Quick links: Politicians Fail To Deliver Surprise Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, I suspect that it is.

Class of Sunny: digging a deeper hole

As usual, Sunny Hundal breaks blogging conventions (by using my real name, not my blogging identity) when attempting to reply to my earlier post.

Of course, because he doesn't want his Liberal Conspiracy buddies—most of whom are not as stupid or bigoted as himself—to realise what a tit he has made of himself, Sunny uses his race issues vehicle, Pickled Politics, to reply to my argument.

Cxxxx Mxxxxxx: raising taxes is like kicking Pakis!!

In a bid to try to gain credence for his argument, Sunny appeals to his race-based prejudices, attempting to paint me as denigrating racism. This is, of course, an ad hominem by inference and it is specifically designed to separate people into groups: there are those who think virtuously, like Sunny, and those who might support my position—who are now, effectively, designated closet racists.

In this very way, he actually proves the point that I was making about how the Left like to label people, separate them and set them at each others' throats.

I could stop there, but I won't.

There’s a hilariously dumb-headed post at Devil’s Kitchen called ‘Sunny Hundal: condoning class war. Would he be so keen on a race war?‘ – which basically boils down to libertarian idiot Cxxxx Mxxxxxx equating raising taxes on rich people to kicking the crap out of someone for being black or white.

Of course, this is not what I was saying at all. I was pointing out that, in fact, class is nothing to do with me personally, it is to do with my parents—as, in fact, is race.

I was certainly not equating "raising taxes on rich people to kicking the crap out of someone for being black or white": what I was saying was that targeting people because of what their parents are (or, more generally, because of traits that an individual cannot change) is wrong—in all cases, whether that be "class" or "race".

OK. So, my class must be defined by my parents; Sunny’s race is defined by his parents. I can no more help the income of my parents than Sunny can affect the race of his.

So, there is an equivalence: yes?

Where do you even start with such stupidity?

Heaven knows, Sunny: but I expect you'll tell us.

I suppose the concept of progressive taxation – advanced by Adam Smith himself – must be a form of discrimination against rich people because they can’t help their income. Perhaps they should complain to EHRC! Rights for rich people! Stop the discrimination!

Ah—the appeal to authority! Always a sign of someone losing an argument. To be honest, since I haven't read Smith, I have no idea what he said about progressive taxation—and I don't really care. I like to read around subjects and make up my own mind, personally, rather than parrot the opinions of others.

Of course, "the concept of progressive taxation" is "a form of discrimination against rich people": the concept of progressive taxation is that rich people should pay progrssively more, as a percentage of their income, than poor people. Whichever way you slice it, that is discrimination against rich people.

Now, many people would argue that taxing the rich more (because they need a lower proportion of their income to survive) is a good and necessary thing, and that using that money to boost the lifestyles of the poor is a virtuous thing to do. Fair enough, but that is a complicated argument and not for the here and now.

So let us leave that aside and remind ourselves of what was actually said—because I certainly didn't say that "the concept of progressive taxation" was "a form of discrimination against rich people". Because, you see, that was never mentioned in Sunny's post.

What Sunny's post was entitled was Long Live The Class War Strategy. It wasn't Long Live The Progressive Taxation On Rich People Strategy; nor was it Long Live The War On The Rich Strategy: no—it was Long Live The Class War Strategy.

The word "class" spans an awful lot more of the population than the word "rich"; it also encompasses those who are not necessarily rich, but who might be designated as undesirables according to some nebulous criteria as defined by the Labour Party—or Sunny, of course.

Oh! And here is Sunny's definition... [Emphasis mine.]

I actually pointed out what Class War strategy meant not long ago here:

The ‘class war’ is narrowly defined as being about bankers’ bonuses and higher taxes. Labour needs to expand this to include: Tories increasing IHT, deploring fairer taxes on the super-rich, their privileged backgrounds, the £250,000 “chicken-feed”, MPs “forced to live on rations”, Cameron not knowing how many houses he owned. In fact top Tory gaffes reek of how out of touch they are. Re-framing the debate would allow them to talk about wider issues than just bankers’ bonuses.

There's the phrase—"their privileged backgrounds"... It's hidden in the paragraph quite innocuously, but is does, as Sunny says, allow Labour to talk about "wider issues". Much, much wider issues.

Let us take your humble Devil, for instance: I went to Eton and had what many would call a privileged background. But now that I am an adult and standing on my own feet, I earn about the median wage.

Which class should I be in? Am I with the workers—or am I one of those evil people with a "privileged background"? If you are going to attack me for having a "privileged background" then you are not attacking what I am, but what my parents are.

And, as I have already pointed out, I can no more help that my parents are well-off than Sunny can help that his parents are Indian.

I also pointed out that rather being seen as against aspiration, New Labour should re-frame the debate as being for the deserving rich and hard-working small businesses rather than fat-cat bankers who get big bonuses for screwing up the economy.

Well, sure: absolutely. But this isn't what Sunny meant, I suspect, when he wrote Long Live The Class War Strategy. After all, he has just said that he wants Labour to focus on not "just bankers' bonuses", but on "wider issues".

Personally, as someone who has always worked in small businesses (and who was against the bank bail-outs), I am very much in favour of Labour supporting "hard-working small businesses": if you are too, Sunny, can I take it that you totally disagree with putting employers' and employees' National Insurance up by another 0.5% as Labour will do in April?

I am rather less certain about Sunny's support for "the deserving rich": who, precisely, will determine if they are "deserving"?

Is a Lottery winner "deserving", Sunny?

Is a man like Sir Alan Sugar—who has, in my opinion, spent his life selling tat to the gullible—"deserving"?

I don't think either of them are "deserving", as such—although Alan Sugar has worked harder for his money—but then I am not proposing to take away their money.

How do you define "deserving", Sunny?

I'm not just being snippy here: it's a pretty fundamental point. If you are going to declare a "class war" then you need to define "class". If you are going to declare a "war on the undeserving rich" then you need to define who is "undeserving" because otherwise you might start taking the money of the "deserving" rich.

Who decides who is "deserving"? How is this to be measured—by the quality of the goods they produce, by how hard they have worked, by whether their children are suitable for society, by whether you personally like them?

Surely anyone can see that this is a very slippery slope. But then, as I said, Sunny is after personal power: he would like nothing better to be the one who decides who is deserving and who isn't.

And Sunny would also love to be the person who defines who is one of the Desirables, class-wise, and who is Undesirable. Given how riled he gets when I insult him, your humble Devil would, no doubt, be on the Undesirables list. But then that is the danger of selecting human beings by applying arbitrary criteria.

The same would not apply here: for all that I loathe Sunny's politics and despise him as a human being, I would never advocate that he be treated differently to anyone else. And I certainly do not condone racism—as Sunny so clearly implies.

And so we come full circle, and Sunny's designation of undesirables. I asked if Sunny would condone a race war in the same way as he cheered on a class war because class often has little to do with individuals, and everything to do with their upbringing.

Had Sunny entitled his piece "Long Live The War On The Rich Strategy" I would still have disagreed with him—but I would have done so in entirely different terms. But he didn't.

And his response was to imply that I'm a racist and to do so not at the original forum, but on his race-issues vehicle. A response which was deliberately calculated, as I said, to create a false dichotomy between racists and non-racists—and not between those who drew an equivalence between traits passed down to you over which you yourself have no control.

Sunny has then tried to reframe the argument, attempting to insist that by "class" he meant "undeserving rich". Well, either he did and he's a very sloppy writer, or he didn't and tried to claim a dishonest equivalence between said undeserving rich and all those whom Sunny considers to be of a certain, undesirable class.

Either way, Sunny, it doesn't look good.

UPDATE: a commenter over at Pickled Politics posts the following:

..well DK (Mounsey) is funny, energetic and makes a strong argument, but you, Sunny, are gloomy, boring and cliched…take your pick!

In reply to which Sunny—who claims, believe it or not, to be an adult—brings out this classic playground witticism.

hey, I’d take boring than being so ugly any day!

Well, that's me told, eh? Mind you, that's Sunny making personal judgements again—would you like him to be sitting in judgement over you?

