French strikes a triumph of emotion over reason

The ongoing strikes in France, led by left wing unions and student groups, are opposing the raising of the minimum retirement age in France from 60 to 62.  If you read Idiot Savant you'd think the Sarkozy administration plans are about funding tax cuts for the rich.  If you take off your economically illiterate red coloured glasses you'd learn that it is actually about starting to confront the economic reality that the French Government cannot perpetually run budget deficits, like it has for several decades.  

If nothing was to be done, by 2050 two working age French people would be paying the retirement income of one.  With public debt set to hit 337% of GDP by then (it is 80% now), France will make Greece look like a mild defaulter.  

Of course in the world of the "see no fiscal reality" left, you simply put up taxes.  The legions of young people protesting in favour of protecting pensions shows the ignorance that can so easily be spread, few realising that they will have to pay far more taxes than those who are currently at retirement age, to pay for those who will retire when THEY are in their 50s.   

The reason why this is happening is the ponzi scheme madness of government funded pay as you go (PAYGO) pensions.  The same crisis would exist in the UK, if the retirement age was not to be increased.  In New Zealand the same crisis will occur as well, only partly covered by Dr. Cullen's socialised "fund" designed to invest tax revenue for retirement rather than just operate a PAYGO system.  The United States has this crisis writ large as well.  

The only way these schemes can be sustained is by reducing what is paid, increasing the eligibility age and increasing the tax contributions of those who might not get anything out of it.   A better way would be to simply freeze schemes at their current nominal level so that the total amount paid out erodes over time, but it also enables tax cuts to be implemented over time as well.   If people invest their own money in retirement income rather than the state spending it (or "investing" it), there is a greater pool of savings, more capital for private sector growth and a sustainable basis for retirement income.  

However in France, socialism is ingrained in "being French" say some.  It is an attitude that also infects the European Union, but one that cannot deft reality forever.   People in France might observe that GDP per capita in real terms for that country is now drifting towards that of Greece and Spain, not the UK and Germany.   I suspect the French appetite to do anything substantive to stop that relative decline remains low.

Where did the Liberal part go?

In the midst of the announcements of slender cuts to public spending in the UK, came the news that the government is to proceed with Labour's plan for data on every phone call, website visit, text message and email in the UK to be stored for one year.   Unlike Labour, which wanted the government collecting it on its own database, the Con-Dem coalition will impose the obligation on internet service providers and telecommunications providers.  The emails and text message details wont include the content, but it is still a big brother state seeking to have the capacity to engage in surveillance of anyone it wishes.   It is one thing to get a warrant to monitor the communications of a suspect, another to make private providers keep such records.  After all, what does a website visit tell anyone other than what someone may be curious about (does visiting an Islamist website make someone a sympathiser?).

The Liberal Democrats claimed that they would bring a commitment to individual freedom and a belief in a smaller state to this coalition.   It would appear that this has been stomped on by the jackboot of the Home Office and the obsessive paranoia of the law enforcement sector which always errs on the side of less freedom.

British government cuts modest and unimpressive

Finally it's out.  The Report of the comprehensive Spending Review was released by Chancellor George Osborne, and the result?  Well it's a bit mixed.

The real effect is to cut government spending to levels seen in 2007.  Hardly radical.

The cuts are spread over the next five years and are a £83 billion reduction compared to the Gordon Brown budget.  What does that mean?  Well it is actually only a £28 billion reduction in real terms (taking into account inflation).  From a total budget of £697 billion, it is a reduction of only 4%!  In nominal terms it is a £41 billion increase in spending.  In effect the increase in nominal spending has been cut by two-third.   Brutal cut?  I think not.

So the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the statists of the left is unjustified.   In this period, spending on interest on debt (in other words the price of the past decade of overspending by Gordon Brown) climbs 46% (nominally) to £63 billion per annum by 2015.   9% of all government spending in 2015 being just the interest on servicing debt.  That's more than the total education budget (but deficit spending is caring didn't you know?).

The welfare state isn't being decimated either.  The estimate is that total spending will be increasing in nominal terms from £194 billion today to £214 billion by 2015.  That's over £3,500 for every adult and child in the UK! 

The lie is that it is about hitting the poor.  It is actually mostly about hitting civil service bureaucracy, with 500,000 "jobs" being scrapped over 5 years.

So what is good?

- The appalling "Department of Business, Innovation and Skills" gets a 30% cut in real terms over 5 years, primarily by ending its funding for universities (universities being free to set fees from students to make up the difference).  It also loses £400 million in administration.  Its government science funding is frozen.   Government university funding is not solely from this source, but this is a wholesale shift from predominantly state funding to predominantly student funding.   This is a worthwhile step.

What is tolerable?

- Welfare spending only gets a slowing of growth.  A single benefit is to be created, means tested, staggered to encourage work over welfare and to be cut for those with savings over £16,000.   Already announced cuts to abolish child benefits for those on the top 15% of incomes, and capping total welfare anyone can claim to the average wage.  The pension age drips up to 66 by 2020, hardly radical.  Yet child benefit will still be spent on children until age 19.  Increases in winter fuel allowances will be made permanent and remain for people on all incomes.  Free bus passes and TV licences for the elderly remain.  Pension increases will be linked to the highest of inflation, wages or 2.5%!  In short, welfare is being tinkered with, but the welfare state remains big and strong.  

- The Department for Communities and Local Government gets a 7% cut in real terms over 5 years.  The big saving is in council housing.  New council housing tenants will face rents of up to 80% of market levels, but existing council housing tenants face no change in rental conditions.   It will stem demand for council housing, but is intended to subsidise construction of 150,000 more state owned homes over four years.  So the role in housing isn't being cut back much  Council tax is frozen for a year, because the state will be subsidising it! Funding for "social care" (essentially care homes and support for the elderly) gets a £1 billion increase over 4 years.  Not much excitement here.

- The Department of Education and Skills gets a 11% cut in real terms over 5 years.   This involves a one-third cut in administration, 60% cut in capital budget and abolition of quangos.  The £30 a week bribe to teenagers to stay at college after 16 is being scrapped in favour of targeted bribes.  However a "pupil premium" will be increased to subsidise poor children to go to better schools.  Teaching salaries and expenditure wont be seriously affected.  Education largely holds its own outside the tertiary sector.

- The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gets a £700 million cut over 5 years, from a one third cut in administration, two thirds of its quangos are to be abolished, with cuts in funding for nature reserves, flood defences and biosecurity (all of which will have to fund themselves more).  

- The Home Office gets a 27% cut in real terms over 5 years.  This means a 20% cut in funding of local police forces from central government (although the locally funded share means the effect is less dramatic).  The UK Border Agency gets a 20% cut in real terms (which either means more efficiency, longer queues at Heathrow or less control of illegal immigrants or all of the above!).  Home Office civil servants spending are cut by one third.   The capital budget is cut by 49%.  Why tolerable?  Because it continues to fail to confront real crime to tackle the social disaster of parts of the country that are controlled by yobs.   The Home Office is a bloated centre of ever increasing control

What is disappointing?

