No problem, she's a helicopter

[NB: I am not the Devil]

There seems to have been quite some consternation about this image in our more excitable press ...


... but since the BBC saw fit to weigh in too, it's worthy of comment.

The main problem, as most seem to see it in this risk-terrified society we seem doomed to eternally suffer, is that somehow the kid was in danger.

After receiving attention from the picture posted online of Ffion without a helmet, Ms Pritchard was quick to stress she never did anything she believed would put Ffion at risk.

"The route I was climbing with Ffion [at Three Cliffs], there was no risk of any rock fall. I knew 100% it was safe," she told BBC News.

"The person below me was very competent, I had a mountain climbing instructor there too and I'm pretty confident of my own competence.

"I was top-roping [which prevents a climber falling down the cliff surface], which is very safe."

Now, firstly, it has to be said that this is Ms Pritchard's kid so any judgement from anyone else is - how shall I put this - none of their fucking business. However, since personal or family business is now apparently the business of every arrogant self-righteous moralist with a broadband connection, I'll jump in on the woman's side on the safety debate.

It looks scary for anyone who doesn't like that sort of thing, but if you don't like that sort of thing you don't climb. As such, you're hardly qualified to talk with any confidence about the perils of climbing.

The explanation offered certainly stacks up, mind, and is backed by people who do climb, like the Climbing Association (or whatever it's called) spokesman who seemed rather bemused at the hysterical attention when questioned on Radio 5 yesterday.

So there's nothing to see here then.

But, then again, there's nothing much to see for the kid either, as you can judge from the picture on the left.

What is bothersome about this whole story is why, oh why, is the woman so determined that her two year old must accompany her in every minute of her waking life?

It would appear to be another outing for the mindset of the modern 'professional' parent who feels that there is this big competition to outwardly show their parental love more than the next guy or gal.

In America, the term is usually expressed as 'helicopter', whereby the parent hovers incessantly, unable to leave their offspring alone for any length of time without supervision or 'bonding'.

A fan of babywearing, also known more prosaically as using a sling to carry a child, Ms Pritchard explained: "It was very much having Ffion and being a full-time mum that I started getting outdoors with her. I was keen to explore the surrounding area as I didn't know it."

Err, forgive me for stating the obvious, but rather than an hour or two of studying the back of Mum's head, wouldn't the time-honoured practice of leaving her in the capable hands of a babysitter or other family member be more horizon-broadening in learning to interact with differing human personalities? I'm pretty damn sure a two year old girl would much prefer hammering the head off a Barbie doll than smelling her Mum's sweat on the side of a mountain, too.

You see, this smacks more about the Mum wanting to be seen as perfect, outwardly displaying her credentials, while simultaneously doing what she wants to do - at all times with her kid by her side - rather than some exercise in childhood awareness.

Each to their own, and it's up to Ms Pritchard how she occupies her kid, but - crikey - can't we ditch this idea that kids are the be all and end all of life once one has pumped one or two of them out*?

We have a society infected by kids brought up to believe they are the centre of the universe, and whose parents are so wedded to them that any hardship life throws at the little sprog is deemed somehow unfair, a mindset which is readily taken up by youngsters with a beef on society once they realise that life is actually bloody difficult. As has always been the case, and always will be.

I might be wrong, of course, but something tells me that young Ffion will be one of those poor kids who are doomed to a future where the parent is scared of allowing them to use the bus on their own till they're old enough to shag, and they wouldn't wish to do so anyway as they know little about the outside world than what they have seen under the protective eye (or back of the neck) of their Mum.

And that affects us all to some extent. If only because anyone brave enough to release the reins and allow early self-determination for their kids is often derided as a shit parent simply for doing so.

What's more, once society feels able to make such judgements due to the proliferation of perfect parenting templates, you have a situation where people who climb rocks with their kid tied to their back invite ill-informed condemnation on safety reasons from complete strangers.

Funny, that.

* I say this as someone who has pumped a couple out myself, by the way

Sound The Last Post...?

My last post notwithstanding, your humble Devil finds himself unable to comment on anything at present.

