Democracy is a bummer, eh?

Richard Murphy has woken up to idea that party politics might not be all that great. [Emphasis mine—DK]

But that means we need a political system that reflects the reality of division within the country. The politics we have can longer support the uniformity of opinion that first part the post demands.

Why, oh why, can’t we now liberate debate with a proportional representation system?

Because we held a referendum on a version of PR in 2011, and the British people overwhelmingly rejected it.

Isn't democracy a bastard, eh, Richard?

Coddling Cosslett

The election result threw up an awful lot of self-righteous fury from the Left. But even those angry, war memorial-defacing arseholes are preferable to the kind of whiney, tedious bollocks spouted by Rhiannon Lucy Cosset [who she?—Ed] in a Grauniad article entitled "Why it's OK to cry about this election".

It's not just that what she says is so pig-ignorant—although it is. Let's take this gem, for instance...

I keep remembering and then forgetting; a welcome pleasant thought will be interrupted by the terrifying reminder of what they are going to do to the Human Rights Act.

The Human Rights Act is not human rights, Rhiannon. In this country, we've been quite good at human rights. For hundreds of years, in fact. And restoring the power of British courts as the final arbiters of our laws does not mean that we are going to suddenly abolish human rights.

But I digress. The real kicker is this particular section [Emphasis mine—DK]...

I finally broke down properly at around 6pm on Friday, when I allowed myself, finally, to think about my little brother, who is severely disabled, and what might happen to him. Whether I should grab him and run for the hills so that we could camp down together under warm, soft blankets and not come down again until the bad people have gone.

Well, that's not going to happen, is it, Rhiannon? Because that would mean that you would have to take care of your "severely disabled" little brother.

And the reason that you are worried about what this government might do to changes in state provision for the disabled is because you want the state to take care of him—because you don't want to.

(Although, of course, you will happily use his condition as an token anecdote to shore up your credibility in a woefully fact-free opinion piece for a national media outlet.)

And if you don't want to take care of him within the rather opulent confines of this society, with all of its attendant services, you certainly are not going to do so up on a poxy hill with a few mouldy, old blankets for protection from the elements, are you?

So, Rhiannon, let me just clarify what I'm saying here: I am pointing out that you are a massive hypocrite, and your hypocrisy is the entire basis of your argument.

Now, why don't you go and have a cry about that?

In the meantime, just let the rest of us get on with our lives without having to risk stumbling across your self-serving, shroud-waving drivel.

The government we deserve

Whilst your humble Devil has never been shy of excoriating the government, I am one of the few bloggers that has consistently pointed out that, actually, the electorate are a bunch of fascist bastards too.

It's hard to imagine that this is the same public which proudly bosts of winning two world wars, isn't it? Limp, effete, and cowering like timid rabbits at a small cloud of water particles which float for a second before disappearing into history.

As V said, "if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

Think about it. Understand it.

And change how you think and behave.

Stop trying to control people because you have been credulously sucked into the belief in any one of the fantasmagorical hobgoblins that the government and media have created in order to keep you stupid, scared and compliant.

In other words, stop being a cunt. Yes, you. Stop it.

Now.

"Are we coming or going?", asks Cable

Via the deeply scornful Capitalists@Work, I see that Grandad Cable—the Sage of Twickenham—has decided that the Coalition is going to adopt a "proper industrial policy" and "support the oil and gas industry".

In a move that represents a shift from last year's controversial tax raid on North Sea oil, the Business Secretary said the Government wanted to help the sector "re-energise" its supply chains, which include thousands of small businesses.

In a speech in London, Mr Cable said targeted Government support was needed to create a "different kind of economy" based on manufacturing and trade. Britain could not "just hope it happens naturally", he said. He and Charles Hendry, the Energy Minister, will chair meetings to "see how together we can support this important industry".

Well, Vince, one way of supporting "this important industry" might be not opportunistically taxing it whenever you fucking feel like it. But, then, what do I know, eh?

He insisted the plans were different to the "cack-handed interventionalism of the 1960s and 1970s" and denied that the Government was reverting to "picking winners" rather than trying to create a benign business environment.

Yes, of course it is completely different.

But he argued: "There is a case for being more explicit about the choices we are making and linking them to a clearly articulated economic strategy."

We are now two years into this Coalition government: one would have thought—especially given the current economic crisis—that, if they were going to form a "clearly articulated economic strategy", they would have done so before now.

But, as I say, what do I know?

With a nod to the previous Labour government, Mr Cable said Britain's car manufacturing industry had benefited from the "explicit choices" of government support.

We have a car industry? Who knew...?

Other industries to be destroyed targeted include aerospace, media, film and fashion.

What's that old Reagan saw about the most terrifying words in the English language?

Oh yes: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".

Mr Cable said: "Revolutionary technologies are often too risky, or simply too complex or resource intensive, for an individual company to make the necessary investment.. for Government, there is a significant role here."

Well, yes: if any organisation is adept at pissing our money up a wall, the government is surely a prime candidate to walk away with that prize.

The mind boggles.

DISCLOSURE: I hold a pretty insignificant number of shares in various oil and gas exploration companies. Most dropped sharply on the 27th and 28th and we have seen increased volatility.

I'm not saying it's linked, but Cable made his speech on the 27th and the Telegraph article was published on the morning of the 28th. Just sayin', is all...

Spinning idly in the wind

One of the chief architects of our destruction: "I don't care about energy bills, because I don't pay mine—you do, you fuckin' mooks."

Christopher Booker's latest piece in the Telegraph should have every person in Britain gnashing their teeth at the rampant stupidity of this Coalition's energy policy—specifically the utter lunacy that is embodied in off-shore wind farms.

Last week, the BBC ran a series of reports by its science correspondent, David Shukman, on the Government’s plan to ring our coasts with vast offshore wind farms.
The nearest thing allowed to criticism of this policy came in an interview with the Oxford academic Dieter Helm, who we were told had “done the sums”. What, Shukman asked, had he come up with? The only figures Helm gave were that the Government’s offshore wind farm plans would, by 2020, cost £100 billion—scarcely a state secret, since the Government itself announced this three years ago—plus £40 billion more to connect these windmills to the grid, a figure given us by the National Grid last year.
Helm did not tell us that this £140 billion equates to £5,600 for every household in the country. But he did admit that the plan was “staggeringly expensive”, and that, given the current extent of “fuel poverty” and the state of our economy, he doubted “if it can in fact be afforded”.

Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW.

Compare this with the figures for Britain’s newest gas-fired power station, recently opened in Plymouth. This is capable of generating 882MW at a capital cost of £400 million—just £500,000 for each megawatt. Thus the wind farm is 22 times more expensive, and could only be built because its owners will receive a 200 per cent subsidy: £40 million a year, on top of the £20 million they will get for the electricity itself. This we will all have to pay for through our electricity bills, whereas the unsubsidised cost of power from the gas plant, even including the price of the gas, will be a third as much.

Booker also points out—reinforcing what your humble Devil has been saying for years—that wind power is inherently unreliable and, as such, we would need to build a MW of conventional power for every MW of installed wind power.

Or, of course, the lights go out.

This would be stupid enough were we forced to duplicate our power capacity at gas- or coal-fired prices; that we must build wind farms at 22 times the cost of conventional power plus the gas- or coal-fired power stations is nothing short of insane.

And, ultimately, we are going to have to pay for all of this. And we are going to pay through the fucking nose.

The trouble is that the government knows damn well that people will not stand for massive rises on energy taxes; as such, the government and the EU have forced the power companies to carry much of the cost—thus making the energy companies out to be total fucking demons*.

As Matthew Sinclair points out in this superb rant to the Freedom Society (whilst promoting his book, Let Them Eat Carbon), most people are simply not aware of the vast costs being imposed on the power companies by our Lords and Masters in the name of the discredited Climate Change scam.



It does appear that the energy companies are, however, protesting somewhat. Bishop Hill recently submitted a Freedom of Information request on a meeting between the government and the Electricity Retailers Association (ERA).

