Clegg: same old, same old...

The Big Three have a message for you fucking moron voters: "hand over the cash and shut the fuck up."

Oooh, Nick Clegg's taking his gloves off—the world struggles to notice...

Nick Clegg will accuse Labour and the Conservatives of election campaigns based on "playground politics and make-believe economics" in a speech later.

The Lib Dem leader will say the "game's up for the old politics" as he sets out his approach to the election campaign...

... using the same old tactic of leaking his speech to the MSM before he actually makes it. Wow!—that's so "new" politics, Nicky.

But Mr Clegg will use his speech to try to set his party apart. He will promise to treat voters "like grown-ups" by being clear about the difficult spending and tax decisions that need to be taken.

Yeah, right.

Nick won't, I guarantee, allow you and me—the actual voters—to take those decisions by, say, giving us our money back. Oh no.

No, when Clegg says that he wants to treat the voters "like grown-ups", what he actually means is that he would like the voters to elect the LibDems so that the LibDems can make those terribly difficult decisions for us.

We voters, you see, are far too fucking stupid and child-like to make our own decisions: we are far too ignorant and feckless to use our money as we see fit.

We need to elect the LibDems, who will assure us that we are being treated like "like grown-ups", whilst they ensure—as is the case with Conservatives and Labour—that we are kept as far away from making decisions as is humanly possible.

The LibDems: just another patronising party of holier-than-thou cunts.

Fuck off, Clegg, you wanker, and take your mealy-mouthed shit-eaters with you.

Rowan Williams on tax

Rowan Williams: a smug, self-satisfied, hairy, diseased Polly-cunt. With teeth. And not in a good way.

I see that the Archbishop of Canterbury—who is, by any measure, a delusional bearded cunt—has decided to open his ill-informed gob on the subject of tax. [Emphasis mine.]

Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.

He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable.

I'm sorry... You fucking what?

Let me explain this to you very simply: "new levies" on "financial transactions and carbon emissions" are a sure way of "stifling business". You might think that this is a price worth paying, but what you are reported as having said makes. No. Fucking. Sense. You. Moron.

Look, Rowan, I think that it is time that we had a little chat. Sit down; yes, here, next to me. Now, let me try to put this simply. Hmmmm, where to begin...?

OK... Ummm... I hate to point this out, Rowan, but you are the top man at the Church of England. You understand that? Good.

Now, the Church of England is haemorrhaging members at a rate of knots; your organisation is selling off land and property in a desperate attempt to balance the books and you yourself command the respect of precisely no one.

To be honest, Rowan, you are the CEO of a failing—and damn near failed—business and I don't think that you have any right to give advice about economic matters to anyone at all.

You, Rowan, cannot even manage your own business properly: why don't you keep your comedy pug nose out of everybody else's, eh?

You are a colossal failure, Rowan, in every conceivable way—economically, socially and spiritually—and I really don't think that you have the authority to lecture anyone on anything.

Understand?

There, there: don't cry. Just crawl away to your palace and shut the fuck up, and no one will be nasty to you anymore. That's it—off you go. You fucking bearded clam, you.

For a more rational dissection of the Archbishop's utter shitness, do feel free to head over to The Longrider's place. I'm got better things to do that to spend any more time on this delusional god-botherer.

So what?

Letters From a Tory approvingly quotes Simon Hoggart's musings on the idea of open primaries for prospective Parliamentary candidates...

Suppose it catches on, and all candidates for all major parties are chosen by all the voters? Won't we wind up with a collection of bland, acceptable, uncontroversial, middle-of-the-road, white bread MPs, holding no very strong opinions about anything?

How the fuck would we tell the difference from what we have now, precisely?

Yes, Hoggart cites a few of the annoyingly eccentric and stridently irritating characters who have passed through the House of Commons but—let's face it—the only reason that Hoggart can easily recall the names of these people is because they are so utterly rare.

After all, such is the stranglehold that the political parties have on MPs these days, it doesn't actually matter what any one candidate believes anyway—they will simply be slapped down by the Whips.

I don't see that open primaries are going to substantially reduce the numbers of these already rare interesting—and, be honest, rarely interesting—candidates all that much.

Besides, cynical though I am about the British people, I tend to think that voters are more likely to warm to those candidates whom they regard as having genuine beliefs—especially in these difficult times.

And if the more gobby fuckwits don't get in, well, maybe the people—having realised that their representatives are all moribund, tedious bastards with all the conversational skills of an autistic accoutant—might vote for someone more amusing...

Hobson's choice

Via Longrider, I find that some miserable shithead called Theo Hobson has written an article about how James Bond is evil.

It feels like breaking rank with modern heterosexual British malehood, to which I more or less belong, but here goes. I hate James Bond. The continuation of his cult disgusts me, embarrasses me, depresses me. Yes, "cult" is the appropriate word. He embodies everything that's really awful about our national psyche. He mixes nostalgia with vulgarity, snobbery with hedonism. Because he's a semi-cartoon figure, caked in irony, he evades serious censure. Clever critics might sometimes scoff at the naffness, but the vast majority, including many intelligent ones, say stuff along the lines of "Cool!".

It's hard to dissent from this barrage of adulation. Call me Licensed to Killjoy, but it has to be said: this cult hero is a deeply malign cultural presence. He represents a nasty, cowardly part of us that ought to have been killed off long ago.

Of course there is a very serious case to be made against 007 on strictly feminist grounds. The women in the books and films are silly, naughty, flimsy things who need hard male mastery. I don't know how offensive this is to women, but it's offensive to me. Indeed I think the real victims of the Bond cult are men, who are impelled by a vile peer-pressure to worship at the shrine of this lethal lothario.

Theo Hobson, whoever the fuck he might be, is deeply offensive to me. And, one would hope, to all women too. Can you imagine being in a relationship with this tedious little turd? It would be hell, and utterly devoid of romance. Ugh.

People like Theo Hobson quite obviously consider all sex to be rape: the very idea that both men and women might actually enjoy sex is an anathema to this man. He is probably the kind of man who—thrusting ungracefully (tight with embarrassment, trying to get the whole thing over with quickly so as not to prolong his lady's pain)—does not murmur sweet nothings into his lover's ear, nor even heated cries of desire: no, Theo Hobson will be muttering, "sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

Either that, or he likes to slap women about and he is merely projecting his nastiness onto what is, let's face it, a fictional fucking character, Theo!

What a joyless shit he is. Still, there is a rather good comment underneath the piece-of-shit article...

Yes indeed, we can't be having any of that ironic fun business with our sex. Sex is a very serious matter.

I'm currently pitching my own movie in Hollywood. Titled Quantum of Angst, it tells the tale of New Age social worker Nigel Bond, a member of the Allotments Association who poses as a member of the Rotary Club in order to expose their plan to run a hosepipe from the Communal Tap to feed water to their bowling green sprinkler system. When a parsnip crop is badly damaged during a wheelbarrow altercation, Bond calls an emergency community committee meeting and the various parties agree to mediation. There are two sex scenes, both between Bond and his life-partner Frozilla Hemp, and any suggestion that sex might be fun has been carefully excised.

Nigel Bond will be played by Ally Fogg and Frozilla Hemp by Bond-girl Kathy Burke.

Indeed. Hobson's choice would be that scenario above: I'll take the irony and sexual fun, any day...

The morality of stupidity

Via Andrew Ian Dodge, I find this irritatingly preachy article by Jenny McCartney, on the subject of computer games.

The f-word might be everywhere now, from playgrounds to the titles of BBC documentaries, but it's the m-word that can render people really twitchy. Opinion-formers will squirm to avoid an argument that is seen to be based on moral considerations: they will grope instead for the comfort-blanket of scientific data, and "pragmatic approaches", and "natural concerns".

Look, love, morality is a personal thing: your morality may not be the same as my morality. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it. Therefore it is entirely wrong that you should enforce your morality on me via legislation, which is what you would like to do.

Yet the truth, surely, is that the majority of us would indeed recoil from the idea that our teenage son or daughter was upstairs playing Manhunt 2, a recently licensed game in which the protagonist, an escaper from an experimental asylum, tortures and murders other players in the most graphic ways.

Well, don't fucking buy your fucking kid the fucking game then, you arse. Or, if they have the ability to buy it themselves, then forbid them to buy it as long as they live under your roof. I think that is perfectly acceptable: your house, your rules.

But don't bitch and whine to me about your blasted morality.

What will you do today?

Apparently, the Gobblin' King is going to launch the local polling campaign. Needless to say, The Nameless One isn't impressed.

The world waits with baited breath for the man who can make failed terrorist attacks seem boring to announce how he is going to fight an election that won’t really change anything at all. I’d love to be at the launch but unfortunately I have something more interesting and fun to do. I’m going to sit in the corner and hit myself repeatedly in the face. With a tyre iron.