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that Sunny Hundal is a big campaigner against racism—in other words, he campaigns against people being treated differently simply on their appearance. As such, I find it highly amusing that Sunny should attempt to denigrate my arguments on the basis of my "so ugly" appearance. I wonder if Sunny would tax ugly people more...?

Fucking hellski.

UPDATE 2: Sunny replies to one or two select points over at Pickled Politics.

Secondly, Pickled Politics isn’t my “race based vehicle” – it’s where I write about identity politics. It’s a place where we consistently condemn racism.

My reply to this point was as follows:

You can have a race-based vehicle (or an identity-based vehicle) and not condone racism. Pickled Politics is, as you say, “about identity politics”: it is about assigning identities to sections of society.

If, of course, you maintain that Pickled Politics is about negating such identities, it is somewhat hypocritical for you to paint others with such identities, e.g. being of a particular class.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

UPDATE 3: Sunny replies again...

People have multiple identities according to their backgrounds, religion, other habits (feminism, vegetarianism, libertarianism) – i.e. they ‘identify’ with certain subcultures or ideologies. This could even be people who are into goth culture or love rock music.

The problem is when people are solely judged by those identities and grouped together (as in, all ‘white people behave the same’, ‘all Jews are the same’) or only seen through the prism of that one identity (assuming all Muslims behave the same), or discriminate against someone because of their race, sex, disability etc.

Do you get it now? That’s racism? Simply talking about the BNP or Asian history doesn’t make me any more history than for you to talk about British history means you’re a white supremacist.

Sunny actually has a point here, and I can see what he is getting at. However, in order to discuss identities, you need to label people with those identities—regardless of whether they accept that identity or not—which is where I think we came in...

You see, Sunny seems to assume that I am using racist in terms of "prejudice (negative) based on race" when, in fact, I am using it in the sense of "discrimination (neither negative nor positive: simply descriptive) based on race".

"Race" is, as Sunny would put it, simply another "identity": however, to write about people in terms of their racial identity is to discriminate in terms of race; just as writing about people in terms of their political identity is to discriminate in terms of politics.

In this post, Sunny explains why identity politics interests him and, again, he has a point (or several). But the perpetuation of identity politics is not a good thing.

This is why I'm a libertarian: I don't believe in basing political decisions—which are, ultimately, incorporated as legal instruments—on people's identities. I believe that everyone should be equal under the law and you cannot do that when you are making law based on religion, race, class, etc.

Mad Mahdi Bunting and the Grand Narrative of Death

Last week, the reliably Mad Mahdi Bunting wrote a particularly silly article in The Grauniad, one sentence of which was rightfully mocked by many.

But the whole article was not merely mad, but actively terrifying. At its center was the loathesome idea of the "grand narrative"—a controlling meme through which the unconditional support of the population could be enforced through ignorance and power.

Naturally, this is a repugnant idea to any libertarian—as is Mahdi's contention that "individualism" is somehow synonymous with buying more shiny shit—and it was just ripe for a truly detailed fisking in the grand tradition.

And so, in what is quite simply one of the best posts that I have ever read, Bella Gerens has not only ripped the Mad Mahdi a new arsehole and laid out why forced collectivism is so evil, she has also articulated the virtues of true individualism—rather than the fake, corporatist idea that Bunting and her evil ilk are peddling.

Do go and read it—if only to arm yourself. Because, believe me, we have already seen altogether too many "opinion-formers" cleaving to Bunting's "grand narrative", and we are going to see a lot more.

And it needs to be resisted—else it will be the last nail in the coffin of our liberty.

Slow Blogging

Once again, your humble Devil apologises for the lack of posting.

The truth is, I am feeling totally unenergised; I don't have as much time that I would like to be able to sit down and absorb the news and views of the day. Plus, my real-life work is leaving me totally exhausted at the end of every day.

As a result, your humble Devil's posts are feeling a little formulaic—to myself as much as to anyone else. The combination of these factors has meant that I am suffering from the longest spell of blogging fatigue that I have encountered in four and a half years of swearing at politicians, journos, other bloggers and assorted ne'er-do-wells.

Over the last few days, I have considered seriously—for the first time—whether it this might be the moment to retire The Kitchen.

Fear not, gentle reader: I don't think that it will happen—I am far too attached to this name, this place, and you people. Besides, I still need to vent my spleen somewhere...!

I do, however, need to take a little time to catch up—maybe even take a couple of days off work—and to reacquaint myself with the news stories, and to find some energy to write about them in a half-way satisfying manner. Even if I only take the time to fisk thoroughly—and gratuitously insult—the egregious Toynbee*.

I am going to try to do all that needs to be done at some point this weekend, but I cannot guarantee anything. Until then, I severely doubt that there will be any posts—at least by me—at The Kitchen**.

* On which subject, Juliette is most lyrical.

** Having said that, last time I announced a hiatus, I found something the very next day that utterly enraged me. It must have been one of the shortest hiatuses ever.

Defending the indefensible

(nb. I am not the Devil's Kitchen)

Fakecharities.org continues to get a reaction, sometimes positive, sometimes not so positive. Funnily enough, all the negative reviews have come from people working in the 'third sector' (fancy that). One such chopper is a chap who blogs under the name Rob Permeable. Under the rather desperate heading 'Work with us, not against us', Mr Permeable misses the point by a country mile.

It is a mixture of incredulity and depression that I feel reading the same tired, naive, and reactionary opinion I have encountered many times working almost nine years in the third sector – in new hate-blog fakecharities.org.

If you've been hearing the same opinions for nine years, how long is it going to take before you get the fucking message?  

The site sets itself up as a name-and-shame roll call of UK and international charities (yes, bona fide Charities Commission-registered non-profits) that *shock, horror* sometimes accept grants and funding streams from Government.

Funding streams? Funding rivers, more like. £3.26 billion at the last count.

The self-styled (and predictably anonymous) judge-and-jury bloggers

Rob Permeable's your real name, is it?

– so sickenengly echoing The Daily Mail editorial line that I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if was Paul Dacre in full Guido Fawkes mode – decide that any charity that accepts Government money – or indeed lobbies for change to alleviate inequalities in society – are not *real* charities.

Well, sort of, but its not either/or. In fact, they must accept Government taxpayers' money and lobby the government to make it onto the list. It's very, very easy to stay off the fakecharities directory. Fill your boots, take our money, take the fees, provide the services. You can do all this and more, but once you start using government money to lobby the government, you are compromised. If you want to get into politics, stand for election.

Well thanks for making that clear for us. I bow to your blind optimism that the national health service and state provision is adequately taking care of everything tickedy boo like.

Your hilarious sarcasm is misplaced, Permeable. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the site and its editor will be aware that we are very fucking far from being optimistic about the capability of the state to provide anything adequately. 

Even if we were, it would have no bearing on fakecharities' hall of shame because, with a few exceptions, the NGOs featured there do not provide services. They certainly don't help people. Some are pressure groups, some are think tanks. All of them, in some way, are lobby groups and - yes - I do object to being forced to fund lobby groups, even if I agreed with their politics. And since these bastards have grown fat on 12 years' patronage from a government I despise, it will come as no surprise that I absolutely do not agree with their politics.

The second, and quite revealing, claim made on the site is that charities should all be run by volunteers and should serve only to “assist the poor, the sick, or the helpless".

Not our words, Mr Permeable. They come from the dictionary. Perhaps you should read it. Under 'charity, noun' it says:

"a foundation or institution for assisting the poor, the sick, or the helpless".

And we have never said that all charities should be run by volunteers, you straw-man building butt-monkey. What we actually say is:

People tend to assume that charities are primarily funded by voluntary donations and are primarily staffed by volunteers. Because we assume them to be essentially altruistic, we give their views more weight than we would a politician or an industrialist.

Spot the difference? Professionalism is not the issue. We have never claimed that charities should be run by volunteers (although they should certainly be funded by voluntary donations). But if you've got a charity that does nothing to help anybody, that nobody wants to volunteer for and nobody wants to donate to, then why in the name of Greek buggery should everybody be forced to fund it? 