Here's an odd thing. Some weeks back I noticed that Gregory Barker, the Climate Change minister, had met with representatives of the Electricity Retailers Association to discuss "information on consumers' bills".

To me this seemed rather odd - why would electricity retailers need to discuss the information on bills with ministers? Perhaps Mr Barker wanted to insist that some information was passed on to consumers?

An FOI request later, I discover that the meeting was at the request of ERA itself—it appears that they asked to speak to ministers about a number of issues—Fuel Poverty, the Green Deal, the Community Energy Saving Programme and the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target. Putting this together with DECC's record that "information on consumers' bills" was discussed, I conclude that ERA wanted to make the costs of these government programmes transparent.

Unfortunately, I can only infer this because according to DECC, no record was kept of the meeting.

The Grauniad recently ran a fucking ludicrous story about how climate change might lead aliens to eliminate us because our carbon emissions would lead them to assume that the human race was "out of control".

Personally, I think that these self-same aliens might well kill us all.

But only because they would look at the fucking colossal idiocy enacted by our governments (and the rampant apathy of their citizens) and decide that the human race is too fucking stupid to be allowed to live.

* Alright—worse demons than they actually are.

Not that desperate, then...

Via Timmy's Other Place, I see that a number of defence charities have turned down some £3 million donations.

Defence charities have snubbed the News of the World by refusing to accept millions of pounds in donations in protest at the alleged hacking of dead soldiers’ families’ phones.
...

Paul McNamara, the paper’s fomer defence correspondent, said he had to make “50 phone calls” to charities before Barnado's, the Forces Children's Trust and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity agreed to take donations.

Timmy, of course, makes the obvious and ancient point that "money doesn't smell"...

Pecunia non olet*, after all.

What the people who used to run the paper did is one thing and that the paper has now closed would seem to be at least in part a compensation for that. Yet that last issue of the paper did raise £3 million for charity and it’s that money that is being refused.

Personally I’d take money from pretty much anywhere, judging neither the source nor the reason for donating, looking purely at the good that could be done with it. Clearly it’s me that’s out of step though.

These charities may well be snubbing the News of the World but it is the beneficiaries themselves who will suffer—you know, those brave troops who are supposedly the raisin d'être of these organisations.

I don't know how many wounds could be stitched up for £3 million—or how many prosthetic limbs, or psychological counselling sessions—but I bet it's a lot.

It's so fucking pointless too: if these charities had any common sense they would have taken the money as compensation for the damages done to their clients by the News of the Screws—you know, like the damages payments that those assorted pointless s'lebs got out of the paper—which the charities were keeping in trust in order to try to right the wrongs done by these evil people, blah, blah, etc. (Do be careful not to condemn the government that sent your brave beneficiaries off to die on the basis of total lies at this point, of course.)

The most egregious thing is that, apparently, charity funding is being colossally squeezed and, we are told, any moment now, hundreds of charities will collapse and millions will starve on the streets. At best.

But, apparently, these defence charities can afford to turn down £3 million that could have helped awful lot of people; obviously, they cannot spend their funds fast enough or something...?

And just remember, next time that any of these organisations tell some tragic story in order to solicit a tenner from you, they turned down £3 million from News International—which makes them either stupid or wasteful.

Either way, it means they'll get nothing from me...

Factchecking Johann Hari: Junichiro battles the robots

Author's note: I am not the Devil's Kitchen.

This blog post originally appeared on my now-defunct "Mr Eugenides" blog on 22nd January 2010. In view of Mr Hari's current travails, I thought it worth reposting in full this hilarious example of his loose relationship with truthiness.

- Mr Eugenides

------------------------

Two weeks ago it was a lament about our "culture of overwork", despite the overwhelming body of evidence that says the exact opposite. Today, Johann Hari is writing about, er, the increasing use of robots on the battlefield, together with the technological and ethical risks it poses, when he comes out with this corker (my emphasis):

We know the programming of robots will regularly go wrong – because all technological programming regularly goes wrong. Look at the place where robots are used most frequently today: factories. Some 4 per cent of US factories have "major robotics accidents" every year – a man having molten aluminium poured over him, or a woman picked up and placed on a conveyor belt to be smashed into the shape of a car. The former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was nearly killed a few years ago after a robot attacked him on a tour of a factory.

You what? A robot nearly killed the Japanese Prime Minister? I would have thought I would have remembered that, wouldn't you? So I did a Google search, and found footage of the incident in question:

That's it? That's your definition of "nearly killed"? I've got a fucking iron that is more deadly.

It took me three seconds to Google this, and one minute fifteen to establish that Hari is talking out of his capacious arse. Did someone tell Johann this when he was down the pub? Really, did he not think, y'know, um, I wonder if that drunk guy last night was making that robot shit up? What's your scoop next week, Johann, a world exclusive with Bigfoot?

Of course this is the most trivial howler imaginable, but it does make you wonder why the hell you should believe a word this man types. No wonder the Independent is dying on its arse when they print tripe like this.

Why don't EU stop posturing?

Your humble Devil has finished performing in Barnes Charity Players' triumphant production of Terrance Rattigan's Flare Path (a production of which, starring Sienna Miller, is about to start a run in the West End); as such, it is time for me to ease myself back into the sordid tedium of commenting on the deeply sordid political scene.

Scanning through the blogs, I was heartened—if not entirely convinced—by my friend Mark Wallace's assessment of the politicos' current attitude towards the EU.

When The Freedom Association launched the Better Off Out campaign in 2006, its aim was not to convert every MP overnight but to demonstrate that the doomsayers were mistaken.

By proving that the sky did not fall in on the heads of Philip Davies, Philip Hollobone or Douglas Carswell, they started a process of erosion that has seen many other MPs feel free to speak out on the topic. There are now 21 MPs as well as numerous MEPs, councillors and Members of the Northern Irish Assembly who are signed up.

Davies, Hollobone and Carswell turned marginal seats at 2005 into hefty majorities in 2010 despite or because of their EU views – they drank from a supposedly poisoned chalice and they are in hearty health.
...

To change the politics of the EU debate, we need to sweep away a deeply entrenched system of perception and assumption. The cracks are showing in Parliament, the stubborn obstructionism of our opponents is starting to break down, Fleet Street’s unanimity is broken and – crucially – there are signs that there may be sales and votes in the issue.

Make no mistake about it, the plates are shifting.

Perhaps so, especially since Mark links to a James Forsyth report that Oliver Letwin has even mooted the idea of a referendum on our membership of the EU.

Constantly being told what you can and can’t do by Brussels is driving Ministers and No 10 deeper and deeper into the Eurosceptic camp.
Oliver Letwin, Cameron’s mild-mannered and cerebral Policy Minister, has become so frustrated by this constant interference that he has told colleagues he thinks Britain should leave the European Union if it won’t give us all the opt-outs the Government wants.
Letwin is not alone in thinking this. In one department, a recent meeting between a Secretary of State and a junior Minister ended with the pair agreeing that the only solution to the problem they were discussing was to get out of the EU.

If true, this is indeed something of a turnaround for that turn-coat Letwin; long-time readers might remember that, in 2007, I reported on an email conversation I had with Oliver Letwin—a conversation that was updated, after an incredibly spineless reply from Letwin, in June 2007.

In essence, Letwin delivered three reasons for being in the EU, all of which I rebutted in a long reply; Letwin's considered response was that "we shall have to agree to differ". If even he is considering a referendum then we may have turned a corner.

However, I think it very unlikely that this is the case—I have neither seen nor heard anything in the last four years to make me think that Letwin has changed his mind on this issue.

No, I think it far more likely that this is the first in a series of bargaining gambits: having seen their naive leader get shafted—and made to look like a total idiot—over the EU budget, the Tories have decided that it is time for them to play at being tough. This idea is contained within one of the paragraphs quoted above... [Emphasis mine.]

Oliver Letwin, Cameron’s mild-mannered and cerebral Policy Minister, has become so frustrated by this constant interference that he has told colleagues he thinks Britain should leave the European Union if it won’t give us all the opt-outs the Government wants.

