The Last Ditch

If Liberty has Orphans, then I guess she's dead

For Liberty.

I commend this new venture to you. Group blogs seem to be the way forward now. It's certainly hard for a solo blogger (especially one with a life) to compete with such sites. Given the people who have signed up as Orphans of Liberty, we can expect great things and I suggest you add it to your RSS feeds.

The fallacy that underlies statist economic policy

When I was a student politician, there was a Trot on the NUS executive who screwed up the papers after each conference session and threw them on the floor with the words "more jobs". He was from some rubbish polytechnic. What's the excuse of our Oxbridge-educated elite for thinking the same stupid thought?

 

If you are going to lie, then at least be consistent

Since Monday, the Paines have been living in London. We have rented an apartment near to the hospital Mrs P. must visit two days a week, three weeks out of four, for the foreseeable future. She was admitted as an in-patient on Tuesday and we are now waiting for her to be discharged to my tender care. It's good to be a 10 minute walk away from her, if rather odd to be living in the country I left in 1992.

In between hospital visits, I have been trying to make the place comfortable for when she comes home. Amazon guaranteed delivery this morning of a TV I ordered to amuse her while she recuperates. When the deadline passed I checked the online tracking and was surprised to find the courier claimed to have attempted delivery at 0824. I was here and no-one rang. The porters had seen no-one. No contact card was left for me to arrange "redelivery". I received another parcel without problems at 0845. This made no sense.

I called Amazon. The couriers told them they hadn't left a card because they couldn't gain access at all. To a portered building?  How odd. I wasn't happy with the suggested "redelivery" next Tuesday so Amazon agreed to cancel the order. A lady with a nice North American accent said they would refund me once the courier redelivered to them. I said that - given the amazing speed of the courier's vans - that should be quick. She sounded puzzled but called back within ten minutes. Her manager (presumably more familiar with UK geography) had authorised an immediate refund when she showed him the tracking details (pasted below). Well done, Amazon. Shame on you, courier man.

The delivery driver must be quite honest really. Such inept lying suggests little practice. I hope he enjoys the extra leisure he's wangled this Easter weekend. I suspect, if Amazon has anything to do with it, he'll have a lot more leisure soon. Meanwhile, I am off to carry a TV home from Ken High before heading off to the hospital.

Happy Easter all.

 

Date	Time	Location	Event Details
23 April 2011	08:24:00 AM	London GB	Held by carrier - customer to arrange delivery
23 April 2011	08:24:00 AM	London GB	Delivery attempted
23 April 2011	07:11:00 AM	Scunthorpe South Humberside GB	Out for delivery

 

 

Candid Polaroid Camera

 

h/t MindReptiles

How can we save the Left?

More stuff does not make us happier. Doing stuff, especially for others, does | Suzanne Moore | Comment is free | The Guardian.


Suzanne Moore thinks, apparently, that being left-wing involves trusting people. You don't have to have lived (as I have) in socialist countries with a massive apparatus of control (or in post-socialist ones happily dismantling it) to find that comically delusional. Anyone who lived through the New Labour era must marvel too at her claim that;

...surely anyone vaguely left-wing is more optimistic than those on the right, because we tend to believe that people given power and freedom will do good things for each other...

If she tried, could she be more wrong? We libertarians are constantly mocked by Leftists for believing that (while bad people will always do bad things) if left to our own devices, most of us will look after ourselves and our families and a good number of us will act selflessly on occasion. The Left, on the other hand, never stops demanding (for our own good, of course) more control. That's precisely because what they truly believe is what Moore has the nerve to attribute to her political opponents (based on observing her own children);

...without socialisation we would simply bite each other, grab whatever we goddamned want and shove it in our mouths...

No we wouldn't. For centuries of human progress before Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Neil & Glenys Kinnock, John Prescott, Tony Blair and other con-artists learned the power of political hypocrisy as the perfect cover for doing precisely that, we trended in the opposite direction, building cooperative ventures and steadily improving the human condition.

I am still optimistic about the potential of the human race. But I am pessimistic about the prospects for people capable of such astonishing self-deception. I can only wonder what such a fantasist sees when she looks in the mirror. Katy Perry, presumably.