I’m sorry to break it to you but charities literally bridge the gap between over-stretched and underfunded NHS services, and damn right they should be subsidised or contributed to by these services and central Government in order to help more people. And to affect sustainable change to make sure more people are generally better off and living as independently as possible.

Again, the provision of services isn't the issue. If a charity is best placed to provide a service then the government is wise to pay them to do so. We have never had a problem with charities being paid  for services or training, which is why Common Purpose, for example, has never made it onto the directory, despite numerous requests for us to do so.

Take it from me, your money is not being wasted by employing talent to help more people, or paying the ‘leccy bills so that details of databases or valuable donors don’t get lost.

And take it from me, you condescending cunt, that my money is most certainly being wasted on Alcohol Concern's war on drinkers, Brake's campaign to reduce speed limits, ASH's vendetta's against smokers, the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health's lobby fund to push quack medicine and by War on Want's campaign to overthrow capitalism. 

Why the fuck should I be compelled to pay for a bunch of twats to go marching against free trade? Why do I have to finance neo-prohibitionists? It's not just that we can do without these people, we would actually be much better off without the bastards. 

And before you say it, yes, I also resent having to pay the wages of politicians with whom I utterly disagree, but at least I can vote to kick them out of office. And at least you know where you stand with politicians, who are widely, and quite justifiably, viewed as the scum of the earth. Charities, on the other hand, are viewed as being - for want of a much better word - nice, which is why unelected NGOs and state-funded lobby groups revel in the halo of respectability that the word charity bestows. 

And this is the real point. These NGOs/quangos/arms of government are charities for PR purposes only. They are, as Raedwald put it, the state in disguise. If anybody should be getting upset about the corruption of the notion of charity, it should be people who work for genuine charities like Rob Permeable. So why don't you, Rob, 'work with with us, not against us'? 

Neither is it a waste to motivate grass-roots movements – within the one resounding and powerful voice of a charity – to lobby for change, groom MPs to do something altruistic with their vote for a change, or persuade heads of corporate companies to offer pro bono support or staff volunteers for a local project.

Which grass-roots movements would these be, then? Where are these people who want 20 mph speed limits and more tax on beer? Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but I haven't noticed many round my neck of the woods. 

Of course, that could all change once Alcohol Concern and Brake have finished their systematic, state-funded propaganda campaigns, using dodgy statistics, fraudulent studies, bent consultations and rigged surveys. And therein lies the problem. These so-called charities exist because there is no grass-roots support for the hare-brained schemes of the political elite. They are funded by the state to create the illusion of a grass-roots movement to raise taxes and push political agendas that most people couldn't give a flying fuck about. Good God, man, can't you see any problem with the government financing groups to "groom MPs" and "lobby for change"? 

I don’t entirely buy the argument that by accepting a stream of money from one Department or lottery-stream deems it impossible to remain a critical friend or outright lobbyist to that and other Departments – and that somehow this ‘blood money’ buys charities’ silence.

Really? You seriously believe that these people won't further the agenda of their paymasters? Then let me ask you something. If a charity that is whipping up panic over the obesity 'crisis' turned out to be almost exclusively funded by pharmaceutical companies who make weight-loss drugs - would you have misgivings about them? (Yes, National Obesity Forum, I'm talking about you.) If an anti-motoring charity turned out to be funded by bus and train companies (hello, Transport 2000) - would you say that there was a conflict of interests? 

I would, and I suspect, Rob, you would too. They are quite plainly lobbyists with a vested interest. What magic process turns evil lobby groups into friendly charities when the money comes from the state rather than from industry? Or is it just that industry is always evil and government is always benign?

It's really quite simple. If you're in a charity that receives money from the government, you keep your fucking mouth shut when it comes to politics. You are a servant of the state, you owe your job to politicians and every word you say is suspect. You've taken filthy lucre from people who have no choice but to give it, you are a thieving bunch of parasites and if you had any sense of decency you would count your lucky stars and shut the fuck up.

And then comes what Permeable obviously believes to be his killer blow: 

The final irony of fakecharities.org is that it contains a ‘donate’ button accepting all major credit cards…..You mean the bloggers aren’t providing their services on a strictly voluntary basis?? Heavens…let’s hope they don’t accept cash from any MPs…Could screw their independence.

If anything confirms that the charity industry has become so hooked on taxpayers' money that it can no longer tell the difference between voluntary and involuntary giving, it is this idiotic comment. They just don't get it. They cannot see the difference between private donations and public funding. Still, I'll spell it out one more time:

Firstly, we are not a charity, nor do we claim to be.

Secondly, we are not trying to change the law, raise taxes or get anything banned. 

Thirdly, we think that voluntary giving is a good thing. In fact we think that voluntary donations distinguish 'a good cause' from a fake charity. 

Fourthly, unless DK is quietly stashing it away for the Christmas party, I'm not aware of anyone ever contributing anything. The fact that the donate button was added with the words 'more in hope than expectation' should give you an idea that we fully expected it to be clicked on even less often than the 'I am under 18' button on youporn.com. 

Fifthly, if hell freezes over and an MP decides to give us some money, we would tell them to shove it up their arse.

Okay?

Hannan rips Brown a new arsehole

As you will know, your humble Devil has a great deal of time for only a very few politicians; one of those is Douglas Carswell MP, and another is his friend, Daniel Hannan MEP.

Douglas has featured on The Kitchen many a time, and Dan... Well, just watch Master Hannan ripping the one-eyed, Scots cunt to pieces in the European Parliament and you will see why he's such good value (a tip of the horns to Guido for this)...



Might I also recommend The Plan: twelve months to renew Britain, by Hannan and Carswell, a rather well-researched book detailing how to cut the state down to size, and return power to the people through localism.

It's a very good book and your humble Devil is secretly rather proud to have his copy signed by the authors and inscribed with laudatory messages of solidarity.

Yes, I am a vain man, and flattery will get you everywhere. Or, rather, it may get you a mention on The Kitchen if you are a very good boy.

Now, I'm just going to click that button and watch Hannan rip the crap out of Brown again...

UPDATE: it seems that the fat-arsed, monocular Jock bastard just isn't very popular; via Trixy, Nigel Farage (another politician that I have time for) laid into the Prime Mentalist first...



I wonder if Gordon realises that people are more than a little fed up by his stupidity, arrogance and incompetence? Probably not so, for the avoidance of doubt, fuck you, Brown, you stupid, arrogant, incompetent cock.

UPDATE 2: Douglas Carswell explains why this couldn't happen in our Parliament.

In Westminster we’re prevented from making the kind of short, pithy speeches that hold squirming ministers directly to account by something called "tradition". Procedures for debates in SW1 make it very difficult to actually say what needs to be said. The closest you can get is a question. If you're lucky.

Indeed, most debates are reduced to bogus, formulaic ritual. The order of speaking often irons out spontaneity. Cabinet ministers invariably clear off to the tea rooms rather than listen to what anyone might want to say.

Other than the weekly Prime Ministers Questions, I'm trying to think when I've ever seen a Prime Minister speaking in the Commons in a way that would allow anyone to hold him to task the way Daniel did.

Like I've been saying, our Commons is monumentally useless at holding government to account.

This irritating politeness is one tradition that I would be happy to see abandoned. I think that, if politicians really loathed each other, in the way that people who genuinely lose their tempers at each other tend to, then we would see more interesting debates.

Oh, and Her Majesty's Opposition might actually oppose, rather than politely disagreeing over the Dispatch Box and then wandering off together for a beer in the taxpayer-subsidised bar.

Tim Lang: fuckwit of the day

Tim Lang: possessor of a pinched, mean and unpleasant face that you would never tire of punching.

Before we start on today's article, which I found via Timmy at the ASI, let us make absolutely clear that we have established Tim Lang's vested interest credentials—according to his profile at CiF...

Tim Lang is professor of food policy at City university and co-author with Erik Millstone of The Atlas of Food. He is land use commissioner on the Sustainable Development Commission and co-author of the SDC's 'Green, Healthy and Fair' report.

So, he is the kind of cunt who knits his own underwear.