This is a warning shot across the bows to the EU and the other member states—it is most emphatically not a "cast-iron" guarantee of a referendum. Nor is it even a particularly convincing gambit.

The EU will simply call Letwin's bluff, we won't get the opt-outs—and Ollie will not call for a referendum.

Apart from anything else, the Tories are in a Coalition with the deeply EUphile Liberal Democrats, and they simply don't have enough clout to push anything at this stage.

The Tories try to keep their newly hardened Euroscepticism under wraps when dealing with their Lib Dem colleagues, who remain committed to the European project. But even the Lib Dems have been shocked at how much influence Brussels has on decisions that should be taken at a national level.

Indeed. However, whoever leaked this particular news to Forsyth must be gunning for Clegg...

Nick Clegg was appalled when officials told him that the EU wouldn’t allow VAT to be set at a local level.

It is simply inconceivable that Nick Clegg—an ex-MEP, a party leader and general policy wonk—is unfamiliar with the constraints on the setting of VAT levels. It is entirely conceivable, however, that the Tories are setting Clegg up for when the inevitable backlash over the VAT rise finally hits home.

Whilst I would like to believe that Mark is correct in his assessment of the EUscepticism of our MPs, I suspect that the Tories remain as wedded to the EU project as they ever were. Although, believe me, I would be happy to be proved wrong on that...

Adults or otherwise

There are some things—sorry, a great many things—that are seriously fucked up in this country, but surely one of the most urgent and pressing issues is that of responsibility.

Yes, sure, the Coalition is happy to bang on about "personal responsibility" and all of that, but that's not what I am talking about—what I am referring to is the majorly stupid way in which the law recognises personal responsibility.

My thoughts were sparked by this extraordinary story, which I found via JuliaM.

A social worker who had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl in his care has avoided being sent to jail.

Eh? What? I thought that was supposed to be THE big no-no, surely?

Well, no, incredible as it seems, it wasn't having sex with her that got him into trouble. It was taking pictures:

Richard Superville, 51, of Ceylon Road, Westcliff, was caught out after explicit photographs of the teenager were found on his laptop, a court heard.

Although Superville had not broken the law by his affair—because the girl was 16—he had committed a criminal offence by taking pictures of her topless.

OK, let us leave aside the issue of "care"—for we must assume that the law that applies to teachers in this situation does not apply to social workers. What a surprise!—and just imagine that this is two people having a sexual relationship.

In that context, it should be obvious that the story outlined above is utterly insane—it's OK to fuck a 16 year old but not OK to take topless photographs of her? Barking. Naturally, this sparked off some thoughts about the utterly loony laws surrounding "ages of consent".

And yes, I meant "ages" because we have several. Let's have a look, shall we?

• You must be 18 to: vote, sell naked pictures of your own body, buy cigarettes or buy alcohol (if you're lucky: I'm sick and tired of seeing signs proclaiming that such and such a place won't sell booze to anyone under 21. Or even 25).


• You must be 16 to: leave school (until the Coalition arseholes bring in Educational Conscription), get a job, join the army (and be trained to fucking kill people), get married, bring up a child and to fuck (or be fucked).


• You must be 10 to: be held responsible for a crime that you've committed (yes, yes, we all know that was brought in so that the politicians could appease those baying for the blood of the Bulger killers, but it wasn't much higher before—twelve, maybe?).

Now, can we please get this shit sorted out?

If you are responsible for crimes that you commit at the tender age of ten, then you should be responsible enough to do anything else, including buying booze and fucking people. If you aren't responsible enough to do those things with your own body, then you are not responsible enough to know that you've broken the law.

And if, at the age of sixteen, you are deemed responsible enough to fuck and be fucked, then you are most certainly responsible enough to know when you can allow your lover to take photos of your naked body. Damn it, if you want to earn money by selling pictures of your own body to whomever wants them: you are allowed to fuck and you're allowed to work—why the fuck shouldn't you be allowed to sell the pictures of you doing one or the other?

And if you are responsible enough to make love, and to get married, have a child and to hold down a job and get taxed on your bastard wages, then you are most certainly responsible enough to vote for the politicians who are stealing 50% of everything that you earn.

And yet these things are not put on the same level at all—and it's utterly insane. At what age are you responsible for yourself in law—is it 10, 16 or 18?

Successive governments—including the Coalition—quite obviously think that the age is 18: however, they have all lacked the balls to tell people that they cannot get married, they cannot get a job and they cannot screw each other at 16.

Personally, I think that the age of responsibility should be somewhere around the 16 mark—possibly lower. If there is a possibility that a crime has been committed—a very much older lover inveigling a young girl into sex, for instance—then that is for a court to decide.

Sticking with that theme, we could do what most other countries on the Continent do (and as Canada does), and make the law flexible dependent on the difference in ages between the two parties.

Whatever you personally think should happen, I personally think that a little consistency would be a really good idea—if only so that a man is not sent to jail for taking sexually-explicit photographs of the girl that he is perfectly legally allowed to have sex with.

Two steps forward, one step back

As I have pointed out a number of times, education is a bug-bear of mine. As such, I have been watching the massively-foreheaded Cameron's plans for this sector with some interest.

It's a depressing exercise, frankly. In some ways, it is almost more depressing than watching Labour's pathetic flailing about. I mean, we know that NuLabour are crap and intellectually bankrupt; we know that those fuckers are more interested in everyone being equally mediocre than allowing bright kids to shine: we expect them to propose stupid ideas and ludicrously illiberal bollocks.

With Cameron, it is rather more of a roller-coaster of emotions—one feels a bit like a manic-depressive who's stopped taking the Prozac. Because, you see, every now and again, the Tories come out with a good piece of rhetoric—such as a voucher system for schools—and then, in the next breath, they wheel out a colossal load of old knackers which makes you realise that they still haven't grasped the fundamentals.

As a case in point, Conservative education policy seems to be inspired by Swedish free schools and the voucher systems that have been tried there (since 1994) and in the US; similarly, the accompanying rhetoric is all about setting schools free, giving Head Teachers more power over their schools and other good things.

On the other hand, the Tories' actual proposals are arse—they are little more than tinkering at the edges.

"Yes, we will free schools," they cry. "But only in really poor areas!"

"Yes, parents and other private entities can start their own schools, but they will not be allowed to be both owner and operator of the schools and make a profit."

"Yes, we will give Head Teachers more control, but we'll maintain the Local Education Authorities."

"Yes, we will free up teachers to educate, but we'll keep the National Curriculum."

It's a hideous mish-mash of crap showing that Cameron doesn't understand the fundamental reasons why the free schools work: it isn't because they are free at the point of use—because they aren't—it is because they are free to set their own entry requirements, free to set their fees, free to discipline children as they wish, free to set differing salaries for their teachers, free to reward work well done as well as to punish those who are useless: in short, they are called "free schools" because they are free to compete in the marketplace of educational attainment.

With every fresh utterance, Cameron shows us ever more clearly that he doesn't understand this at all; he doesn't understand that it is the state provision of schooling that skews priorities so badly.

Cameron needs to abolish the LEAs—they take about one third of the entire schools budget and deliver... what? No one seems to know. They certainly do not add value to a child's education—remove them and free up the money for the schools.

Then comes the abolition of the National Pay Deal for teachers. It is insane that a teacher in the wilds of Yorkshire can command the same salary as a teacher in vastly more expensive areas. For the same reason, automatic pay rises based on length of service must be abolished. These measures would also allow Head Teachers to pay good teachers more money, thus providing incentives to be... well, a good teacher—and attract better calibre people into the profession.

Having done that, Cameron should introduce a voucher system and remove of catchment areas—this will allow parents to elect to get children into the school of their choice. In terms of pure electoral strategy, this would prove popular amongst the working class who cannot afford to buy large houses in nice neighbourhoods simply to get their child into the local Good School's catchment area.

The next crucial step is to allow schools to make a profit, and to be operated by anyone. There may need to be safeguards in place to stop rapacious property developers, etc., e.g. any school so transferred must be operated as a school.