I simply don't have the will or inclination to write, or even care, about politics at the moment. And even if I did express myself in terms which would lead to some catharsis, I would probably find myself in court.*

In many ways, Al-Jahom has expressed my current feelings rather eloquently.

So what’s changed? Why the quiet? Wither the fury?

Well, rage, anger and fury spring from the tiny hope that things can get better.

And so these vigorous emotions have given way to abject despair. You can see for yourself in the archives that the cynic in me never really expected things to be any different under the new lot. But I had to hope that the end of the Blair/Brown era would be a watershed.

And now what hope there was, however silly it might have been, is all but extinguished.

Nothing has changed. Nor will it.

The Labour monster was cast out and the dying hydra’s heads are snapping at each other furiously. It’s an amusing sideshow, but it’s of little consequence.

I’m not expecting the burden of taxation to ever be reduced in real terms. We have already been shown what we suspected – that Cameron’s pledges on the EU are meaningless, because Lisbon trumps the need for further legislation or treaty changes. The lights will still be going out before the end of this parliament, thanks to the influence of the Lib Dems on energy policy. I don’t expect to walk into a pub where I can smoke ever again. I don’t expect the police to be reformed for the better. I don’t expect the CPS to be taken in hand. I don’t expect family justice, or the judicial and punitive bias against men to improve. I don’t expect appeasement of radical Islam to decline. I don’t expect the transport system to improve; overcrowding, no new roads, vainglorious rail projects, hellish airports, spiralling costs, penalties and delays.

And a million Prima Donnas are crying about some marginal cuts to their pet projects?

So you see, *sigh*… What’s the fucking point?

Quite.

I want to stress that I am not a Tory, not—god forbid—a LibDem. I don't agree with most of the stuff that they are doing (or not doing): and in those areas in which I agree with in principle, I disagree with the way in which they are executing them.

I started blogging almost six years ago now: it's a long time in which to keep on writing about the same frustrations. But there were a couple of things that kept me going.

• The first was the political and philosophical journey that was developing. I started off, roughly, as a Tory who disagreed with some Tory policies and actions; sometimes, what I read—on blogs, not in the MSM—made me reassess my allegiances, and to rethink my position on a number of things. And as I became exposed to more economic and political theory, I started to understand that there was a vocabulary for the things that I believed.
  
  This vocabulary belonged to a philosophy called "libertarianism"; it was a philosophy of hope, of faith in human nature, and a method that outlined how an individual's great potential might be realised. And it was a philosophical and political structure that I believed—believe—in utterly.
  
  That journey that I made, however, has stopped. I am a libertarian, and I will be a believer in libertarianism until I die. As Steve Baker MP said at the Libertarian Alliance Conference a couple of weeks ago (and I admit, I may paraphrase slightly), "we are The Good Guys. We are the only ones who do not believe in coercing people to live their lives as we deem fit."


• The second reason to keep blogging was that there was some hope of change in the near(ish) future. Now, we have seen that change, and it is no change at all.
  
  We are ruled by same loathsome, lying, corrupt, venal bastards rule over us: they are simply wearing slightly different novelty masks. Indeed, the simple fact that I must write the words "we are ruled" is sign enough that nothing has changed.
  
  We are in for another five years of the same "dreadful, overbearing and untrustworthy" government as we have had for the past thirteen. And then? Well, either these same awful people will be returned to power or the Other Lot of awful shit-bags—the ones that we've only just got rid of—will be brought in instead. Again.
  
  And no matter which bunch of bastards we are forced to elect to Parliament will make little difference: the state will continue expanding, we will continue to pay more tax, society will become more atomised and dangerous, business will become more difficult, civil liberties will be removed, everyday pleasures will be ever more circumscribed and punished and our lives will continue to be a little bit harder and more miserable with every year that passes.

There seems to be little point in railing about anything because, with the politicians in power, nothing ever changes—no matter what the colour of the government's tie.

Take the whole Climate Change thing; we, the sceptics, are winning the scientific argument. The ClimateGate exposure of the shitty code and the dirty tricks employed by climate scientists sent waves around the world; now, the IPCC is threatened and the people, in general, believe that they have been deceived.