Oh, no, wait: no he isn't.

He is the kind of cunt who would insist that you knit your own underwear, whilst continuing to ensure that his soft, roomy drawers are tailored in Jermyn Street.

So, you can imagine what hideous bullshit he is spouting today, the socialist whore.

World Food Day gives us all a chance to think about the state of Britain's food system and how our eating fits into the world of food. The outlook is sobering.

Only because you paternalistic cunts are trying to limit the amount that we proles are allowed to drink.

World figures on malnutrition show a rise after decades of fall.

Ah, yes: perhaps Tim is now going to mention the disastrous effect that biofuels have had on world food prices...

Yet we here in the UK are overeating our way to ill-health.

As is our choice, as adults. Food consumption isn't a complicated idea: if you consume more energy than you burn, that excess will be stored as fat.

We think of food problems such as crop failures, droughts and floods happening far away, but give less attention to how our food supply chain has a large ecological footprint.

Oy! Tim! What about the biofuels?

Calculations vary...

This is a phrase that always signals that there is a massive load of bullshit ahead...

... but if everyone ate like us, we'd need three or four planets.

For fuck's sake, Lang, this whole Malthusian nightmare has been discredited so many fucking times, you twat. Advances in food-production technology have allowed us to respond to these sorts of problems; the reason that people are starving is not solely for the lack of food per se, but because they cannot afford what food there is. And the reason why we have a (very slight) shortage and the reason why they cannot afford the food are the same: interference by state bodies have created distortions in the market.

You Green cunts are one of the very worst for this: you deplore the advancement of food-growing technologies, so creating less food. You insist that we all use vast amounts of biofuels, with the result that the land that we do have is switched to growing crops to be burned rather than eaten.

Many governments (and, most egregiously, the EU) have created these distortions and they are killing thousands of people the world over—and it is the fault of lobbying by people like you, you murdering son-of-a-bitch.

The harsh reality is, that if we don't make changes to the food system soon, a major food crisis will hit. This isn't a problem for others. It's our problem. UK politicians need to push food policy up their priority list fast.

How might they do that, I wonder? I know! They should throw oodles of cash at a "professor of food policy at City university" and probably at the "Sustainable Development Commission" too, eh?

You, Tim Lang, are just another rent-seeking bastard, aren't you? Yes, you are.

But we also need to emulate the French and US and unashamedly rebuild growing capacity here, too. It's dropping fast from a peak in the mid 1980s, when we produced 80% of foods consumed here that could be grown here. Now it's near 60%. Why are we using others' land to grow food we could grow here?

Look, you cunt, the reason that we grow less food is because we do not need to. As Timmy puts it...

It's called trade laddie. That voluntary exchange, that exploitation of comparative advantages, the division of labour that makes the modern world so stinking rich. The very thing that makes it possible for two grown men to spend their time, as we both do, pondering upon food policies rather than stooped double over a hoe in the fields growing the stuff.

But you can bet your last quid that, come the Greenie revolution, Tim will not be breaking his back over a hoe, oh no. It will be you and I doing that, whilst Tim and his mates look down approvingly from their well-heated Islington apartments; whilst we are tilling the soil, menaced by the guards' machine-guns, Tim will be guzzling his way through a bottle of Bacchus whilst producing more pointless papers on "sustainability" that are, in fact, thinly disguised totalitarian instruction booklets.

My god, but you are such a cunt.

The Treasury is fixated on reforming the common agricultural policy by which it means cutting budgets. A new initiative is needed, to create a common sustainable food policy, based around sensible land use and health.

Much as I hate to say it, Tim, the Treasury is on the right track here; if you want decent use and husbanding of resources, we need to abolish not only the CAP but also the CFP. Both of these measures—but especially the CFP—have been absolutely fucking devastating in terms of sustainability. It's because those who dictate to us have no fucking clue what they are talking about—and yes, that includes you, you moron.

The new food policy has to produce more food from less land, be more equitable and improve public health. This requires new skills and R&D; designed around sustainability.

Right. And this would involve giving you more money and power...?

Colleges of agriculture and universities ought to be central to that.

Oh yes: yes it would.

Experiments are popping up all over the UK of more local, community-based, connected food supplies.

Yes, Tim: isn't the adaptability of the market wonderful? All of these things are springing up without government help and, in all too many cases, in the teeth of state interference. Let us acknowledge the ingenuity of Man!

In our own lives we can change our eating and shopping habits. Avoiding food that takes a lot of resources to produce like meat and dairy products, and growing more food ourselves could change our food system from the bottom up.

Well, we can do that, but what is we don't want to?

But individual action is not enough.

Oh, here we fucking go...

It requires choice-editing, not personal choice.

"Choice-editing"? Fucking "choice-editing"? What the fuck is this shit? As Timmy says...

No. Sorry, but no. I'm an adult and I, like all the others who share that distinction, am entirely capable of both taking my own decisions and also of bearing the consequences of them. While you've slightly disguised your intention by calling it "choice-editing" your aim is obvious enough. You want everyone to do as you would will it, not as they, in that irritating fractious manner of free people enjoying their liberty, would. And for that, Tim Lang, you need to be assailed, even if only in a blog post.

Although it would be much more amusing to assail you in person, you totalitarian little shit. Because that is what you mean by "choice-editing", eh? Removing people's ability to make choices about their own lives: that is totalitarian, is it not?

And as we all know, Tim, that regime worked so well for sustainability in Russia, didn't it? Stalin wiped out over 50 million of his own people and the remainder still didn't have enough to eat. Mao Tse Jung did for another 100 million Chinese and the remainder still didn't have enough to eat. When will you fuckers learn that totalitarian economies don't fucking work? Let me spell it out for you again, you fucking tit.

Totalitarian economies never. Fucking. Work.

But that does bother you, Tim, does it? Because you won't be out there, labouring in the fields and starving, oh no. You see yourself in your nicely heated dacha, eating and drinking the best of everything.

Tim Lang is a dangerous cunt who should be ignored and, if he insists on pushing his worthless opinions forward, he should be actively removed. For he conforms to the Devil's first rule of those who advocate totalitarianism...

Those who advocate restrictions in people's choices always assume that they will be the ones who decide what those choices are to be. Those who advocate totalitarianism, of however mild or serious a flavour, always see themselves as the ones in power.

So fuck you, Tim Lang: fuck you right in the ear. I'm going to sharpen my cockroaches and excite my candiru fish, and then I'm coming for you, you hear? I'm coming for you...

Werner disagrees on drugs

Yesterday's post on drugs seems, generally speaking, to have struck a chord with many people; but not, however, with Werner Patels.

I have written about the legalization or decriminalization of drugs before, and I have also made my point very clear that if drugs are legalized or decriminalized, all drug users should be forced to accept responsibility for their own actions -- in other words, no taxpayer-funded needle-exchange programs and similar nonsense.

I have absolutely no problem with this attitude at all; but then I am not a believer in the Welfare State in general. Although, of course, we probably wouldn't need so many needle exchange programmes if we mere mortals were actually able to obtain hypodermic syringes anyway.

Further, I do wonder if Mr Patels would take the same attitude to, say, someone who had played truant throughout their school life and thus was one of the 20% or so leaving, after 11 years of compulsory education, still functionally illiterate. Surely, that person should be equally responsible as a drug addict for the situation in which they find themselves and thus should be denied state benefits.

I do recognize that the fight against drugs has actually helped to increase the profits for the drug lords and dealers in the world. I also recognize, however, the harm that can come from drug use -- and even marijuana has been found to be more harmful than a cigarette in many ways.

Yes, of course it is; the vast bulk of the harm associated with smoking nicotine is in the way in which it is ingested, i.e. by smoking it. Leaving aside that cannabis is a reasonably strong drug, why anyone should possibly think (and I have heard it many times from pot-heads) that marajuana or cannabis—which is usually mixed with tobacco anyway—should be healthier, I am not sure.

But the final question is, so what? What does it matter? If the user is educated and taking a free decision (you cannot make a free choice unless you realise the consequences of your actions) and their medical treatment is being supplied by themselves, then that is their choice, is it not?