- The Ministry of Defence faces a 5% cut in real terms in five years, but its story is deserving of the cliche "travesty".   Reconnaissance aircraft (Nimrods) will not be replaced, the Harrier and Tornado fleets will be scrapped early.  All three forces will lose soldiers, sailors and aircrew, but more welcome is the cut in 25,000 civilian personnel.  Tanks, ships and artillery are being scrapped.  The Ark Royal aircraft carrier is scrapped, and one of the two new aircraft carriers (being built which are more expensive to cancel than build) will be mothballed within three years.   Aircraft carriers wont have any British aircraft to operate on them after the Harriers are scrapped, until 2020 if the Joint Strike Fighters proceed.  The replacement for the Trident submarine based nuclear deterrent is deferred until after the next election.  The short of it is that the UK could not repeat the Falklands conflict if it needed to, and could not match the commitment it had originally for Iraq or Afghanistan.   The UK is stepping back from its ability to project military power.   What is particularly frustrating is to have unfunded aircraft carriers ordered without aircraft able to use them.  The MoD screwed up, the Brown government didn't spot it, and so one reaps the rewards of a state focused not on its core, but on too many issues at once.

- The Department of Energy and Climate Change (which frankly could be closed) will have a 5% per annum cut over 5 years.  Why disappointing?  Well it includes a "Green Investment Bank" worth £1 billion to fund gold-plated energy projects like offshore wind farms, £1 billion to fund carbon capture and storage, £200 million to fund low carbon electricity.  The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority gets an increase in budget, to support the policy of allowing new nuclear power plants.  People will get subsidies for generating their own electricity in environmentally friendly ways.  Grants for insulating homes get cut 63%.  

- Health was always not to be really affected.  Given estimates of inflation, it will face a 1% cut in real terms, but the NHS itself gets a 0.5% real increase.  As it had a 50% increase in funding in real terms over the period of the last government, this is hardly going to hurt.   More is to be spent on social care, cancer drugs, three new hospitals are to be built.  Administration is to be cut by a third, with eight health quangos abolished.  10 health authorities and 150 primary care trusts are to be abolished. With £109.4 billion spending this year, this is an area where scope for efficiencies would be enormous, and to ration demand for a system that is "free at the point of use" (generating waste from appointments not kept and the worried well).  One curiosity is abolition of a £75 million programme to promote healthy eating and drinking.   The world's biggest health bureaucracy continues.

- The Department for International Development means foreign aid. It is being increased by 43% in nominal terms over five years.  Administration cost are to be cut by 50% and foreign aid to Russia and China terminated, but this increase helps fund bilateral aid, the UN, the EU and other multilateral agencies.   By 2013 0.7% of the UK's GNP will be spent on state foreign aid, a UN target.  A transfer from the middle class of the UK to the upper classes of the third world.  

- Ministry of Justice is cut by 26% in real terms over 5 years.  Why disappointing? Because it effectively means cutting spending on prisons without a commensurate abolition of victimless crimes.  Less prison places, court closures and reductions in legal aid.  Without a comprehensive strategy to focus law and order on real crime, there is every risk that this results in the public being less safe.  Again, a core role of the state being distracted by everything else.  The potential is there for this to be positive, but there is little sign of this.

- Department for Transport is cut by 13%, but spending on grand rail projects like Crossrail remains, and the road budget is being used for some high value projects (but still remains hopefully inadequate compared to the revenue collected from road users).  Rail remains addicted to the state tit, and there are few signs of moving roads to the private sector.  

So let's not get excited.   Government spending is being sent in the right direction, but not by much.  The welfare state, health and education largely get unaffected (with university spending being hit the most), everything else is more about tweaking spending and cutting much bureaucracy.  On the downside, the core roles of defence, police and justice are hit significantly, but it is unclear whether this has long run effects on Britain's military capability and whether law and order will be seriously affected.

So no, it isn't the catastrophe the state addicted left will claim, and it is hardly enough to get a libertarian excited.  Keep calm and carry on.

What can undo the Tea Party in the US?

When the positive push for less government gets tainted and polluted by idiots like this.

Let's be clear, the Tea Party movement has core values and principles that are undoubtedly libertarian and pro-freedom.  In and of itself it promotes small government, free markets and fiscal responsibility.    The fact that some Republicans have actually taken it upon themselves to embrace what are the core values and principles of the United States of America is positive.   It is frightening the silver spoon socialists like Nancy Pelosi, who hasn't seen a problem she didn't want the government to fix.

It has perplexed President Obama who is astonished that only two years after he won off the back of a euphoria of incredibly vacuousness ("change" I'll give you "change") he isn't getting "credit" for introducing compulsory health insurance, bailing out failed banks and automotive manufacturers and spending billions of dollars that are not being raised in taxes.

The Democrats are lost between being amazed that so many Americans are embracing the small government message, disappointed that Barack Obama has not parted the sea, healed the sick, rebuilt the economy and "changed" everything for the better, so have resorted to accusing the Tea Party Movement of racism (the cheap instant slur thrown about with such abandon that it demeans those who fought true racism).

So it is an opportunity, yet it is one that is so readily squandered in the hands of Christian conservatives who seek to use the state to promote or enforce their own beliefs.

There is no majority in the United States of Christians who want the Federal Government to promote religion in schools, to regulate behaviour between consenting adults or restrict freedom of speech.   Indeed those like O'Connell who dare to question whether the United States is a secular liberal democracy will do far more damage to the Tea Party Movement than anything else.

For the "wingnut" religious right in the US will vote Republican in any case, but by associating the Tea Party Movement with religion it alienates swinging voters who find religious fundamentalism distasteful, but who agree with small government, free markets and fiscal responsibility.

Yes some imbecilic parents want their children to be taught that the pseudo-science of creationism is "as valid" scientifically as evolution.  The appropriate answer to that is to privatise education, so that schools can set themselves up as they wish and teach as they wish, so the state is not involved.   The answer is not to confuse beliefs in the supernatural with the state.

It is why the likes of Sarah Palin can not be the Presidential candidate for the Republicans in 2012.  She does not consistently believe in small government (she believes in the war on drugs for starters,and she has lobbied for earmarked pork funding from the Federal Government for Alaska) and she cannot help but get tied up in linking religion to public policy (by claiming war in Iraq was part of "god's plan").  

The Tea Party can be a great force for good, but it will be undone only by two types of people, the religious right who want it to be a proxy for an agenda that is anything BUT about reducing the size the government, (and so frightening off moderate Christians, and non-Christians to the Democrats or not voting at all) and (more likely) the sleazy, pork barrel carrying, power hungry statists who have dominated the Republican Party for decades.

Sarah Palin is in both camps, she finds it difficult to separate her religion from her publicly expressed political views and has also shown herself to be part of the establishment (as well as being far from bright).

I am wishing the Tea Party the very best in the mid-terms, if only because it will send a message to the Republican Party, and because the Democrats will have no way of confronting it other than attack (how can they embrace a movement that runs contrary to all they say and do).  However, it cannot and should not be a hostage to imbecility or those for whom the phrase "Christian theocracy" doesn't send chills down their spines.

Spending cuts do not take money out of the economy

It's so abundantly simple that it shouldn't need explaining, but the Adam Smith Institute hasn't done a bad job:

"The error is in seeing the government as being external to the economy, with spending coming as manna from heaven. In fact, government money does not come from nowhere – barring simply printing money to pay for spending (which obviously does not increase actual wealth), government spending money can either come from taxes or borrowing."

Anyone can see that taking it from taxes is a transfer from the private sector to the state, and simple redistribution.  If this generated wealth, then North Korea would be beating South Korea.

How about borrowing though? Surely that's bringing money in?

"Government borrowing comes from private savings, crowding out private borrowers like entrepreneurs and investors. By diverting money away from businesses and entrepreneurs, who can use it to create commercially-valuable projects, wealth is squandered on projects that are unproductive such that only a government. If they were productive, why would it be necessary to tax people to pay for them in the first place?"

 

Now some make the argument that governments can make productive investment, in certain infrastructure where the private sector is prohibited or crowded out.  This can be true if the projects selected are high value, but this is only a second best option and only reflects the failure to allow market signals to incentivise the private sector to enter such markets (the best example is with roads).   

