they be smokers or not: because a pub is, in fact, a private business.

You are running a business, just the same as anyone else, and you should be subject to the same laws as anyone else.

Sure. But maybe—just maybe—businesses should not be bound by these laws either. Ever considered that, Iain?

If you do not wish gay people, black people, Jews or anyone else in your house, don't open it to the public. Simple as that. No one would accept a shopowner refusing to serve a particular type of person, would they?

No, Iain. And that's why public opinion is rather more important than the law. These days, a shop that displayed a sign saying "no blacks, no poofs and no Etonians" would be boycotted by anyone who isn't a colossal bigot. Now, it might be that a large proportion of the British public are bigots, but...

... perhaps you should leave the decision to individuals, rather than slapping blanket laws of people to force them to live by your personal morals.

Now, to a dedicated statist like Iain Dale this is, of course, unconscionable. The state should force private businesses to behave like Iain wants them to—in short, that private businesses should belong to the state (as long, of course, as that state is run by the party that Iain hero-worships).

Get a grip, Iain: businesses are private entities, just as individuals are. In fact, they are recognised as private individuals in the law that you are suddenly so fond of.

And so, once again, Iain Dale shows himself to be an oppressor of individuals' rights, and a statist of the most disgusting type—a man who claims that he believes in personal freedom, except when your morals are opposed to his. In which case, of course, he will use violence to ensure that—at least outwardly—you agree with him.

Wake up! Freedom means tolerating those things that you dislike, as well as those things that you do like.

Iain Dale has failed that test—and not for the first time.

UPDATE: for the benefit of commenter Phil Dickens, here is a brief 101 on how libertarianism applies to this case.

• The central tenet of libertarianism is the non-aggression axiom: that is "you shall not initiate force or fraud against someone's life, liberty or property".


• Inherent in this is a strong belief in property rights—your body is considered to be your property and, thus, so is your liberty and the property that you have justly acquired through the application of your life and liberty.


• The shop that you run is your property. Anyone who tells you how your shop should be run is infringing on your property rights, thus violating the non-aggression axiom.


• Blacks, gays and Etonians do not have a right to buy stuff from your shop—you do have the right to refuse to serve them. It would make you a bit of a shit, but that is, nonetheless, the case.


• The disgusted community do not have the right, for instance, to show its displeasure by throwing bricks through your window. It does have the right to boycott your shop because of your unpleasant ideas; nothing says that anyone must buy from you, or give you their money, and they can refuse to buy from you and thus make your business fail.

Of course, someone might set up a rival shop, selling anything to anyone—they will not be closing off a large section of the market as the bigot is. That person might be, for instance, an Asian who also happens to work harder than the bigot; the Asian thus not only serves the whole market, but also prices his goods more cheaply—money talks and people go to his shop and realise that maybe these Asian fellows are not the demons that they've been painted as.

The Asian's shop thrives, whilst the bigot's becomes less and less frequented. Indeed, as the Asian community grows bigger and the surrounding community less fearful of the interlopers—realising that Asian people are, in fact, humans just like them—the Asian shopkeeper starts to branch out. Instead of stocking only traditional corner-shop goods, the Asian shopkeeper starts to import the exotic fruits and vegetables that he is used to in his land of origin.

The Asian community start to flock to his shop and the indigenous community start, slowly but with increasing momentum, to discover the diversity of foods out there. Instead of buying the usual carrots, potatoes and other earthy vegetables, the wider community starts being introduced to mangoes, okra, sweet pumpkin, taro and other assorted delicacies.

People also start being introduced to new ways to cook things—the concept of "curry", for instance, might become so ubiquitous that it's almost seen as something indigenous. Further people who might never have become curious about far away places are, as travel becomes cheaper (partly as a result of enterprising Asians taking holidays back to their countries of origin), able to visit these places and further appreciate the culture that the Asian shopkeeper has come from.

And so on and so forth...

At the end of all this, the community has become enriched, by trade and the interaction of human beings—not by laws handed down from on high and enforced by violence. In the meantime, of course, the bigot's shop has long gone bust, and the bitter old cunt has joined the BNP.

UPDATE 2: more on this by the Libertarian Party's Head of Policy.

The Devil Abroad

Via Brian Mickelthwait, I have found the video of my appearance at the Oxford Libertarian Society.

Brian Micklethwait, Tony Brown, Chris Mounsey - 'What YOU can do for liberty' from oxford libertarian on Vimeo.

The Oxford Libertarians were very generous so I had had quite a lot to drink by this point. I also had only the vaguest idea of what I was speaking on, so I'm afraid that my speech is pretty ad hoc.

Struck off

I see that Bob Crow and his merry men have been forced to cancel their rail strike because of dodgy balloting.

A High Court judge rescued the travel plans of millions of Easter holidaymakers and commuters returning to work next week by granting an emergency injunction against a national rail strike that threatened to halt 80 per cent of trains.

Superficially, there's only one thing that I can add to this news...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahaha...

There is, unfortunately, a downside to this news.

Mrs Justice Sharp also spared the Prime Minister untold political damage by halting the four-day strike, which was to begin on Tuesday — the day on which Gordon Brown is expected to call a general election.

Bugger.

Oh well: at least one can say that—strike or no strike—Gordon Brown is still an absolute cunt.

And so is Bob Crow.