But denying that addiction as such even exists is probably one of the craziest arguments I have ever heard:

Because here's the truth: almost nobody who takes drugs gets addicted to them, and very few drugs are actually addictive. Of those that are addictive, given a decent supply, they do not actually affect the day to day workings of the individual.

Oh, hello, Artie McStrawman! How are you today?

Read the quote above: I did not deny that addiction exists. That would be stupid: it patently does. I merely pointed out that the vast number of people who take drugs do not get addicted and the vast majority of commonly-used drugs are not addictive.

If only, if only. If people are not addicted to drugs, why do they keep shooting up until they OD?

I think that you will find that my statement above does allow for the fact that some drugs—and heroin is obviously one of those—are addictive. And generally speaking, heroin ODs are caused because of fluctuations in the purity of the drug; an addict is used to taking a particular amount and then shoots up, unaware, a particularly pure mix. Which is why the third strand of my drug argument was Regulate.

Why do they keep smoking a substance that, as has been confirmed by scientists everywhere, permanently impairs their cognitive skills and lowers their IQ?

Which one are we talking about here? Pot? Well, firstly, the word of scientists has very low coinage at present. Second, as I'm sure Chris Dillow would point out, people are very bad at emotionally assessing a long-term possibility. But, third, ultimately, because they choose to.

Why do smokers find it next to impossible to quit? Why do so many alcoholics fall off the wagon?

First, these drugs do not really fall under the scope of those that I was talking about, since they are already legal. Second, because the social pressure in both cases is almost certainly more of a problem than the physical addiction.

Despite people whining about how nicotine is as addictive, physically, as heroin, this is patent bollocks; to compare the screaming ab-dabs of the heroin user going "cold turkey" to the irritation and cravings that a smoker undergoes would only prove one thing: that you are a fuckwit who lacks any kind of proportion.

And alcohol is not a particularly physically addictive drug (at least not for a good long time); people start out as alcoholics because they want to escape, not because the drug itself is addictive. It does become physically addictive later on because—as with heroin or any other regularly-taken drug—the body adapts to increasing amounts of it (which is why serious alcoholics can die if they stop drinking suddenly).

The second part of the argument is also wrong: Drug use does affect the day-to-day workings of the individual -- just look at how unreliable and dysfunctional alcoholics, for example, become.

Drug use does NOT affect the day-to-day workings of the individual. Drug dependency does, yes; if you like, day-to-day drug use does affect the day-to-day workings of the individual but my point was that the vast majority of drug users DO NOT USE DRUGS EVERY DAY.

And the scale of the problem? Let's look at our old friend, Ecstasy.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service estimates 500,000 to two million ecstasy tablets are consumed each week in Britain. Last week, figures published in the journal Human Psychopharmacology showed there had been 72 ecstasy-related deaths in the UK in 2002, compared with 12 in 1996.

So, between half a million tablets and two million tablets a week; let's take an average and call it 1.25 million a week, or 65 million pills a year in Britain alone. Let's allow for three pills, per person, per week and we have some 417,000 users per week (the 2003 report cited above thinks that it is more like 730,000 in which case I would say that they are radically underestimating the number of pills taken weekly).

How many times have you seen the headline, "man loses job over Ecstasy use"? Would "never" be about right? Yes, I think that you'll find that "never" pretty much fits the bill.

And why is the Caribbean not exactly known for its economic productivity?

I'm sorry, but is this a serious question? Even a serious rhetorical question?

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, "the Caribbean not exactly known for its economic productivity" because everyone there is a fucking lazy, pot-addicted Rasta. Fucking hellski.

This is patently ridiculous: quite apart from Mr Patels' lazy stereotyping, one might then infer that Werner Patels thinks that the piss-poor economic performance of Africa is just because they are actually lying around smoking drugs. What a load of fucking simplistic twaddle.

Apart from anything else, if the population of the Caribbean are such lazy, good-for-nothing drug-addicts, why were we so keen to import them in huge numbers during the fifties and sixties?

Furthermore, it does rather ignore the fact that drugs were only made illegal throughout the course of the twentieth century; so, whilst drugs were legal in Britain, we were busy going through the industrial revolution and generally developing.

One could argue that those who took opium, for instance, weren't those producing anything worthwhile, but even that is a big load of fucking shit: here is a short list of great writers who were regular users of laudanum (and that list doesn't even mention the great Wilkie Collins either).

Legalize or decriminalize drugs, fine, but please don't feed us bunk such as this -- for this is truly worse than drugs.

Yeah, Werner, that's right: you've got exactly the right agent there. My writing that the majority of people who take drugs are not hopeless addicts is actually worse than the drugs themselves. Nice one. And the people who get there heads cut off in Iraq, it's their fault for working there, right? Definitely nothing to do with the head-hackers themselves.

Fucking hell: there are ways to argue against what I have said, but surely someone has something better than this bullshit?*

* Incidentally, my brother (somewhat surprisingly) was, when I mentioned it to him last night, violently against the legalisation of drugs. In one sentence, he actually made a more coherent and relevant point than Mr Patels does in his whole post; the sentence(s) went something like this:

So, what?—we buy up lots of cocaine and heroin and make the drug barons in Columbia and Afghanistan immensely rich and we give them legitimacy? You would end up with anarchy in those countries.

Which was a good point, I thought. My reply was that, if we did not desire to trade, we would have to manufacture the drugs ourselves. But any other opinions on this in the comments, please.

Whilst your humble Devil is presently finding it difficult to access The Hate, the poor little Greek boy has written an article on Gordon Brown and his "concensus politics" that I wish I had written myself.

The man is a liar, pure and simple - a plodding, workmanlike liar, to be sure, compared to the all-singing, all-dancing freakshow that preceded him, but a liar nonetheless. How much bile did he have to choke back to come out with that horseshit yesterday, one wonders? Will it be worth it?

Just go and read the whole thing: it is a beautiful, wondrous creation. And spot on too: Gordon doesn't give two cunts for your opinion...

Fisk of the day

While the Devil makes his weary way back down from Edinburgh, here's the Reactionary Snob doing a quite splendid job of eviscerating Polly's latest broadside at the forces of common sense:

The ICM poll's first finding that most people think the courts are too soft is no surprise. People always think judges mad when verdicts are reported with no details of the case.

Polly Toynbee having a pop at people for jumping to conclusions without any supporting evidence. If things got any more ironic the space-time continuum would warp so badly I'd end up wanting to fornicate with her.

Recent research finds people are clueless about the current tariff of punishments. But they advocate sentences that are precisely the same as the ones judges actually hand down.

And who published this research? The Nonsense Brigade? The Horseshit Alliance? The Society For The Publication of Bollocks? Most Brits are a) in favour of tougher sentences b) in favour of the death penalty c) in favour of 'lock 'em up for life' d) in favour of ripping the balls off paedophiles.

Glorious stuff - go over and enjoy...

Desktop Linux is shit

Now, via John Gruber, here's an excellent post on Linux and other "freetards" that'll have Dizzy wetting himself in frustration. Take it away Fake Steve (Jobs)!

Freetards, face facts. You've lost. You've had sixteen years to try and build a desktop operating system, and you still can't get your shit together. Nobody wants your software. It's not Microsoft's fault. It's yours. Because trust me, if you truly developed a kick-ass OS with tens of thousands of drivers and easy installation and reliable performance, you'd be winning. But you're not. Firefox caught on, right? Why? Because it rocked.

Desktop Linux, however, is a different story, and in your heart of hearts you know this. It's a bad imitation of Windows and can't even come close to OS X. Want more proof? India rejected the XO machine. Hardly anybody else is placing orders for Negroponte's miracle laptop, despite the low, low price of only one hundred dollars. Now the Chinese don't want Linux. They're not buying into your crazy crusade. Sorry. And you guys are starting to sound like the world's biggeest whiners, constantly blaming everyone around you for your own failures. You're the John Kerry of software.

Not a word of a lie, Fake Steve, not a word of a lie.