Yet neither in the UK, nor in the US (nor New Zealand) is such deficit spending about roads, it is about consumption.

This is why eliminating deficit spending is positive for economies.   It gets the government out of competing with private businesses for borrowing (of all sizes), so it reduces the cost of borrowing.  As government debt is typically seen as one of the safest "investments" (nothing like lending to someone who can extract repayment by force from its subjects), reducing the supply of such debt will induce financial institutions to look elsewhere for returns.

After all, Japan has been deficit spending now for over a decade, and the results have remained lacklustre. 

Keep calm, the cuts are going to be pitiful

A "reckless gamble" says the Shadow Chancellor. The Marxist Trade Union Congress says the cuts will be "huge".

The full details will be announced in two days time, but we already know how much the total value will be as the Emergency Budget foreshadowed the amount earlier this year.

The Adam Smith Institute has analysed what was forecast, although it has forecast inflation being 2-3% (when it is closer to 5%) and the overall cuts will be only 4.2% over five years.

Even the Guardian's handy public spending guide demonstrates that after the forecast cuts, the size of the British state as a proportion of GDP will be about the same as when the Atlee Labour Government lost power (after creating the NHS). It will not be the lowest since WW2, which was shared by the mid 1950s under Eden and the late 90s under Blair (the first term of which was characterised by fiscal restraint). 

So let's not get excited.  Schools wont close down, hospitals wont close, nobody is going to starve, the only people who will get less welfare are those on middle to higher incomes and precious little of the state sector is getting cut back.    

The only reason noise is being made is because so many have been enjoying the growth of the state tit in the past decade that they find it hard to accept that the money to keep this up simply does not exist.

Labour's land policy can be extended

Labour Leader Phil Goff today announced that given the warm reception of his policy against foreign own land and businesses that he would apply the principle more generally.

“Given that foreign investors can often have a pernicious, non-Kiwi way of looking at land and infrastructure operations, we understand that only the Tangata Whenua, meaning not only Maori but non-Maori Kiwi blokes and blokesses know how to treat land as more than an investment, but a link to the nation and the people. This link isn’t just across Aotearoa but is local too, so I have decided to announce that Labour will restrict sales of South Island land to South Islanders only.

For many years now more and more farms, businesses and infrastructure in the South Island has been owned predominantly or exclusively by North Island companies and individuals. These people do not have a direct link with the land, and are less likely to appreciate the cultural, economic, social and environmental sensitivities involved. The Queen Street Farmer with properties in Otago must come to an end.

The inflation in prices that this allows has been rampant, so I will institute a policy that such sales will only be allowed if they are in the interests of South Islanders.

Given the wisdom of this approach, I intend to empower local authorities to institute similar such rules, so that the people of Hamilton do not face Aucklanders buying up properties and shutting them out of the market. Similarly, the overpriced Kapiti housing market will be set free by keeping Wellingtonians out.”

He continued:

“There are big North Island buyers with money to burn who want to control and own the supply chain for food production. Instead of adding value to production in the South Island, they could decide to do it in the North Island.

That would cost the South Island jobs.

They’re going from the North to the South Island to buy what’s currently South Islanders’ and they will be doing it more often.

South Islanders are more vulnerable as land values fall.

We are at risk of our land being priced on a national market beyond the reach of South Islanders.

When South Islanders have to compete against North Island buyers, we have to ask ourselves - what will happen if the prices paid lock us out of owning our own land?
Where does it end up if we say to ambitious young South Islanders that you can only buy into our best and productive assets if you come from the North Island or you are born into a wealthy family.

That is not the South Island I want.

No North Islander has the right to buy South Island land - it is a privilege.
It is a privilege we have granted too easily.

Today you have my commitment that Labour will turn the rules on selling land to across Cook Strait on their head.

We’ll guarantee that South Islanders’ interests are put first.

We will reverse the presumption that any North Island purchase of South Island rural land is good for South Islanders.”

He continued to explain that he would be consulting on whether to first restrict inter-electorate sales of land ("can't have those Cantabrians buying West Coast land willy nilly can we?") or inter local authority sales ("Carterton for Cartertonians"!), noting that local authorities themselves may decide to impose more local restrictions if need be.

"Parnell for Parnellians, Miramar for Miramaranians, Taradale for Taradalians" he could be heard banally crying out.

He noted finally that this policy was in alignment with the great philosophy of self-reliance of Juche, adopted from Pyongyang.

Where and when will North Korea's future new leader be born?

Why ask such a question?  Wasn't he seen recently in public with his dad Kim Jong Il?

Well yes.  However, when and where was he born? 

Daily NK explains that none of this is new.

Confused?

Well there is NO official birthday, birth year or birth place for Kim Jong Un, yet.   However, some sources in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) claim that this is being manufactured at present.  

It goes like this:

Kim Song Ju (Kim Il Sung after 1935) was born 15 April 1912 at Mangyongdae near Pyongyang.  His birthplace is a national shrine, although the authenticity of almost all of it is questionable, debate about his birthday, birth year and birth place is largely closed.

Kim Jong Il was born 16 February 1941 at Vyatskoye Russia.  This is where it gets interesting.   The official story is he was born 16 February 1942 at Mt. Paektu in Japanese occupied Korea. The earlier date and location are proven by Soviet records and other historical accounts.  Even the DPRK once published his birth year as 1941 well before Kim Jong Il had any political role. 

Why change it?

Firstly the change in location is the most important point.  The official history of Kim Il Sung is that he was an anti-Japanese revolutionary fighter (true on the face of it) who helped lead the Korean people to remove the Japanese Imperial Army from the Korean Peninsula (far from the truth).  To support this myth it can't be said that Kim Il Sung in 1941 (or 1942) was actually in the USSR leading the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade of exiled Koreans (and Chinese) learning about Marxism-Leninism.   Kim Il Sung fought in the Red Army, a fact that would not support his nationalistic Korean anti-Japanese credentials.  Those credentials have been critical to gaining support for him among north Koreans - who better to lead you than a man who single-handedly saved Korea from the (truly) brutal and barbaric Japanese occupation.

So Kim Jong Il HAD to be born in Korea to support the myth of his father.   Given that was the case, where better than Mt. Paektu, the highest mountain in Korea (although half of it is in China) and so it carries "sacred" qualities.  It is where Kim Il Sung was supposed to have had his base to fight the Japanese, so how better to assert anti-Japanese credentials for Kim Jong Il than to claim he was born amongst soldiers.

What about the year?  Well Kim Il Sung was born in 1912, which meant 1962 was the year of his 50th birthday celebrations.   It was decided if Kim Jong Il was said to be born in 1942 not 1941, then 1982 could be a year of 70th birthday celebrations for Kim Il Sung and 40th birthday for Kim Jong Il (he was publicly announced effectively as successor by name in 1980).   Nothing more than that.

So Kim Jong Un?  He needs a suitable birthplace, something to do with his grandfather I would think.  There are conflicting accounts as to whether this is being constructed (and residents relocated as a result).   The birth year is accepted in South Korea as being 1983 because of the testimony of Kim Jong Il's former chef who defected.   Shifting it to 1982 would align it with his father.

What does all of this prove beyond being a quaint curiosity? That a state that owns its people so comprehensively as the DPRK is so egregiously willing to lie to them on such a grand scale about the most trivial of things. 

On a more optimistic note, the Korea Times reports that North Koreans are laughing off the propaganda they are being fed about the new leader and his immortal exploits.   Given even his older half brother opposes the succession (and is being protected by the Chinese government), it seems unlikely that a second hereditary succession can be undertaken smoothly.