Like TNO, I have better and more worthwhile to do. I shall sat sit, naked, on a freezing metal chair on my balcony, shivering in the icy wind, and repeatedly wallop myself in the nuts with a piece of two by four.

It is telling that the BBC can’t make this news exciting. All we have is the same phrase repeated over and over again—basically that Brown would like a better showing in these elections than what happened last May. No, really? A politician wants to do well in an election? Crazy stuff.

Colour me bored.

Sexism in the monarchy

I have to say that if your priority, as an MP, is to worry about male primogeniture in the British monarchy, then you really don't have enough to do.

James Windsor, Prince Edward's first son, overtaking of his sister, Lady Louise, as eighth in line to the throne has today been referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission by newly appointed Lib Dem Youth & Equalities Spokesperson Lynne Featherstone MP.

Following the common law practice of male-preference primogeniture that sees male heirs take preference over their female siblings in the line of succession, James Windsor (Viscount Severn) who was born in December now comes before his 4 year old sister in succession to the throne.

Ms. Featherstone has written to the chair of the Commission requesting an urgent investigation into the legality of displacement in the light of recent equality legislation.

To be honest, Lynne, I have fuck all interest in funding an "urgent investigation" into the monarchy's succession.

Apart from anything else, all law is made in the name of the monarch so I seriously doubt that equality laws apply, even if they do originate in the EU (our true government).

But wait! Lynne has more to delight us!

It may not be the nuts and bolts of discrimination against women in terms of equal pay (appalling - 144,000 cases waiting for tribunal), rape conviction rates, funding for carers and so on - but it is completely unacceptable.

If you are really worried about inequality, how about setting some priorities? Further, if you are going to make judgement calls, would you mind letting us know your understanding of the figures?

Because the state of pay equality is not "appalling", as Timmy continues to point out.

Women, on average, who work part time. get paid 38% per hour less than men who work full time. Men who work part time also get paid less per hour than men who work full time. In the private sector, the difference between male and female part time pay is around 11%.

And, as he points out again, this pay gap is not to do with sexism per se.

Whether discrimination is at the root or not is what we want to find out, not our starting assumption. When we do look in more detail and we find that there is no pay gap for lesbians, that never married no children women earn more than their male counterparts, that the pay gap is very small indeed, widens considerably in the prime child bearing years and then shrinks again we might in fact come to the conclusion that the gender pay gap has something to do with…..children!

However, Featherstone is only an MP and I don't expect her to actually have read any of the actual studies as that might require something a little more than knee-jerk bigotry.

And, let's face it, which sector is actually the worst for discrimination: private or public? Well, let's just have a little look at which sector is having to cut wages in order to meet the employment legislation, shall we?

Public sector unions are threatening strike action over equal pay deals for council workers after proposed cuts of up to £35,000 for thousands of male staff, The Times has learnt.

Unison and Unite, the largest public sector unions, are balloting members in Birmingham over industrial action because nearly 5,000 staff face salary cuts to fund rises for low-paid women.

Birmingham City Council, the biggest authority in the country, with 60,000 staff, will prove a test case for other council employers, where town halls are trying to reach similar equal pay agreements.

Oh, look, the public sector: what a fucking surprise! Because private companies have to make a profit, they tend to hire the best person—be that man or woman—for the job. Further, they will then pay that person whatever they need to retain them. The public sector, quite obviously, has no such priorities.

Lynne also implies that all 144,000 tribunal cases are concerned with equal pay; unfortunately, she provides no evidence that this is the case. And, naturally, she does not elaborate as to whether these are public or private sector cases.

And rape conviction rates are an indication of sexism, are they? Gosh, I really hope that you can back that up, Lynne. Because I would point out that the low conviction rates for rape are reliant on a number of factors; not least the fact that, since it tends to be one person's word against another's, it is very difficult to convict beyond reasonable doubt. Another factor is that of the "date rape" being equated to "stranger rape". Timmy again...

One of the more pernicious ideas of modern times is that all rape is rape, that all and any sex (although rape is more properly thought of as a crime of violence, of power over someone, but that’s another matter) against the will of a woman is the same and must be treated and punished equally. Finally, even The Guardian is getting the point that this isn’t actually the way to deal with it:

A more fruitful approach might be a two-tier offence, with the highest penalties reserved for "aggravated" rapes, allowing juries to convict in more typical cases without fearing that this would lead to the maximum life term.

Currently, when tried, the possible sentence for a drunken misunderstanding over consent is the same as that for a violent stranger rape. No wonder juries are hesitant to convict. A gradation of offences will do much to remedy at least that part of the problem.

That is, an acknowledgement that not all rapes are equal.

But a failure to convict is sexism? I don't think so: quite apart from anything else, last time that I looked, there were twelve people on the jury and the chance (and they are picked at random) of all twelve of those people being sexist men (who are so sexist that they would rather indulge their bigotry than convict a rapist) is pretty fucking low.

And the lack of funding for carers is sexism? Fucking hell, what are you on, Featherstone?—because I want to legalise it.

I mean, none of us expect much of the idiots who infest the House of Commons, but judging by Lynne Featherstone's priorities, we could easily do away with half of them and never notice the fucking difference.

You see, this is the problem with MPs: they don't actually have enough honest, worthwhile work to do and so they have to prat about at the edges, agitating for all sorts of pissy little ways to impose on us their personal vision of what the world should be like. And the worst of it is that they cannot even be arsed to look at the facts or, indeed, even to engage their brains before shooting their big mouths off.

Do these fucking little monkeys not see how dictatorial their stance is? I think that this should happen and I think that I have a perfect fucking right to force you all to act in the way that I think is correct.

Fucking hellski, people may not agree with my libertarian ideals, but at least I acknowledge that people's priorities might be different from mine: were I in power, I would advocate letting everyone live in the way that they, personally, see fit.

Since we seem to be having something of a debate on the subject, I would like to propose that MPs' pay is performance-related. The longer an MP shuts the fuck up and doesn't propose some illiberal fucking bollocks, the more they get paid. I mean that we should literally pay our MPs to do nothing: the world would be a much better place, and we would have considerably more freedom. Oh, and a lot more money in our pockets too.

Failing that, every time an MP fails to use evidence or uses some fucking specious argument based on their own pathetic prejudices to attempt to force through some piece of shit law, we start docking their pay.

Hell, but I hate them, the lazy, sanctimonious little pricks.

Another one bites the dust

The signs were all there and so it comes as no surprise that Caroline Hunt has shut up shop.

I am bringing a close to proceedings on this blog. I've just run out of time and steam. A full time job means I just don't get to devote the time I want to to my writing anymore. This blog was at it's best at the beginning of 2007 when I wasn't working and all day long to work out what I wanted to write about and what I wanted to say. My blogging has now been reduced to me firing off a few sentences on the top news story of the day and frankly I'm embarrassed by the quality of it.

On Sunday, The Kitchen will reach its third birthday and I must confess that, despite the occasional bout of blogging fatigue, I have never seriously thought about giving up.

When I occasionally peruse the archives, I do wonder if my writing is as good as it was: I was angry, really angry, when I started jotting my thoughts down in cyberspace but, I now realise, much of that was down to the work situation I found myself in.

Since the move to the Big Smoke, I have become much more relaxed and happier. Stupid policy initiatives instigated by NuLabour tend to bring on mild irritation rather than the screaming ab-dabs that once characterised my writing. Hence a reduction in the amount of swearing (having said that, I haven't fisked Polly for a while: now she does bring me out in a rage, unfailingly).

Another problem is that the current government are so fucking dull; I think that the Gobblin' King has decided that the best way to avoid critical comment is to bore everyone to death by being screamingly fucking dull and following up his utter tedium by appointing a lacklustre collection of even duller cunts to his Cabinet.

I mean, say what you like about Tony's lot—and, let's face it, I have. At length (you can find many of the best ones in the sidebar, under DK's Favourite Posts)—at least fuckheads like Reid, Blunkett, the jug-eared cunt and Patronising Patsy had some personality that one could deride; the person with most élan in the current Cabinet is Batshit*, and he is almost entirely personality-free.

If boring us all into submission is the monocular cunt's strategy, then it's a good one.

On the other hand, if it's not a definite strategy, then he is a fun-destroying arsebiscuit who should be beaten to death with his own stumpy cock. Mind you, all talk of strategies aside, he is a fun-destroying arsebiscuit who should be beaten to death with his own stumpy cock anyway.

The most annoying thing about Brown's bottling of the election was that we might, at least, have had a different collection of thieving, statist cunts in power for me to mock***. Ah, well, we'll just have to wait until Brown finally has the balls to call a general election, I guess.