Finally, the National Curriculum should be abolished—or, at the very least, slimmed down to include reading, writing and basic arithmetic only. (This would provide the impetus to start making inroads into the abolition of Examination Authorities—but we'll leave that particular topic for another post...)

All of these would free the provision of education from the dead hand of the state, and of the unions; schools would be forced to compete against each other for pupils, and they would be able to teach as they saw fit.

So, in summary, David Cameron and His Merry Men need to make schools more free and more responsive to the market. So, does today's announcement about better teaching—reproduced, and for some inexplicable reason, praised by Iain Dale—do that?

No, of course it fucking doesn't.

Nope, what David Cameron wants to do is to make it more difficult for people to get into teaching. Worse, he wants to base the suitability of potential teachers on the basis of how many pieces of paper they have to their names.

The result will be an even greater shortage of teachers than there currently is, and thus it will be even harder to sack bad teachers because there will be no one to replace them with, you fucking moron.

And besides, just as having ten billion A*s does not make you a good doctor, nor does having a 2:1 make you a good teacher. It's about more than academic prowess, for crying out loud.

Perhaps, at this point, I should hand over to the lovely Bella who—being a teacher—has some insights that the Massively-Foreheaded Cunt™ might care to take on board.

Anyway. This is all just to reiterate my point: restricting teacher training to people with good degrees will simply worsen the teacher shortage, because most academically successful people (‘best brains’) don’t want to become teachers. It’s an unattractive profession to people who value creativity, resourcefulness, and freedom to innovate. And even if the best brains did become teachers, there’s no guarantee they’d be good. Many academically gifted people have trouble communicating the subject of their expertise at a level that is accessible to schoolchildren anyway; and probably the core skill involved in teaching is being able to synthesise patiently, to simplify complex ideas, to keep what you’re saying on a level kids can understand and in a way they can tune into.

Finally, I will say this. I teach Latin. I am not an expert in the subject, nor do I have a degree in it, nor do I have the faintest clue where my American university degree would fall on the degree-class scale used in the UK. I do not have a teaching qualification. And yet every time I apply for a teaching position, the school falls all over itself to hire me and to pay me well above the going rate for my services. I can’t be the only teacher like that. David Cameron’s plans will, by and large, make it harder for people like me to get teaching jobs. And for what? So that a bunch of smarty-pants graduates with 2:2s or better can have a ‘high-prestige’ career.

Camerhoon, school is not about teachers. It’s about children. And anyone who wants to teach, and can demonstrate that they do it well, should be encouraged to do so, whether they have fancy papers to qualify them or not, and whether they have the biggest brain in Britain or just a mediocre brain that happens to be full of passion and love of learning and dedication to showing kids how amazing the world they live in is.

Quite—it's really worth reading the whole of the wife's post. And this is an attitude that I am sure that Miss Snuffleupagus would also embrace (memo to Cameron: she too is a teacher, and she too cares about the children. Perhaps you should try treading her blog, you fucking Hoon).

What gets my goat about this is that Cameron has pinched my line: I had a good education and, knowing what a good education looks like—as well as the benefits that it brings—I would like to ensure that everyone gets that chance.

Unfortunately, my fat-headed fellow OE and party leader completely misses the point—again. Call Me Dave keeps banging on about making teaching "unashamedly elitist": no, you fuckwit—we need to make education unashamedly elitist. What matters is the quality of the education, the quality of the children coming out—not the quality of the teachers going in.

And having a First in Biochemistry does not necessarily make you a good teacher. Look, you idiot, you even admit that yourself!

Everyone remembers a teacher that made a difference – who through sheer force of personality and infectious enthusiasm sparked an interest, instilled a love of learning and set a life on its course. And the evidence backs that up.

Yes! Do you see? Do you see, Dave? Those teachers made a difference "through sheer force of personality and infectious enthusiasm", not because they had a fucking 2:1 in Gobshite Studies.

For fuck's sake, you are a product of the private school system—a system which, unlike the state one, does not insist that teachers have any kind of teaching qualification: don't you think that there might be some sort of a link there?

Yes, there are other issues—private schools can set teachers' salaries, can set their fees, can (to a large extent) control their own curriculum, and a myriad other things—but encouraging those who want to teach, rather than merely taking those who can think of nothing better to do, is a big reason for the success of the private sector.

The steps that I laid out above would go a good long way towards ensuring that every child in this country can get, at the very least, a decent education—if not an excellent one.

All that your measures will achieve is a colossal shortage of teachers and more highly qualified cohorts of crap.

Quote of the Day...

... comes, rather unusually, from Iain Dale's post on Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs)—and Cameron's rather disappointing lack of u-turn on that policy.

EMAs are a waste of money and there are far better ways to encourage 16 year olds to remain in education. Providing a decent education might be a good start.

Pithy and correct.

EMAs are paid to those over 16 who remain in further education. Of course, when Labour passes their law to force young people to remain in education for another two years, can we assume that EMAs will no longer be paid out to those under 18...?

Quick links: Politicians Fail To Deliver Surprise Edition

Tomorrow, your humble Devil will be fisking this ludicrous article by the High King of "Vested Interests"—multimillionaire businessman, Dr Rajendra K Pahuri. Now, a good, well-researched fisking takes a while (which is why I have done so few recently) but so utterly facile is this article that I fully expect it to take very little time indeed...

In the meantime, might I point you to the absolute screwing doled out to Ed Balls by my good lady wife...

Apart from his stupid name, the first thing I really learned about Ed Bollocks is that his modi operandi are, primarily, lying and intimidation. Which tactic is he employing in his most recent Guardian piece, I wonder?

... and this succinct but—one fears—all too easy deconstruction, of Call Me Dave's bloody stupid NHS policy, by Dizzy.

The Tories say they will "scrap all of the politically-motivated process targets" (good) and "set NHS providers free to innovate by ensuring they become autonomous Foundation Trusts" (also good), but then they say they will "focus on the health results matter, like improving cancer and stroke survival rates or reducing infections (sounds like targets and centralised edicts too me).

They also complain that patients do not get effective treatment because the "system lets Ministers off the hook by blaming decisions on unaccountable bureaucrats in NICE", but at the same time say on funding they plan to "create an independent NHS board to allocate resources to different parts of the country" - this will surely create the same "off the hook" effect in funding allocation won't it?

We have waited a very long time for some concrete Tory policy, and now it is here it is—like a turd in a prettily-wrapped birthday box—something of a disappointment. Not that any of us are surprised, are we?

And the NHS is, apparently, Call Me Dave's priority. Is this really the best that you can do, Dave...?

Sadly, I suspect that it is.

Barking at the moon: stats snapshot

The latest forecasts are that unemployment will peak at 2.8 million in 2010.

Unemployment will peak at 2.8 million in 2010, according to the latest forecast from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The business group said unemployment would continue to rise for the first six months of the new year, despite the recovery in the UK economy.

The forecast is more optimistic than previous predictions.

Indeed. Let us, for a moment, ignore the fact that the true number of unemployed in Britain is about double that number and consider the government's response to unemployment worries.

The 2009 Pre-Budget Report announces:

• an additional(1) 0.5% increase in the employee, employer and self-employed rates of National Insurance contributions from April 2011. However, the Government will also ensure that the 15 million people on income below £20,000 will not pay any extra National Insurance contributions.

Erm... Right, so the government's response to job losses is to tax jobs even further. Nice one. That section of the PBR website is entitled Helping People Fairly: hmmmm...

The median weekly wage up till April 2009 was £489, which is £25,428 per annum. So, helping people fairly is, in NuLabour's definition, raising taxes on those who are earning below the median wage. Nice.

Interestingly, the median wage in the public sector was £539 per week (£28,028 pa), widening the gap between the public and the private sector—in which the median wage was £465 per week (£24,180 pa).

Still, back to the PBR site and we find a nice little graph showing government spending for 2009–2010.


Wow! £676 billion—that's some pretty hefty spending. More than this last year at any rate. I guess that the government must be able to fund this lot, because they wouldn't want to increase the national debt anymore than they already have, would they?

Oh, fuck.


So, tax receipts are projected to be £498 billion, which leaves a shortfall—or "deficit"—of £178 billion.