Happy Birthday Maggie

Almost forgotten, today was the 85th birthday of Baroness Thatcher, the woman who dragged the Conservative Party kicking and screaming back to its principles and stopped the party from just being a comma to the Labour Party's implementation of socialism.

Her victory was one that changed British politics somewhat, but changed the British economy dramatically.   Not only did she set it free, pulling back the state from areas ranging from telecommunications to buses to railways to coal mines to airlines, but she so shook up the political establishment the Labour party had to abandon hard-core socialism (which meant nationalising industries ever time it got elected) and embrace a mixed-market economy to be elected.   Most of us she confronted a communist (no exaggeration) union movement that was sustained by bullying, monopolies and intimidation, and won.

Let's not be deluded though.  Despite the rabid vile rantings of so many on the left, Thatcher didn't dismantle the welfare state, she didn't dismantle the NHS or state education, she didn't even shrink state spending as a proportion of GDP.  She did take on local government, abolishing the ridiculous Greater London Council, she did believe passionately in private enterprise and choice, but most notably she looked socialism in the eye and didn't blink.  She did it in the Falklands, she did it against Moscow and did it in Brussels.  She showed that she had more courage than any of the "born to rule" testicularly challenged bores who typically infest the Conservative Party.

Sadly, New Labour took her legacy and after its first term got intoxicated again on keeping much of Britain in dependency, with ever growing grants, subsidies, middle class welfare and feeding the gobbling behemoth of the NHS.   This bubble popped when the recession killed off tax revenue to sustain the borrowing.  In short, Gordon Brown squandered Mrs Thatcher's legacy.

What Britain has now is a pale weak unprincipled imitation of Thatcher, and a Labour Party led by a man who is cheered on by a man Thatcher defeated twice.   Thatcher rescued Britain from its Post War stagnation, but she didn't dismantle Britain's welfare state.  The fact that all too many today in Britain sustain a myth of Thatcher as devil shows how much she rattled the socialist consensus.   She wasn't perfect by a long way, she supped with the likes of Pinochet, she mistakenly proposed a new tax for local government and had a streak of social conservatism around some issues that kept many from even considering the Conservatives (e.g.  playing up to bigotry around immigrants and homosexuals).

However, for turning the tide back, temporarily, for putting the wind up a Marxist Labour Party that nearly (had it listened to Tony Benn) nationalised the 20 biggest companies in Britain in the 1970s, for being part of the Western alliance that stared down the murderous anti-human dictatorships of Marxism-Leninism (and won) and for showing Britain that there can be a better way than always turning to the state, she deserves to be congratulated for reaching 85.

Thank you to the Adam Smith Institute for this video reminder of what was:

Len's boondoggle

If you want an example of why politics should be taken out of the sphere of transport then Len Brown’s policies provide some pretty clear guidance.  A lot of attention has been paid to his policies focused on building expensive electric rail lines to the North Shore, Auckland Airport and an underground CBD rail loop. These lines that would cost billions of dollars, would lose money year after year to operate and hence couldn’t be sold for even one twentieth of what it will cost to build them.  However, Len Brown is a politician – he has visions, visions of how to spend other people’s money and he doesn’t care whether this spending is worth it financially, economically or environmentally.  No, he’s joined one of the religions of recent times - Railevangelism – driven by faith, passion and a belief that trains are good, and a little thing like money shouldn’t get in the way of Auckland having more.

The cost of his plans approach NZ$5 billion.  To put that in context that is around two years total spending on land transport by government on roads and public transport, across the country.  It is double the total annual national take of fuel tax, road user charges and motor vehicle licensing fees.   So if you like Think Big, you’ll love Lenin’s Think Biggest. 

Ahh, but wont people use it?  Well sure they will, but you wont be charging fares that even cover the costs of running the trains (which need to be bought too, the $5 billion doesn’t include those).   You see the whole urban rail strategy is based on the trains not making a financial return.   So not only will the capital expenditure be a deadweight loss, but it will bleed money continuously unless the fares are increased to change that.  Funnily enough if the fares were increased the trains would be empty, which tells you exactly how much those who would ride the trains truly value them.

Ahh, but wont their be economic benefits from reduced traffic congestion?  You’d hope so for that sort of money, and a year on year subsidy, but this is where things break down a little.  Yes, the NZTA estimates that removing one car from peak time roads in Auckland and shifting the users to rail is a $17 benefit in reduced congestion.   However, will everyone on those trains have been people who would have driven cars?  Hardly.   Many will be existing bus users,  for the CBD loop some will have otherwise walked, some will have been car passengers (so the car is still being driven but the train offers a convenient option for the passenger) and yes some will be drivers of cars.  On top of that some will be new trips, trips that otherwise wouldn’t have been done,  but which you will have been forced to pay for.   Funnily enough the railevangelists treat everyone on a train as if it is someone who is doing good for everyone else by not driving a car, ignoring that many of them would not have driven in the first place.

Oh but wont congestion be reduced?  Really?  What new world city has made any impression on traffic congestion by building a new electric rail network?  Los Angeles? No.  Portland?  No.  Atlanta?  No.  In all cases the impact on traffic has been minuscule, and is more than made up by the continued growth in road traffic.  A large amount of money spent for next to no gain.   In Auckland only 12% of commuters terminate their trips in the CBD because most jobs are not downtown.  Len Brown wants to build a railway focused on servicing downtown Auckland where over 30% of commuter trips are already by public transport (mostly buses, which get ignored by many railevangelists because they aren’t politically sexy).  The simple truth is that his ideas will benefit a tiny percentage of commuters at a cost of thousands of dollars for every Aucklander.

Surely a rail line to the airport is a good idea and will take lots of people out of their cars?  Well it might take some businesspeople (they always need a subsidy) from taking taxis to the CBD, but the catchment area for airport trips is across all of Auckland.  Who will take the train to west Auckland or Penrose or Pakuranga or Long Bay or Point Chevalier?   Auckland does not and will never have the kind of high frequency metro service seen in London, Paris or New York,  so it will remain highly inferior to take any connecting trips by rail.   An airport line wont ever stack up.

Let’s be clear, the last and the current government have committed to wasting your money on a heinously expensive rail electrification scheme that is already costing a fortune.  Before that has even been built or proven by any measure, Len Brown wants to build the next few stages at around 3x the cost of what is committed already.   He isn’t even saying “let’s wait and see how it goes” in case it proves to be a financial failure or simply doesn’t reduce congestion, he’s calling for more money to be poured down this tunnel of faith.

The economically rational response to the rail programme is to treat it as a sunk cost, let the current contracts be concluded and eventually sell the whole thing off to whoever wants to run it.  The economically rational response to Auckland’s traffic congestion is to commercialise and privatise the road network so it can be priced and invested in according to demand, rather than political whim, and finally for Len Brown to get his pilfering hands out of the wallets and purses of ratepayers.   He is no better at planning how Aucklanders should move than he would be if he wanted to plan how Aucklanders should eat, dress or be housed!

Hwang Jang Yop's passing deserves more coverage

If you watched or read most of the media in the last day or so you'd think the key news about North Korea was the appearance of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un at the 65th Anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang.  After all, the authorities in Pyongyang invited foreign journalists and TV crews to cover it.

Sadly on the same day a man died in South Korea who sheds more light on the regime than the spectacle of military parades in the (surprisingly small) Kim Il Sung Square and pictures of an ailing autocrat and his youngest son (with a face allegedly reshapen by plastic surgery to look like his grandfather).  

