"Arbeit macht frei"—May doubles down on the fascist state

I see that Mrs May is determined to double down on the fascist inclinations she displayed so shamelessly in the Home Office...

The Conservatives will use the power of government to "restore fairness" in Britain and spread prosperity more widely, Theresa May has said.

Well, that doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster at all, eh? Higher taxes and more interference in business all round then. And note the use of the word "power" here.

The prime minister told the party's conference the UK must change after the "quiet revolution" of the Brexit vote, urging people to "seize the day".

Labour were now seen as the "nasty party" and only the Tories would "stand up for the weak... up to the powerful".

It seems to me, Mrs May, that the entity that is most "powerful" is the state—it certainly has the monopoly on violence.

So, Mrs May, who is going to stand up to you and your ilk, I wonder...?

The state should be a "force for good" to help working people, she argued.

Fucking hellski.

The Glorious Leader goes on...

"If you're one of those people who lost their job, who stayed in work but on reduced hours, took a pay cut as household bills rocketed, or—and I know a lot of people don't like to admit this—someone who finds themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration, life simply doesn't seem fair."

Hmmmm. What about if you are—and I know a lot of people don't like to admit this—someone who finds themselves out of work because of the National Minimum Wage (or National Living Wage, or whatever the hell it's called these days), Mrs May?

You know, the kind of person whose human capital is so low, that they will never get a job? Like, I don't know, a young person with few qualifications?

How will you use the "power of the state" to "restore fairness" in the face of this particular piece of government stupidity? Will your government stand against the power of your government...?

What's next—compulsory National Service for all citizens?

She stressed the importance of the role of the state, the need for government to be a force for good. She promised a new industrial strategy and enhanced workers rights. It was a very different message from that of previous Tory leaders who have sought to reduce state intervention and roll back the size of government.

So, if I think that reducing state intervention and rolling back the size of government is a good idea, who the fuck do I vote for?

Political choice in this country just became even narrower.

UPDATE: the ASI peeps have responded rather more coherently...

"If only Theresa May was serious about ditching ideology in favour of pragmatism and evidence – she’d have to abandon most of her main policy planks.

"Take energy price caps. We have evidence that these will lead to lower investment [PDF], lower production and more brownouts or even blackouts. Eventually, these policies may lead to electricity rationing [PDF] and nationalisation. High energy prices are mostly caused by high wholesale prices, and energy firms are not generally more profitable than other large firms.

"Or look at the employee representation on company boards – which is better described as union representation. Here, the evidence is that giving unions this sort of power can turn boards toxic, as happened to Volkswagen, and these rules have reduced the value of German firms by 26%. Other academic evidence suggests that board representation is just about the only bad way of giving workers more say in how their firms are run. So why on earth is this the policy that supposedly-pragmatic May is proposing?"

[...]

Ah yes—I had forgotten about May's lunatic idea for energy price caps. Once again, a government wants to intervene and disrupt the market—in order to fix a problem that the government has created. For fuck's sake...

I can only assume that Mrs May is planning to "restore fairness" in the Venezuelan way—by making everyone equally poor and deprived.

The motto of Mrs May's government must surely be Forwards to Fascism!

Wind power is too expensive at any price, you fool

This morning, CityAM published a spectacularly silly article by Ben Goldsmith on energy provision in the UK (which is, as we know, looking pretty dicey right now).

Upon reading the first part of Goldsmith's piece—which dwells on the mind-bendingly high energy price that the government has signed us up to for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant—you might find yourself nodding along in agreement. But then you will have read a little further...

It is not surprising that, instead of setting a new competitive low for nuclear generating costs, Hinkley Point has done the reverse at £92.50 MW/h.

The costs of coal and gas power are also rising. Recent Bloomberg research has shown that the price of UK coal and gas power rose by around 17 per cent to £74 MW/h in the past year, despite downward pressure from the advent of US shale gas. Now comes the surprise. Over the same period, the costs of energy from onshore wind fell from £70 MW/h to £55 MW/h–making it cheaper than gas.

Sigh.

Look, running an energy system is not an easy job: you need to be able to keep the energy in the grid at a fairly stable voltage, but demand ebbs and flows considerably—which means that you need to be able to control the supply to the grid too.

And this is where wind power fails spectacularly: not only because it is intermittent, but also because you have almost no control over the output. Even were wind power levels consistent, because the actual output is only a fraction of the theoretical installed capacity (around 29% on average), you would need to install around four times the required capacity to be certain of keeping the lights on.

All of this is made abundantly clear in a recent report by physicist and civil engineer, David Partington (and as reported by Not A Lot of People Know That.

Derek Partington, a former Chartered Engineer, has spent a lot of time in the last six years, researching the effectiveness of wind turbines. His findings are damning:

His report runs to thirteen pages, well worth a read. But some of his tables and charts tell the story.

For instance, how capacity utilisation can vary wildly from month to month.

It's well worth reading the whole thing—but, for now, I will just repeat the conclusions.

Over the period studied, January 2013 to December 2014 inclusive, wind turbine operational capacity connected to the UK Grid has increased from 5,894MW to 8,403MW. The operational capacity in January 2011 was 2,490MW; therefore there has been an increase of almost 3.4x over the four year period.
The conclusions to be drawn from the data analysis are:

1. An increase in the operational capacity does not improve average output. In fact the average monthly capacity factor has fallen over the periods studied, dropping from 33.2% in 2011 to 28.8% in 2014.
2. An increase in the operational capacity does not reduce the periods of low or very low output as measured by the number of hours per year when output was low (less than 10% of installed capacity) or very low (less than 5% of installed capacity). There is a variation from year to year but no pattern emerges. The mean low output over the four years was 1,617 hours/year with a standard deviation of 197 hours/year and the mean very low output was 599 hours with a standard deviation of 96 hours.
3. An increase in the operational capacity does not reduce intermittency. If taken as a measure of intermittency, the average monthly minimum expressed as a percentage of installed capacity was 1.9% with no significant variation from year to year.
4. Taking maximum rise and fall in output over one hour period as a further measure of intermittency, the National Grid is now having to cope with variations in output of over 1,100MW over one hour periods, with this variation increasing by about 250MW per year. This is very significant as it represents the changes in output which the Grid has to cope with and which has to be compensated by conventional fossil fuelled power stations.
5. An increase in the operational capacity does not indicate any possibility of closing any conventional, fossil-fuel power stations as there is no correlation between variations in output from wind turbines and demand on the Grid. Often the opposite is true – when demand rises, output from wind turbines falls and vice versa. This has a significant negative effect as back-up has to be provided from conventional, fossil-fuel power stations not only to cater for increase in demand on the Grid at peak times but also to cover for any possible fall in output from the UK wind turbine fleet at the same time.

Therefore, taking the four criteria above, there is no case for a continued increase in the number of wind turbines connected to the Grid.

As stated in my previous report, it is incumbent upon the Government to ensure that the British consumer is getting value for money from industrial wind turbine installations and that they are not just paying subsidies to developers and operators (through ROCs) whilst getting nothing back in return in terms of CO2 emission reductions through the supplanting of fossil-fuelled power generation.

Based on the results of this and my previous analysis I cannot see why any policy for the continued increase in the number of wind turbines connected to the Grid can be justified.

So, to return to Mr Goldsmith's article, and his lunatic assertion that onshore wind power is "cheaper than gas"... Well, this is clearly barking insanity of the very first order: wind power does not provide stable and controllable power outputs; as such, it does not provide what we require from a power generation source and, therefore, is too expensive at any price.

So, since you would have to be an idiot not to understand all of this, one has to pose the Polly conundrum—is Goldsmith ignorant or is he stupid?

Actually, that is unfair. Because there is a third option in the conundrum, and it is this—"or is he shilling something?" And it is, of course, this last option that explains the article.