And yet the government carries merrily on, making our lives more expensive, curtaining energy and killing poor, brown people.

So what was the point—why did we bother fighting?

So, the main point is that I simply cannot bring myself to comment on the crap that is going on around us; I want to concentrate on making enough money to ensure that myself and my wife can, at the last, escape all of this shit. When the end of our great liberal civilisation finally comes, we can leave the stinking socialist hellhole that Britain is fast becoming.

Once I would have wished to take everyone with me, but the people of this country have shown that they don't care about freedom, they don't care about liberty—they would rather have their cotton wool prison. So now my considered opinion is, "you wanted this—you can go fuck yourselves."

Now, I'll admit that I have suffered from blog fatigue before and I have even previously announced my retirement. I will even admit that I found that doing so—being released from the need to write—actually returned to me the desire to do so. And it may be the same this time too.

But, the way I am feeling at present, it is looking a little unlikely.

I won't say that I am retiring, or that The Kitchen (or The Knife) is dead—as before, I may prove myself wrong. But what I will say is that—right now, at this moment—I feel no desire to write, and cannot see that desire returning. But, as I keep saying, it might do (do keep me on your Feedreaders).

Until that time—should it come—good luck to you all.

Ave atque vale.

* To be fair to Polly Toynbee (god, how I hate to write those words), despite the many brickbats thrown her way, she has never acted in the petty, vicious, pusillanimous way that the evil Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has done. So all credit to Pol.**

** I feel dirty just writing that sentence.

The Freedom Association hosts an idiot

Over at The Freedom Association website, there is an appallingly badly written article by some fool called Jonathan Jones. The commenting system over there gives no feedback and I have no idea whether my comment will be published or not, and so I replicate it below.

Wow. What a stunningly bad article...

Jonathan Jones shows very clearly that he has no idea what libertarianism is about, if only with the following line...

... affirming the inalienable right of the majority to force rules upon the minority."

Despite pointing to the Non-Aggression axoim, poor wee Jonathan obviously doesn't understand it: libertarianism does not recognise the "right of the majority to force rules upon the minority"—I think that you'll find that that is called "democracy".

The whole point of the Non-Aggression Axiom is that no one is allowed to force anything, rules or otherwise, on the minority—or, for that matter, on the majority.

"Libertarians argue that a government cannot stand without the support of the people."

Libertarians argue no such thing. Anarcho-libertarians believe that there should be no government; minarchist libertarians believe that the only thing that the government should exist for is the protection of its citizens (through the provision of national defence and, possibly, criminal justice).

I would fisk the rest of the article but I find it impossible because it makes no sense.

Read it.

It. Makes. No. Sense.

Why is Afghanistan in there? No idea. How does Afghanistan relate to libertariaism? It doesn't. How do the Americans or the Taliban relate to libertarianism? They don't. For that matter, how does George Washington relate to libertarianism? He doesn't.

What I take from this article is: the reason that Jonathan Jones is not a libertarian is because he believes that might is right. And, in this he is correct: for a libertarian, might is never right.

DK

Do go and read the article and see if you can make any sense of it.

Good luck.

Gideon: arsehole

George Osborne: could we have a real clown as Chancellor, rather than this total fucking clown?

The Brazilians may have sent a clown to congress, but we've gone one better: we've got a total fucking arsehole as Chancellor.

Now, listen up, George: we all know that certain benefits need to be cut—indeed, those of us who have spent our entire working life paying for other people to enjoy the fruits of our labour are very eager to see it happen.

And yes, cutting benefits to the highest earners does, indeed, make total sense: benefits are supposed to be a safety net, not a bloody bonus for those who are considerably better off than I. So, given that, yes, cutting Child Benefit to those people is a good idea.

Child benefit is to be axed for higher rate taxpayers from 2013, Chancellor George Osborne has announced.

Ahead of his appearance at the Conservative Party conference he told the BBC the move would save about £1bn.

But what kind of utter fucking arsehole does it this way...?

Under the proposed changes, a family where both parents are earning just under £44,000 will continue to receive child benefit while a family where only one person is working and whose income is just above £44,000 will lose the payment.