Fucking hell, Brown is such a fucking cunt**, he really is.

* Batshit's latest derisory entry on his tedious "blog" is entitled, "Does everyone really hate diplomats?"

I was surprised to be asked when I arrived at the Foreign Office whether "everyone hates diplomats". It was depressing because it suggested a lack of confidence—as well as being a bit out of touch. I don't think 'people' do hate diplomats.

I can't say that I give two shits about diplomats, to be honest; I don't think that I've ever thought about it. But I can tell you that "everyone" fucking hates politicians. I fucking hate you, for starters. You are such a cunt that I hardly have enough "cunts" to describe what a fucking cunt you are. You cunt.

** Take that, Jackart, you cunt****.

*** Although it will be interesting to see what happens to some of the bigger blogs out there—Dale, Dizzy and Guido—when the Tories get into government. For we unashamed libertarians it will just be another bunch of statist thieves to attack; but for those who support the Conservatives (even if they themselves are libertarians), it may well be the kiss of death, I suspect.

**** Sorry, I'm in "The Cunt Zone", man...

Libertarianism and solutions

Now, some of you might have gathered that your humble Devil is a somewhat radical libertarian; he dislikes this govermment in particular and thinks that the state does a fucking appalling job in general.

My views have developed quite a lot in the few years in which I have been blogging, of course. The way that such views might be developed are articulated by Mr Eugenides' spendid article on Libertarianism. This is particularly pertinent...

Yep, I’d say there’s a tension between my conservatism and my libertarianism; I'm not too proud to say that it’s a work in progress, with all the contradictions and missteps that may entail.

Of course my views are still developing; it would show a remarkable lack of self-knowledge to maintain my railing against dogma whilst being similarly inflexible. It should also be pointed out that my natural leanings are reinforced by the situation of a year or so ago when—despite having paid fat wads of taxes and NICs for seven years—when I was actually doing very badly, about to lose his home, being taken to court for Council Tax arrears and quite literally starving, the state refused to help him.

However, I have always tried, not only to rage against the soft-socialism which all the mainstream parties seemed to have embraced, but also to suggest viable, libertarian alternatives. Which is why reading the kind of fucking shit spouted in this Never Trust A Hippy post makes me what to knaw through my own arm.

I fear that Chris [Dillow, in a response to a post of mine] is too patient in his defence of the term liberal left. He could, far more easily, gone on the offensive against the notion of a liberal right.

Not really. Yes, he could go on the offensive against the right, but the libertarian right...?

No, I shall control myself and see what this nitwit has to say.

You can see the problem with it by revisiting Mr Eugenedes' point. Bloggertarians, as he points out, will always gravitate towards something pragmatic, right-wing and populist like the Conservative Party or possibly UKIP, because they don't have any positions of their own that could be sold to a sceptical public.

What the fuck? That motive might be true of Eugenides but it is not true of many. The pragmantism comes from the likelihood of getting a party into power that might be more orientated towards your sort of area; it's the argument that Jackart constantly makes.

I have plenty of positions of my own that could be "sold to a sceptical public" but, unfortunately, from a practical point of view that simply won't work: our political system demands big, reasonably centrist parties.

They have a critique, of course - and the bloggertarian position is absolutely stupendous as a standpoint from which to oppose something.

Quite. Personally, I loathe all of the big three parties and pretty much all of the others too.

But if you ask a right-wing libertarian to explain what they would actually do on any given subject (with an audience consisting of some members of the general public, as opposed to wonks from the Adam Smith Institute) ... well, don't hold your breath waiting for anything coherent.

And this is where my shit has been mercilessly gripped. I have always put forward solutions to problems based on libertarian ideals. A number of times, commenters or other bloggers have disagreed with my solution and I have revised the idea; but to say that people like myself never put forward solutions is either rank ignorance or simply a lie.

Once again, we find ourselves faced with the Polly conundrum...

Here's what I mean. Have a quick look around a few bloggertarian sites. It's easy enough to find out what they are against. In the example of 'law and order', generally it's...

• CCTV


• ID Cards


• DNA databases


• Police powers in general (though the distinction between bloggertarians and libertarians is that they only oppose police powers where they are endorsed by a Labour PM).

Jesus, but you are a fuckwitted little tit, aren't you? That last point is particularly stupid: we have had a Labour government for the last decade and a fucking wet Opposition for most of that time: who else has endorsed and implemented increased police powers in that timeframe?

For some people, you might be right, Hippy; but to point to Longrider (an ex-Labour Party member) and I (given my voluble criticism of the Tories) is just fucking stupid.

Yet, if any of the bloggertarians were to break the habit of a lifetime and provide us with a libertarian - or right-liberal - prescription, you can bet your arse that it would not increase the liberty that we enjoy in any way.

Really? I beg to fucking differ.

For example, let's look at what a more libertarian alternative to a publicly funded and accountable police force would look like.

Sorry: an alternative? How, exactly, is our police force accountable to anyone but central government? Our point is that the police force is not accountable, in any meaningful way, to those whom they are supposed to serve.

How will it be funded, in whose interests will it operate as a consequence?

There are two basic funding options which are generally advocated.

1. Privately funded. In which case they, like any other business, are accoutable to those who pay them directly, i.e. their customers. If this force does not do a good job, another is hired.


2. The police remain publically funded—preferably at local level but that leads on to a number of other issues—but their Chief Constables are locally elected and thus answerable to the local electorate for their jobs. In this way, they have a real incentive to respond to the needs of those people whom they are supposed to serve.

What powers will this atomised entity be provided with?

Ah, this "atomised" entity, eh? This is what I love about socialists: they will bitch and moan about how supermarkets are conspiring, i.e. working together, to fuck everyone over, but the idea that localised public services might do the same thing is obviously lunacy, eh?

And what powers would they have? Well, that depends on the laws that the government passes, doesn't it. Fucktard.

How would the end of socially-funded policing impact upon the environment that we live in?

Well, hello, Mr Strawman—how are you today?

Look, strong property rights are absolutely essential to libertarian thought; as such, law and order is vitally important. Law and order is, in fact, one of those few things which needs to be handled by the state as it is one of those areas (the other being defence) where most libertarians can agree that we need to avail ourselves of the unique power of force that we endow to the state.

Would there be less CCTV?

With a libertarian government, yes, one would think so. Why? Because CCTV impinges on personal freedoms whilst simultaneously being almost entirely useless for its intended purpose.

CCTV makes people feel safer but has no impact on actual crime levels [PDF] or crime clear up rates. This is an overconfidence that has lead to real miscarrages of justice, luckily this is rarer than it might be because even with high quality systems it is hard to identify people from CCTV that you are not already familar with, and CCTV is very rarely of high quality.

But, actually, once again, this is partially up to any government.

Less by way of gated communities and general obstructions in the way of the free individual walking about where they please?

Well, yes, hopefully. Isn't that the whole point? People don't really want to live in "gated communities"; after all, they still have to walk around the streets. But that is the point of making the police more accountable to the people they serve.

One of the single most consistent replies to any survey is that everyone—rich or poor—wants to see more police on the beat. However, there is no real incentive for the police to do this plus, of course, they have to spend so much of their time filling in forms that most policemen are out and about for very little time.

Remove central government's petty form-filling, and let the local people decide what the priorities should be (that'll be "bobbies on the beat" then).

I don't think so.

Well, that is because you have set up a load of straw men and you haven't even bothered knocking them down, for fuck's sake. You have simply asked a load of questions and then stated your opinion without even explaining yourself. Or, indeed, articulating what the libertarian position is.

Would commercial risk aversion demand that we have more robust means of proving our identity?

Er, well, does it now? Are banks demanding DNA samples? No.

Is the state? Yes.

Will well-heeled lawyers be able to demand access to any information held by organisations that verify our identity, should such organisations exist?

What about the not-so-well-heeled lawyers? Or do we have nothing to fear from them? But the answer to your question is, "no". I am really not sure what Paulie thinks libertarianism is about, really. He seems to be assuming that it is the same as anarchism, in which case he's a fucking idiot.

Will we wish to provide these atomised entities that we pay to look after our personal security some kind of legal leeway to make mistakes?

Oh, look chaps! It's those pesky atomised entities again! Again, as for the question, it depends doesn't it?

But let's clear something up here: we pay the police to look after our personal security right now. They don't come for free, you know.

Or will every standard of the law apply to them even though we expect them to constantly place themselves in situations that demand the use of force or coercion in our interests?

It rather depends, Paulie: would you like them to get away with shooting an innocent man seven times in the head with no one being held accountable, or not? Because that is, by the look of it, the system that we currently have in place.

Will we be a more, or less regulated society? Will we be more or less intruded upon? Will life generally be fairer? Will our initial choice of womb be any less of a future-defining decision than it is now?