Hwang Jang Yop was President of the Committee for the Democratisation of North Korea, and the highest ranking defector ever from North Korea.  He was International Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly from 1972 to 1983 when he was removed and "softly" purged (criticised and demoted rather than incarcerated and condemned).  He subsequently defected in 1997 by walking into the South Korean Embassy in Beijing whilst on an official trip, after which he spent his remaining years in South Korea, writing books and memoirs of the regime in North Korea.

He passed away at his home in Seoul due to a heart attack on 10 October 2010, the day North Korea commemorates the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea.   Thankfully his passing does not appear to be suspicious, as it was well known that he was a leading target for North Korean agents  to assassinate.

His defection was bitter for the regime, and he was aware of this, as he fully expected his wife and children would suffer enormously as a result.  North Korea imprisons entire families for the political crimes of one, including children and the elderly with no limits on age.  His letter to his wife expressed his belief that he had to defect for the people of North Korea and could not go on with things remaining as they are.

He wrote 20 books after his defection, about the regime, the Kims and strategies to bring its downfall and reform.  In his memoirs he claims to have written the Juche Idea (the national ideology associated with Kim Il Sung), he tells about the long history he lived through from Japan's brutal colonialism, the Korean War, the rise and fall of socialism, the death of Kim Il Sung and the so-called "Arduous March" when mass starvation saw Kim Jong Il prepare for war whilst millions died.

His excellent regular column in the Daily NK website was one of the most incisive commentaries on the regime and its nature.  His final column mentioned the annointing of Kim Jong Un as Kim Jong Il's successor:

“Kim Jong Il has turned his entire country into a huge prison; a place where a few million people starve and he enslaves the rest...Kim Jong Il is the worst kind of thief; a man who stole a whole country...Now he is making fun of and humiliating the North Korean people, making them shout ‘Hurrah!’ and ignoring the world after conferring a boy with the title, 'general'."

He is being commemorated in South Korea now as a great man whose defection helped challenge the views of many who supported North Korea, and highlighted much about the reality of the regime in Pyongyang. 

The Daily NK visual tribute is here.  His memoirs were published, in serial form, on Daily NK here.

Sadly his passing is likely to get only a brief mention in Western media, compared to the military display and show of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang yesterday, for which the BBC, CNN and other major TV broadcasters were invited.   I note none of Stuff, TVNZ and RNZ websites are carrying this news (NZ Herald carries an AP report), but all carry the story, video and pictures of North Korea the regime want to show.  Even CNN doesn't have the story on its Asia page.  While the BBC does, it puts greater headlines on Michael Law's being an attention-seeking airhead.

Journalism? Ha!

Nobel Peace Prize winner makes a timely point

The Nobel Peace Prize has been devalued so many times over the years that one could be excused for ignoring it.   From its regular glorification of the UN, to the celebration of fraudsters (Rigoberta Menchu), vacuous self promoters and appeasers (Jimmy Carter, Al Gore), accomplices to mass murder (Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat) and celebrators of dictators (Agnes Bojaxhiu), it has occasionally got it right  in more recent years- with Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi and Martin Luther King Jr. 

Granting it to President Barack Obama when he had demonstrably done nothing in the cause of peace (and whose record to this day remains bountifully barren in this field) even disgusted many who would have tended to be supportive of him.  An award for achievement which is designed to encourage someone who had only achieved rhetoric as substantial as that which lies between Pluto and Neptune is meaningless.

Clearly the Nobel Peace Prize Committee intended to encourage with the granting of the prize to Liu Xiaobo a timely debate within and with China about human rights and freedoms in what is now the world's second biggest economy.  

Xiaobo helped draft Charter 08, China's version of Charter 77 which in socialist Czechoslovakia helped to solidify calls to erode the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Prague.  His fundamental call is for China to no longer suppress political speech, a separation of powers between state and party, an independent judiciary, protection of private property rights and liberal democracy.

In that he is calling for that which now exists in Taiwan, which largely exist in Hong Kong and which are taken for granted in the West, and indeed in increasing numbers of Asian states.   Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia have all transformed themselves from dictatorships of one form of another into liberal open societies, where political debate is vigorous and free speech guaranteed.   China need not fear this.   Indeed, its future prosperity not only relies on it, but will demand it.

Much has been achieved in China in the last twenty years.  There is debate about issues, the gap is questioning the role of the Communist Party, and there is considerable risk if one criticises politicians.   Chinese people can live their lives without much political interference, and the amount of non-political/civil and private space for citizens has grown enormously.   However, without the ability to criticise ones political leaders, China remains a country where the state treats its citizens as children.

China's greatest weakness today is the rule of law.  Without an independent judiciary, without the ability of the judicial system to hold politicians, laws and officials to account - consistently - China retains a system where corruption is built in to the state, party, judiciary and all of the instruments of state violence.

The reaction of the authorities in Beijing is not unexpected, trying to shut down discussion, treating the Prize as "blasphemy" and threatening trade relations with Norway.   This is not how a modern 21st century power behaves, it is how the poor paranoid and blinkered Maoist China of the 1980s would behave.  

Indeed, it is likely that this will cause more harm than good, as the clumsy efforts to censor this news from the Chinese people will fail.  The internet, even as censored as is attempted in China, is too porous for this news not to now be widely known among tens of millions of Chinese citizens.   The attempt at treating these people as children who can't know news about their own country is counter-productive, and will undo the enormous efforts at national loyalty that were promoted by the Olympics and the ongoing national prosperity.   Following this failure, Xinhua News Agency (China's monopoly state news agency) will no doubt try to shape public opinion in the clumsy manner that was its full time job from 1948 till the 1980s, and this will be seen for what it is.

I like China, it is a country of immense diversity, energy, entrepreneurship and good nature.  I want it to succeed, but it is not a bad time to remind it to look at the two models of governance on its doorstep (indeed one shining example at the back door) that allows its citizens the dignity to speak freely about those who govern them and how they behave.   For the past 30 years China has been moving closer to how both Taiwan and Hong Kong operate - Mr Xiaobo reminds us of the great leap forward (!) needed to lift it up to the shining heights of a modern state and society that exist in that province and region.

National-ACT fails Auckland

Clap - clap - clap.

Margaret Thatcher once commented about how horrified she was in the 1970s when a senior Conservative MP expressed the view that socialism was "inevitable" and the Conservatives existed to slow it down and moderate it. In other words, when the Tories would get elected, it was to tinker, but by and large whatever Labour did in government would not be overturned.

One wonders if the current National minority government in New Zealand has the same profound inspiration - to preserve the legacy of Helengrad and tinker.

When I now see the results of the local government policy of that government then all i can say is well done. Because it passes the test of the Tories before Thatcher - maintain and continue with the policies of your opponents.

Auckland, all of Auckland, now has a Mayor - more empowered than ever before, to lead a council with the wide ranging powers granted to it by Sandra Lee and Judith Tizard in the height of the Labour-Alliance government that was Helen Clark's first term.

Why? Because Rodney Hide and ACT, cheered on and fully supported by John Key and the Nats, facilitated it.

In 2008 when Labour was kicked out, there was hope from some that it would mean that the local government policy of Labour, that National and ACT opposed, would be rejected.  The hope being that local government would no longer have a "power of general competence" - which Labour and the Alliance (supported by the Greens) gave councils, allowing them to enter into ANY activity they wish, which of course means they can grow (what councils will shrink?).  Even with a change of government, local authorities could subsidise anything, enter into any business activity, enter into any form of social activity (schools, healthcare, housing and welfare even) and government could not stop them, without a change in the law.