The terrors of Tolley's

 

In my days practising commercial law in London 20 years ago, we called our tax lawyer colleagues with the volumes of Tolley's Tax Guide under each arm "the deal busters." My, how their deal-busting weapons have grown. For those at the Socialist Worker Party front known as UKUncut, here are the rules that people obeying tax law must follow. That you have repeatedly claimed people going to the trouble and expense of complying with such detailed rules should then pay tax as if they hadn't marks you out as fools, scoundrels or both.

Cuts, what cuts?

Here are three examples from my own recent experience. First (as they might put it) a not rich but "comfortable" elderly couple are spoken to by a medical social worker after a hospital visit. They are financially-independent and in reasonable (though not perfect) health for their age. Both are fully-mobile and active. Each has a car and they get around (a lot!) without difficulty. However one is deemed disabled and the other is therefore offered a payment of several hundred pounds a month to look after him. The social worker making this offer looks askance when the lady proudly retorts that she vowed to be with her husband "...in sickness and in health..." and does not need to be paid to take care of him.

Secondly, a millionaire middle-aged couple. The wife is seriously-ill and being treated privately. The hospital (rather against her will) involves a charity providing support to people in her position. A representative shows up bearing forms for her to claim disability allowance. She declines and the charity worker mistakes her reasons. "Don't worry love," she says, "...we can help you fill in the form." When put straight, she snorts "That's not the point. Everyone's entitled!"

Thirdly a man who works for a fake charity. His organisation has a contract from the government to interview a category of unemployed people about their suitability for work and help place them in jobs. The "clients" have been told their benefits will be stopped unless they present for this service. So he spends his working days with people who (at best) sit in front of him with earbuds in, listening to their MP3 players, while he goes through the pointless motions of his contract.

This dying civilisation is bleeding money from its every wound but still employs (directly or through fake charities) armies of social workers to push state dependence. I would like to say that no taxpayers' money was wasted during the incidents reported here. That is almost true in the first two cases, due to the laudable responses of the two women concerned. But of course none of the public servants concerned work for free.

The reaction is more interesting than the Rally

I'm attending the Rally Against Debt. And that makes me worse than a Nazi, according to the hysterical Left – Telegraph Blogs.

If you are following the #RallyAgainstDebt discussion on Twitter or elsewhere, you will have been struck by the ferocity of the Left's reaction. The cuts only started yesterday and they are mild. They are little more than Labour promised, and probably pretty much what it would have had to do, if re-elected. They are being implemented without enthusiasm and are inexplicably not targetted on social engineering projects.

There is no ideological sea change here. Press and public may confuse "deficit" (the shortfall in government revenue) with debt, but that's just stupid. The cuts are only in the rate of increase of national debt. There is no plan to repay it. On the contrary, it's planned to grow. Like only the most improvident households, the country is borrowing to service borrowings. If Ministers were the directors of UK PLC, as they like to fantasise, they would be jailed (and personally bankrupted) for "trading while insolvent."

Debt service is already a major government expense and will continue to get worse during the life of this Parliament. No reasonable person can disagree (indeed even Ed Balls can't disagree) that action needs to be taken. Taxing the rich won't cover it. There aren't enough of them and they are too mobile. The ones who are not mobile will disengage economically if not allowed rewards for the risks they take with their capital. Right now, those living on their savings are losing value by the minute on their deposits. They are hardly going to risk them elsewhere unless there is some return. With idiots demanding that even loss-making companies pay taxes, there's little danger of that. Money needs to be put to productive work for jobs to be created.

The greatest burden of taxation in this country falls on ordinary workers. In our funny snobbish British way, they may fancy themselves "middle class" now, but they are workers by hand and brain who lack enough capital to live without employment. They pay most of the tax and have no realistic capacity to pay more. They have been indebted by politicians buying votes with borrowed money on the basis that their careers will be over by the time the vultures circle. It has been trans-generational piracy on an epic scale.