I don't know, Paulie: what is the point of these questions, precisely? And when are you going to answer any of them? And what the fuck has the choice of womb got to do with anything?

Some people are born into more difficult circumstances than others: I'm afraid that that is always going to be the case. After all, despite ten years of your lot attempting to do something about it, social mobility has not progressed at all.

In this case, I'm pretty sure that market liberalism would result in less of what most people would call liberty.

Really? I am pretty sure that you are utterly wrong.

Let us take your ludicrous womb analogy and run with it, shall we. Let us assume that the reason that you referred to it was because you feel that liberty is partly the liuberty to move social class: to not be irrevocably doomed to have a shitty, unproductive live and bring your children up the same way, shall we?

And let's assume that Willetts is right when he asserts that schools are the key to social mobility—and I think that we can assume that. And NuLabour have comprehensively failed on this front, despite their "education, education, education" mantra.

So, what should we do? Well, libertarians try to look for the nearest to the free-market solution; the solution that allows the customer the most choice. Competition works. So, I, like Timmy and others, propose a voucher system much like Sweden has. Does it work? Yes.

The strongest evidence against this criticism comes from Sweden, where parents are freer than those in almost any other country to spend as they wish the money the government allocates to educating their children. Sweeping education reforms in 1992 not only relaxed enrolment rules in the state sector, allowing students to attend schools outside their own municipality, but also let them take their state funding to private schools, including religious ones and those operating for profit. The only real restrictions imposed on private schools were that they must run their admissions on a first-come-first-served basis and promise not to charge top-up fees (most American voucher schemes impose similar conditions).

The result has been burgeoning variety and a breakneck expansion of the private sector. At the time of the reforms only around 1% of Swedish students were educated privately; now 10% are, and growth in private schooling continues unabated.

Anders Hultin of Kunskapsskolan, a chain of 26 Swedish schools founded by a venture capitalist in 1999 and now running at a profit, says its schools only rarely have to invoke the first-come-first-served rule—the chain has responded to demand by expanding so fast that parents keen to send their children to its schools usually get a place. So the private sector, by increasing the total number of places available, can ease the mad scramble for the best schools in the state sector (bureaucrats, by contrast, dislike paying for extra places in popular schools if there are vacancies in bad ones).

More evidence that choice can raise standards for all comes from Caroline Hoxby, an economist at Harvard University, who has shown that when American public schools must compete for their students with schools that accept vouchers, their performance improves. Swedish researchers say the same. It seems that those who work in state schools are just like everybody else: they do better when confronted by a bit of competition.

Good, that's that sorted, then. On to the next thing.

In the meantime, any examples of bloggertarians not simply being negativists would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I have some 3,200 posts on this blog and I would say that a good 50% of them propose positive measures of some sort. Also, why not give Worstall a shot?

Of course, if you prefer, you could just keep asking questions that you don't answer, carry on avoiding defining your terms, and just trog on supporting your lovely Labour lot. Or, of course, you could try reading a few more of these bloggertarians before you just wade in with the sweeping generalisations.

You could even grow a brain and start telling us what your solutions might be (given that the traditional statist ones have been a massive failure over the last 10 years).

UPDATE: Strange Stuff also replies to this, articulating some of the libertarian policing strategies rather better than I. I should start adding these to your folder of non-negativist plans...

The "Liberal" Conspiracy

Ah, those of us who have heard of this have been waiting eagerly for its release. "What?" I hear you cry, "what is this release? Is it a release of huge numbers of vicious and hungry leopards into the House of Commons at PMQs? is a release of a swift and fatal virus into the Chamber wherein our corrupt yet hapless MPs while away their shiftless hours?"

Alas, it is not: it is the launch of what Sunny Hundal modesty terms his "super-blog": Liberal Conspiracy.

Y'see, the Left-o-sphere has been feeling somewhat persecuted of late, not least by their own side—both by blogs and by the appalling behaviour and performance of the government which they elected time after time.

Admittedly, many of the more decent ones will have voted for NuLabour as the least worst option—just one of the many reasons that I would caution the Right against doing so with the Tories—but it doesn't alter the fact that the "liberal-Left" have been having a bit of a hard time of it.

Still, there are some impressive names on the Liberal Conspiracy roster: Chicken Yoghurt and Robert Sharp are quite simply two of the finest prose writers on the blogosphere, for all that I almost always disagree with him; Chris Dillow—the man of no fixed beliefs—has been churning out some excellent work on economics and managerialism for years; Garry Smith was once a regular stop before he became totally obsessed with Iraq; and I have worked with Unity—possessor of one of the blogosphere's finest analytical minds—on a number of issues, behind the scenes.

But, you see, I have a problem with this whole "liberal-Left" issue: to me, the terms are near incompatible. Many of us have long argued that the terms Left and Right are effectively meaningless, and that the actual fight is between those who are statist—believing in redistribution of wealth, state economic controls, heavy regulation of both business terms and personal habits—and those who are free-market libertarians—those who believe that markets, and minimal interference by the state in business and personal concerns, provide the answers to the problems that we face.

One of the reasons that the statists have been taking a bit of a beating is because we have a fundamentally statist government in the form of NuLabour. Not only have NuLabour demonstrably failed in all the important milestones that they set for themselves—health, education, social mobility—but they have made significant inroads into personal liberties too.

Thus the statist bloggers—or those who appear to be calling themselves the liberal Left—find themselves in something of a bind: not only do they find themselves fighting against an incumbent government who is naturally inclined their way, but that government is imposing many restrictions on civil liberties that these bloggers (rightly) disagree with.

Further, many of them have also found that those policies that they do agree with—which mainly consist of stealing more money off private citizens and pouring it into the public services and into measures designed to increase social mobility—have been employed by the government and simply haven't worked.

Thus, many of the liberal Left bloggers have found themselves—slightly embarrassingly, although probably more productively for all of us—aligned with Tories and libertarians over civil liberties issues.

And on the subject of public services and social mobility, they find that their backs are against the wall, for the money has been poured into those areas over the last decade and yet the services are barely better and social mobility is no different. This makes them easy targets for the libertarians—or classical liberals—who can point to the figures showing the failure of their chosen champions, and most of those decent statist bloggers are honest enough to know that a decade is more than long enough to have shown some improvement: bleating about needing more time simply won't wash any more.

In fact, those same bloggers know that they are guilty of keeping these people in power. It seems appropriate today that I should quote from V's speech.

Really, it's not good enough, is it? And it's no good blaming the drop in work standards upon the bad management either...

... though, to be sure, the management is very bad. In fact, let us not mince words... The management is terrible.

We've had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact.

But who elected them?

It was you! You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you.

It is ironic that V For Vendetta, which was intended as a critique on the Thatcher government, should apply so well to NuLabour—the film made that very obvious.

And it is futile for statist bloggers to point out that the Tories are just as bad, or that NuLabour are only bad because they copied the Tories: that simply plays into the hands of the radical small-state libertarians (amongst whom I count myself and many other better bloggers) who point out that this is precisely why the state should run almost nothing at all and should have little or no power.

Every way that they turn, the liberal Left find themselves harried and spiked intellectually: not because their ideas are too impractical but because their ideas have already been implemented and have demonstrably failed. But they do have one big advantage over the libertarians: the general populace.

The general populace cares little for their civil liberties, at present. Further, the general populace can usually see no connection between their government-cossetted lives and the way in which this gives the state authority to interfere in every aspect of their lives—that the state owns us all is a theme I developed a few days ago. Further, the concept that the state might be working in the best interests of the state and not the populace is not an idea that has occurred to many of them just yet.

But this means that, in general, the liberal Left can only really argue for the status quo (albeit with the occasional piece of tinkering) which is hardly the most inspiring rallying cry. The libertarians, however, can fire up the anti-statist rhetoric and, whilst the vast majority of people haven't got it yet, it generally makes for far more interesting reading.

Further, despite the paranoid fantasies of those on the Left, there is no great, big right-wing conspiracy; we classical liberals aren't really ones for organising and corralling our supporters because it is precisely against our philosophy to do so—hence the trope that trying to get a libertarian party together would be like herding cats. Believe me, I've tried it (and that is before you take into account the fact that people have limited time and will use that time to push their personal blogs first).

So, am I worried about Liberal Conspiracy? No, for I don't believe that they have anything particularly original to say. And those that do will, I believe, continue to say those things on their blogs.

Will they have an impact on the media? Maybe, or at least that section of the media that is already sympathetic to them. Is this a problem? Only in that it will help to further entrench the status quo and this is not much of a problem: it was always going to take a massive force of will to mobilise people to look beyond their own comfortable, state-funded lives anyway. Liberal Conspiracy may raise the bar a tiny bit, but not in any significant way.