Just to emphasise how adroitly Gideon has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, I will let Dizzy spell out just how incredibly stupid this proposal is...

Look, the idea and principle of saying higher rate tax earners shouldn't really be getting a £20-or-so a week handout in child benefit is a good thing, but please, if you're going to do it at least execute the change with some sort of skill.

What you don't do is go on the telly and say that a couple earning £43,000 each, making their household earning £86,000 will still get the benefit, whilst a couple with only one working on £44,001 won't.

Quite. And I can only join Dizzy in emphasising that George Osborne is a fucking twat.

I mean, seriously, George—this isn't rocket science, you know. Your advisers might be utter morons, or they might be playing a practical joke on you, or they might be simply massively anti-government... I don't care.

You should have looked at this proposal and gone, "this cannot be right. It is going to make me, and the government, look like a bunch of twats."

For fuck's sake...

Oh dear, that's not at all peachy

Both Iain Dale and Tory Bear have been punting an advert—mainly because it (very) briefly features TV's Shane Greer—for Peachy Pink, a supportive underwear company.

Your humble Devil does not like to be bombarded with adverts, silly films and general animated hideousness, so he has Click To Flash—a Flash blocker for Safari—installed on his browser. Many people have a similar plugin for Firefox.

As a result, this is what Peachy Pink's website looks like.



Whilst I can click on the Flash areas to reveal the website, the same luxury is not afforded iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users—who will not be able to see anything at all.

Now, some would argue that this is Apple's fault for putting such a restriction in place; I. however, would argue that Flash is an abomination and the sooner it dies, the better.

Whatever the merits of one argument or the other (and I don't intend to get into it here), that isn't the real issue: the real issue is that it is bad business—both for Peachy Pink and for the web designers who built the site.

Now, until Smokescreen—a clever little open source application that will render Flash into HTML5 and Javascript—is ready, any site should have fallbacks. And even then, any site should still have fallbacks.

Everything that the Flash does in that site can be achieved through HTML5 and CSS3 (and some minimal Javascript)—yes, including all of the animations! This will, of course, not take account of less advanced browsers, but Flash could be used to deal with those—especially since those using Internet Exploder (and that's the browser that we're really talking about here) are highly unlikely to have Flash blockers installed.

At the very least, there should be an @media stylesheet included for mobile devices: this would allow Peachy Pink to target any mobiles that do not run Flash (and that's most of them) with special rules that will ensure that your message comes across.

As it is, Peachy Pink's website is unavailable to most mobile devices, and undesirable to web curmudgeons like myself....

Eggs by the kilo

The poor little Greek boy points me to this piece of idiocy from the EU.

British shoppers will no longer be able to buy eggs by the dozen under new regulations approved by the European Parliament. For the first time, eggs and other products including oranges and bread rolls—will be sold by weight instead of by the number contained in a packet.
...

Eggs have traditionally been sold by the dozen or half-dozen because the old imperial measurements such as inches or pennies were calculated in groups of 12. But the new rules, to be introduced next year, mean that instead of packaging telling shoppers a box contains six eggs, it will show the weight in grams of the eggs inside.
...

An FSA [Food Standards Agency] spokeswoman said: "This proposal would disallow selling by numbers. Retailers would not be allowed to put "Six eggs" on the front of the box. If it was a bag of rolls, it would say "500g" instead of six rolls."

This is utter idiocy: who gives a crap what weight the eggs are? I want six eggs, not the exact bloody weight.

Apart from anything else, this has no benefit to the consumer: does it give me more information about the eggs? Not really—some might have thicker shells than others, thus ensuring that I have no real information about the quality or otherwise of the eggs.

Does it take information away from me? Yes: because now I cannot know, without opening the box, how many eggs are in it.

Does this measure have any benefit to the consumer at all? No. It's just harmonisation for the sake of it.

In fact, it actively harms the consumer because the eggs will cost more. Why?

Well, I would imagine that selling a 500g box of eggs that does not, in fact, contain 500g of produce is illegal under Trading Standards. So now the egg producers are going to have to weigh each and every box, and stamp the exact weight on each box. Not only will they have to buy the stamping equipment (because you can bet your bottom dollar that just writing the weight on is not legal: they even have to stamp each individual egg now, for fuck's sake) but it is also labour-intensive.