Blue Meanies

The Conservatives' National Citizen Service is based on successful precedents set in other countries.

One does wonder what the fuck is going on in Tory HQ—occasionally they mutter about personal freedom but, whenever they announce a policy, it seems to be about the Conservatives' freedom to tell us what to do.

As a case in point, let's take this little article by Tim Loughton, headlined...

Our plans for a National Citizen Service...

... are a National Fucking Disgrace? Seriously, what the hell is going on here?

Since 1997, Labour has, true to its roots, concentrated on building big government. Gordon Brown’s unremitting control-freakery has peppered public services with targets and processes, regulation and paperwork. The result has been a bigger state.

We want to reverse this.

OK, I'm not going to argue with that. So, what's your solution, Tim?

Are you, perhaps, going to roll back the big state by cutting the number of things that it tries to run, slice public spending down to sustainable levels, enact a Great Repeal Bill to restore the personal freedom and civil liberties that have been stolen from us and generally get the fuck out of our lives...?

We want to breathe new life into public services by making them more genuinely public – we want public sector workers to have a much greater say over what they do and how they do it.

What the fuck? As The Englishman says, we do not want "public sector workers to have a much greater say over what they do and how they do it"—we want public sector workers to do what we, the public, tell them to do and to do it in the way that we, the public, tell them to.

In the vast majority of cases, we'd like them to fuck off down to the Job Centre—and line up in front of the tills, not sit supine behind them.

We want to make it easier for people to contribute to the lives of their communities in the ways they see best. We want a bigger society.

Oh really? Well, what if I don't want to be part of your "bigger society", Tim? Can I opt out?

No, of course I fucking can't.

This mentality drives one of our most exciting proposals for young people—the National Citizen Service. This will offer all 16-year olds the opportunity to take part in a three-week social project in the summer after they’ve finished their GCSEs. First and foremost we want young people to experience a challenge—we’ll take them out of their comfort zones on a residential team-building course of a week or more.

Ah, you're going to offer them "the opportunity" to do this are you? When you say "opportunity", could it be that you actually mean that you are going to make it compulsory? Timmy thinks that it's entirely possible but it is certainly true that when Cameron announced this policy in a Sun article of September 2007, it was stated that it would not be compulsory in law.

Experts say that would be the wrong way to encourage the 650,000 16-year-olds each year to participate. Instead, they say the scheme should become so attractive it will become a natural part of growing up.

Employers will take note of those who include NCS work on their CV.

Oh, they will, will they? Will that be made compulsory in law? Or is it possible that employers will look at a potential employee's competence, rather than whether they have participated in the Tories' fucking Summer of Slavery.

Students will qualify for a cash award on completing their course.

Oh, I take it back—students will be paid, so it's not slavery. It will, in fact, prepare them for the world of work: it will give them the thrill of getting a paycheque that has been honestly earned!

I remember how good it felt to get my first pay packet—not only was it a reasonable sum of money but it felt amazing to know that I had earned every single penny of it through hard work and skill.

These young people will learn that hard work brings rewards!

Half of it will go to the organisation with which they worked. The other 50 per cent will be donated to a charity of the individual’s choice.

Oh, no: I was right the first time—it is slavery. Not only that, but the Tories are teaching sixteen year olds that it is wrong to work for your own profit, that it is far better and more worthy to subjugate your talent and your hard work to the will of others, and that working hard will bring no reward to themselves.

Ayn Rand would have a fucking fit. And I'm none to pleased either.

And, of course, it is a fool-proof and ostensibly worthy way of funnelling taxpayer funds into the Tories' favoured vested interests. Not the evil vested interests, you understand, but the good vested interests—like the unions.

After that they will be sent back to their own communities to consider what they think they can do to help meet their area’s needs. They will then draw up plans for social action projects which they will set up and keep going with volunteer work in the following year. This will be inspirational hard work giving every young person the opportunity to rub shoulders with others from very different walks of life and work with them to build better societies and communities.

For fuck's sake...

Equally we need to build better rites of passage for young people in this country. At the moment too many of the perceived markers for adulthood are negative – getting drunk, smoking, having underage sex – NCS is an opportunity for us to offer the youth of today an indication that society will value them by what they put in, not what they take out.

And what of the kids value of themselves? Should all of our worth be dictated by what other people think?

Unsurprisingly, I think not. But then I am pretty damn sure of my own worth.

And, given that, I cannot be bothered to look at the last two paragraphs of this boilerplate bullshit—I have better things to do with my time than to fisk, in their entirety, the stupid vacuous ideas of stupid vacuous men.

But, seriously, fucking hellski...

Libertarian Roundup #10

The Last Ditch speaks of the end of days. Angry Exile has more on the nub of Henry Porter's grumble.

Iain Martin shows Alastair Darling's mendacity. The Fact Checker has more on his economy with the actualité.

The UK Libertarian shows how the government is out-spending everyone on advertising.

Boatang & Demetriou highlight Gordon Brown's Mugabe-esque manoeuvres.

Iain Martin highlights how the Westminster Bubble insulates government decision-makers from the consequences of their decisions.

Leg-Iron reports on the tyranny of the scientists.

Hopi Sen (!) identifies some Tory hypocrisy.

The Salted Slug says the Tories are utterly clueless.

And finally, Al Jahom has a fine selection of election posters.