The TUC, UKUncut and the so-called "anarchists" protesting on our streets (as far from anarchism as can be conceived, but less violent leftists want distance from them) are not kind, gentle, caring people whatever they may say. They are demanding that money we don't have be spent on them. The trade unionists were demonstrating for their own pay and perks. These are selfish, hypocritical and judging by their online incitements - violent people. They have hijacked the language itself to demonise all who oppose them, however gently and reasonably.

Toby Young has not been unfairly selective in the quotes he has chosen to illustrate his article. I have been following the #RallyAgainstDebt Twitter exchanges for days and;

Hopefully, it’ll all kick off in fairly violent style

is pretty typical. As for the BBC, that its "talent" should be tweeting that;

Its like Toby Young thought ‘I dont think enough people think I’m a c**t yet’

is no surprise. My first public spending cut (and it wouldn't hurt a single vulnerable person - Polly Toynbee is financially-independent and can blog her nonsense just as easily as publish it on dead trees) would be to deny The Guardian its advertising revenue by offering all government jobs online. The second would be to shut down the BBC, enemy of all freedom and enterprise and comfortable nest for all the vipers who hate us most.

"When Government Turns Predator"

American Thinker: When Government Turns Predator.

I particularly liked the George Washington quote in this article. It is a new one to me, but it sums up the truth denied by statists of right and left everywhere.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master

If only Guardian readers could be persuaded of this one truth, Britain would be a better place.

Guardian journalists -vs- morality

Manipulating morals: scientists target drugs that improve behaviour | Science | The Guardian.

Clearly I wouldn't expect anyone from the Guardian to have a problem with drugs to alter your beliefs (as long as they are to be modified to be the same as theirs). Nor would I expect anyone to be surprised at the potential uses for such drugs imagined by a Guardian journalist;

a treatment for racist thoughts, a therapy to increase your empathy for people in other countries

Natch. Give her a minute and she'll come up with the idea of curing the urge to make money for one's family too. I hope I am not alone however in thinking that moral manipulation by pharmaceuticals is itself immoral.

The commonest insanity in modern Britain is the belief by one imperfect human that s/he has the right to impose his/her views on others by force. The control freaks are the true crazies.

Crime is not progressive, it’s reactionary

Harry's Place » Crime is not progressive, it’s reactionary.

Since I spend much blogging time criticising the writings of those on the Left in Britain, I feel it's only fair to highlight the linked article, which is amazingly sensible. Those of us who grew up in working-class areas have never understood the Guardianistas' / Islington Labourites' apparent affection for the criminal classes. I have often argued that the Labour Party itself, with its absurd education pollcies, incentivisation of idleness and disincentivisation of thrift is the working man's worst enemy. Though I was once a criminal defence lawyer, I would strongly argue that the criminal class is a close second.

Criminals are lazy. Criminals are (thank goodness or they would never be caught) stupid. Criminals can rarely be arsed to venture far to commit their crimes. As the one disadvantage of their lifestyle is that they can rarely (at least not now sanity has returned to the mortgage market) borrow money to buy a house, they are usually to be found in public housing, blighting the lives of poor but decent people around them and offering terrible role models to local youth.

Criminals deter people from earning and consuming because their activities are an income tax (unofficial, but with the same economic effects). They also drive up insurance premiums, creating an effective wealth tax. You may be able to afford that nice watch or necklace now, but can you keep up the premiums on your household insurance for the rest of your life, expecially when you have retired? As the linked article notes, the homes of the rich are likely to be full of security measures - not only because householders feel the need but because their insurers insist. Again, that's an effective wealth tax. It makes it more expensive to live in a high crime society and is another pressure on the rich to move away and/or consume less.

The only people who benefit from crime are criminals, policemen, criminal lawyers (prosecutors, defence lawyers and judges), probation officers and other social workers, insurers and security firms. The poor are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime. The last time my home computer was stolen I was secretly quite pleased to have the chance to buy a new one on the insurance. A poor person, often uninsured or paying higher premiums because of his postcode, will not feel the same way.