To adapt a classic Daily Mail phrase, it's bureaucracy gone mad.

To be fair to that paper (much as I hate to do so), whilst it confirms the Scotsman's story, the Mail does point out that these laws are very far from being decided.

‘It is important that information is provided in a way that is meaningful and beneficial to consumers. This issue is still being considered by EU member states and it will be some time before the regulation is finalised.’

... says the woman from the FSA. However...

Experts say it will be next year before the EU is able to pass the controversial measure, which bureaucrats say is designed to help consumers make an informed choice when buying their food because it will require suppliers to provide more comprehensive information.

But last night, food industry experts said the EU plan was ‘bonkers’ and ‘absolute madness’.

Federation of Bakers director Gordon Polson warned that it may be too late to change the rules, even though they will be debated further in the European Parliament.

He revealed that lobbyists had already tried to rectify the regulations, discovered in the 174 pages of amendments to the initial 75-page proposal, but there was not enough time to convince MEPs before the crucial vote.

The fact that one would need to lobby MEPs in order to convince them of the idiocy of this law is, in itself, a damning indictment of the sheer, brutal stupidity of our representatives. However, the EU voting system—in which legislation is voted on in "blocks"—also won't help. This law will go through.

Unless, of course, this is all a cunning plan by the Tories, to feed newspapers a story about an utterly ridiculous EU law which was never going to pass anyway, and then paint themselves as "tough on the EU" when it is voted down. Or am I crediting Dave with too Machiavellian a mind?

Probably not.

In any case, there is a wider point to be emphasised here, and we may as well use a snippet from The Mail's article to lead us into it.

The move could cost retailers millions of pounds because of changes they will have to make to packaging and labelling, as well as the extra burden of weighing each box of food before it is put on sale.

The cost is likely to be passed on to shoppers through higher grocery bills.

The cost is "likely" to be passed on through higher bills? No, the cost will be passed on through higher bills, just as all of the costs of EU regulations are passed onto consumers through higher bills.

And this is, of course, the problem—a problem which I have decided to illustrate pictorially.

1. The first graph shows the proportion of our exports that go to the EU, and to the rest of the world. Whoa! 50% of our exports are to the EU? That's a pretty big chunk.
   
   
   
   
2. The next graph shows the proportion of UK businesses that must abide by all EU laws, whether they trade with the EU or not.
   
   
   
   All of these regulations cost time, money and effort to implement—and so the costs are passed onto the consumer. Not only that, the costs of ensuring that these regulations are being followed—all of those inspectors and suchlike—are undertaken by the UK government, so we consumers pay again in tax.
   
   But why should 100% of businesses have to obey these EU regulations—after all, only 50% of British businesses actually deal with the EU. Isn't that right?


3. Well, no—that's wrong. Only 50% of our exports are to the EU: the vast majority of trade within the UK is internal. In other words, the vast majority of businesses never trade abroad at all.
   
   
   
   This final graph shows the rough breakdown of the UK economy. As you can see, trade to the EU accounts for only 10% of the total, 80% of the trade is internal and trade to the rest of the world is another 10%.
   
   And yet, as you'll remember from the pretty graphs, 100% of businesses must comply with EU rules—with all of the associated regulatory costs that that entails.

Now, to be fair to the EU, our own Ministries are very good at "gold-plating" (that is, adding in their own little madnesses to) EU Directives. But, if the EU did not force this crap on us, then our snivelling, cowardly civil servants wouldn't be able to hide behind the EU fig-leaf: their own pusillanimous, interfering, cost-inducing evil would be plain to see.

I believe that this, as much as anything, is one of the reasons why government is so pro-EU: it allows them to conceal their own petty vindictiveness and mismanagement by pointing the finger at the EU.

Anyway, all of this has a cost—it's difficult to know how much of a cost, but it is certainly in the range of tens of billions of pounds. All of which gets passed onto us in the form of higher prices and higher taxes.