Accompanying the piece, in typical (usually decent) CityAM style, is a short biography that coyly explains that Goldsmith is "the founder of Menhaden Capital and WHEB Group". These are investment firms, of course, but what is their speciality? Well, given that Goldsmith is brother to environmentalist nut-job Zac, I think you can guess.

And you'd be right.

Ben Goldsmith, brother of Conservative MP and environmental campaigner Zac Goldsmith, is floating an investment fund backed by high-profile business figures to invest in green businesses.

Menhaden Capital will target business opportunities that specialise in saving resources such as energy and water or cutting waste.
...

Goldsmith said investment in green projects was no longer an act of faith and that there were many opportunities to make good returns from backing environmental businesses.
...

Ben Goldsmith is the founder of WHEB, an investment firm focused on energy efficiency, clean technology and sustainable development.

Can it be that "investment in green projects" is, in fact, "an act of faith". And could it be, with the government steadily rowing back from subsidising these white elephants, that Mr Ben is having trouble persuading people to invest money into his fantasyland adventures?

You might say that: I couldn't possibly comment...

FFA or and bust

Following their remarkable win, the SNP is now pushing for Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) for Scotland. Broadly speaking, this means that Scotland runs its own economy—being able to spend cash and raise money as they please.

The supposed driver for this is that Scotland is a "more socialist" country, willing to pay more tax in order to stave off the tyranny of austerity. This narrative is, of course, bollocks: were it not, the SNP (also the dominant party in Holyrood) would already have used the tax-raising powers that the Parliament has—up to 3p in the pound extra in income tax, if I recall correctly.

Instead, when these powers were granted at devolution, the proposal to use them was attacked as "a Tartan tax". Indeed it may be but one that, if the SNP and other Scottish commentators are to be believed, one that would be welcomed by the austerity-loathing Scottish people.

The fact that the extra tax has not, actually, ever been levied leads one to re-examine that old economics truth of "revealed preferences", i.e. watch what people do, not what they say.

Of course, raising income tax by an extra 3% probably would do little to help the Scottish budget—the projected deficit under FFA is nearly £8 billion (around 10% of Scotland's GDP). In fact, most commentators think that Scotland's Full Fiscal Autonomy would be as disastrous as HP's adoption of Autonomy (yeah—that was a tech world joke (if an old one)).

So, why on earth are the SNP lobbying for FFA—a policy that will, as Alex Massie points out, surely lead to cuts in Scottish public spending that make "austerity" look like the most extravagant fiscal splurges of the more insane Roman emperors?

A clue to what the SNP might be thinking comes from SNP MP George Kerevan, in an article for The National [Emphasis mine—DK].

It is now inconceivable that David Cameron can reject Scottish demands for greater home rule, given that all three mainstream Westminster parties – Tory, Labour and Lib Dem alike – have minimal legitimate authority in Scotland in the wake of May 7. The general election was not a mandate for a second referendum – a point reiterated time after time by Nicola Sturgeon, whatever contrary hares are set running by the battered and bruised Westminster establishment. Nevertheless, the SNP’s electoral success is undoubtedly a mandate for going far beyond the hastily conceived ragbag of new powers contained in the Smith Commission documents.

The SNP maintains that the Smith Commission does not actually give Scotland enough powers (although many English people might argue that the Smith Commission gives the Scottish Parliament a great many powers, with very little responsibility). The Grauniad has summed up the main points, which I reproduce below.

• The Scottish parliament will have complete power to set income tax rates and bands.
• Holyrood will receive a proportion of the VAT raised in Scotland, amounting to the first 10 percentage points of the standard rate (ie with the current standard VAT rate of 20%, Scotland will 50% of the receipts), but cannot influence the UK’s overall UK rate.
• It will have increased borrowing powers, to be agreed with the UK government, to support capital investment and ensure budgetary stability.
• UK legislation will state that the Scottish parliament and Scottish government are permanent institutions. The parliament will also be given powers over how it is elected and run.
• Holyrood will have power to extend the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, allowing them to vote in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary election.
• It will have control over a number of benefits including disability living allowance, the personal independence payment, winter fuel payments and the housing elements of universal credit, including the under-occupancy charge (bedroom tax).
• The Scottish parliament will also have new powers to make discretionary payments in any area of welfare without the need to obtain prior permission from department for work and pensions.
• It will have all powers of support for unemployed people through employment programmes, mainly delivered at present through the Work Programme.
• It will have control over air passenger duty charged on people flying from Scottish airports.
• Responsibility for the management of the crown estate’s economic assets in Scotland, including the crown estates’s seabed and mineral and fishing rights, and the revenue generated from these assets, will be transferred to the Scottish parliament.
• The licensing of onshore oil and gas extraction underlying Scotland will be devolved to the Scottish parliament.
• The Scottish government will have power to allow public sector operators to bid for rail franchises funded and specified by Scottish ministers.
• The block grant from the UK government to Scotland will continue to be determined via the operation of the Barnett formula. New rules to define how it will be adjusted at the point when powers are transferred and thereafter will be agreed by the Scottish and UK governments and put in place prior to the powers coming into force. These rules will ensure that neither the Scottish nor UK governments will lose or gain financially from the act of transferring a power.
• MPs representing constituencies across the whole of the UK will continue to decide the UK’s budget, including income tax.
• The Scottish and UK governments will draw up and agree a memorandum of understanding to ensure that devolution is not detrimental to UK-wide critical national infrastructure in relation to matters such as defence and security, oil and gas and energy.

Your humble Devil submits that this is very close to FFA, whilst admitting that there are some constraints on how the Scottish Parliament may act. One might argue that a great many of these constraints are there to stop the Scottish Parliament bankrupting its country. Your mileage may vary.

However, the SNP is arguing for Full Fiscal Autonomy. That means that Scotland is entirely responsible for its own economy, right?

Well, you might think that: and now we'll return to George Kerevan's comment [Emphasis mine, again—DK]...

The constitutional ball is well and truly in David Cameron’s end of the field. Cameron’s opening gambit may well be to offer Scotland fiscal autonomy, in return for termination of the Barnett Formula (a mechanism that matches per capita spending changes across the UK constituent nations). We all know that in present UK economic circumstances a fiscally autonomous Scotland would face a significant budget deficit.

For Scotland to accept fiscal autonomy without inbuilt UK-wide fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide. However, all federal systems have mechanisms for cross subsidising regions in economic need by regions in surplus. To deny that to Scotland suggests a disingenuous Mr Cameron is hoping to derail any move to Scottish Hole Rule within the UK.

Wow. Yes, that's right: George Kerevan—and, we must assume, he is a proxy for the SNP—is seriously suggesting that Scotland be given Full Fiscal Autonomy except when it doesn't have the money to afford it.

Just sit back and admire the chutzpah—George is saying that the Scottish Parliament should be given free rein to run things as it likes. Except that when the Scots overspend, rack up debts, or just go batshit wild with the cheque book, the rest of England should have to bail them out. Kerevan is proposing that English taxpayers chuck another £7 billion a year at the Scots before they've even started turning on the spending taps (because who, genuinely, thinks that they won't?).

What the SNP are holding up—as an expectation—is a total lack of any responsibility. Kerevan is proposing is that no matter how much the Scottish government screws up—no matter how fecklessly Holyrood runs the national finances, or shamelessly its parties bribe their voters—the people of England should be expected to bail out the Scottish nation regardless.

There really is only one answer to this, and its very simple: fuck off.

David Cameron, in concert with Miliband and Clegg, has already betrayed England by his shameless capitulation—a.ka. "the promise"—to the Scots after the Independence Referendum: it is entirely possible that this spineless Buttered New Potato will sell us down the river by agreeing to this shit too.

If he does, we might finally see the anger of the English people burn hot enough to march down Whitehall—parading Cameron's massive, shiny head on a fucking stick.

And not before time, frankly.

UPDATE: have the SNP been monitoring the Kitchen for suggestions...?