I am delighted to encounter a so-called "progressive" advancing these points. New Labour's idea of "tough on crime" was to create many more crimes, rather than rigorously and vigorously to enforce the few that really matter. They set targets for higher conviction rates, when an occasional conviction is no deterrent unless sentencing is (to use one of my most hated words correctly for once) "appropriate".

One of the best features of the criminal justice system in Britain is TIC ("taking into consideration"). It offers a convicted crook the chance to offer up all his other crimes for punishment (at a sentencing discount) so as to ensure he cannot be charged with them again later. The double jeopardy doctrine then guarantees that when he leaves prison, he has a chance to start again with a clean slate. Other countries don't have this idea and criminals would never dream of confessing to undetected crimes. The detection rate in Britain would be far worse without it. One consequence is that you really don't have to catch the criminal every time he offends. Once in ten or twenty times is quite enough, if the punishment is appropriate and offers a sufficient deterrent. The rat does not need to find cheese (or in this case poison) in the maze every time to be on the alert for it and think carefully about his choices.

Let's take the heat of detection targets off the police, so as to reduce the well-documented distortions to which they have led. Let's scrap most crimes, to allow the police time to focus on the ones that really matter (in my view, mostly the ones that were known to Common Law before Parliament's legislative incontinence began). Then let's revise the sentences for those "real" crimes to ensure (when occasionally caught) that those who commit them spend their lives where they cannot blight the lives of those around them.

By the way, if this doesn't sound very "libertarian" to you, you haven't grasped the concept yet!

Spread the word! #RallyAgainstDebt

Please spread the word! : Rally Against Debt.

The old cynic in me fears that the Rally (conceived, I am sure, as a Facebook witticism but now gathering momentum) will be a damp squib. If so, there will be lessons to be learned. Right thinking bloggers will earnestly/bitterly juxtapose the recent militant fervour of the massed parasites against the indifference and placidity of their long-suffering hosts.

The idealist in me (and the Misses Paine reckon me more a frustrated idealist than a genuine cynic) rather hopes the organisers pull this off. I may even get on a plane to be there to witness the dampness of the squib or (hope against hope) the glorious ignition of the libertarian revolution.

In the meantime, friends and fellow-victims of state robbery with violence, please do like the man said and spread the word.

The cost of high-tech medicine

Britain has fewer high-tech medical machines than Estonia and Turkey - Telegraph.
This will not surprise anyone who has lived in an emerging market. The interesting question is "why?" In a spirit of scientific enquiry let me offer a theory for you all to shoot down;

The profitability to the vendor of a a good or service varies directly with the number of bureaucrats involved in its purchase, multiplied by their average annual remuneration but divided by the square of the number of decision makers with a financial interest in the outcome. Where "bureaucrat" is defined as a paid, office-bound employee with no financial interest in the outcome of the purchase.

Please note that it is not specific to the public sector (although the number of decision-makers with a financial interest in the outcome is likely to be lower there). Let's call it "Paine's Theory of Purchasing."

Any thoughts?

Rally Against Debt!!

Rally Against Debt.


Some humorous soul on Facebook is organising a Rally again Debt in London on 14th May between 1100 and 1400. If you have not succumbed to the electronic embraces of FB yet, it is billed as follows

A well mannered, polite rally for civilised people who don't wish to see their hard earned money being spent on pointless government initiatives and instead would like government spending to actually fall and our national debt to be cut.

Any visits to Fortum and Mason's by protestors will only be to marvel at their selection of quality goods and perhaps make the occasional purchase.

Bonfires will be strictly forbidden: it's out of season anyway

Trips to see Vodafone and other high street chains will result in congratulations to the company for providing jobs and growth in the UK.

It's a nice idea but well-mannered, civilised people who object to their grandchildren being impoverished by ever-increasing government debts will not get much coverage from the BBC, I suspect.

Of anarchists and force

TUC march: How a family day out turned to mayhem - Telegraph.



I wish journalists were more careful in their presentation of poltical viewpoints. The people who rioted yesterday are not "anarchists". The demonstration was demanding more use of government force to enslave private sector workers for additional days each year in order to support state dependants.

People making such demands are most certainly not "anarchists." If we are going to call them nasty names, let's use the right one - socialist.