Fucking hell.

And this isn't due to get much better: the "structural deficit"—that bit that won't sort itself out as the recession ends—is, as Wat Tyler points out, now predicted to run at about 10% of GDP or about £150 billion per annum.

Not good: not good at all.

What this means is that our government needs to cut spending by £150 billion per year before we even begin to pay down the national debt. Or, of course, they could raise taxes by £150 billion per year (a pretty tall order) or meet somewhere in the middle.

Of course, a AAA-rated government can always borrow money, but it may not be at favourable rates. Right now, with interest on government-issued gilts and bonds paid at around 4%, debt repayments are around £35 billion per annum.

If the markets lose confidence that the debt will be repaid (if, for instance, the state lost its AAA rating) or they believe that the interest payments will not be sufficient to cover costs (if, for instance, inflation rises considerably) then we will find that interest needs to be paid out at more than 4%. In the 80s, interest on government-issued debt rose as high as 16%.

The situation because even worse when you consider the problems of borrowing from foreign depositors.

Fucking hellski.

Trafigura, Carter-Ruck and the Streisand Effect

UPDATE: The situation has now been resolved and the Guardian ungagged. Read to the bottom of the post for further details.

Author's note: I am not the Devil's Kitchen. Cross-posted from Mr Eugenides.

Looks like Carter-Ruck solicitors should be in the PR business, because neither I nor, I'll wager, you, had ever heard of Trafigura until they allegedly slapped an injunction on the Guardian prohibiting them from - get this - reporting proceedings in Parliament in which Trafigura's name had, apparently, been mentioned.

Well, get comfy, guys, because you're big time now; everyone who's anyone (as well as those of us who aren't) are busily writing about you, and directing baffled readers to articles like this one, in the Independent. In no particular order, you're now famous to the readers of, inter alia, Iain Dale, Guido, Dizzy, Next Left, Unity, Chicken Yoghurt, Harry's Place and Timmy, who between them can't be a kick in the arse off having a higher daily readership than the paper you've tried to gag. (This outbreak of blogospheric solidarity, to put it into context, is akin to the Russians and the Germans taking a time-out from slaughtering each other to erect a big sign in downtown Stalingrad telling everyone that Cary Grant was a poof.) Add Alex Massie at the Spectator and Nick Cohen and Joshua Rozenberg at Standpoint magazine, and this is quickly becoming an online clusterfuck of epic proportions.

One day these highly-remunerated libel lawyers are going to wake up and realise that they aren't being paid in guineas any more and that, thanks to this thing called the Interwebs, they can't shut down freedom of speech the way they used to in the old days. On the contrary; as Barbara Streisand found to her cost, 99% of people don't give a shit about 99% of stuff, right up the moment when you start waving your arms up and down telling them to stop reading about it.

If I were you, I'd ask Carter-Ruck to itemise the bill.

UPDATE: The Guardian have now been ungagged after a tsunami of online publicity, and after having requested (though before receiving) an urgent hearing to discuss the gag order.

Clueless, starring Kezia Dugdale

Kezia Dugdale: not to be confused with Kezie Ostrich. The latter is very common roasting on a barbeque at the Edinburgh farmer's market (on Castle Terrace) of a Saturday morning; the former is just common and currently roasting in The Kitchen.

A couple of weeks ago, your humble Devil horned in on a debate between @keeprightonline and @keziadugdale (the latter being some sort of NuLabour apparatchik of the Scottish persuasion).

My main contribution to the debate was this:

@kezdugdale Re: the tax problem, would you lobby for a higher personal allowance—£12,000, say? Then those on MNW would pay no income tax...

I thought that this would be a no-brainer. After all, surely the point of socialist policy is to ensure that the poor are not so... well... poor?

OK, I admit it: given NuLabour's continued hammering of the poorest in our society, I fully expected to get some excuse explaining why taxing the lowest-earners in our society is absolutely tickety-boo.

And I wasn't disappointed, for Kezia promptly got onto her Soapbox.

Labour’s MSP for Glasgow Shettleston, Frank McAveety is hosting a Members' Debate tonight on the campaign for a Living Wage – a campaign that I fully support.
...

Anyway, @DevilsKitchen soon got involved as well. He said if I was so concerned about poverty, why didn’t I support raising the personal tax allowance so that no one earning the national minimum wage would pay any income tax.

I disagree with that idea because I think that sends the wrong message about the national minimum wage. Branding it as more of a benefit than a right.

For fuck's sake...

[Cue Devil speaking slowly and clearly, as though explaining a simple point to a small and slightly doltish child.]

Kezia, your mission is, supposedly, to redistribute wealth so that the poorest in society are able to feed and clothe themselves—this is the desired, or at least professed, outcome of your economic engineering policies. It is not to make those people feel good about the fact that they are living off charity; which the National Minimum Wage (which uses the force of the law to net workers more money than they would otherwise have) most certainly is.

Now, one can argue that we, as a society, have decreed that x amount is the minimum that someone should decently earn. We can even say that we, as a society, benefit from them earning this minimum wage because it provides an incentive for people to work rather than lie around, rotting on benefits.

However, as Timmy pointed out at Comment Is Free, if we—as a society—think that people should earn a minimum wage then we, as a society, should pay the price.

Rather, it is that if we as a society decide that a certain price is immoral, then we have to pay for that price to change. As you can see from the numbers above, the burden of the minimum wage falls on three groups. Those who employ low-skilled labour see their profits shrink. Those who buy goods made with such labour see the prices rise. And of course many low-skilled workers lose their jobs (or have their hours reduced). But if we really think that wages of below £5.73 an hour are immoral then we should all be dipping into our pockets to increase wages to that sum. That means that we all get taxed and the money redistributed.

In other words, we should not force one particular group—in this case, business shareholders—to pay for our collective conscience. The price should be paid by all of us, through the redistribution of taxes (of everyone earning more than our positied minimum).

So, Kezia supports something that she calls the Living Wage; she does not explicitly state what amount she considers this to be, but I think that we can make an educated guess from the following section.

If we’re talking about tackling the poverty of those in work, I’m utterly convinced that a living wage is the answer.

700,000 Scots are low paid. Some facts:

• Around 70% of workers in the hotel and restaurant sector earns less than £7.00 per hour. Three fifths of these are women.


• Almost 60% of workers in the retail and wholesale sector earns less than £7.00 per hour. Again three fifths are women.


• 20% of directly employed staff in the public sector earns less than £7.00 per hour with over three quarters of these being women.

Now, I am not going to get into the equal pay based on sex debate here—that has already been comprehensively covered elsewhere.

However, I think that we can conclude, from the list cited above, that Kezia's Living Wage would be £7 per hour. So, let's do the maths on this, shall we?

1. A full-time worker on the current National Minimum Wage earns £5.80 x 40 hrs per week x 52 weeks in the year = £12,064. Your humble Devil would like to see this entirely untaxed, and so the net yield for the worker is £12,064.


2. A full-time worker on £7 per hour earns £7 x 40hrs per week x 52 weeks in the year = £14,560. Given Kezia's original answer to me, one can assume that she would levy tax on this, so the net yield for the worker is £11,970.05.


3. In this specific instance, the policy of the eeeeeevil right-wing libertarian would ensure that our worker was better off by nearly £100 per year, compared to the policy of the bleeding-heart socialist.

Of course, there are a number of papers that have researched just what the minimum living wage should be—one of the most recent (and comprehensive) was that published by the very-definitely-not-eeeeevil-right-wight Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

A single person in Britain needs to earn at least £13,400 a year before tax for a minimum standard of living, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says.

Note, please, that the JRF's estimate is pre-tax: after tax, the net yield is £11,169.65. The conclusion here, of course, is that both Kezia and I are being far too generous.

And such generosity does, of course, have unintended (though quite predictable) consequences: workers get laid off, or their hours are reduced and suchlike. Or, of course, the business goes bust.

None of these consequences are mentioned by Kezia in her fascinating post—and nor is the provenance of the money to pay for her proposal. However, since she wishes to tax the income of our toiler, one can assume that she means to make businesses pay the higher wage rate—please bear this in mind as we continue dissecting this truly extraordinary post.