Harding of hearing

The ever reliable Neil Harding has left a comment on my recent Polly diatribe. Although I started to answer it as a comment, it was becoming so long that I thought that I would flag it up as a post. So, to kick off, here's Neil's comment...

Hi DK, dear comrade. Yeah you are right, Polly is spot on once again and I will defend her.

Even in your wonderful US of A, they only give a measly 1.5% of GDP to charity. How on earth are we to fund a decent health service, education etc out of that?

I suppose your answer is; 'lets not bother, the wealthy will be ok and the rest can go hang themselves'.

At the end of the day, this 'small government' idea just doesn't work. Inequality will cost you more as crime soars and society disintegrates. Maybe you guys will be happy living with your tennis courts and swimming pools behind electric fences as we turn into a brutal police state to keep the proles in their place (like they do in Brazil). Personally I think the Scandanavian model of 50% of GDP going to the state and a society at ease with itself is a better option.

If all this wealth accumulated at the top (96% to top 50%) was down to merit, you would have a moral position to defend but you haven't even got that. The market will always distort, people working long hours for less than a living wage, while those at the top pay themselves millions/billions for very little. To you this is all fine and dandy - well I have a message for you - most people disagree and if we had a decent electoral system you lot would have to change your ways significantly to even get a sniff of power. Until that day...I had better keep arguing with you...

(I should acknowledge at this point that, despite my less than polite posts, Neil is always unfailingly cordial in his comments. He's consistently wrong, but he always shows courtesy.)

Anyway, my answer to him?

"Even in your wonderful US of A, they only give a measly 1.5% of GDP to charity. How on earth are we to fund a decent health service, education etc out of that?"

People constantly do this when I discuss reform of the NHS too—the US is not the only fucking option. What I hope we could do is look at every system in the world and build one that is better than all of them. But even were the US model the only other option, you love your Straw Man arguments, don't you?

The US does not fund its health service out of charitable giving. The biggest buyer of health services in the US is the state.

The US does not fund its education system out of charitable giving either.

Whereas we, Neil, hand over nearly 40% of our GDP to our government and we still don't have a decent health service and we still don't have a decent education system. Why the fuck do you think that handing another 10% to the sodding state is going to make any difference?

Why do you continue to ignore illustrations like that of Raw Carrot's town?

The best bit though, is that the two local hospitals were not paid for through taxation - but through patronage, charity and paid contributions from the local community.

In fact, the larger of the two hospitals was founded in 1879. In 1882, a mortuary, ambulance house and other “conveniences” were added. In 1900 a donation of £10,000 was made by a local benefactor. Additional land was acquired, a new operating room erected and fitted with “every modern requirement” and several other improvements were made to the establishment.

A further £10,000 was left to the hospital by another gentleman and was used to found an extension to the hospital, including the installation of “a complete X ray apparatus”.

To give an idea of how wonderful this healthcare provision was, consider that the hospital was built in 1879 when the population of the town was just short of 8,000 [...] Note how, as the population increased so too did the facilities and size of the hospital. One might say the town had a health care system responsive to the needs of the local community.

Today, with a population in excess of 65,000 people we have one “real” in-patient hospital and it’s located about 12 miles away (a 23 minute car journey). It also happens to be a rather shit hospital...

Yes, the technology of healthcare has increased massively and I am unable to comment on whether the quality of the care was any good. But since people had a choice of six hospitals and they seem to have happily used them all, one can assume that it wasn't exactly substandard. In fact, the fact that they would have been competing with each other would have ensured high standards (of the time). And they were mainly funded through charitable donations.

Look at all of these very, very rich people today: why don't they give to charity to the same extent? I pointed out some time ago that it is because the state is expected to do the job instead.

[T]he inequality gap was pretty damn high in the Victorian times too. The difference was that all of the public amenities were provided by the mega-rich. The Welfare State has removed that sense of social responsibility; and not just amongst the rich. It permeates every level and strata of society. Once we abdicated our responsibilities to the state, we also abdicated our responsibility to our fellow humans.

Surely, when the mega-rich decide to give some of their money to charity, you should be applauding them? The charity will certainly spend the money far more efficiently than the state will, as Roger Thornhill points out.

The State is incredibly inefficient with our tax money. A tax £ ends up in the Treasury with the spending power of 30p it is so inefficient and bad at its job.

Charities might not be the most efficient bodies around either, but they can hardly be less so than the state. If you actually cared about the poor, you would wish that the money that goes to help them was spent in the most efficient way.

I suppose your answer is; 'lets not bother, the wealthy will be ok and the rest can go hang themselves' [...] Maybe you guys will be happy living with your tennis courts and swimming pools behind electric fences as we turn into a brutal police state to keep the proles in their place...

When have I ever extolled this idea? For fuck's sake, Neil, you don't have a monopoly on knowing what it's like to be poor. You know that I spent two years essentially slowly starving. You know that I live in fucking Brixton (actually on the border with Streatham), for fuck's sake. Try to put your mindless bigotry back in its box and address the facts, Neil.

Yes, any libertarian society has to be built on strong property rights; they are the foundation of such a society. If you don't have strong property rights, trade is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. If you want an example of this, just look at the majority of the African nations; they aren't still poor and benighted because they were exploited fifty years ago: it is because the lack of decent property rights, and the enforcing of those rights, means that no one wants to do business there. Despite the fact that many African nations have a free trade agreement with the EU and despite the fact that labour is ludicrously cheap, the corruption of their systems means that, for most businesses, it just isn't worth it. And so Africa remains poor.

But OK, let us assume that we aim for something nearer to the Scandinavian model; in fact, let's look at the Swedish paradise so beloved of you and Polly.

Look at their health and education systems; what do you see? You see the fact that they are not run by central diktat. The education system uses a voucher system—which I have long advocated.

Even, the health system is run on a local level and with a great deal of local funding.

The point is that they are locally run and they are (to a great extent) locally funded; as such they are locally responsive. A model further away from our own I can barely conceive of.

And you misunderstand the small state argument completely. Although I would prefer that taxation was lower, what really pisses me off is that our government keeps on pouring billions of pounds of our money into failing fucking systems. Our government (and this has applied to the Tories as well as to Labour) keep on pouring hundreds of billions of pounds into systems that don't even work.

Further, the direct the money in such a way that it encourages social behaviours that we don't desire. We look on single mothers as a bad thing—and all the research suggests that the most healthy environment for children is a standard two parent family. Just to spell it out, this means is that single parent families are worse for the children—yet we pay people to be single mothers.

We understand that people need to work to keep the economy going—we even know that most people actually want to work; very few people enjoy living off the charity of others—and yet we have a benefits system that provides a financial disincentive to get a job. I know that you agree with me on this one, because you (quite rightly) advocate a Citizens' Basic Income.

Our government acknowledges the problems with our system and it trys to change it through legislation or "education programmes". It attempts to discourage all of these undesirable social traits on the one hand, whilst providing fiscal incentives to indulge in this very behaviour with the other.

It is an insane situation. It's absolutely fucking insane.

If all this wealth accumulated at the top (96% to top 50%) was down to merit, you would have a moral position to defend but you haven't even got that. The market will always distort, people working long hours for less than a living wage, while those at the top pay themselves millions/billions for very little.

For fuck's sake, Neil, that is the way that the market works. Yes, some people get very rich and good luck to them. I might feel a slight dash of envy from time to time, but not enough to believe that taxing them more highly wouldn't change their behaviour. I don't believe that taxing people to satisfy my own personal morals is a good thing.

You despise religion as much as I do. How would you feel if a religious government suddenly legislated that we must all go to church on a Sunday? Outraged, I imagine. "Why", you would say, "should these nutjobs force me to comply with their personal (and insane) beliefs?"

Your desire to extort more money from those whom you deem to be undeserving of their wealth is precisely the same principle. You think that they are too rich and you believe that other people are more deserving of the money. The state should not fucking legislate on the basis of personal morals because they are just that—personal morals. And everyone's personal morality is different and so it is actually immoral to legislate on the basis of morality. Can you see that?

To you this is all fine and dandy - well I have a message for you - most people disagree and if we had a decent electoral system you lot would have to change your ways significantly to even get a sniff of power.