Because, fundamentally, the liberal Left still believe that the state can make all things right and they are, gradually, losing that argument. Indeed, I quoted V's speech above, but there is an earlier section which is also applicable to the people of this country, which explains why the liberal Left have dominated for so long.

You don't seem to want to face up to any real responsibility, or to be your own boss...

The fact is that this is precisely the attitude of the British populace today, and so they have been content to let the management run ever more of their lives. One day, it will have to stop and it will not be the liberal Left advancing the solutions.

And, in the meantime, since "right-wing loonies" are not welcome in the comments of this Liberal Conspiracy—like most conspiracy theorists, they far prefer to put their hands over their ears and sing than to hear any counter arguments—it will, by the look of it, provide a rich seam of earnest and contradictory articles to fisk and otherwise rip the piss out of.

Judging by some of the stuff that has already appeared, the Liberal Conspiracy looks to be like a particularly prolific Polly Toynbee, and you all know how much I love and respect her...

UPDATE: Timmy's slightly sceptical too.

Notes to writers...

... from a print designer: do not put a double space after a full stop.

Since the advent of computer word processing, we have developed digital typefaces with advanced kerning* and double spaces are no longer necessary, to the extent that it is generally considered incorrect.

More importantly, what often happens is that you get sentences being indented by one space from the left margin (where the line break has come between the two spaces), so we designers have to go through removing all of your double-spaces and—even though we can automate this procedure—it's a bore.

* Apart from in monospaced typefaces, but you should not really be using those in print documents anyway.

Advertising for a new job?

My, my, the Tory graphic design team are really hard at work at present: Iain has posted another one this evening.

However, Guido reports that there might be a slight... um... hiccough.

On the tight-rope issue that is the EU treaty, the Tories are campaigning hard for a referendum, which Gordon will not concede. What Cameron has refused so far to concede to his own right-wing is a retrospective referendum should they be in power in 2010 - two years after the treaty will have been confirmed by Parliament.

Hague has been firmly evasive on this point, Tory EU-headbangers have also been, well, as headbanging as always on the same point. Tomorrow's new "CANCELLED" poster from the Tories has now muddied the waters. As soon as it appeared on ConservativeHome, UKIP supporting Chad Noble spotted that the poster implies "A vote on the European Constitution" is "now delayed until the election of a Conservative government".

Indeed. This could be somewhat embarrassing (unless of course, it is a firm policy commitment).


Guido implies that there might be dire repercussions in CCHQ, but why should that be? After all, David Cameron did seem to give a quite unequivocal promise, in The Sun, only a few weeks ago.

"Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations."

Well, Dave's been back-tracking a bit since then; there's all this talk of "assessments" and "context".

And, as Unity has pointed out, William Hague has also been extremely vague on the matter of a referendum after ratification.

Rather its the Tories who are still running scared of the propensity for Europe to open up divisions in their own party, divisions that would be all the more damaging to Cameron as they would come from pro-European Tories most closely associated with the very centre-ground that Cameron purports to be trying to capture and, therefore, cast doubts on his credibility as a ‘centrist’.

That’s why the Tory’s only substantive policy on Europe is to demand a referendum - because the only thing they have on the menu is Chicken Cameron.

That’s me on the Tories and the EU Reform Treaty—and now this…

...

Mr Hague, speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme yesterday, dodged calls from his backbenchers for a referendum even if the treaty became law.

He said: “We don’t rule out a referendum in the future, and our discussions will take place against a background that this treaty, if passed without a referendum, will lack democratic legitimacy.”

Unity invited me to pass comment, but all I can do is sit back wearily and say, "I told you so."

I, and others, have also pointed out that the "proper immigration controls" promised by this poster are also utterly unworkable; how can they be when we are not even allowed to ask why a large number of immigrants are coming here?

What the paper misses is that immigration officials are not permitted under EU law to interrogate entrants from the EU as to their intentions on entering this country, nor quiz them as to their activities or plans should they decide to leave. Any such move would be "discrimination" on the grounds of nationality and thus, again, contrary to EU law.

So it is that the immigration channels are set up to include British nationals and "EU citizens", so that anyone waving a passport from an EU member state can sail through the channel, on exactly the same basis as a British national. All the immigration officials can do is stand aside and watch.

It is that issue, more than anything else, which is so disturbing. Whatever one's views about the utility and benefits – or otherwise – about mass migration, the very fact that the government has no idea of the scale of the inflow of migrants taking up work, and no legal means of acquiring such information, means that any idea of controlling - or even predicting and thus managing the effects of – mass immigration, is strictly for the birds.

And, as we have pointed out, immigration from the EU member states does not just include indigenous Europeans. With the current EU rules – viz the notorious Directive 2004/38/EC – we are obliged to permit entry to recent immigrants from third countries, who have entered via any member state and acquired residential status – as well as giving free passage to their relatives.

It is this huge "back door" which further makes a nonsense of any attempt to craft a rational immigration policy – or any policy at all. As long as we buy into the European Union and its core policies of "freedom of movement" and "freedom of establishment", we simply do not have a policy, other than, "let them all come and go as they please".

But at least we control immigration from those outside the EU, right? Well, currently, that is the case but, as Timmy has pointed out, soon that too will be controlled by the EU.

A single European work visa, to be known as a Blue Card, will be introduced alongside a global advertising campaign to attract thousands of “highly skilled” migrants, EU officials announced yesterday.

The visas, coloured blue to match the EU flag, are intended to rival the American Green Card by offering permanent residency anywhere in Europe after five years’ work.

As Timmy points out, once again, we do have an opt-out from this but it is worth little.

Of course, the Govt says that it has an opt out from this: one that actually means nothing as once someone is in the EU and legally so for two years then they can move anywhere else in the EU.

As I have said many times before, I have mixed feelings about immigration and lean towards not really giving two shits, generally; however, if you are making a cornerstone policy, you really ought to tell the truth. OK, OK, I know that they are politicians but could they not at least make an effort to be truthful?

And as for the National Citizen Service... well... the was pretty widely fucking derided at the time. If it is compulsory then it is nothing less than state-sponsored slavery and if it isn't compulsory, then it would simply be a summer indoctrination camp for nice, middle-class kids and thus utterly ineffectual for the purpose for which it was proposed.

Interestingly, there was a motion at the UKIP Conference this year, which proposed that school leavers should do national service—either in the Army or in Social Services (Health Care Assistants and that sort of thing). This is, of course, state-sponsored slavery, unequivocably; given the age of the greater proportion of the members there, I was quite surprised by how big a margin it was defeated by.

These things aside, I am actually enjoying the Conservative advertising pieces at the moment; they should a light touch of humour as well as imagination—a far cry from the stodgy, worthy, boring efforts of the recent past.

Join the dots

Apparently, we major political bloggers are asleep on the job.

Why are the major bloggers not picking up on these things? Where are they? Tied up in Polly Toynbee and David Milliband.

Well, yes, we get all tied up in spelling "Miliband" correctly, amongst other things. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but for fuck's sake, I'll cover precisely what I want to cover and you know why? Because I do this for my delight; I am not some kind of philanthropic public service, nor am I an unpaid publicity mouthpiece.

I am fed up of being lectured by bloggers who feel that I'm not doing my "job" properly. You want me to cover stuff: fucking well pay me—make it, if you will, a proper job—and I will think about trawling through your poorly written, structurally incoherent posts and try to assemble them into something that people want to read and easily comprehend.

In the meantime, I shall keep trawling the 130 or so RSS feeds that I currently track and continue writing about things that I want to write about, in the way that I want to write about them.

Oh, and I have been aware of Common Purpose for some time and may well write about it at some stage. In the meantime, if you are interested, do feel free to watch this fascinating although overly long video about this rather sinister organisation.

More substantial postings to follow in a bit, but could I make a plea: can we please put Bremner, Bird and Fortune out of my misery? Bremner himself has not been funny for about a decade (and his current imitation of Boris is particularly shit) but, worst of all, he now seems to have leeched all of the comedy from the two Johns too.

Bremner, Bird and Fortune: it's fucking shit.

Recess Monkey writing in The Telegraph?

Polly must have leant him some nosepegs...

Via Guido, I can barely contain my wild excitement! In fact, I'm so excited and I just can't hide it; I think I'm going to lose control and I think I like it!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Batshit is back—and this time, he's got company! Fucking hell, it's the A Team of FCO blogging. How will we inarticulate bastards cope now that this eloquent visionary is back—back to eclipse our own poor efforts?

The Liberal Democrats? Sorry, who?

The Liberal Democrats had their conference this week. They didn’t ditch their leader, and they moved slightly to the left. The heavens didn’t open, there weren’t any real moments of earth shattering political change or even mild political interest. Quelle surprise. It was the Liberal Democrat conference after all.