Boycott!

So, the BBC has finally sacked Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear.

Given how much money the programme makes for the Beeb, I would say that decision might be described as "courageous".

However...

Your humble Devil has sod all interest in cars^*, but I did rather enjoy watching Top Gear. I think, basically, because it was three chaps—mercifully free from the aching right-on-ness of most people these days—arse-ing about in colossally brilliant machines built by very clever human beings.

It seems that the other May and Hammond—in a decent British show of solidarity with a mate—will probably not continue with the programme. Good for them.

So, the upshot is that I think that the BBC are totally wrong to sack Clarkson. Totally and utterly wrong.

Thank goodness that I can boycott their output, withhold my payments and cancel my contract. And that's why I am calling for a...

I'm sorry—what?

Prison? For not wanting to pay for a service that I not only don't want, but morally disagree with?

Oh.

FFS.

^* I got banned some years ago, and have never bothered to apply for my licence back—despite the ban having expired two years ago (or more).

Satire is dead

The European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

So, a non-democratic institution that has lasted for about twenty years—not 60—and led to riots and appointed heads of state is...

No. Do you know what—this is why I've quit. The world is beyond comment or satire.

How soon can I get off this fucking planet...?

From hell

I was not able to catch Babies in the Office this evening, but luckily the Radio Times gives me a quick summary just long enough for me to vent spleen at this dreadful idea.

Imagine an office where toddlers clamber onto knees during management meetings, toys litter the carpet and it’s fine to bottle-feed whilst on an important phone call. Does it sound like professional heaven, or the very definition of hell?

It sounds like hell.

But could bringing baby to the office ever work for ordinary parents – and their colleagues? A bold experiment in one British firm, captured on film for a new documentary, looks set to find out.

When Liam Griffin, managing director of cab firm Addison Lee, announced that he wanted to try letting some parents bring babies into his company’s London headquarters, staff were sceptical. “There were two camps: mothers were very enthusiastic about it, and those people without kids were massively unenthusiastic,” recalls Griffin.

Well, there's a fucking surprise!

Look, I find babies' whinging, crying and shouting pretty much intolerable on a ten minute train ride—why in god's name should I have to put up with it for eight hours at work too.

My job requires me to spend hours getting "into The Zone" and concentrating really hard (just one of the reason I so rarely blog these days): this kind of mental effort is difficult enough to sustain anyway, let alone having to do so with your damn kid screaming and wittering on for half the bloody day.

More practically, the scheme was a lifesaver for staff struggling with nursery fees of up to 80 a day – or forced into painful choices by the cost of childcare.

For fuck's sake, my taxes pay for your child's education, its healthcare, your Child Tax Credits, your Child Allowance and it subsidises your childcare—how much more are you going to steal from me to fund your baby-bearing lifestyle choice?

“One girl wants to have a second child, but can’t afford to,” says Mitchell.

I want a really expensive made-to-measure suit—but I can't have it because I can't fucking afford it. Why should having children be any different?*

“If we could help her, she’s going to be so loyal to us as a business.”

Yeah? I bet the rest of your employees are already polishing up their CVs.

Or as Chris Snowdon tweeted:

cjsnowdon
Next time on Babies in the Office: Addison Lee goes into administration. #babiesintheoffice

But as long as the kiddies have "softened the mood" and everyone is happy in the land of unicorns and rainbows, who cares, eh?

More practically, the scheme was a lifesaver for staff struggling with nursery fees of up to £80 a day—or forced into painful choices by the cost of childcare.

Having children is all about making hard choices. Actually, so is life.

Anyway, if only because the idea of watching a car-crash at a taxi firm amuses me, I might now go and find this programme on iPlayer.

*Oh, by the way, if my company decided that buying me the aforementioned really excellent suit would make me "so loyal to [them] as a business", the government would slap a whacking great tax on it as a benefit-in-kind.**

** Yes, yes: I know that there is probably some work clothing allowance of some sort. However, I bet it doesn't apply to really fucking expensive made-to-measure suits.

Wind farms cause climate change...

Today's hilarious headline was found via Danny Weston on Facebook—apparently wind farms cause climate change...

Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.

Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.
But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world's largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost a centigrade as more turbines are built.

This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.

It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.

Aaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha! Aaaahahahahaha! Aaahaha! Ah ha! Ha.

Oh, oh, wait. Uh... Here it comes... AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Aaaahahaha! Ahahaha! Ah ha! Ha! Ha.

Am I done yet? Oh, no, doesn't look like it...

Aaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

*wipes away tears of hilarity*

So, let's summarise: wind farms cost billions in subsidies, transfer money from the poor to the rich, slice up rare wild birds, dice up bats by the hundred, emit more CO2 in their construction than they save over a lifetime, don't generate any worthwhile or consistent electrical power.

And now they cause climate change...?

I think that I've split my sides from laughing.

Well done, Greenies—oh, very well done!

Adults or otherwise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

Now, can we please get this shit sorted out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Laurie Penny the stupidest woman on the face of the planet?

Look at it. That's Laurie Penny, that is. Fucking hell.

Timmy calls it grossly overblown rhetoric.

I call it a stupid, ugly, miserable, evil ignorant sack of weasel-vomit being paid too much to write filthy, lying, hyperbolic bullshit in order to pander to one of the world's most bigoted and moronic demographics—the bien-pensant, tofu-munching Lefty sheep-shaggers known as "the readers of The New Statesman".

I mean, how could anyone take this sentence seriously? [Emphasis mine.]

If [the Labour Party's] collective response to the greatest assault on social democracy in living memory is anything to go by, Labour has also lost sight of what it means to be a party of the left.

It might come as a bit of a surprise to Laurie Penny—who is, I assume, about thirteen years old—that there have been far greater assaults on "social democracy in living memory".

I fail to see, in any case, how cutting the amount of money that the state spends is, in any way, an attack on society—unless, of course, society revolves solely around money. I imagine that, for Laurie Penny, it probably is—after all, you'd have to pay me to spend a minute in her company.

And an attack on democracy? How is cutting government spending worse for democracy than Gordon "fucking" Brown's quite deliberate policy of extorting money and using it to buy votes?

And how is this possibly the greatest attack in living memory? This may come as a surprise to someone who probably can't remember the First Gulf War, Laurie, but there are still some people in this country who remember the Second World War.

(And, if you want to get pissy about it, the invasion of the Falkland Islands was arguably a greater assault on a social democracy by a military junta—it did, at least, involve some guns, missiles and lots of dead people.)

Still, I suppose that one should be grateful for the fact that dear old Maggie seems to be off the hook: the poor woman probably thought that she would be Laurie Penny's prime demon until she died. It seems, however, that Dave and Gideon are to be the greater hate figures for the Left.

Or that part of the Left that is represented by Laurie Penny anyway, i.e. the really fucking stupid part of it.

Luckily for Laurie, by the way, the answer to the post title is, "no, Laurie Penny is not the stupidest woman on the face of the planet": but that's only because Bevanite Ellie—surely one of the single most asinine creatures ever to grub around on this dirty ball of rock—is still around.

And mature, sophisticated and subtle though they may seem next to those of Ellie Gellard, it doesn't alter the fact that Laurie Penny's political views are slightly more black and white than footage of a Hitler rally, and about as well-meaning.

Yes, yes: I am sure that some people are going to pop up and say that I am exhibiting misogynistic tendencies—that I am only attacking this silly bitch because she is a woman. Believe me, that's not the case.

If I were a woman, I would be slitting my wrists—overcome by the way in which Laurie Penny shames my gender in general and the feminist cause in particular.

As it is, being a man (who knew?), I just feel a deep and abiding disquiet whenever I recall that I am part of the same species as the lack-witted creature that wrote this pile of cobblers... [Emphasis mine.]

They have knelt down and swallowed the Tory narrative that this recession is all Labour's fault, rather than the result of years of systematic global financial deregulation with which every major political party in Britain and America was until lately in agreement.