Ensuring that more workers receive a living wage will not alone end income inequality, but it will provide some justice for those who work in essential jobs, ones that everyone relies on, but which few people value.

And that's the point, Kezia: these jobs are low value. They require little training, no degree and, as a consequence, any monkey could do them. As such, they are low-paid jobs.

And it's not just about individuals and poverty—it's good for business.

Oh, this is going to be good...

Employers in the private and public sectors who pay a Scottish Living Wage will help lift the pay of thousands of low paid workers and increase an employer’s productivity, reduce staff turnover and absenteeism, meet Corporate Social Responsibility standards and contribute to boosting the economy more generally.

And how the fuck is all of this going to happen, precisely?

1. Businesses do not exist in order to "help lift the pay of thousands of low paid workers": they exist to provide a return to their shareholders. In fact, the directors of the business have a fiduciary duty to provide as good a return to the shareholders as possible. And if they don't do this—through making a profit—then they will cease to be a business and their workers will be workless.


2. And how, exactly, does forcing a business to pay its workers a higher wage for the same outcome "increase an employer’s productivity"? It doesn't: in fact, it does the very opposite. Quite obviously, paying a worker more for doing the same does not increase productivity—it decreases it.
   
   One could argue that the worker will work harder if promised a higher wage but even this falls down in this case. For when said worker knows that the employer must pay this higher wage, by law, then the worker sees the higher wage as his right: why should he work harder and thus be any more productive?


3. And the idea that a higher minimum wage across the board will "reduce staff turnover and absenteeism" is absolute crap. It won't reduce staff turnover in the slightest; if someone leaves a company to go to another one, it will often be because that company is offering higher wages. Upping the minimum that companies are reuiqred to pay does not reduce the incentives to find a new job at all: how could it when the current minimum wage has not?
   
   And reduce absenteeism—how? Again, all employers must pay the same legal mimimum, so staff are not likely to be any more inclined to show up for work. If they don't show for work, then they will be sacked. In many jobs, this would represent a cost to the employer in training new recruits but, as we have already pointed out, these are low-value jobs.


4. And who cares that employers "meet Corporate Social Responsibility standards": this is just more government-imposed red tape—red tape that stifles job creation.


5. Having been through the above, I think that we can dispense with the idea that the Living Wage will "contribute to boosting the economy more generally".
   
   What it will do is to make goods and services far more expensive for everyone, thus wiping out any possible gains for the £7 an hour worker anyway. Plus, of course, fuelling inflation.

So, having concluded that Kezia has fuck all understanding of economics, business drivers or worker psychology, let us plough on manfully to the end of this missive.

None of this is an attack on the national minimum wage or what it has achieved. In fact, there has not been nearly enough recognition of the fact that Labour has increased the national minimum wage year on year since 1997. Gordon Brown pledged this week at the TUC conference that he would continue to do so.

And for the reasons that I have outlined above, the National Minimum Wage "achievement" should be thrown as Gordon—along with the rotten fruits and turds—when he is finally driven out of Downing Street.

And the unemployed should be on the front line because, of course, the NMW has had another effect: someone whose labour is worth less than £5.80 per hour will now never, ever get a job. And that means that they cannot get either the experience or finance to better themselves—and that means that they are condemned to a life rotting away on benefits, a seam of potential destroyed.

And Kezia's Living Wage would destroy yet more lives, for there will be far more people whose labour is worth less than £7 per hour. That's yet more thousands of people consigned to the scrapheap of life, thanks to Kezia Dugdale.

Some people might say that is "in spite" on the current economic difficulties. I would say that it is even more important that we increase the NMW "because" of the recession.

Then you are a moron.

Particularly as low paid workers face more risk during this time. They are more likely to be less secure at work, face a higher risk of unemployment and have fewer resources to fall back on. Whether that may redundancy pay or personal savings.

Uh-huh. So, tell me, Kezia, do you think that forcing cash-strapped businesses to pay workers £7 per hour will make said workers' jobs:

1. more secure, or


2. less secure.

If you answered "1", then you really are a complete idiot. If you answered "2", there may just be a small sliver of hope that you might actually understand what I am talking about—all hope is not lost (unlike the poor souls that you Living Wage would fuck up).

It just makes sense and it requires bold and confident governance from the powers that be.

Kezia Dugdale, ladies and gentlemen, pushing compassionate policies for a more bankrupt and miserable Scotland. It's almost worth moving back to the 'Burgh, just so that I can spend my time hunting Kezia through the streets and wynds of Edinburgh, that I might pelt her with neeps, turds and tatties.

Fucking hellski.

UPDATE: on this subject, the lovely Bella has constructed a simple model showing how Kezie Kezia's £7 per hour might impact on a factory owner.

Worst-case scenario? My partners and I sack our 100 employees and sell the factory. My employees are now earning £0/hr. My partners and I go off to teach maths to left-wing dunderheads who, despite our efforts, will never understand that occasionally, just occasionally, raising the costs of a business means it is no longer worthwhile to operate that business.

Excellent...

Windows Ads and Apple fans

Stuart Sharpe approvingly quotes Charlie Brooker's article on how much he hates Mac users (yes, another one).

Well, this Mac fanboi far prefers a CleverSimon article that highlights the idiocy of Brooker's argument. [Emphasis mine.]

But that’s the thing. I’ve never met one of these “eerie replicant Mac monks” Charlie Brooker is bitching about. I’ve never known anyone, online or off-, who considered a Macintosh purchase a “spiritual choice.” In fact, I’ve never once encountered an Apple zealot half as frothy-mouthed as the jackasses who jump on every opportunity to take cheap shots at Apple products and their users.

Charlie Brooker’s thesis is “I hate Windows, but I hate strawmen Mac evangelists more, so I’m going to marinate in my misery just to stick it to these imaginary fanboys. I’m unhappy and unproductive, and I’m going to stay unhappy and unproductive—that’ll show ‘em.”

Well, your humble Devil is perfectly happy for Brooker to stay stewing in his Windows hell and—let's face it—I entirely endorse everything that the man says about the hell that is Microsoft's flagship operating system (especially since I seem to have become the designated office Mr Fixit of late).

But, as CleverSimon points out, Charlie Brooker's irrationality is screamingly evident.

Finishing the sentence “I’ll never buy a Mac because” with anything but “it doesn’t meet my needs” means you don’t get to accuse Apple users of making irrational purchasing decisions based on slavish adherence to an ideology.

Quite.

Now, I'm quite sure that many people will accuse me of taking Brooker too seriously or of being a biased Mac fanboi but, frankly, that doesn't alter the fact that Brooker's article invokes a strawman so huge that it might as well be twenty feet tall, full of chickens, pigs and Scottish policeman and burning on a remote Scottish island.

Having said that, I'm entirely with Charlie as regards the Windows 7 Launch Party adverts...

It's so terrible, it induces an entirely new emotion: a blend of vertigo, disgust, anger and embarrassment which I like to call "shitasmia". It not only creates this emotion: it defines it. It's the most shitasmic cultural artefact in history. Watch it for yourself.

Alternatively don't: you may need to scrub your eyeballs after watching the hideous ethnic and age-gap spanning grab-bag of sinister fuckers in that video. Just imagine that they are planning a sex-party. Trust me, it wil be less creepy and repulsive. Although not much, I'll admit.

Who the fuck is handling the Microsoft ad account? They should be shot, their building burned to the ground and the entire place sowed with salt. I mean, it's not only the cringe-making Windows 7 parties but (as I have mentioned before) also—as we approach the final quarter of two thousand and nine—the continual radio adverts for Office 2007.

What the fuck is going on at Microsoft? Are they trying to kill the company...?

Raping the stats

One of the constant background moans of feminists is that the conviction rate for rape is so very low—numerous articles will quote it at 5%–10%. Despite the difficulty of convicting in many rape trials—often one has only the word of the accuser and accused to go on, especially in the expanded definitions of rape that NuLabour has introduced—your humble Devil has always been slightly sceptical of these figures.