Who's "my lot", Neil? You know damn well that I am not a Tory. I am a libertarian and, yes, I do belong to a political party but you know what? If we adopted your precious proportional representation, my lot would actually get some Westminster MPs, which they won't—barring some miracle—under the first-past-the-post system.

And most people disagree? Actually, they don't. As the recent Rowntree Report on inequality [PDF] shows, most people don't actually care. In fact, fewer people care now than they did in the 1996s.

A third of the public (32 per cent) in 2004 agreed that ‘Government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are less well off’. This is much lower than in 1996 (44 per cent), despite the fact that levels of actual income inequality have changed little over that time.

As Tim Worstall so helpfully summarises...

Inequality hasn't changed much and even fewer people care to do something about it.

You know what? You want to help the poor? Well, stop taking their fucking money then. The fact that someone on the minimum wage pays tax is just fucking obscene as well as being insane. Gordon Brown has racheted up the Minimum Wage whilst barely raising the Personal Tax Allowance (and while we are about it, my lot are the only politicos calling for this situation to change), and he has done this so that more people can become clients of the state—because the only way that they can survive is by filling in loads of forms and begging that one-eyed bastard for some of their money back.

It's a fucking disgrace, and your willingness to defend this belies your constant whinges on behalf of "the poor". If you actually gave two fucks about the poor, you would highlight this as an absolute fucking disgrace. But you don't.

Instead, you either mindlessly toe the NuLabour Party line and bash the Tories on the strength of things that they did over a decade ago or you moan about how the rich have too much money. Fuck that, Neil, it's irrelevant: economics is not a zero sum game and that means that when people get very rich the poor do not automatically get poorer. You know this, and yet you continue to peddle your policies of hate whilst strenuously ignoring the actual plight of the poor.

This is why we libertarians hold you in such contempt, Neil; not only because you are unable to construct a decent, logical argument devoid of logical fallacies but because you don't actually give two shits about the poor at all: thus we all view you as being morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Strange Stuff takes on Neil Harding and comes at it from a slightly different angle than your humble Devil did. I particularly liked this line...

Genocide and socialism, like an ugly iron fist in a spiked steel glove.

Go and read the whole thing: it's definitely worth it.

Neil Harding strikes again*

Neil Harding: the Mouth of NuLabour. The planets are in alignment and so he is due a kicking once again.

It has been some time since your humble Devil turned his baleful eye towards the Jester of the Fifth Estate, Mouth of NuLabour and general fucktard, Neil Harding. To be sure, others, such as the inimitable Longrider, have continued to point out that Neil is a twatmonkey, but one cannot help but feel that one is banging one's head against a brick wall when one is hectoring someone who is utterly unable to appreciate a logical argument.

This stupidity is particularly pronouned today and, as usual, Neil has conflated a load of issues into one post in order to try to deflect from the fact that he is writing contradictory bollocks.

Having Children is bad for the environment.

I knew that someone would agree with me sooner or later...

Well, with billions of blogs out there, the balance of probability dictated that someone, somewhere, had to. It's taken a while though, eh?

... we have to reverse population growth (especially in the developed world where per capita emissions are so much higher) if we are to seriously tackle our environmental problems...

OK. How soon before Neil is advocating a Chinese-style rationing, I wonder?

And that means more than just climate change. We need to improve the environment for its own sake - to improve our quality of life. And inequality is also a factor, I don't think the present levels of inequality can be sustained if we are serious about reducing emissions - the richer you are the more environmentally damaging you are.

Well, this is not only a mildly disgusting argument—although it is very nice to see an enviro-fascist stating precisely what the aim of the climate change movement is, i.e. to make everyone poorer, a position which sits well with Neil's almost-Communist socialism—but it is also untrue.

Were Neil to go down to his local garage and deign to speak to a filthy mechanic who does emissions-testing on cars and ask him which pollutes more—a 1.2 litre car from the early 80s or a massive fucking brand new 2 litre Chelsea Tractor—Neil might find himself surprised by the answer. The answer is, of course, that the older car actually pollutes more because, first, engines were not as clean and, second, that age severely affects efficiency.

Now, ask youself: who is more likely to own a battered, old 1980s 1.2 litre crap-car: a well-off middle-class person or a poor person? Yup, you've got it: the poor person.

There are, of course, other factors to consider in an energy lifestyle, but what is true for cars is also generally true of electrical goods: the newer an appliance, the more energy-efficient it is. And it is not the poor who are going to own the newer appliances.

All this middle class ownership of hybrid cars, recycling and careful shopping is all very good but their higher consumption overall has to be tackled if it is not just to be window dressing - like Cameron - good PR but no substance.

Given that hybrid cars have been shown to be rather less green than a decent, modern pure petrol car, it is indeed window-dressing.

Please note though, that Neil does realise that it is the middle-classes who are being accommodating here and yet it is still not enough for this fucking socialist retard: he wants to make them poorer as well. Does Neil want to make the poor poorer? Does he address their consumption? No, no he doesn't. Because, you see, the poor are all saints.

So far people have not got serious about climate change, some people of course just deny it exists at all.

Ah, Neil loves a straw man: I don't deny that the world is getting warmer but I do deny that man has any significant role in this warming; further, I do not subscribe to the predicted catastrophes because the world has been warmer than it is now, and the human race not only survived: it prospered. And—damn!—we are a lot more adaptable now than we were in the Middle Ages because, you see, we are richer.

Even if they were right (and they are not right)...

Um, quoting The New Scientist's "debunking of climate change myths" is not terribly helpful. As requested by Neil, I did address the first of their articles and showed it to be at the least flawed and, at worst, flagrantly dishonest (at some stage, I am going to go through the articles one by one and show the flaws, with links to documents).

And, as I have repeatedly pointed out, any publication that still wholeheartedly embraces the utterly dishonest Stern Review simply isn't worth the attention of anyone serious about science.

...we should still reduce consumption and lessen inequality as the best way to improve quality of life.

Really? So how does making people poorer and restricting what they can do "improve quality of life", Neil? Let me repeat that, Neil, you fuckwit: how does restricting people's quality of life actually improve their quality of life, precisely?

And what is the point of lessening inequality? Don't you actually mean that you would like to tax high-earners in order to make the poor richer? But if you make the poor richer, won't they become higher consumers thus damaging the environment?

Er, yes.

In the war years we had rationing and people had less possessions.

The word you are looking for is "fewer", Neil: "fewer possessions."

Yet more equality had a strange effect - it improved everyone's happiness.

Yes, Neil, but people like to reminisce. But developments are like scientific inventions: you cannot uninvent them. You can't take away people's desire for a fridge now that we can actually have them!

People said they were much happier then...

"People" are not reliable evidence. Eeeee, I remember when this were all fields...

...their health improved dramatically (admittedly from a very low base)...

Yes, Neil, that low base bit is really very important.

- but isn't this more important than just chasing more and more products that we are persuaded we need when we don't.

Ah, yes: people don't want possessions, they are just "persuaded" that they do. Because, from the point of view of people like Neil, people cannot actually make choices for themselves; they are brainwashed by advertising, they cannot make decent choices and that is why the state must make those choices for them. What a disgusting little man you are, Neil, you thief of ambition, you denier of rational thought: you reduce humans to the level of animals, you horrible little statist.

We cannot afford to ignore the environmental costs of things anymore - I do think we can get round this - but it will need carbon rationing not just 'green taxes'.

But, Neil, green taxes are designed to bring about carbon rationing. Of course, they will make a lot of poor people poorer, but this is for the greater good, isn't it, Neil? This is for the future of the species, Neil, and if the poor get poorer, well, they will at least reduce their carbon footprint, eh?

In fact in some ways we are less green now than we have ever been (For example, I remember how glass bottles were valued and recycled in the past - milk floats collecting them and getting a deposit to take them back to the shop).

Yup, that is because it is now more expensive—for which read, "consumes more resources and is thus more environmentally damaging"—than using new ones.

The easiest way to reduce carbon emissions is to reduce the population.

Well, yes, that would do it. In which case we do not really need to reduce individual consumption, eh? We just reduce the number of individuals. Can baby rationing be far away?