Er... Good fucking god—where to start? And how to put it in the kind of simple terms, Laurie, that a lackwit arse like you will understand?

Let's have a go...

• The Labour government spent far more per year than they were able to steal from people in tax.


• This "deficit" has been climbing steadily for the last decade—long before the recession hit.


• Last year, Labour overspent by nearly £170 billion.


• As a result, our declared national debt is nearly £800 billion.


• Although, actually, our real national debt is actually somewhere nearer £8 trillion.


• By 2016, just paying the interest on the debt is going to cost us in the region of £200 billion per year—or about £300,000 per household in Britain.


• There is no fucking money left.


• Despite the Coalition's "greatest assault on social democracy in living memory", they are on track to overspend by even more this year.


• That is because there are no cuts in spending—only a cut in the increase in spending.


• There. Is. No. Fucking. Money. Left.

It is about time that people—by which I mean commissioning editors—realised that Laurie Penny is not only a pig-ignorant self-serving nutcase, but also a bigoted, shallow fuckwit living in a fantasy world in which government spending is not the extorted product of people's hard work, but magic fucking money that falls from the sky.

Having said all of this (yes, yes: I know—very rude), the last paragraph of her pointless screed does contain some good points—more by luck than judgement. [Emphasis mine.]

That Labour does not have any answers for us is a disgusting display of the irrelevance of Westminster politics to the lives of ordinary citizens. If today's pathetic equivocation parade is a benchmark for the next four years of Labour politics, we will have to look elsewhere to find a voice in the hard, cold months ahead.

Westminster politics has long become irrelevant to the people of this country (except as an instrument of tyranny)—we know this.

But, more pertinently, Laurie, maybe (if you weren't a self-loathing sociopath) you might turn to real people, to the society that you profess to love, for comfort—rather than relying on the empty promises and meaningless platitudes of politicians to keep you warm at night.

Other than that, you'll just have to start putting some money into the meter, love...

UPDATE: removed "disappointing" link (see nwd comment below). We don't want another Gordon Brown's children debate, do we?*

UPDATE 2: if you want to know why I hold Penny Red—and others like her—in such contempt, it is because they are thieves, blackmailers and extortionists who do not even have the courage to do their thieving in person—instead contracting the state do to so on their behalf.

* An in-joke for very long-time readers.

No shit

Via Dick Puddlecote, I see that someone has woken up to the idea that speed cameras might actually cause accidents.

Eighty-one per cent of respondents to the insurer’s survey admitted to instantly looking at their speedometers, instead of the road, on detecting a speed camera and one in twenty admitted to braking suddenly, risking losing control of their vehicle or a rear-end shunt.

In other news, the Pope is still Catholic and bears do shit in the woods.

And what is the scale of the problem...?

The insurer estimates that at least 28,000 road accidents have been triggered by the cameras since 2001 and nearly one in three motorists questioned said they had witnessed an accident or near miss as a result of other drivers’ erratic behaviour when faced with one of the cameras.

Close to half of motorists surveyed believe the cameras divert attention away from other areas of driving while one in ten claim that speed cameras increase the risk of an accident.

Speed cameras cause accidents by distracting drivers from the road in front of them and causing them to drive erratically.

This is far more likely to cause an accident than travelling at 45mph in a 40mph area.

In other news, water is—apparently—wet...

The vast wealth of the poor

For some time now, Timmy has been pointing out that wealth in this country is not measured properly.

That report on wealth inequality. It’s wrong. For everyone has a large asset: it’s called the welfare state.

In April, he posted a long and detailed article at the Adam Smith Institute blog, laying out the issues and attempting to calculate just how much the Welfare State is worth.

The Hills Report states that the wealth gap between the 10th and 90th percentile is of the order of 1:100. It says that the average 10th percentile household has assets of £8,800 and the 90th £853,000. But it is only possible to reach this conclusion by ignoring all of the things that we already do to redistribute wealth.

Just as we do with income inequality, we should measure wealth inequality after the influence of the tax and benefit systems. The benefit system provides a number of income streams to the poor and we can calculate their net present value by treating them as an annuity.

Combining the value of just the NHS and the state old age pension every individual has wealth of over £100,000. This must of course be added to the wealth of both poor and rich but it brings the 90:10 wealth ratio down to 10:1.

Looking purely at the income support available to an average 10th percentile household the value of their annual receipts from the welfare state is some quarter of a million pounds when capitalized. This lowers that 90:10 wealth gap to somewhere under 5:1.

In order to illustrate this point, Jenny Jones (some utter muppet at the Grauniad) has decided to excoriate George Osborne for not being a Socialist shitbag like the author capping the amount of money that will be paid out in Housing Benefit to a still-massively-generous £280 per week for a flat and £400 per week for a house. Yes, that's per week, not per month.

The caps on the amount a household can claim in housing benefit will be set at between £280 and £400 a week, or up to £20,800 a year. The chancellor claims this is only fair, and that the current benefits are excessive.

In central London, the Local Housing Allowance gives families in four bedroom homes up to £1,000 per week to pay their rent. So families in Westminster and parts of boroughs such as Camden could be worse off by up to £600 per week, or £31,200 per year. Families in Camden in the inner north London sub-region can currently get up to £575pw, and in cheaper inner east areas, such as Southwark and Lambeth, families can get up to £430pw.

So, just to clarify, the state is paying out up to £52,000 per year for some people to live in areas that those paying tax couldn't even dream of living in. And, after the cap, these families could be worse off by rather more than I get paid.

My heart bleeds.

I think that CiF Commenter Mr Joe summarises the situation very succinctly indeed.

To sum up, some people are effectively being given a pre-tax income of £77,000 for doing nothing, and people far poorer than that are paying for it through taxation. The chancellor claims this is unfair and you disagree. Right.

The situation is made even clearer by a Times article (behind the paywall):

Finally the figures are being exposed. Spending on welfare has risen by 40 per cent in real terms over 10 years of unprecedented economic growth. In that time the number of people claiming disability benefit has trebled and housing benefit doubled. This week, the loudest voices are warning that Mr Osborne’s cap on housing benefit could be devastating, especially in London, where rents are high. But do not underestimate the effect on the silent majority of the news that we spend £21 billion on housing benefit — more than on the police.

The Times reported yesterday that parents may face “eviction” from council houses when their children leave home under new “draconian” laws. But local authorities have queues of families waiting for houses because retired couples refuse to move. People who are scraping together their own rent wonder why anyone feels that they have a lifetime “right” to a council house. Ordinary people regularly make distinctions, not always correctly, between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. Politicians cannot continue to treat these views with contempt.

Indeed.

As Timmy points out today, the fact that these vast iniquities are being pointed out can only be a good thing.

Limiting housing benefit to only £400 a week, to only £20,800 a year, might mean that some poor families cannot live in central London. Oh Woes!

Then look at what the people who have to pay for this are saying: You What? They get more in rent than I earn in a year? And yet I have to pay tax for them?

Why can’t they just move 5 miles east? Why can’t they live in the suburbs, like I have to? What God given right do the unemployed or low paid have to live in Belgravia?

Bugger that for a game of soldiers.
...

Yes, you have to pay tax so that we can subsidise this numpty to the tune of £20,800 a year to live in Westminster…..yes, you have to pay tax so that the kids of this unemployed single mother can eat.

My own guess about my fellow Britons is that the latter will get people quite happy to have the State in their wallets: the former not so much. And the more that the former is held up to the light, the more there will be a general agreement that the system needs to be changed.

And then, of course, we can point to Lee Jasper, Baroness Uddin and the rest who, despite high incomes and professional careers, still have their housing costs subsidised by the rest of us.

Depending upon how the same information is laid out, how the PR is done, these cuts could well actually be very popular indeed.