Via Timmy, it seems that my scepticism was justified because the conviction rate is nowhere near that low. [Emphasis mine.]

For years the Home Office and the former Lord Chancellor’s Department have misled the media about rape statistics—and allowed the media to misinform the public.
...

Since 1999 the Home Office has known that its methods for calculating rape convictions are wrong. The real conviction rate is not the publicly broadcast 10 per cent but closer to 50 per cent (it varies slightly from year to year). In a Minority Report which I wrote for a Home Office committee in 2000 but which advisers refused to forward to ministers who were then actively considering new rape legislation, the HO were told that they were confusing ‘attrition’ rates with ‘conviction’ rates.

The attrition rate refers to the number of convictions secured compared with the number of that particular crime reported to the police (it must be noted that a crime that is ‘reported’ does not automatically imply that the crime actually took place). The conviction rate refers to the number of convictions secured against the number of persons brought to trial for that given offence.

Rape is the only crime judged by the attrition rate. All others—murder, assault, robbery, and so on—are assessed by their conviction rates. Why?

That's a very good question. Whiston believes that it was...

... a deliberate policy choice (beginning somewhere around 1988) to ensure that no matter what the cost, rape and sex crimes would climb remorselessly up the political agenda.

What the reason for this should be can only be speculated upon. However, the figures that Whiston produces show that—for both attrition and conviction rates—rape is comparable to other reported crimes. This is extremely worrying.

"What?!" I hear you cry. "This isn't worrying—it's extremely good news. It means that women aren't being unfairly victimised and that rapists aren't getting away with it."

But it is worrying. Because the government is using the excuse of low conviction rates to bring in some terrible affronts to our system of justice. It has been suggested, for instance, that rape trials be heard by "specialist jurors", i.e. those appointed by those with an axe to grind. It has also been posited that accused rapists should—in defiance of all other criminal cases heard under British law—be assumed guilty until they can prove their innocence.

These are not minor changes—these fundamentally undermine our entire rule of law. And the inevitable increased rates of conviction will, no doubt, be trumpeted by the government, and then the principles transferred to the trial conducts in other crimes.

The method is reminiscent of the weekly alcohol unit limits: one of the scientists involved in that report admitted that these limits were plucked out of the air, and yet they—and other lies—have been leveraged in order to justify ever more draconian legislation.

Whilst the drinking laws "just" make everyone's lives a little bit more expensive and considerably less fun, the proposals surrounding the conduct of trials—which, we now know, are based on equally spurious figures—will lead to more innocent people being jailed.

The central travesty of justice is the same though: the innocent are punished for the crimes of the guilty.

Dim bulbs become a moot point

Quite apart from Charlotte Gore's discussion around the quality of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light, we get confirmation that they simply aren't as bright as their incandescent cousins.

The Sunday Telegraph has conducted its own tests on level of illuminance provided by light bulbs from different manufacturers to see whether their claims stand up to scrutiny.

We found that under normal household conditions, using a single lamp to light a room, an 11W low-energy CFL produced only 58 per cent of the illumination of an "equivalent" 60W bulb – even after a 10-minute "warm-up".

Mind you, The Sunday Telegraph is a filthy capitalist venture and not to be trusted—especially when the good old BBC and their puppetmasters (Defra, in this case) both reassure us that this simply isn't the case.

However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs denies they are a risk...
...

"The light is bright and clear and tests conducted by the Energy Saving Trust suggest that the majority of people cannot tell the difference between the light of a new CFL and an incandescent bulb."

There! The Beeb said it so it must be true.

Um, except that—according to The Sunday Telegraph—the European Union appears to disagree.

On a website intended to answer consumers' questions about the switch to energy saving bulbs, the European Commission states: "Currently, exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps.

"For example, a 11-12 Watt compact fluorescent lamp would be the equivalent of a 60 Watt incandescent, which is not true. The light output of 15W compact fluorescent lamp is slightly more than the light output from a 60W incandescent."

So, there you have it: make of it what you will.

Let us also not forget that CFLs contain mercury and so you cannot just throw them away—and nor can councils simply landfill them. Under EU law (yes, it's the EU again) CFLs need to be properly disposed of.

But all of this is shortly going to become moot because these light-bulbs are low-energy but they cannot run on no energy at all.

Because, via Burning Our Money, it appears that we should all start bracing ourselves for blackouts over the next decade.

Britain is facing the prospect of widespread power cuts for the first time since the 1970s, government projections show.

Demand for power from homes and businesses will exceed supply from the national grid within eight years, according to official figures.

The shortage of supplies will hit the equivalent of many as 16 million families for at least one hour during the year, it is forecast.

Not since the early 1970s when the three-day week was introduced to preserve coal has Britain faced the prospect of reationing energy use.

One of the defining traits of both the Blair and Brown governments is total cowardice—a willingness to defer the important decisions in favour of ensuring that crucial next-election win.

NuLabour has dithered and prevaricated about the building of new power stations, and has finally approved (some) new generation stations. But it is too little, too late.

Most stations will take some ten years to come onstream and many of our powerstations—coal, gas and nuclear—are already operating past their recommended lifespan. This is, to put it mildly, not good—especially as regards the nuclear reactors.

The gap between Britain’s energy needs and demand throws fresh doubt on the Government’s assertion that renewable energy can make up for dwindling nuclear and coal capabilities.

Anyone who thinks—regardless of what future technologies might bring—that we can provide for Britain's current power needs through renewable power is a fucking moron.

The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in a document that accompanied the Government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was launched in July.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, outlined the plan amid much fanfare.

Under the plan, 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity will need to come from low-carbon energy sources including clean coal, nuclear and renewables.

Ed Miliband is, along with his half-wit brother, one of the single stupidest people alive in Britain today. Not only is he a creepy little shit with the kind of bulging eyes that makes one suspect that he has some sort of unpleasant thyroid problem, but he is utterly pig-ignorant of any kind of science.

Given the fact that Miliband is mentally sub-normal, I shall spell out a simple message to Ed: "renewables are simply not going to cut it, you cunt."

As a case in point, the current darling of the renewable-energy twats is wind power: as regular readers of The Kitchen will know, wind power is not only vastly expensive in and of itself—the only reason that any windfarms have been build is because they are massively subsidised by the taxpayer—but the industry rule of thumb is that wind power requires 90% back-up capacity (that means conventional powerstations). NINETY PERCENT!

[Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary Greg Clark] also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could in fact be three times worse than the Government predictions. He said some of the modelling used was “optimistic” as it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until to 2020.

It also assumes a rapid increase in wind farm capacity. There is also the assumption that existing nuclear power stations will be granted extensions to their “lifetimes".

The last time Britain experienced regular power cuts because of shortages of supply was in the early 1970s, when a miners' strike caused coal restrictions. The country was forced to do everyday tasks by candlelight and a three-day week was imposed on all but essential services to try and conserve electricity.

Needless to say, an awful lot of this gargantuan fuck-up can be traced back to the EU. Again.

The looming problem in Britain is caused by the scheduled closure by 2015 of nine oil and coal-fired power plants. They are the victim of an EU directive designed to cut pollution.

In addition, four existing nuclear power plants are set to be shut, adding to the need for new sources of energy.

We are already fucked: we simply don't have the time to bring new powerstations online, and nor do we have the infrastructure to import massive amounts of electricity from the Continent—even if they had the surplus to sell.

We simply cannot afford to let the lights go out because the situation now is far more crucial than in the 70s—if only because a far higher number of people use computers to do their jobs. If we have blackouts, almost every single business will grind to a halt: the entire banking sector would be (even more) screwed. Britain would be destroyed as any kind of economic force.

You think I exaggerate? These blackouts are not predicted to be for a couple of months: we are talking about a shortfall in power generation—even assuming no growth in usage requirements—lasting for nearly two decades.

The official figures are taken from the government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, and here's their chart showing the projected energy gap (Expected Energy Unserved):

Ed Miliband has been poncing around Twitter recently—as well as getting short shrift from people he's spammed—encouraging people to sign up to his piss-poor campaign website, EdsPledge.com.