But the Moai asked some interesting, nay, pertinent questions – who are the Liberal Democrats? Who supports them? Does anyone know a real life Liberal Democrat (at least since leaving university)?

Ironically enough, I caught up with an old friend last weekend who told me her ambition in life (if she was forced to have one) was to become Liberal Democrat Prime Minister. She seemed genuinely surprised when I pointed out that the term was political nonsense – there has never been a Liberal Democrat Prime Minister. There has never been a Liberal Democrat Leader of the Opposition. The last time this timid excuse for a party got anywhere close to power was at the beginning of the last century, when it was called something different and was left of the current Labour party.

However my friend’s naiveté nicely sums up the Liberal Democrat mentality. They know how politics works in theory, however they have no idea of the reality of modern politics. The Liberal Democrats are a play party for those who want to appear to be politically aware without taking any of the responsibility for being politically aware. It is far easier for them to spout their shite when that shite will never really be exposed through the harsh glare of actually becoming public policy.

So who supports them? Trixy paints a nice image of pony tailed men and bearded women, which I do not doubt makes up the vast majority of those who attend the Liberal Democrat party. But I rather suspect those who support them are defiantly middle class – affluent, living in the suburbs or polite little commuter satellite towns. They are assuaging cliched middle class guilt by supporting a party who spouts the sort of policies they feel they should support – and, indeed, did support back in their student days – without actually running the danger of those policies coming into play and therefore hurting their middle class lives. This is not a class rant, but rather an observation that it is far easier for some to assuage their middle class guilt by supporting a high tax party when there is no danger of that high tax party actually getting their grubby hands on the keys to Number 10.

The Liberal Democrats are little more than a debating society for those who want to appear worthy and want to appear “right on”. The party is a talking shop for those who don’t want to make hard, realistic policy choices. It is telling that their most successful leader in recent memory had one great talent (other than alcohol consumption) – he was a shameless bandwagon jumper, attaching his party credentials to what ever appeared to be the latest “in” policy to be supporting. The Liberal Democrats are the political equivalent of tracing paper – they mimic whatever they are placed against.

And as a result the Liberal Democrats are a waste of time. They have all the structures and procedures of a political party, and even succeed in winning some seats. But they are nothing but an ersatz political party – they go through the motions, but the end result of everything they do is exactly the same as if they had done nothing. The party motto should be “why bother”?

So the truth is that it doesn’t matter who is the leader. It could be the ginger drunk, the doddering old fool or one of those young pretenders to the throne whose names you kind of know but you just can’t quite remember what they look like or indeed what they stand for (if anything). It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that no-one moved to depose Kennedy until the news of his chronic alcohol problem was about to made public – and the ongoing saga of Ming’s non-leadership of the party – shows that they kind of realise this. Of course Clegg is willing to wait until there is a vacancy: in his heart of hearts he knows that there it doesn’t matter who is leader.

And it also doesn’t matter what policies they come up with. They can talk about banning petrol powered cars in 33 years time, or about raising taxes for the rich, until they are blue in their pock marked, bearded faces, but it really doesn’t matter. Hell, they could say they are going to murder the rich, make the national religion the worship of Ming and then declare war on the Devil Goblins of Neptune and it still wouldn’t fucking matter. They will never get into a position where they can foist the arbitrary fucktarded shite that they consider to be workable policy on this nation. In the unlikely event that one of our parties has to go cap in hand to them to form a coalition then I have no doubt that the relevant party with ruthlessly and brutally cut away the more loopy parts of any Liberal Democrat manifesto, and only take the “let’s all try to be nice to people if we can” policy from the Lib Dems to make them feel a bit better.

So, given I think that the Liberal Democrat party is the very definition of a non-entity, why have I written this post? Because actually everyone (including myself) needs to accept that the Liberal Democrats talk irrelevant arse, and leave them to get on with it. The Liberal Democrats are so neutered politically that they are irrelevant. We need to concentrate on the real problems with our political ruling class. We need to be attacking the money grabbing dour bastard who is acting as Prime Minister, and also young Hug A Husky and his band of tree-hugging merry men. They have a chance of getting into power, and they will be the ones who will be spending our hard earned cash on half-baked schemes and down right corrupt plans.

Ming the Merciful and his band of bearded prigs, geography teachers and Euro-phile hippies should be treated with the respect they deserve. They should be utterly ignored.

Unions still stuck in the 70s

Exciting technologies such as email, PDFs, etc. have absolutely shredded the Royal Mail's business; what profitable sections remained—parcel delivery, etc.—have been opened up to competition to other suppliers, under EU rules.

Unfortunately, the postal unions do not seem to have noticed and are preparing a new lot of strikes.

Postal workers are to stage two 48-hour national strikes next month in a row over pay and jobs, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) has confirmed.

The CWU said its members will walk out on 5 October and 8 October, with further strikes to follow if no agreement is reached with Royal Mail.

At the centre of the dispute is the CWU's objection to the Royal Mail's 2.5% pay offer and modernisation plans.

Are these people totally fucking insane?

What the CWU do not seem to have realised is that I really doubt is anyone really noticed the last time that they walked out; I certainly didn't.

Most communication—even invoices, etc. can be sent as PDFs—is via email. The vast majority of payments are now done via BACS or other computer-based transfer systems. Even those small companies who still deal in cheques will simply pay a competitor to courier urgent orders. The CWU don't seem to understand that they no longer have monopoly power and they can strike till they are blue in the face, and no one will give a shit: the CWU has no leverage.

The union claims the shake-up plans will put about 40,000 jobs at risk.

The Royal Mail believes that without dramatic reforms it will not to able to survive in a liberalised mail market.

Quite. And if the Royal Mail does not survive, then a good number more than 40,000 jobs will go.

"Despite five weeks of negotiations, Royal Mail have failed to take on board the union's message that in order for the business to succeed, Royal Mail need to invest in their workforce," said CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward.

No, Dave, I'm really sorry but the Royal Mail does not have to invest in its staff. Being a postman is not terribly complicated: you might have noticed that you take on thousands of students around Christmas every, single year and they seem to have little trouble doing the job.

Walking around putting letters through doors may not be the most interesting job in the world, but nor is it very difficult. And nor is the sorting of them.

Your trouble is, Dave, that not only does the CWU have no leverage outwith the Royal Mail, it has precious little within the company itself. Every single one of your workers could be sacked tomorrow and the Royal Mail could probably hire and train at least a skeleton workforce in about a week.

And if the management threatened to sack all of your members as though they were US Air Traffic Controllers (whose bargaining power you don't have even the tiniest fraction of), how many do you think would stick with you, Dave?

"Strikes are a proportionate response to an employer that is completely out of control.

"Rather than running the business, Royal Mail's actions demonstrate they are intent on destroying it."

Give it up, you fucktard: the only people destroying the Royal Mail is you and your blinkered union cronies. Seriously, don't you get it? You aren't a public company anymore, so you can't cause embarrassment for politicians, and you aren't the sole provider of communications.

So let me repeat this: you have no leverage. None. Not one iota.

Furthermore, have your members increased their performance from 2005 levels? At the time, I wrote...

[Royal Mail CEO] Mr Crozier: turns the company round and therefore does his job. Bonus deserved.

Postal workers: not only losing 14.4 million items a year, but also having to be bribed to actually turn up for work. Bonus deserved?

Me? I'd say not. But then, I'm harsh like that...

But perhaps we should have some sympathy for the poor, wee workers, eh? Perhaps the pay offer is derisory?

Earlier this month, the CWU said that the Royal Mail had now upped its pay offer to a two-year increase worth 6.7%.

No, I reckon for a company that is still very far from being out of the financial woods, that's pretty generous—and it's certainly greater than the original 2.5% offer.

Yet the union added that the company was sticking to pension reform proposals - such as increased employee contributions and later retirement age - that it had rejected.

The Royal Mail countered at the time that it had "made it clear" to union officials that their aim was to "protect [our] existing people's pensions as far as possible and not increase their contributions".

Ah, it's the pensions. Hangovers from the days of state-ownership are they? Would this still be a final salary pension scheme perchance?

I think that it might be. After all, why increase employee contributions if you are not trying to hit a certain target? Look, Dave and cronies, these pensions are no longer sustainable: get used to it, you dim bastards.

Anyway, as I said, you aren't in any fucking position to argue; really, you aren't. I seriously suggest that you get back to work and shut the fuck up.

The Toynbee Files, Part the 64 Millionth

Some people have commented on my lack of reaction to any recent Toynbee articles. I am unsure why this should be so but it may be that, like someone living with some seriously irritating and mildly unpleasant disease—psoriasis, perhaps, or cold sores—one simply learns to cope and, although there is the occasional flare up, it becomes a little less surprising and a little less debilitating as time passes. Polly Toynbee as oral herpes: yes, I like that comparison.