And not just amongst those of us who object to being forced to pay for all aspects of other people's lifestyles—finally. And it might very well spread: couples who are saving up to have children, for instance, might also wonder why on earth they have to pay tax so that those who have never worked can continue to increase the size of their family.

And then people will get angry.

And, pace Blue Eyes, that is the only way that radical change is going to happen in this country.

Anyway, to bring the conversation back to where we started, £52,000 per year in income is worth a lot of cash; I have made a cursory attempt to calculate the Net Present Value (NPV) and I reckon that—at a 4% discount rate—£52,000 a year for ten years would be worth just short of £1 million pounds as a lump sum.

So, it seems that some of the poor have, in fact, wealth far in excess of that of those of us who work for a living.

UPDATE: in reply to Mark Wadsworth's comment, I'd like to clarify just who I am bashing here. In order.

1. The idiot politicians who have been pissing our money away. Remember, it takes two parties to agree a price in a trade: in this case, the price that our Lords and Masters were willing to pay was "oh, fuck it, as much as you like—I'm not paying for it." If it were the politicos' personal cash, you can bet your last tuppence that even £280 a week would be way more than they'd be willing to pay.
   
   There are two reasons why they have not put a cap on Housing Benefit prior to this: first, it's not their cash and they knew that they can magic up some more moolah simply by taking ten minutes to pass a law and, second, because their voters now get to live in Islington.
   
   Further, these economic illiterates have probably never considered that their profligacy would ramp up the price of housing quite so much, because they are idiots. But, then again, since they don't have to worry about rent—they just claim it off the taxpayer—why the hell should they give a crap?


2. Idiot Grauniad columnists, their colleagues and acolytes. These people don't mind how much money is pissed away on their pet projects because they are all so stinking rich that they'd barely notice £280 a week disappearing from their pay packets.
   
   These morons are the kind of people who criticise politicians for being rich, privately-educated, out of touch, elite wankers without realising that—really—it does take one to know one.


3. The private landlords who quite soon realised that the government was not only stupid enough to pay thousands of pounds a week in order to keep their client voters happy, but also venal enough to pay thousands of pounds a week to keep their donors happy.
   
   But why should they care? After all, there's plenty more magic money where that last lot came from, eh?


4. The benefit recipients who are even now bitching and whining about how they and their multitudinous progeny will have to move out of their Belgravia mansion and—like the poor bastards who have to pay for this profligacy—live somewhere within their means, even if that means that they will have to commute a couple of hours to work and back each day.
   
   To this last lot, I say this: we are sick and fucking tired of paying for you to be able to make life-style choices that are denied us. Get used to it.

Have I left anyone out...?

Anyway, you might have spotted a theme running through the above points. Just in case you are a politician, let me just spell it out for you: when one bunch of people spend other people's money—money extorted at gun-point but at a far enough remove that the first group don't feel sullied—on presents for yet another group of people, not only do they get abysmal value for money but they also massively distort the entire market thus ensuring that everyone suffers.

Unless, of course, by using a combination of legislation and yet more financial extortion, the first group manage to totally insulate themselves from any negative effects. In which case, it is only the plebs that suffer.

At last, some good news!

Is it just me, or is this absolutely fucking hilarious?

Labour’s cash-strapped party machine is quietly abandoning up to 60 vulnerable seats to divert resources to defend constituencies in its heartlands, according to MPs.

It is the first sign that some senior Labour figures accept that defeat is inevitable and are switching resources to defend seats with larger majorities to prevent a rout next year.

Plans for targeted mailshots in marginal seats have been scaled back dramatically because of a lack of resources. Some MPs say Labour’s HQ is refusing to help seats with majorities of less than 3,000 — about 60 — as it retrenches in the face of the Tory advance.

A member of the National Executive Committee denied that it had set a bar but acknowledged that the party was being forced to make “difficult decisions” about which seats to defend.

Aaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha! Ah haha hah ha. Ha.

Although it has fended off bankruptcy Labour’s national party remains in a precarious financial position.

In the past year the party has “raised” £18 million compared with the Conservatives’ £25 million. However, £2 million was a loan converted to a donation and £15 million is in borrowing and credit facilities.

Oh dear, oh dear: what a pity, how sad.

On a less amusing note, Labour's financial problems are indicative of how they have run the country—as Charlotte Gore pointed out a few days ago.

A pet theory of mine, as yet untested, is that the way parties run themselves internally is probably one of the best indicators we have about what a Government run by that party will be like. I base this on the idea that parties can run their parties however they like so, in effect, it exposes how they view authority, organisation, hierarchy, democracy etc. In addition we can see how they manage their communications, how they manage their own internal processes in drawing up policies, making announcements and finally—and crucially—we can see how they run their finances.

Is it reasonable to believe that an undemocratic, highly centralised, tightly disciplined party with strict processes and chains of command and rules about what people can and can’t say to whom would somehow then produce a decentralised, open, democratic government that values civil liberties? The very idea seems absurd, and in practice—in reality—Labour’s approach to Government appears to mirror their approach to their own internal organisation.

More relevant and important—can you believe that a party with a well documented “spend now, worry later—nothing must get in the way of winning” reckless, scorched earth attitude to funding election campaigns, landing them in serious debt would run the public finances with prudence, care and diligence?

Time has told on this one—Labour have run the public finances with the same ‘whatever it takes to win’ attitude, and has left our public finances mirroring their own.

Quite. And, like the country, Labour are not quite bankrupt—not yet. But you can bet that it is getting more and more expensive to service their debts.

Why would you trust the morally-bankrupt leader of a near financially-bankrupt party to run your country—and your life?

To coin an old phrase, would you buy a used car off Gordon Brown? No? Then why, in the name of all that's unholy, would you vote for the cunt?

P.S. It's worth noting (last I heard, anyway) that all of the Big Three parties are in considerable amounts of debt. The Tories and the LibDims aren't in quite the same position as Labour, but I wouldn't expect either of them to run the public finances particularly responsibly...

A Quick Reminder: The Government are Cunts

[NOTE: I'm not The Devil, and I know I'm late to the party on this, but fuck it. You can't have too many reminders.]

OK. We had an "asset bubble." Lots of things were overpriced. That house you bought for £200,000 was actually only worth £150,000. Share in a company were priced at £3.30 but were actually only worth £2.50.

These things happen. Sometimes speculators drive the estimated value of things up higher than they should be. Whether tulips, south sea trading rights or housing this stuff has been going since year dot and will happen from time to time pretty much forever.

When senses return and the bubble bursts, a load of people are left with assets that are worth less than they paid for them. In today's case, the 'victims are the banks'. Northern Rock doled out billions on pounds to people who couldn't afford to repay it, on the basis of properties that weren't worth their valuation. In order to "save the world", resident genius G. Brown stepped in with colossal quantities of cash to help the bank stay afloat.

As more institutions realised they were in the same fucking hole, so they turned to us—via our representatives—for help. Which would be great, except for the small detail that we can't afford the losses either. Consequently, no-one dares to lend money to anyone else all of a sudden. And when your economy is largely based on credit (who buys a sofa for cash these days?) that spells trouble. Anyway, because we "can't let these institutions fail" we're the ones stuck with all this shit.

So now, the Government is encouraging the printing of money. £200 billion of it thus far. This is supposed to be used so that the banks will start giving credit to people and they can spend it on stuff and then we'll all be happy and somehow one day we'll be able to pay the £200 billion back.

Only here's the rub: interest rates are 0.5%. That means if I lend you a hundred quid, you only have to give me £105 back in a year's time (or something, who the fuck knows how it works—read the small print and get back to me). That's not much return on my investment. On the other hand, stock markets were sent artificially low by the banking crises. So my £100 is going straight into shares instead because I can make more money there because I'm not a moron. So while every economic indicator from GDP to retail sales to employment continues to tank, the stock markets head in the opposite direction.