With Rodney Hide appointed as Minister of Local Government, there was some hope that this would be wound back - that rates might not be increased unhindered, and councils could not engage in ever more new activities, crowding out private business, private non-commercial activities, and ever imposing higher financial and regulatory demands on the people they claim to serve.

To be fair he briefly tried in 2009 to change the powers of local government, but failed because National decided to keep the Local Government Act 2002.  

However more importantly he failed to answer the question "What should be the role of local government"?  

The answer implicitly given is the same as Sandra Lee, except she answered with conviction:

"Whatever elected local politicians want to do".

In parallel he inherited the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance commissioned by the Clark, Peters, Dunne regime.   He could have, rightly, decided to treat it as curious but out of step with the objectives of the new government.

No.  He embraced it.  With the exception of the blatantly racist pandering of the proposed Maori only seats (as New Zealand remains increasingly alone in ascribing credibility to the patronising fiction of democracy being racist), it was as if the government had not changed at all.  Same policies, different people implementing them.

So the "super city council" (let's not pretend Auckland as a city changes because the petty control freaks who seek to govern it have only one place to rule it from) was created.  Not only was one council created out of eight, but the role of Mayor shifted from being cheerleader and chairman of the council, to having power over money and private property.   

So the biggest local authority in Australasia has been formed, by parties ostensibly committed to free enterprise.

Some ACT supporters thought it was a cunning plan, believing that a bigger council would be dominated by the "centre-right" (which you should be glad for. "Better than the socialists" right?).  

The victory of Len Brown does not exactly demonstrate that.   He has already stated his priority is joining the railevangelists in making ratepayers (and the government) pay for three rail lines.  Projects that are not economically viable in their own right, none of which will generate enough in fare revenue to pay for their operating costs let alone the capital that will be destroyed in building them.

So John Key and Rodney Hide have created a powerful local government entity and Mayoral position that is unfettered, and now a cargo cult loving, "think big" socialist has been elected as Mayor.   Not only that, but this Mayor is talking about a referendum on having apartheid Maori seats. 

Well done.  I don't know quite what Labour can say to this - as I can't imagine it would have been substantively different if it was still in power.

Hide says it is "good for Auckland".   Well given he let it all happen, and endorsed letting voters choose a council that can do what it wants to Aucklanders, he can hardly complain.

It's politics not values after all.

So, if you're unhappy about all of this, will you be voting National and ACT next year?

UPDATE:  It is telling that Idiot Savant thinks this is an epic fail for Rodney Hide.  He's right you know.

So what would you do?

Whenever any government announces spending cuts, there are always those who are recipients of the money (that isn't their's) who claim it isn't fair that the state isn't taking quite so much money off of other people to give them some, and those who are on their side, constantly sniping about anytime the state does less.

Few governments cut spending while running surpluses, as it is only when years of past profligacy catch up that reality has to be faced, as it is in the UK.

However, "journalists" (I put inverted commas in place because so few of them understand making intelligent queries about what goes on or are capable of comparing current with historical events) rarely ask the two most important questions of such naysayers:

1. How would YOU cut spending or increase taxes? Who would lose out in your world? For example, if child benefit is to remain universal in the UK, what spending should be cut instead, or should the very people who currently receive child benefit pay more tax instead??

2. How much of your own money will you be using to compensate those who are losing out on the spending cut?

The typical answer to the first question is "I don't know". In other words, a mindless opposition to politicians who, to be fair, are simply trying to balance the books and reduce the rate of borrowing. The more philosophical ones of a leftwards bent would make a flippant comment about "the rich should pay more tax" (or bankers), or that defence spending (the left hates defence) should be cut.

The second question invariably draws a blank. Spend your own money helping the poor, or schools, or hospitals? Actually do something rather than call on government to force everyone else to do so?

No - it is the moral vacuum of too many of the left who have never really thought of voluntarily raising money or spending their own money to relieve poverty or keep open a school, hospital, library, art gallery or whatever it is they are so stouchly defending.

Whereas I simply think that if you can't be bothered contributing something substantial yourself then your advocacy for forcing others to do so, through the state, is morally bankrupt.

Destroying the welfare state

"There will only be schools for the rich"
"We wont have any hospitals for the poor"
"Families will struggle"
"It's so unfair"

Such are the ridiculous hyperboles thrown about because the British Government is proposing to cap the welfare state by (get ready for the poor bashing moment):

1. Eliminating child benefit for anyone earning over roughly £44,000 p.a. (where the second highest income tax rate cuts in);
2. No one will be able to receive more in benefits (including housing, council tax etc) than the average wage.

So the top 15% of incomes in the UK (yes apparently £44,000 p.a. is rich!!) wont get welfare. "An attack on the principle of universality"! Oh what a tragedy. Families that WONT get welfare.

It really has come to this. Britain is overspending at a rate of £2 billion a week, but a cut in welfare for the comparatively RICH, sends the left into apoplexy. A saving of £1 billion a year, and it is portrayed absurdly as an attack on the poor.

The British welfare state is not under threat.

British taxpayers still pay for everyone's children to have compulsory education.
British taxpayers still pay for the most centrally planned and socialist universal health care system in the world (and funding for it isn't to be touched).
British taxpayers still pay for benefits for those out of work, unable to work and to reward breeding up to the average wage.
British taxpayers still pay for much of the population to be housed.

All the government is doing is cutting back on welfare for the middle classes. It is a start, but it is NOT destroying or even challenging the welfare state.

The opponents of these cuts do NOT have an alternative to reduce the deficit, they like to pretend continually borrowing to pay these benefits is better (none ever propose other cuts, few propose more taxes on the rich who will lose from these cuts anyway).

However, most disconcerting is the belief that families are "entitled" to help from the government. No notion that it is their own taxes they are getting back, no notion that when one breeds you should look after your kids yourself. A culture of being "entitled" to someone else's money or more absurdly, to get your own taxes recycled through the state.

The Conservative-Lib Dem government isn't challenging this revoltingly corrosive dependence on the state. What it is doing is abolishing welfare for wealthier families and capping welfare so that nobody gets more in welfare than the average person takes home from working.

For this to be controversial to anyone other than hardened Marxists who believe money grows on trees and that people should ideally get paid money for no reason at all, is tragic.

Oh and if you think New Zealand is less silly, then take the OECD figures from the Daily Telegraph, which claims payments per child per annum are on average US$3,133 per annum in NZ.

What is wrong with people paying for the consequences of their own breeding?

Sell it and change the channel

Yes Paul Henry was a dick for his comment about the Governor General.

However, doesn't it show once again why you shouldn't be forced to have an ownership interest in TVNZ?

TVNZ should be privatised. The last National government was confidentially investigating exactly that at the time, but time wasn't on its side before the rise of Helengrad.

The rise of digital TV (first by Sky via satellite and Telstra-Clear via cable, some time before terrestrial broadcasting) will mean much more radio spectrum will be available for TV channels. There is no need for the state to own four of them.

TVNZ has long been a laughable excuse for a public broadcaster, caught between trying to be the lowest common denominator folksy, once over lightly, reduce everything to parochial or sporting analogies, asinine banality, with the ernest attempt to try to be the repositary of kiwi kulcha and the need to produce news and documentaries for adolescents.

Selling it would mean Paul Henry would be with an employer who would respond completely to what its customers (advertisers or subscribers) wanted.

At that point (and right now) you can simply abstain. Don't watch. If enough of you do that then the democracy of the market will remove him from the airwaves, but you can remove him from your screens now - just don't put that channel on when he is on.