Not only that, of course, but the EU stops us doing more trade with the rest of the world—through two main mechanisms.

First, the EU controls all trade beyond its borders and it has a tendency to put tariff barriers up against other nations—usually to protect EU-based firms (the big firms, the ones that can afford to lobby the EU bureaucrats). A classic example of this is the fact that there is a 66% import tax on energy-saving lightbulbs from China: this was imposed (and renewed last year) after heavy lobbying by German Siemens and Dutch Philips.

Now, this makes us poorer again—we are having to pay 66% more for an energy-saving lightbulb than we might.

However, in retaliation, non-EU countries then tend to put up tariff barriers against EU goods (and point out to their workers that the reason that they aren't selling more light-bulbs in the Eu is because the EU has erected tariff barriers).

The result? Everyone is poorer.

Second, of course, the high costs of regulation mean that British (and EU) businesses cannot compete so well abroad, as our products have an even higher cost than they otherwise would.

Now, Timmy would maintain that it is the imports that make us rich, and that exporting is just the tedious stuff we need to do in order to be able to afford the imports. And he'd be right.

But the point is that we do still need to export of we cannot afford the imports. If we export less, we end up owing other people a lot of money.

Plus, of course, all of this crap offends the sensibilities of a man like myself, who maintains that it is free trade that makes us rich and, as a result, that tariff-wielding organisations like the EU make everyone poorer—and ensuring that people are poorer means that you ensure that more people die unnecessarily.

So, whether or not this eggs and rolls story is true or not, can I join both my peripatetic Athenian friend and Timmy in saying "can we fucking well leave yet"?

Unio Europaea delenda est.

UPDATE: John Band has a good comment on this, as usual. It doesn't alter the main thrust of my argument though, which is that this is not free trade and the EU should be dismantled.

UPDATE 2: Nosemonkey also debunks some of the myths surrounding this matter, illustrating how this particular measure is actually about deregulation.

As a matter of fact, it is a result of reading Nosemonkey for some years that made me express some scepticism about this law; however, I believe that my wider points still stand.

Like the turn of a page, or a change of gear...*

Ah, technology! How do we love thee? Let me count the ways...

... later. Right now, the normally non-sweary Ministry of Type has a gripe that he needs to get off his chest.

Then we get to the real fake-Georgian pediment over the front door, the overly-shiny brassy door furniture, the PVC window frames, something that infests reading software rather than dedicated e-reader hardware (but is no less annoying for it): yes, it’s the page turn animation. Oh how these software producers love their page turn animations. They might not make a big deal about their font selection, their crappy justification algorithms or even the number of books you can buy through their store, but they will always make a great big bloody feature of their sodding page turns, even the app I pointed to above. Even if an app doesn’t have these damn things, you get the impression they’re working on adding them. In a book, an actual dead-tree book, you don’t notice turning the page because it’s just part of what a book is. That’s how you get to the next bit of text. The whole idea of pages bound like that is an artifact of a particular printing technology — it’s the nature of the delivery medium, not the message. So when we have a digital book, we’re using technology that has its own set of conventions, its own restrictions and its own freedoms, and every bit of digital technology has some means of moving through any arbitrary content: a keyboard has cursor keys, page up and page down keys, a mouse has a scroll wheel, laptops have trackpads with scroll areas, and smartphones have touchscreens, joysticks or D-pads. But no. Those aren’t good enough. They’re not booky enough. You’re going to be reading Ullysses on this thing, War and Peace, The Illiad with this thing for crying out loud! You can’t sully things like that with a scroll wheel! You’re supposed to be imagining reverentially turning the thick, musty, ancient pages in some great national library somewhere, worshipping at the altar of Knowledge! Never mind the story! Never mind leaving you free to just read! No, every 250 words, perform the gesture, watch the animation!

Just let me scroll, please? I’ve been reading stuff off the screen seriously for what, 15 years? More? Scrolling is fine, you know.

Like Aesir, I'm not interested in the state of e-readers (or whatever) themselves. Nor have I ever used an e-book reader. But I have watched the videos of those page-turning animations and thought...

... o god, why?

* From the excellent Waterboys song, Good News.