This is why the money the government is printing isn't reaching the 'real economy'. Instead it is feeding a stock market rally. We're creating another fucking asset bubble. Meanwhile, businesses and people are going to the wall because they still can't get credit. Worse, eventually we're going to have to deal with this £200 billion that has been created somehow.

Are we going to tax it back from corporate institutions who have benefited from our largesse? Pfft. The only answer is to accept that everything is going to get more expensive. With that much easy money floating around in the economy, that's what inevitably will happen.

For proof, you only have to look at Germany's Weimar Republic or modern-day Zimbabwe to see what happens. When there's a lot of cash, prices shoot up because money itself becomes cheap. It's a problem with modern economies that have decoupled their monetary systems from something tangible like gold. As our money itself becomes worth less, so people demand more of it in exchange for their goods. This is inflation, and it is a bitch. Because if your £15,000 a year is barely enough to live on now, how will you feel when the price of everything shoots up 10% in the course of a year?

Now to me, a no-mark in the middle of nowhere, knowing fuck all about nothing, it is baffling how the rich, mighty, connected and intellectually powerful people who claim to run this country can't see this. But then there's a lot of things I don't understand about them. Frankly, we'd be better if they went off to do something more productive. Like fucking stoats. In Iceland. Without condoms.

Gordon and Darling: insane bastards

The BBC—even the BBC—is reporting that the latest stupid idea from Brown and Darling has received a "lukewarm reaction".

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's idea of a financial transactions tax has received a lukewarm response from G20 countries.

The proposal, which took delegates by surprise at the meeting in St Andrew's overshadowed other items on the agenda.

Naturally. Gordon's idea of being "statemanlike" is just throwing in ideas that are not on the agenda. This one-eyed Scots idiot seems to equate lobbing in stuff that no one has prepared for to being "radical". It's this silly fucker's standard tactic.

The US said it would "not support" a transaction tax and Canada added it was "not an idea we would look at".

The Conservatives said that Downing Street had previously "poured cold water on this proposal" and that the Treasury had called it "unworkable".

But what is the standard protocol for by-passing silly little local governments...?

Chancellor Alistair Darling said the leaders had agreed the International Monetary Fund should now consider the possibility of introducing an international transactions tax, which would be used to create a fund for bank bailouts.

That's right: you submit it to a supranational body who will attempt to enforce it on everyone anyway (remember Blair trying to get the EU to force ID Cards on us?).

He said governments should consider whether it would be possible to develop a tax that would be universal, comprehensive in scope and compatible with financial stability, as well as fair and which would not "distort things".

Taxes always distort things, you stupid fuck.

He described the idea as "clearly work in progress, it will take time to develop but it is, I believe, an important piece of work".

Yes, yes it is an important piece of work—if, by "important", you actually mean "completely fucking insane".

Look, the government now owns most of our banks; it has a duty to ensure that they can make a decent profit so that we taxpayers—those of us who pay for our government's profligacy—can get some of the money back. This Tobin tax would, quite obviously, make that long climb back to profitability considerably longer and harder.

Now, I am no economist, quite obviously, but some people do have the relevant training. So, first up, Timmy discusses the reasons why Tobin suggested such a tax—to "throw “sand in the wheels” of turbo-charged capitalism" in a world of fixed exchange rates (which ours is not. Until the world currency anyway)—and how it would have unintended consequences (surprise sur-fucking-prise) in penalising those who are not eeeeevil bankers.

We now have the Austrian Government making the decision about whether my trades on the currency markets are necessary or not? As just a very minor example, my income is variously in $, £ and €. My expenditures are similarly, variously in $, £ and €. Incomes in one corrency rarely match with outgoings in that same currency so there’s a certain amount of shufling things around month by month. But according to the Austrian Government I should be taxed because, umm, well, apparently I’m some bastard international bank who deserves to be screwed.
...

You can levy a tax wherever you like. But just because you levy it somewhere doesn’t mean that that’s where it stays: there is this thing called tax incidence.

And as the report says, we do have a transaction tax on financial transactions in the UK: Stamp Duty on share transactions. And who actually bears the economic burden of that tax? The wheelers and dealers? Actually, no: a report back in 2002 pointed out that it was individual’s pension funds that bore part of the brunt, the other major effect being a rise in the cost of equity capital to UK based firms. And as we know, a rise in the cost of capital shows up in the workers’ paycheques as a reduction in them.

So far from a Tobin Tax screwing the bankers, it, once again, screws the workers.

And Chris Dillow expands on all of this, helpfully pointing out that the bastard tax wouldn't bloody work anyway—and, just to ram home how fucking nuts this is, outines why it wouldn't even have stopped the current problems.

1. It would have done nothing to have stopped this financial crisis, and might even have made things worse. The two markets upon which a tax would impinge most - FX and stock markets - played little role in this crisis; they were, as near as dammit, innocent bystanders. The tax would not have stopped RBS overpaying for ABN-Amro, would not have stopped HBOS making bad loans, and probably wouldn’t have stopped Northern Rock funding its mortgage lending by borrowing in wholesale markets.
   What the tax might have done, though, is reduce the liquidity of mortgage derivatives. But this was, for many banks, precisely the problem. As Alistair Milne describes in The Fall of the House of Credit, the problem with many “toxic assets” is not so much that they were devalued by defaults, but rather that they became illiquid, untradeable. A transactions tax might have exacerbated this problem.

...


2. A transactions tax does not necessarily stabilize markets. It might do the opposite. As Andrea Terzi points out (pdf), such a tax doesn’t so much reduce short-term trades as trades with low expected gains. However, these trades are often stabilizing trades - those done by arbitrageurs hovering up pennies.
   If the tax bears more heavily upon these than it does upon noise traders, then it might make bubbles more likely, not less.

Which all goes to show that Gordon Brown—a Labour historian^*, by the way, not a fucking economist—and Alistair Darling (a total fucking ignoramous Trotskyite cunt of a lawyer) know less than fuck all about economics, and that the pair of them are barkingly insane.

Unless, of course, all that they are interested in is taking control of the entire money supply and thus ensuring complete control over the British nation—in which case, they might just be evil genuises.

UPDATE: Capitalists@Work have dubbed this The Worst Policy of New Labour, Ever.

What really staggers me though is that Badger and Brownstuff could promote this idea in the very week in which they confirm the UK taxpayer is to own the largest international bank in the world by assets and 43% of another top 20 bank.

So the UK government now owns banks and is advocating a policy which will cripple their recovery. This is beyond stupidity, it really is.

In years to come the political world will have a new lexicon for all this Government;

'as stupid as a Brown plan'—for a truly appalling policy announcement

'even Brown would not have done that'—for a real turkey of an idea

ad infinitum.

Doesn't everyone already use these phrases...?

^*The title of his PhD thesis—which took him ten years to complete—was The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918–29. The man is a fucking twat who knows bollocks-all about most history that isn't couched in Labour Party terms.

Sensible women and fucking stupid women

Emily Thornberry MP: a very stupid and thoroughly unpleasant person who should be severely punched in the cunt, and then thrown into the sea.

Via Samizdata, I see that some lassie called Nichola Pease has warned that maternity pay—and other benefits—risk making women effectively unemployable.

Nichola Pease, a top City executive, caused a stir last week when she said that state-enforced maternity leave "rights" for women - and for that matter, paternity leave - was a cost that had a bad consequence. If you tell a company that it must pay a woman her full salary for a year while she is not working and raising her child, say, then, other things being equal, fewer women will be employed in the first place, however hard one tries to enforce so-called equal opportunity hiring practices.

This is a simple fact. If you raise the cost to a company of employing a person or increase the risk that employing a woman will be more expensive than employing a man, say, then fewer women will be employed. It is a fact as undeniable as a the laws of gravity.

Quite. Here's more from the original article...

Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of JO Hambro capital management and a mother of three, said excessive maternity leave and eye-watering sex discrimination payouts could backfire on women.