Religion of armageddon

Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s may recall when the next ice age was being forecast, which over time became concern about the greenhouse effect/global warming/climate change. Now there are two key dimensions to the issue of global warming:

1. What does the science say?
2. What should be the public policy response to this?

A rational debate around the science is all very well, and should continue, although many would argue it is more likely that there is anthropomorphic global warming than not, the issue may be more a matter of scale. We already know that the issue of scale and speed of any global warming has been contentious. Any rational person would welcome ongoing inquiry into this area, because it informs what comes next.

The public policy response has been my main area of contention, because it has provoked in many a desire for intervention based on regulation, taxation and subsidy, rather than considering how existing regulations, taxes and subsidies are negative in relation to emissions that may contribute to global warming. As most of those concerned about global warming also happen to be on the political left (and as such show little regard for property rights or concern about the growth of the state) it has caused greatest consternation among liberals who see it almost as a convenient excuse for the left to pursue much of its agenda.

After all, hatred of commercial provision of energy, the private car, aviation, industrialisation, consumerism and capitalism predated global warming, as did the worship of inanimate objects, plants and animals OVER humans.

Because whilst some in the environmental movement truly do have good intentions, have genuine concerns and want the world to be a "better place" in ways that many would agree with (less pollution, improved living standards), others have less concern for humans. The ends justify the means for them.

These are the ones who claim to talk the talk of "non violence" but believe in anything but that.

You see they start by fully supporting the violence of the state in enforcing laws to restrict or compel you as they see fit, including to take money off you to give to whoever they want. The idea that non-violence applies at all levels is absolute nonsense.

It is followed by a willingness to undertake the euphemistically called "direct action", which is essentially trespass, vandalism and obstruction to destroy the product of other people's minds and labour or take it over.

Underlying all of this is to deliberately engage in grotesque hyperbole about what will happen with global warming. The underlying message being that we are all doomed unless something is done about it. This scaremongering has little basis in science, every basis in science fiction and is intended to frighten people into following a line of thinking that there should be NO HIGHER PRIORITY than to cut CO2 emissions (only in Western liberal democratic developed countries mind you, not Russia, China, let alone the Gulf states which are by far the world's highest emitters). Emissions become the measure of success, NOT the net impact, not living standards, not life expectancy, but the composition of the atmosphere. Think atmosphere before people.

It matches the economic nihilism of the same people who think economic growth cannot be sustained (based on the false premise that wealth is solely generated from raw commodity discovery and consumption, rather than the application of reason to all available resources) and must be redistributed. The same who have the socialist notion that it is "unfair" that the countries and cultures that embraced capitalism, science and reason above all others first are wealthier than those that did not, and that means wealth should be stolen from the developed countries and given to the developing. The idea that human development and industrialisation should be curtailed and restricted, because it is "killing the planet" (let's depict the planet as something living of course).

Now spreading this Armageddon concept and the urgency of action has proven to be insufficient. Truth be told the environmentalists are terribly unhappy that they have had poor electoral success in most countries, and that the "urgency of action" has largely been seen in governments dabbling in energy, transport and a few other sectors to encourage less emissions. Governments wont wage war on the car, plane, power stations or industry because most people like their car, like to travel, like electrical appliances, like their jobs in such industries or those related to them, and want better living standards.

So scaring people that they will die if they don't act on global warming has failed, because neither voters nor governments are that interested anymore. The next stage is obvious - scare them that their children will hate them and turn on them.

That is where this video came in:



Showing Greenpeace in its true form, as driven by people who show anger and a desire to threaten violence underneath the shroud of panda bears and humpback whales.   Greenpeace is a multi-million dollar business peddling the propaganda of a new global religion that doesn't take kindly to those who point out when it is wrong.

However, it is most clearly seen in the now infamous Richard Curtis video depicting how school-children who want join their fellow drones in the religion can "hilariously" been blown up - Taliban style - like what happened in London, Paris, Madrid, Baghdad, Kabul, Istanbul, Moscow etc. It is part of a campaign called 10:10.



Neither the Green Party of England and Wales, nor Greenpeace have uttered a word about this. All I can say is bravo for scoring a spectacular own goal, and showing that the term eco-fascism is not an exaggeration. Name a situation when it is funny to show a teacher blowing school students up like a bomb for not agreeing with the teacher or the rest of the class.

Of the businesses that deserve to be pilloried for supporting this, the list of O2, Kyocera and Sony, can also include the Royal Mail and Adidas.

I don't expect the British Con-Dem government to respond, led as it is by a man who made a point of joining the Conservatives to the global warming religion, and with a coalition partner that is one of the most fervent adherents to it.

Where is the attention deficit?

The scientific discovery that so-called "Attention Deficit Disorder" may be inherited by some children has of course now let many millions of parents off the hook for their poorly behaved and anti-social children. Some were reported as being relieved they weren't to blame, as if they were also relieved of responsibility for how their children behave (although a cruel person would argue if it is in the DNA then one shouldn't replicate it) or perform at school.

It is a measure of these times for parents to evade responsibility for their children and their actions. It can be seen in the flippant approach of far too many (men in particular) who don't want to carry the responsibility for their own reproduction. It has long been timeless for teachers to notice the parents who refused to accept responsibility for their children being disruptive or violent at school. I recall my parents being told at parent-teacher evenings they need not have bothered coming along, because the parents the teachers really want to meet are the ones who never turn up - the ones who prioritise TV, the pub, their friends or their latest shag over their own kids.

Whilst undoubtedly medical science will continue to discover bio-chemical and genetic bases for all sorts of behaviour (I await the undoubted discovery that some pedophiles, sadists and masochists are born that way), the mistake is to think that there is nothing that can be done by means other than medication.

As Theodore Dalrymple writes in the Daily Telegraph, the real "attention deficit" is from parents, in particular fathers. He says "far more British children have a television in their bedroom than a biological father living at home throughout their childhood".

The destructive legacy of this is seen in boys growing up looking for male role models in all the wrong places (in the case of some ethnic minorities, gang culture in the teens is rife at both supplying and seeking out fatherless boys), and girls who learn from a certain age the main way many women get male attention, and so seek "daddy" figures of not quite the kind they need. The ease by which attention lacking young people now have communication means to pursue these surrogate father figures who prey upon them is largely ignored, and is probably too shocking for the middle classes to truly accept.

Far easier for some to blame their genes, far easier for politicians on the left to say it is poverty.

Far harder to confront that a combination of the welfare state, the post-modernist abstinence from individual responsibility regarding breeding and the lack of promotion of life values is what is the issue.

Ireland's forthcoming default

Two article today present antidotes to the typical leftwing "f'ing bankers" reaction to the foolish decision by the Irish state to bail out its most profligate bank.

City AM's Allister Heath blames the Euro for feeding Irish banks with low interest fiat money, when interest rates should have been far higher. The Euro, reflecting the dominance of German economic conditions, wouldn't reflect the boom of Ireland.

The Adam Smith Institute takes things further, blaming the ridiculous 100% government guarantee of deposits at Irish banks for encouraging profligacy and costing taxpayers an absolute fortune (and removing any interest in people considering how viable their banks really are). It calls on the Irish government to end this guarantee, slash state spending and withdraw from the Euro.

The fear being that the Irish state may default itself, which of course would render all its borrowing as junk, but would mean the state would need to cut back to what it can afford.

Meanwhile, if you wanted to retire in Ireland and buy a house, now is the time.

It's quite a jump to the left

After losing this year's election, the British Labour Party purged Gordon Brown, as he proved himself to be one of a long list of Labour leaders who only lose elections (he joins Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, James Callaghan, Hugh Gaitskell as post war Labour leaders who never won an election).  It has been on the search for a new leader, and had five candidates get nominated.  