However, after perusing some of my old pieces—via the poor, little Greek boy's old Swearblogger Roundups—it has occurred to me that I have become somewhat lazy of late, and someone who generally inspired some consistent and inventively vile writing was La Toynbee.

Perhaps we are, in fact, linked in some terrible symbiotic conflict—Toynbee and The Devil doomed to lock horns and horniness until one or other of us should die (whether literally or metaphorically). It is an unsettling and unpleasant thought, not least because it is far from certain who would win such a sordid struggle: Toynbee has the advantage of being paid an obscene amount of money to write her tripe, I have little but the truth to drive me on.

No matter: if I have been assigned this fight, then I have little option but to turn my face away from the light and grapple once more with the logical fallacies, turgid writing, statistical inaccurancy and rancid philosophy of a woman who may well be assigned as my nemesis, by some higher power.

And so, after much soul-searching, we come to Polly's latest encomium to socialist jealousy.

'Hammer the rich!' At last a political leader has the nerve to say what pollsters find most people think. Good for Menzies Campbell.

Most people have their own definition of what rich is. Ming, of course, has decided that what he earns is, conveniently, below the line at which he defines rich. Which is, I think you'll agree, very convenient.

The only bonus to this lunatic idea is, I think you'll agree, that Polly will have to pay of her ill-gotten gains over to her Gobblin' lover.

Were those words so hard to utter when the polls have said for years that top pay is "obscene"? But you won't catch Gordon Brown or his chancellor even whispering the thought in the dead of night.

We know who you really what Gordo to whisper to in the dead of night, don't we, Pol? Eh? Eh?

It may be seen later as one of Labour's great derelictions.

There are so many of them, I barely think that this really makes any difference.

What better day for Campbell to break the spell.

Well, one might argue that Ming should have announced this measure—this "wealth tax", if you like—some time ago? How about on, say, back in April at about the same time that Sweden finally came to its senses, realised that it was losing massive amounts of cash (as well as it's brightest talent) and abolished their wealth tax?

Oh, and Polly's response when I emailed her for her opinion? Very simple.

How depressing. This is what conservatives do. It will make inequality
soar, and it probably won't bring back those who want to avoid high income
tax anyway.

So, as Polly herself admits, once you drive these people away, they are unlikely to come back. Implicit in her reply is an acknowledgement of what we all actually know: that the very rich, far from being hammered will, in fact, simply go elsewhere; in this way, the Treasury loses the entirety of their receipts.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Polly Toynbee: financial genius! Not.

The queues snaking out of every Northern Rock branch look like grainy pictures from the 1929 Wall Street crash. The only bank run we've ever seen is in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, but where is James Stewart to rush out and beg the savings and loans customers not to destroy their own mutual lifeline?

Well, actually the staff of Northern Rock—some of them quite senior—were indeed doing precisely that. That many people were simply too stupid to understand what they were doing is just too bad.

Alas, Adam Applegarth, Northern Rock's chief executive, is no James Stewart. He did not hurry to give hard-hit shareholders back any of his pay: if he took 10 times less, he'd still be left with £140,000 - and that's not counting his pension.

I imagine that a lot of his pay will be in stock options: thus, I severely doubt that his pay package is at the same level as his last reported renumeration. After all, back in May, Northern Rock shares were topping £12: they closed today at £2.57.

The trouble is there's no escape from a bubble, even when every pundit agrees these pyramids of debt were not sustainable.

Well, we seem to be escaping from it. Not in the best way, but we are.

Group-think eclipses common sense because any fund manager who gets out of a risky market too soon is fired just as surely as when he stays in too long.

I'm not entirely sure that that's true, actually. Are you seriously saying, Polly, that a fund manager who manages to sell a few weeks before he loses his clients' shirts is going to be as likely to lose his job as the guy who holds on that bit too long? I doubt it: one will, you see, probably still turn a profit and the other... well... probably won't.

The madness of the private equity bonanza let Boots be bought on impossible debt: that debt has already been sold on at a loss.

Then the shareholders of that company lose: what fucking business is it of yours, Pol? Are you suggesting that we should just nationalise every fucking company that you happen to like? Don't be such a fucking chimp.

British airports were sold to a company that borrowed £11bn, leaving no money to invest so now our airports are a worldwide synonym for the hell of flying.

Again, that is a private deal. See above.

Infinite debt's airy magic is fuelled in part by the mystique of City wizards' awe-inspiring pay.

How precisely?

So the Liberal Democrats have struck a blow for sanity.

Tell that to the Swedish government, Polly.

Strong gestures matter in politics, and this chimes with the mood of the moment. Hammer the rich, shut loopholes for tax exiles and cut the basic rate of income tax for all by 4p sounds good.

Fuck you, Toynbee. As I've said in regard to Neil Harding before, if you actually gave two shits about the poor, you would support a much higher Personal Tax Allowance, to take the poor out of the tax system entirely.

Unfortunately, you don't: what you support is continued taxation of the poor, so that they have to beg for some of their money back to scrape a living. And the sole reason for continuing to support such a policy? So that you fucking Gobblin' King might continue to hold onto power.

You really are a disgusting individual, Polly.

So does cutting the huge pension tax reliefs for the rich, long overdue, yielding as much as £7.5bn.

Oh, yes, that'll be fantastic! Yet more complication in taxes; yet more assessment and, as though Gordo hadn't done enough, yet another raid on pension funds. For fuck's sake...

Dead right to axe the inexplicable relief on capital gains for private equity, which would bring in another £6bn.

I don't know the exact nature of this relief, although I suspect that it is not actually a relief but instead an acknowledgement that private equity companies should only pay tax on their profits (which are, unsurprisingly, less any debt repayments). However, here we are, in a credit squeeze, with some companies looking very ropey, and Polly wants to increase that squeeze? How many companies do you want to send under, Polly, you moron?

All these the chancellor of the exchequer should steal wholesale for his next budget: think what he could do with £13.5bn in a very tight spending round.

Piss it up the wall, just as he has with the vast majority of the rest of the money that he has extorted from the electorate over the last decade that he has been in power.

He won't, of course, do anything as brave - people who work private equity are rattling his cage with threats that touching their perks will lead to "meltdown".

Awwww, Pol: are you criticising your Norse Warrior? Has he turned you down again, or did he just not buy you any flowers this week?

Tax and spending defines a political party: apart from war, other policies are marginal. The Lib Dems have planted a good banner on turf Labour long ago vacated. Sadly, they no longer promise a 50p tax rate for earnings over £100,000, but they remain the only party to do any hammering at all.

This is just pure jealousy, Polly. And it also exposes you for the tedious, bitchy little cow that you are. What is the point of tax, Pol: is it to provide services, or is it to indulge in social engineering, in redistribution because you happen to believe in it?

Well, we know that you do. But your caravan analogy has a basic flaw. {Emphasis added.]

As the others have observed, Polly spouted a good deal of rubbish; it all hung off her favourite society as caravan analogy. The idea is that society is like a caravan travelling through the desert, and its contituent parts move at slightly different speeds: those at the front will move faster than those at the back. However, if there is too much of a differential then the ones at the back will eventually lag so far behind that they cease to be part of the caravan. Which is a very pretty analogy.

Unfortunately, so bitter and warped is Polly that she concentrates entirely on those in the front and wants them to travel more slowly. The trouble is that if this happens, the whole caravan takes far longer to get where it is going than it would otherwise do.

The idea is to ensure that the back of the caravan moves faster, not to force the head to move slower.

However, a party's identity lies not just in where the money comes from, but where it goes. Here Labour scores higher on social justice.

Reeeeeaaaally. Um, if that is their goal, then they haven't been very good at it. Mr Eugenides found this chart, from the ONS, which shows that the distribution of wealth has not really changed since 1996. Or, indeed, 1976.



So, Labour have been utterly ineffective: but we knew that anyway.

The Lib Dems always have a tendency to want to collect more from the rich, but to redistribute it more to the middle. Remember their commitment to free care for the middle-class elderly, and free tuition to mainly middle-class students.

What? What are you talking about? Do working class elderly not need free healthcare? Do working class people not need free university tuition? Or are you saying that, in the main, they already do have this, and that the LibDems want to extend it to those who have paid taxes all of their lives and been merely foolish enough to believe the promises of scum-sucking politicians?

Lib Dems prefer universal benefits that please middle England, so they promise £5 extra child benefit for all. But Labour has been singleminded in targeting tax credits on the poorest children.

Really? So all those stories of households earning £50k and above were... what? Untrue?

Here are the Lib Dem changes: they would cut income tax by 4p and at the same time abolish council tax and replace it with to an average 3.5% extra local income tax (some would lose on council tax benefit).