She denied allegations of sexism in the City, claiming most women did not rise through the ranks because of their own choices rather than any prejudice against them.

And she suggested bosses were reluctant to employ women for fear they could go on to have lots of children supported by Britain's over-generous maternity leave system.

'We have got to be realistic and make sure the protection around women doesn't end up backfiring,' she told a parliamentary hearing into sexism in the financial sector. 'That is actually one of my greatest worries.'

Mrs Pease, 48, said women were 'a really capable, practical and driven bunch of multi-taskers'.

But their contribution to the workforce risked being overshadowed by a nightmare of 'legislation and protection'.

'I think we have got too long maternity,' she told MPs.

'A year is too long and sex discrimination cases that run into the tens of millions are ridiculous.'

Women in Britain currently have the right to 52 weeks maternity leave.

One gets tired of repeating the same old mantra—incentives matter, you morons—but it seems that these idiot socialists just don't get it. It is one of the things that make me so angry with these stupid bastards: they seem to think that—if you just wish (or legislate) hard enough—then you can change both human nature and reality.

Here's news for you, you fucking socialist morons—you cannot change human nature. All of your fucking around just creates perverse incentives and your legislation has unintended consequences.

And then these nitwits pass more and more legislation which tries to compensate for the previous screwy laws. For instance, socialists enable maternity pay for women; then they realise that this makes women less employable, so they then have to pass laws making it illegal to discriminate; but these laws don't fucking work because no business person is going to risk crippling their company. And so we wait for the next round of stupid legislation—usually auteured by that disgraceful, lawless bitch, Harpy Harmperson.

Mrs Pease, who is said to earn around £3.5million, enraged equal rights campaigners who warned that maternity leave was vital if women are to compete on equal footing with men.

That sentence actually makes no fucking sense at all. None. As Mrs Pease points out, maternity leave and other bonuses make women less employable: they most certainly do not allow them to "compete on equal footing with men"—not least because companies aren't forced to pay for men to take a year off whilst being compelled to keep their job open.

Mrs Pease is obviously one of those women who absolutely understand that incentives matter; Emily Thornberry MP, however, does not.

Labour MP Emily Thornberry said: 'I am absolutely horrified to hear such an old-fashioned view expressed by someone who should know better.

Is that the extent of your argument, Emily—this piss-weak attempt to talk down to a woman far more successful and intelligent than yourself? Do you have any logical, economic argument to present?

No? Well, what a fucking surprise, Emily. You see, just another socialist moron attempting to change the world to fit her own deluded mindset and without even the slightest grip on the reality of humanity.

'The rights that Labour have given to women are extremely important - especially to women who do not have a £10million cushion to sit on.'

And this, of course, is typical NuLabour: if you don't have any reasonable counter-argument, just sneer at your opponent, smear them and demonise them.

Look, Emily, Mrs Pease may have a lot of cash but she fucking well earned it; you, on the other hand, get your salary through picking other people's pockets, and then last year you managed to steal an extra £132,390 from the taxpayer. So, why don't you shut your fucking face, you repulsive parasite?

Of course, Emily Thornberry is the kind of person who would support this piece of crap (found via Timmy).

Women without children should be allowed maternity leave, survey says

Women who do not have children should be allowed to take maternity leave, allowing them time off from the workplace, according to a study.

It found that 74 per cent of women would be in favour of being allowed to take a six-month break, or even longer, as mothers are allowed to do when they give birth. More than two-thirds of those in favour were mothers themselves.

All that this survey shows is that 74% of the people surveyed are absolute fucking morons. Well, either that or they are absolutely determined to ensure that no woman gets a job ever again. This is an devastatingly stupid idea—indicated, I think, by the fact that it is referred to as "maternity leave" when there is no maternity. But I bet Emily Thornberry supports it. Because she's a thick bitch.

I increasingly think that the world is going absolutely insane: we are seeing more and more people coming out with ideas that are, quite simply, unworkable. Has everyone gone completely batshit mad?

Nope: they're just socialists.

Roman Polanski: better late than never

(N.B. I am not the Devil's Kitchen)

Nick Broomfield made a tit of himself on This Week last night when he found that Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo—pissed though they invariably are—take child-rape a tad more seriously than a bunch of ignorant luvvies.

The scene was set with a clip of Peter Fonda using perhaps the most specious reasoning I have ever come across.

Interviewer: Do you think Mr Polanski should be punished?

Fonda: No. I think Dick Cheney should be punished.

Interviewer: Why?

Fonda: Because he's a criminal. He's a war criminal.

WHAT?!! Is this the Chewbacca defence? Hey man, it's like Bush is the real terrorist, yeah? Fucking hell-fire. After all these years, is the Iraq war really the only thing these Film Actors Guild twats can talk about?

Peter, it's not an either/or situation. I assume there is more than one jail cell in California so how's about using one of them for a guy who anally raped a 13 year girl, jumped bail and has spent 30 years evading justice?

As you will know, dear reader, Fonda isn't the only FAG spokesman to have spoken out in support of the Oscar winning kiddy-fiddler.

Polanski's friend, Swiss filmmaker Otto Weisser, was among the first to publicly run to his defense.

"This is for me a shock. I am ashamed to be Swiss, that the Swiss is doing such a thing to brilliant fantastic genius, that millions and millions of people love his work," Weisser said upon learning the director had been detained by Swiss authorities. "He's a brilliant guy, and he made a little mistake 32 years ago. What a shame for Switzerland."

A "little mistake"?

Polanski was initially charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor. These charges were dismissed under the terms of his plea bargain, and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor...

Geimer testified that Polanski gave her a combination of champagne and quaaludes, a sedative drug, and "despite her protests, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her", each time after being told 'no' and being asked to stop

The number of luvvies leaping to the defence of this child-buggerer is astonishing.

"He is sweet and very strong and is very, very demanding, in the tradition of an auteur," said Sigourney Weaver about being directed by Polanski in 1994's "Death and the Maiden."

Yeah, Sigourney. It's so unfair isn't it? It's like that nice Fred West. No one ever mentions his lovely brick-work, they just keep banging on about all them women he killed.

Studio chief Harvey Weinstein told CNN in a statement: "We are calling every filmmaker we can to help fix this terrible situation."

And what, Weinstein, should these filmmakers do? Hold a rally to get the law changed so that anyone with an Oscar can go around butt-fucking kids? What is the matter with these people?

Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape."

You're right, Whoopi. It wasn't "rape-rape". It was child-rape. If you're implying that fucking a child isn't really rape if it's consensual then I think the law might take a slightly different view on what constitutes consent. If the male in question was 13 years old himself then you might—might—be tempted to turn a blind eye, but seeing as Polanski was 45 at the time, there really is no excuse.

Not that the victim did consent in any case:

“I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No’, and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she said in an interview [in 2003].

This really couldn't be much more clear-cut. Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape. There is no statute of limitations on the crime. It makes no difference whether Polanski is or is not a threat to children today. He broke the law and then broke another law by jumping bail. The man is as guilty as sin and the fact that Sigourney Weaver thinks he's a smashing bloke is of absolutely no fucking consequence.

Which brings us to Nick Broomfield, who decided to go on This Week to present the FAG line to a British audience. Alas, he found Andrew Neil to be a tougher interrogator than his mates down the Groucho Club:

Andrew Neil: "Let me put a simple proposition to you. He was convicted of a pretty terrible crime. He should serve his sentence."

This rational line of enquiry threw Broomfield completely. After a brief pause, he replied:

"Yes. But I think we also need to ask another question, which is 'Why now?' and 'Is the law very expedient?'

I think with all this hoop-la, I rather agree with Peter Fonda. You'd think that Dick Cheney or Rumsfeld or somebody who'd really committed some big crimes was actually convicted."

Hell's teeth, man. Dick Cheney has got absolutely nothing to do with this. When will you tedious tub-thumping liberal tossers change the fucking record? And, last time I checked, drugging children and fucking them up the arse was a pretty "big crime", a crime that Roman Polanski, unlike Dick Cheney, has been convicted of.