I'll be pushing for clear action to get a global climate deal that's ambitious, effective and fair. This means ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, keeping countries to their word and supporting poorer countries in adapting to climate change.

Really, Ed? I'll tell you what: here's a pledge I'd happily sign up to:

I, Ed Miliband, pledge that my ludicrous climate change posturing will not cause any power shortages from now until 2030. I, Ed Miliband, am so confident of this that I pledge—for every blackout that occurs—I will allow 100 people to kick the living shit out of me for an hour per minute of blackout.

There, that's a pledge that I would sign up for—so how about it, Ed? Want to put your shortly to be crackered knackers where you horrible, writhing mouth is?

Ed? Ed? Hello...?

Throwing some light on the situation

The latest EU-mandated insanity comes into force today—I speak, of course, of the ban on 100W incandescent light-bulbs.

It is light, bright and has been around for 120 years. But from Tuesday the 100 watt bulb bows out from Britain.

Under new EU rules the manufacture and import of 100 watt bulbs and all frosted bulbs will be banned in favour of the energy-saving variety.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, compact fluorescent lamps (energy-saving bulbs) use 80% less electricity than standard bulbs.

They could also save the average household £590 in energy over their lifetime of between eight and 10 years, and if all traditional bulbs were replaced, the carbon saving would be the equivalent of taking 70,000 cars off the road.

Good reasons.

Well, thank you for those spurious figures, Auntie. Now, tell me, are those your figures or are your English Literature-educated science editors just regurgitating other people's figures unquestioningly again?

And who are the Energy Saving Trust, eh? To find out, let us turn to Charlotte Gore's excellent fisking of this colossal load of crap.

Well they’re a ‘non-profit’ organisation 90% funded by the Government and includes as members The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, The Secretary of State for Transport, The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and The First Minister for Scotland. It gets 2% of its funding from the private sector, and boasts the membership of most of the utilities and energy producing interests, all of whom seem terrified of being perceived as un-Green by consumers.

So when the BBC reports the views of the Energy Saving Trust like this, they’re not really quoting an independent, reliable source—it’s the Government advising the Government—again.

In short, it's a classic contender for fakecharities.org—I shall go and add it as soon as I can.

Anyway, do read Charlotte's piece in full, as she addresses a number of different points including the quality of the light. However, I shall quote her conclusion here, because there's a little thing that I want to add...

And once again I’m brought back to wondering why. Why do this? Presumably the answer is “because the market has failed! People are still buying cheap bulbs that give off better lighting instead of expensive bulbs that aren’t as good. We must do something!”

Yet the market hasn’t failed. The market’s working perfectly well. People aren’t switching because the new bulbs aren’t better and cheaper than the ones that came before. I mean, even if you decide that 100w bulbs are wasteful and it’s not enough that people simply waste their own money paying to run them, why make it illegal to sell a bulb with diffusion or tinting?

This is purely to rig the competition and deny us the ability to choose for ourselves.

So the EU, a ‘Free Trade Zone’, is deciding that the manufacturers of energy saving bulbs are to be favoured (they’re produced by Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) and the manufacturers of incandescent bulbs are to be fought against. It is economic planning, without question—done on an EU wide level, using The Environment as the excuse for restricting yet another personal and economic freedom.

It is worth noting, of course, that one would have thought that the best way to get people to buy these bulbs would be to make them as cheap as possible.

"But surely," I hear you cry, "They already are? It's just that the market cannot supply them any cheaper?"

Um... No. The EU has had, since 2001, an import tariff—of a colossal 66%—on cheap CFL lightbulbs from China. As your humble Devil reported, almost two years ago today, the EU renewed those tariffs in the face of opposition from some of the biggest manufacturers.

Obviously, saving power is one very important way that we should do this and one of the easiest ways to save power is to convert to "green", low-energy light bulbs. These are so beneficial, we are told, that they will save gigawatts of power every year. In fact, so wondrous are they that the EU is banning the sale of bog-standard incandescent light bulbs from 2009.

Naturally, the great EU will encourage all of its citizens to replace all of their evil old bulbs with these near-miraculous low-energy ones, and our EU masters recognise that the best way in which to do this is to make them as cheap as possible, eh? Er, no...

THE European Commission is under fire from green campaigners and retailers for plans to extend duties on energy-efficient light bulbs from China.

The Chinese light bulbs have been subject to import duties since 2001, because the commission says the products are sold in EU markets for less than their true value.

Yesterday, EU commissioners met in Brussels and agreed to keep tariffs of 66 per cent in place, despite calls from green campaigners to bring down the price of energy-efficient light bulbs to encourage consumers to make greener choices.

Oh, jolly well done! The EU has decided to ensure that energy-efficient light bulbs remain 66% more expensive than they should be, thus ensuring a slower take-up and making both us and the Chinese poorer in the process.

What a fucking triumph: quick, go shout it from the roof tops!

Both Philips and General Electric, two electronics giants, wanted restrictions lifted. They argue that Europe needs cheap energy-efficient bulbs from China to meet growing demand. However, Osram, a German company, opposes ending the duties.

While a majority of member states were amenable to scrapping anti-dumping measures, Germany has lobbied hard to keep the restrictions in place for longer.

Speaking on behalf of the British Retail Consortium, Alisdair Gray said the proposal to extend anti-dumping measures was unjustified.

"We are really disappointed in it, because it has no basis in law; it's just caving in to one company, Osram," he said.

Wow! Y'know, it's that cross-border spirit of unity that's going to stop us all frying, ain't it just!

Or, if you were overtly cynical, you might think that it illustrated how the EU operates as a protectionist entity and block on global free trade (helping to keep everyone poorer) and that all this horseshit about how only the EU can save us from ourselves is just so much fucking bollocks.

So, thanks to the lobbying of one particular big business and the willingness of the institutionally corrupt and fascist EU, we already pay 66% more than we might for these wonderful "green" lightbulbs. And now they are legislating to ensure that we cannot buy anything other than CLRs.

Not only does this protect Osram—giving them a competitive advantage against Philips and General Electric (both of whom manufacture their bulbs in China and are thus subject to duties)—but it also substantially benefits the European Union institution itself—because the tariffs on imports go straight into EU coffers.

The only people who lose out are the Chinese and us, the citizens of the European Union countries—but neither of these entities are important, of course. The only thing that is important is that the corporatist EU has managed to appease the powerful companies who spend millions of pounds lobbying for protectionist measures.

There is an economic argument called "revealed preferences", which can be summed up by the old adage, "by their actions shall ye know them".

So, European Union Commissioner Margot Wallstrom says...

It is frustrating that so many people still either deny that climate change is happening or that we can do anything about it. (Also frustrating that some people still regard climate change as some kind of conspiracy theory or a quasi religious belief). The scientists are unanimous: It is happening. Can we do something about it? We must at least try. Mankind has more means at its disposal than ever before and needs to apply its collective wisdom to this problem. Otherwise future generations will not enjoy this earth that we enjoy.

But you need to look at the EU Commission's actions to see whether Margot is being sincere or whether she is lying like the corrupt, dishonest little bitch that she is.

So, the EU's action is to make CFLs more expensive through 66% import tariffs, when the best way to get people to adopt these "low-energy lightbulbs" would be to ensure that they are as cheap as possible.

Conclusions?

• Margot Wallstrom is a liar, and


• the EU doesn't believe in climate change or,


• if it does, it is not going to sacrifice its own revenue or put "future generations" before immediate corporate interest, and thus


• anyone who argues that one of the virtues of the EU is that it addresses cross-border environmental problems is sadly deluded.

However, anyone who thinks that the EU is a corporatist entity which has the ultimate aim of a planned economy whilst using the evironment as a smokescreen might just be onto something. As Charlotte says...

Is there any wonder that Green is the new Red?

The only word that I would question in that sentence is "new": the Green movement is and always has been about technological regression through legislatory oppression.

The EU is broadly aligned with this authoritarian, planned economy agenda (although that entity is less interested in Green issues and more focused on power for its own sake).

So, can we fucking well leave yet?