It does make me laugh when the same people on the 'right' who voice their concerns about overcrowding and immigration are usually the same ones who oppose abortion and call for 'English' people to have more children. They quite obviously are just closet (or not so closet) racists.

Come on, Neil, you get that straw man set up for us, go on.

Their policies would mean more overcrowding and lower quality of life as inequality widens (they even oppose house building despite growing demand that will leave many homeless or in squalid conditions. Where is their laissez faire capitalist ideas when they drag their feet over planning applications or call for tighter immigration or for that matter where are their morals when they stop people having a home?)

Neil, their policies do not stop people having a home. They might mean that people cannot own a home, but that is not the same, is it? Owning a home is not a necessity, you know; it isn't like water or food, people will not die if they don't own a home.

Besides, you fuckwitted moron bugger, building more houses will have a higher environmental cost and you are trying to reduce that, remember? Fucking hell! but you are thick: are you seriously unable to keep your logical argument going even half-way through one blog post?

What you should be advocating is that we stop all house-building and demand that people start sharing houses and that all properties become effective communes. Would this "improve quality of life"?

What we reallly need is abortion on demand. Making women jump through bureaucratic hoops to get an abortion is currently helping no-one. It justs mean more late abortions, more unwanted children with poor quality of life, more crime and more distress and unneccesary guilt placed on women by religion and vindictive moralising right wingers.

I agree with you, as it happens, Neil. However, there are many libertarians who wouldn't, who argue that the unborn child's right to life trumps the consequences to the mother. I am not one of those people, but the bonus of these "bureaucratic hoops" is that people really think about what they are doing. They are terminating the life of a human being and whilst I support their right to do so (up to a certain point of development), I do think that people should not do so casually: that they should realise the enormity of what they are doing.

Then there is immigration. Firstly yes an admittance that immigrants in this country will consume more and emit more carbon than if they stop home - but they will also send home remittances that reduce poverty, inequality and ultimately slow population growth which have a much bigger impact in the opposite direction.

But they will make those at home richer and then they will also consume more carbon and become more polluting than they would be in poverty, Neil. Is this good? Aren't you trying to reduce carbon consumption, you idiot?

Basically, education of women is the key and this is something the developed world needs to grasp. We also need to promote contraception (yes promote) in the same way Mcdonalds promotes hamburgers and that means educating children BEFORE they are likely to have sex - not afterwards. We need more sex education not less and as Holland shows this actually is likely to increase the age when people first have sex.

It's nice to see that you agree with me, Neil. But it is not just women we should be educating, you know; we need to educate men too: they too need to take some responsibility for their actions. As the old adage goes, it takes two to tango. Or produce a baby, for that matter.

At the moment the market (through films and some other media (usually the same media that bemoans a drop in morality) promotes sex rather than contraception.

Yes, Neil, because when people go to the cinema to see a film embracing a glamourous fantasy, they don't want to be moralised to and lectured at. Any film that did so would be a massive flop and the market dictates that such films will not be made.

Or would you make a film promoting contraception and then make it illegal for people not to watch it? Actually, you probably would, you statist cunt; in fact, you'd probably strap them down with their eyelids pinned open, a la Clockwork Orange.

There needs to be direct graphic examples of people with sexual diseases - people should be shown horrific images of people suffering such diseases, be given the probabilities of catching them and the problems they cause.

Visual depictions of these diseases are somewhat difficult in this country because... er... we can cure them. Someone has to be in advanced tertiary syphilis before their fingers and nose start failing off; up until that point you can't really get enough graphic images.

It is ironic that Neil should display such ignorance of STDs whilst advocating that others be so educated.

They also need to be shown directly the responsibilities and difficulties of having children - financial, social etc.

Such things are done on a small scale (getting the local 12 year old mother in to lecture her classmates, etc.): but, how, precisely, does one show such effects? And, of course, the financial remittances for having a child in this country are rather tempting; I shall return to this topic in due course.

Sex education can put people off sex and especially unsafe sex. We need a campaign as high profile as drink driving (if not higher profile). The sooner we get away from stigmatising and moralising people the better - the right-wing media and parties and religions have a lot to answer for.

But, Neil, the drink-driving campaign works precisely because it does stigmatise those who drive whilst drunk, as Vernon Coaker pointed out recently.

"I think attitudes have dramatically changed in relation to drink-driving and smoking - we need to have that same sort of discussion and debate around binge-drinking as well."

His point is that drink-driving, and to an extent smoking, have become socially unacceptable; in other words, those who do it are stigmatised. This is what you want for those who have babies?

As well as destroying people's lives they could also be destroying future human chances of remaining on this planet.

Children destroy people's lives? That's a very interesting point of view: perhaps we should teach it in school.

"Well, kids, welcome to the class. I am here to tell you that every one of you destroyed your parents' lives. You are not little bundles of joy, you are harbingers of misery."

And if people don't have children, then that is going to, y'know, mean the end of people on this planet anyway, isn't it? Or would only state-sanctioned couples be allowed to have children, Neil? And for the rest: state enforced abortion? You could be there, as the foetus is scraped from the wombs of the poor, preaching about how it is "for the good of the planet and the human race as a whole".

Besides, population growth in this country has been minimal. In fact, were it not for immigration, our population would actually be dropping. Neil rather dodged away from this, getting mired in his remittances argument, but can we assume that Neil opposes immigration?

How novel: a Lefty opposing immigration—I thought that position was reserved for the hang 'em and flog 'em right-wingers that Neil's always knashing his teeth about.

I suppose given the religious proficies, some of them are quite looking forward to the end of the world, nutters the lot of them!

Wow! Finish on a non-sequitur, why don't you? I won't point out that this warming is hardly the end of the world because it seems slightly pointless. However, I will point out that we have not actually seen any further warming since the 1998 peak.

Even then, as the top graph shows, data from the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, charted from 1979 until October 2006 demonstrate that global temperatures have flattened out over the past five years.

The more accurate NASA satellite data, however, are even more striking. These, recording lower air temperatures, show that there has been no warming since the global peak in 1998. Far from having risen, global temperatures have in fact stabilised.

As science writer, John Ray, points out, since the effects of reduced solar radiation may be lagged, the influence concerned may take some time to show up. One reason for this, he argues, is the vast reservoir of heat, CO2 and much else that girdles the earth: the ocean. It takes some time for a surface temperature variation to show up in the amount of heat stored in the ocean.

His view is that, when the recent drop in solar output works its way through all the systems - such as the ocean - we might expect global cooling. It is cooling, he suggests, that the solar data suggest as imminent, not warming.

Whoops! I'm looking forward to this (except, of course, that I am wrong).

Anyway, having fisked Neil's article, I want to turn to another inconsistancy. Because, you see, Neil is a statist and supports benefits for the poor. These benefits that he supports include, presumably, child benefits and, as we all know, incentives matter. And what incentives they are!

A few nights ago I decided to try and figure out how much money a lone teenage mum could get if she “fiddled it” just right. So, after sifting through Directgov (that delightfully orangey-yellow Government “portal”) I totted up the total and was disgusted.
...

Yep. Who would have thought: £18,441 per annum. To earn that much as an income tax (and National Insurance) payer you’d need to be earning £25,000 based on my calculations and supported by this online calculator.

All of this is, of course, added to the other benefits received, such as jumping to the top of the council housing queue, etc. The net result is that these benefits actually provide incentives for people to have children. Surely it is rather difficult to show "the responsibilities and difficulties of having children - financial" when, in fact, the financial consequences are not actually all that bad?

Now Neil believes that those evil Tories just want to do down the poor by cutting their benefits, etc. But Neil also wants to reduce the numbers of people who have babies in order that we might save the planet! What to do, what to do?

So, Neil, here's a question for you: do you support the removing of incentives for having children? In other words, Neil, do you support the abolition of child benefits?

If you say "yes" there may be hope for you yet. If you say "no" then you are precisely the fuckwit that I always thought you were: the difference this time is that you are condemned out of your own mouth keyboard.


* Typical public sector fecklessness.