As for the question of "Why now?" The answer is, as The Huffington Post points out, "Why the fuck not?"

The argument that he's been allowed to roam free for 30 years, therefore he should be allowed to stay free is moronic. Just because some lame-ass law-enforcement authorities had their collective thumbs up their asses for three decades does not give Polanski a get out of jail free card.

Should we not arrest Nazi war criminals because they've been living in Argentina for 65 years and might be "liked" by their neighbors? Who cares when justice ultimately gets served, as long as it gets served. Let's keep things in perspective here: the Los Angeles DA's office has not committed any crimes. Polanski has.

Michael Portillo exposed the hypocrisy of Broomfield's position by pointing out that no lefty fuckwits started yelling when Pinochet was arrested in similar circumstances. Nor would they be complaining if the same thing happened to Tony Blair.

Portillo: "When Pinochet was arrested in London after a very long time, I expect most of the greats of Hollywood thought it was a jolly good idea. 

But the arbitrariness of the way these indictments are served up in different countries, I think, does raise some interesting questions for the future. And you may be quite pleased with what happens in the future.

Who knows whether Tony Blair one day will be passing through Spain and Balthazar Garzon takes out an indictment against him."

Broomfield: "I can't wait for the day."

Dianne Abbott: "Yeah!"

Broomfield: "I can't wait for the day."

Should that day ever come, neither Broomfield, Fonda nor any other Hollwood pecker-head will be kicking up a stink and complaining that it was all a long time ago. Unless, of course, Blair gets done for child molestation, in which case—apparently—he'll just be one of the boys.

More nannying crap

Via Strange Stuff, here is yet more absolute barking insanity that is both stupid and offensively patronising.


You can click the image for a larger representation but, just in case you can't be arsed, the picture shows some cutlery sets for sale in a shop—these cutlery sets include your basic table knife (not even a vaguely sharp steak knife). The sign below them says:

Sale of Knives & Bladed Articles

The sale of these products is regulated by the Offensive Weapons Act 1996
(as amended by the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006)

It is a criminal offence to sell these articles to any person under the age of 18 years.

For fuck's sake...

Boo-fucking-hoo

Like many MPs, Nadine has had a stressful time: the lesson for all MPs is that you shouldn't lie repeatedly, smear your opponents and steal money.

Via The Englishman (who is not sympathetic in the slightest), I see that Iain Dale was listening to the radio the other day.

Earlier today Radio 4 broadcast a half hour programme on the MP expenses scandal. It is a close look at the effect the scandal had on MPs and their families. Among others, it features Nadine Dorries, Ann Cryer, Denis MacShane and Andrew George. Nadine's daughter breaks down in tears when discussing the effect it all had on her, and Nadine openly discusses the fact that she has thought about standing down.

Good. You should be pleased Iain: it doesn't look good for the Tories to have a proven liar as an MP—especially one who is happy to smear her opponents (and then try to sue people for smearing her) and who is is barking fucking mad to boot.

Unfortunately, Mad Nad won't stand down: it's just bluster.

I suspect that many people will have an adverse reaction to the programme and accuse the MPs of shedding crocodile tears and think they deserved all they got. Many did.

Yes, they did.

But several of the MPs featured in this programme were clearly driven to the edge of reason by what happened.

"But"? What's this "but"? Look, a while ago we were told that some MPs were on "suicide watch"—have we seen any suicides? No, no we haven't. It was simply a cynical ploy to try to gain the public's sympathy.

This is precisely the same: these colossal egotists just cannot stop whining about how unfair it all is and how there are going to be dire consequences, and how we need more rules, and...

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

No one cares. No one cares about your troubles because it was our hard-earned money that you were stealing. You stole our money: do you really expect us to be upset that you were slightly put out for a few days? Really?

You fucks have been repeatedly raping us up the arse, without lube, for years and years and years and you want us to feel sorry for you? Fuck. Off.

"Driven to the edge of reason"? Yes, I imagine that they were: after all, I bet that Bernie Madoff and the Enron management team were also "driven to the edge of reason"—I imagine that it is pretty fucking stressful when you have committed fraud on a grand scale and you realise that you are about to get caught. So?

The solution is not to commit fraud. Do you see? We don't need more rules, and we definitely don't need more self-pitying witterings from you slippery, solipsistic bastards. Because the solution is very simple—don't steal, don't defraud the taxpayers and don't be a disgustingly dishonest little cunt.

And if you get caught being a disgustingly dishonest little cunt—as many of you were—why don't you try employing some of that famous British stiff upper lip? At the very least, you should shut the fuck up about how you became a little upset when you realised that your crimes were about to be uncovered. Do you understand?

You were dishonest: you were caught, and you were fucking lucky not to be prosecuted—any one of us would have been. So count your lucky stars and crawl back under your rock, you thieving slugs.

I have absolutely no sympathy at all, for any of you: fuck off.

Gordon Brown + Ed Balls = bankruptcy

Ed Balls: "I'm gonna get mediaeval on yo' ass. Oh no, wait.. That's wrong. What I meant to say was: 'by the time that we've finished with the economy, you'll know what it was like to live in mediaeval times'."

Seriously, is Gordon Brown living in some kind of fucking fantasy world?

Gordon Brown is to reject warnings about the scale of the public debt and press on with high levels of spending through the recession, according to the Prime Minister's closest [surely that should be "only"?—Ed.] ally Ed Balls.

What the hell? For fuck's sake, can't some Civil Servant go over there with a bloody abacus and do some simple sums for the Gobblin' King? Y'know, and illustrate that we cannot fucking afford this!

Mr Brown's determination to boost spending on frontline services will be underlined with the launch of his much vaunted national plan for public services on Monday.

His Building Britain's Future document includes a number of proposals which will require significant Government spending.

Fucking hellski...

This will include the announcements of new funding for social housing and the recruitment of 100,000 personal tutors as part of an education White Paper.

Personal fucking tutors? I though that the education system under NuLabour was the best in the known world—what the hell do you need personal tutors for? Unless, of course, you have bollocksed up the education system which then begs the question—why the bloody hell do you think you'll be able to run a system of personal tutors, using yet more money that we don't have?

Mr Balls, the Children's Secretary, has defied suggestions from Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, that immediate action was required to check the levels of public borrowing.

Because, obviously, journo-turned-wonk Ed Balls—a creepy and undistinguished minister in the most financially profligate government in British history—is in a far better position to judge economic policy than the Governor of the Bank of England, eh?

He indicated increased spending on front line services such as schools and hospitals, and hinted for the first time that the police may also be protected from the cuts.

Yeah, well, once the people of this country wake up to the enormity of the fuck-up that you have delivered to them and their children (and probably their grandchildren), you are going to need the police on your side, aren't you?

The disclosure that ministers have little intention of reigning back on spending in the short term came as the Centre for Economics and Business Research warned that public spending was set to rise to 50 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of the next financial year.

How many different ways can I possibly say this: we cannot sustain this level of spending! No country can operate for any length of time when the government is spending more than half of the economic output!

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck fuck-fuck.

Alistair Darling, who narrowly avoided being replaced as Chancellor by Mr Balls in this month's reshuffle, was said to be planning to shield the true condition of the economy from the public in the run-up to the election by cancelling the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Treasury's biennial economic report card.

The last CSR was in 2007, but Mr Darling is said to feel that detailed forward-planning on the economy was impossible while the full impact and extent of the recession remained unclear. It is expected this will be after the next general election.

Oh. My. God. I... I... Just what the bloody hell is going on? How can these people possibly carry on spending at this rate when they know that they—we—don't have the money to pay for it?

Fucking hellski: we really are totally bastard screwed. Because Gordon Brown is living in a fucking fantasy world where al of this is somehow possible.

Fuck.