Diddums. As per, of course, we see no proposals to raise the PTA at all: why not?

They would end child tax credits on above average earnings, but add £5 child benefit for all. They would tax flying and driving more, affecting the better off.

Only the better off drive? I don't think so, sunshine.

Here's what you end up with, according to their calculations: someone on £150,000 loses £2,000, a lot less than under a top 50% band. A professional couple with no children earning £50,000 each would be £1,700 worse off. But winners would be a couple with two children on £25,000, who would be £700 better off. A single mother with two children with an income of £8,000 would be £550 better off. Needless to say, Labour disputes this. They say that cutting the basic rate gives the top 10% of tax payers 50 times more than it delivers to the bottom 10%, so just to compensate for that, you need a big tax credit bonus.

No, no, No, NO! Stop taking people's money off them in the first place, for fuck's sake! All that you are doing is paying administrators to extort poor people's money through taxes, making those people beg for it back (using a series of immensely complicated forms which cost them more money in lost time) and then paying more administrators to calculate which inadequate gobbets of their own money the poor should get back (and be suitably grateful for, of course).

Why not go with UKIP's plans: introduce a £7k PTA and then bring in a Flat Tax (NICs and income tax merged) of 33%? It has been costed, and all taxpayers are better off, most by about £1,100 a year; and all you are doing is allowing people to keep more of their own money, for fuck's sake. Or why not put the PTA to £12k per annum and take those on the Minimum Wage out of the tax system altogether?

Isn't that fairer? It is certainly more efficient.

Nor is it all hammer blows for the wealthy. Lib Dems would raise the inheritance tax threshold to £500,000, costing the Treasury £1.5bn, and raise the threshold for stamp duty on properties over £500,000. Both these make the wealth gap worse - homeowners are already undertaxed on their vast capital gains, unshared by those who will never be able to afford to buy.

Tough. Buying a house is not necessary for living, Polly. But, when it comes to it, I am sure that you will be more than happy to sell your fucking great mansion for well below the market rate, just so some people can afford it.

Pol? Polly? Hello...?

So what does all that say about the true identity of the Lib Dems? They have a natural tendency towards class blindness which gives them less commitment to the poorest than Labour. True, they are hammering the rich, but they are also stroking them a bit, too. True, the green taxes are a good in themselves, tougher than the others on gas guzzlers and flying, to invest more in trains.

You'll all know how I feel about Green Taxes, so I won't even bother to comment, except to say that taxes on flying (based on Stern's somewhat high level of CO₂ taxation ($80 per tonne), are pretty much at the right level and that not only are taxes of cars already too high but the LibDem taxes, e.g. £2 showroom tax, do not even punish consumption.

But most disappointing is their boast that these tax plans are revenue neutral. Why on earth? In the comprehensive spending review, however Labour tries to hide it, there will be very little more money, yet everywhere you look the need is great. Children's opportunities need more, for the under-fives, for schools and youth projects.

Because, you silly bitch, this government already takes almost half of everything we earn and what have they to show for it? Wealth distribution is mostly the same, social mobility has declined, education is a mess, the health service is not delivering what it should and the only people that anything has really got better for is the fucking fat cat politicos and their equally corrupt cronies.

By almost any measure that you care to name, and despite the vast increase in spending (in real terms), the state has failed to achieve any of the outsomes that you desire. So why the fuck should we allow them to take even more of our hard-earned wealth, just so that they can award themselves massive pay rises and then piss the rest of it up the fucking wall?

I mean, seriously, Pol, do you really think that handing over yet more money to the state is a sensible, or moral, use of the toil of everyone in this country, both rich and poor? Seriously?

Despite promises, there is far too little money to help more people buy their own home, and this cheap mortgage collapse will make it worse.

Well, yes, that is true. But as you said earlier in your article, "these pyramids of debt were not sustainable". And your "solutions" for helping people to "buy" their own houses were fucking insane and utterly unthought-through.

Polly also tried to expand on a theme: wouldn't it be nice if the 30% of the population who aren't homeowners became homeowners? Well, yes, but it would also be nice if I had a million pounds. But, believe it or not, she was serious!

She proposed that everyone in "social housing" should be allowed to take possession of their house after, say, ten years of paying rent; in this way, they would have something to borrow on, etc. Do you see any flaws here? I did so I asked her whether that was fair to those who rented privately and were not in social housing, a question that she brushed aside with "oh, we'd have to sort that out". It was an answer that I found rather ominous: was she proposing that I be sent to live in some god-awful, shithole sink estate social housing whether I wanted to or not? Alas, no further explanation was forthcoming.

As for everyone owning a house, given that our population growth is not even at replacement rate currently, can anyone see a problem with that? Yes, that's right, there would be no market for houses. Those people who had bought a small house and then wanted to move to a bigger house wouldn't be able to because there would be no one to buy their starter home off them. Whoops!

But our Pol strode gamely on; they wouldn't really own their houses, it would be a mere paper transaction, but they would then be able to borrow on it. Er... Doesn't this fundamentally undermine the concept of ownership? And, if they don't really own their house, they cannot therefore sell that house and so they wouldn't be able to raise capital on it because it would, effectively, have no sale value.

For fuck's sake.

Never mind, what else does Polly think that we need more money for?

Money plundered from the arts for the Olympics needs replacing before the collapse of many arts programmes. So if the Lib Dems show how to raise £13.5bn from top perks, why not use it well? It's doctrinaire to cling to the idea that the tax take itself must never rise.

I've explained above: if you have pumped increasing amounts of money into something that isn't doing the job, you don't keep pumping more and more and more in. That's just lunacy.

We are a low-tax nation.

Fuck off. We might have lower tax than many, but that is not the same as being low-tax. And we do not get value for money, as Wat Tyler points out.

The people queuing outside Northern Rock were in absolutely no doubt—if a politician or commissar tells you anything, it's best to believe the opposite. From money, to public services, to law and order, to foreign policy, they're not just incompetent buffoons, they're also compulsive liars.

So how come we still tolerate them spending 43% of our income? How come we still let them run our public services? How come we give them free rein over virtually every aspect of our lives?

Good question. But Polly knows what should happen...

Labour's silence on gross excess...

Including their own...

... is partly why left of centre voters vacillate between two parties whose supporters are pretty much the same. Yet the Lib Dems endlessly seek out unique selling points, while Labour just as futilely digs for artificial reasons to trash them. What's needed is a blending of both and an end to this century-long split. If only the two friends, Gordon Brown and Menzies Campbell, could make that happen, they would transform the future of British politics. Never mind tea with Mrs T, it's time to end the narcissism of small difference between these two parties.

Fuck me, Polly; why not just blend the Tories in there too and we can live in peace and harmony in our (effectively) one party state. That would be a utopia for you, wouldn't it, you evil old harridan.

After a decade of utterly crap, spectacularly mendacious, barely thwarted, big government, what is really needed is for voters to have even fewer choices, isn't it?

I hate you so, so much.

UPDATE: EU Referendum eloquently lays out yet more reasons why we should not allow these fuckers to take yet more of our money.

No one sensible would trust either politicians or governments and to expect promises to be kept is naïve in the extreme.

What seems to be going on is something different and very much more profound. It is not so much that Brown has not kept his government's promise – it is the contemptuous indifference he is displaying in so blatantly disregarding the promise. There is neither regret nor any attempt to disguise the fact that the people are of no consequence. Mr Brown knows he has the power, and he intends to use it.

The prime minister's attitude is very much "of the moment". Increasingly, we see examples of it in public life – the police picking up drivers for the most minor of infractions, yet evading speeding charges – and worse – when they get caught out.

We see a government enmeshed in the latest foot and mouth crisis, indifferent to the very real economic stress caused by one of its own institutions, and the failure of its own regulatory system. Nothing by way of offers of compensation have been forthcoming and it is unlikely that the many thousands who have suffered real losses will see any recompense.

Whether it be the health service, costing more and delivering less, the education system – ditto – the road system, public transport, pensions, immigration, prisons, crime, taxation … everywhere one gets a sense of decay and inefficiency, yet there is no balancing sense that the "government" or any of the political classes have a grip on any of the issues, or even really care.

That it is not a matter of "trust" would seem to be borne out by the lacklustre performance of the Conservatives in the polls and, more interestingly, the apparent increase in the "don't knows" and those who declare an intention not to vote or refuse to support any of the established parties.

It is not disillusionment either – we are past that. I sense that, more than ever, we look upon the political classes as alien beings, a species apart that exists on this planet but has nothing to do with the affairs of ordinary people. In other words, the government is no longer "our" government, for better or worse. It is populated by "them" and we are "us".

Now, do we have enough lamp posts, I wonder, to hang every last man-jack of them...?