Only one was a woman, demonstrating once again that the party that claims to do so much for women, can't bring itself to get led by one, and Diane Abbott (the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons) came last, not helped by being the most leftwing candidate by far.  It is telling that the winner said patronisingly that she was "right to stand", if only to avoid Labour looking embarrassingly like what it hates.  She and unionist Andy Burnham were not serious contenders.

Ed Balls, former Education Secretary, was a Brownite, and came third, but the real battle was the bizarre spectacle of two brothers contesting for the leadership, each with a different taste to offer.

The Milibands (as comedian Andy Hamilton quipped he wasn't used to the new metric politicians) were raised by Marxists.  The difference is that David Miliband, the older brother, grew up and was strongly affiliated with Tony Blair.  Ed Miliband, the baby, preferred Labour of the 1980s. 

Ed Miliband was an intern to Tony Benn, one of Britain's most ludicrous Marxist cabinet Ministers.  Benn once argued that the British government should nationalise the 50 largest companies in the country - in the 1970s, having been Secretary of State for Industry.  A Marxist dad, a Marxist mentor, it was little surprise that in the 1990s he started writing speeches for Harriet Harman and then Gordon Brown.

It is also little surprise that he won the Labour leadership for only one reason, the trade union movement overwhelmingly backed him.  You see the British Labour Party leadership race is decided in part by the rank and file, in part by MPs and MEPs and in part by "affiliates", which is code for the unions claiming weight by assuming that members of the union are Labour supporters.

The 1.3% margin over David Miliband means Ed is not the choice of MPs or Labour members.  More importantly it means Labour is sliding back to whence it came - the politics of class warfare, wealth envy and hatred of capitalism.

Ed Miliband wants to keep a 50% top rate of income tax, he wants new taxes on banks (all banks, whether bailed out by the state or not) to reduce the deficit.  He has indicated he wants to slow down the reduction in the budget deficit (remember this is the rate of overspending, not the level of debt, he just wants to grow debt more slowly), he wants to grow welfare and chase more jobs overseas with a new minimum "living wage" and most disturbingly he wants a High Pay Commission to regulate private sector pay.

How much of this was to get the unions on side or not is unclear, what is clear is that even after being elected as Labour leader he continues to trot out the Gramscian rewriting of history that covers up Labour's role in the decimation of the British economy.

The story told is:

-  The banks weren't regulated, they acted recklessly and all needed bailing out.

-  Gordon Brown cleverly saved the world the country by saving the banks, and by running a huge deficit to keep the economy functioning;

-  Without a big government borrowing money and spending it, the economy would collapse.

The truth of fiat money, Labour riding off the back of consumers borrowing and spending and speculating on property, that only three banks were bailed out by the state, that bank deposits for over 95% of the population were protected anyway, that Labour had run budget deficits almost continually whilst in power, that Labour had wasted fortunes of money on bureaucracies and vanity projects (the Olympics will be the last one) that destroy wealth not create it, and finally that Labour's goal of reducing inequalities was hindered by the promotion of a welfare dependent society, with state housing, state jobs, health and education, all are whitewashed over.

The best that can be said about the last 13 years is that they could have been worse.  That Labour still supported privatisation in government tells you how much more mature it was compared to New Zealand Labour.   However, the only reason Labour gets away with it is the cultural dominance of the BBC which happily perpetuates a  centre-left view of the economy, and the ineptness of the Conservative Party and the business sector, both of which are scared of backing capitalism or in the latter case, rather keen to engage in  continued corporatism.

Allister Heath in City AM is particularly worried that the trend has now moved clearly leftward, on Miliband:

"He supports high tax not primarily because he thinks it will raise revenue but to punish the better-off. Ken Livingstone wants to go even further. Even though bonuses are already mostly taxed at a marginal rate of 51.5 per cent, Miliband wants to increase the bank tax, reintroduce a bonus tax and slap a Tobin tax on financial transactions. He believes in the need for the government to regulate pay levels in the private sector. He supports a new graduate tax."

He concludes with a bleak forecast:

"There is no place in Miliband’s intellectual framework for the idea, shared by Thatcher, John Major and Blair alike that too much tax and too much red tape is counter-productive, reduces effort and investment, chases away capital and talent, impoverishes the nation and destroys the public finances. Instead, to Miliband, the private sector can be taxed and beaten and throttled – and it will always come back for more. This view of the world is shared almost entirely by the coalition’s Vince Cable wing. The two men appear to agree on everything apart from the budget deficit, about which Miliband is in denial.


The opposition hates the City and wants to tax everything that moves; Cable agrees; the Tories are too scared to resist. The public, which has not been exposed to a proper defence of capitalism for years, wants to lash out. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to remain optimistic about Britain’s long-term future. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear for the UK’s jobs and prosperity."

I am slightly more optimistic, as I think the Vince Cable wing of the government is just about releasing steam from the left of the Liberal Democrats with no real substances behind it. I also think the British public wont stomach the Labour Party of the 1980s today any more than it did then. However a decent defence of capitalism is rare in the UK, with only the Adam Smith Institute and City AM being consistent on this.

Is it time for a UK TeaParty to bolster the Coalition to cut spending?

The bleating as the tit is taken from the mouths of the dependent

As the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition undertakes its comprehensive spending review (which unlike that in New Zealand is about finding opportunities to cut spending almost across the board), more and more of the absurdities of the British welfare state are appearing.

The latest case to cause bleating from the "government is good" left of the Labour Party are payments of mortgage interest to the unemployed.  Yes, you see if you are eligible for the unemployment benefit in the UK, you too are protected from not making your mortgage payments by the state paying for the interest on your mortgage!

So you're not exactly poor, you have property and you expect other taxpayers, property owners and others to maintain your "investment"?   The effect on this is to keep property values inflated about true market value.   It disincentivises people from taking out insurance on mortgage repayments or income, and keeps them as homeowners when some would ultimately decide to bail out, putting their homes on the market lowering prices.   It penalises first time home buyers once again, because it is part of New Labour's programme of middle class welfare, exacerbating the housing price bubble and making it more difficult to people who actually do want to own their own home.

However, the coalition didn't announce it was cancelling this absurd benefit, but reducing the interest rate which would be paid.  You see the state has been paying 6% across the board in interest to mortgage holders on the unemployment benefit even though floating mortgage rates are currently tracking below 4%.   It isn't just welfare, it's a future taxpayer (public debt) funded windfall!   The government simply wants to reduce it to the prevailing market rate.

Still there are plenty moaning about how "unfair" this is, the same who completely ignore where the money comes from (borrow it) and ignoring the impact of being "kind" with other people's money has on those whose money it was in the first place, or on the markets they distort.

The comprehensive spending review wont abolish the welfare state, but it hopefully will completely destroy the middle class components of it.  The universal child benefit (or "you've been breeding, congratulations, here's some other people's money to reward you for having a fuck"), the winter fuel allowance (or "you're old and you forgot it gets cold in winter, so you blew your money on that trip to Barbados"), the "freedom bus pass" (or you haven't even reached pension age, but you're earning a 6 figure sum so how about getting half of your daily commute for free) etc etc, all need to be severely curtailed.

The worst deceit of the last 13 years of New Labour has been how it has used stealth to get so many of the British public dependent on state handouts for part of their income, funded almost entirely on borrowing from their children and grandchildren.   Well Gordon Brown's fiscal profligacy chickens have come home, they can't be evaded and the growth of that debt must be curtailed.

It is one thing to claim the welfare state is about addressing poverty, but it has become a form of insurance to cover people's investment and lifestyle choices.  That should now be coming to an end.

Take a drive on World Car Free Day

Why?  Because cars are NOT bad.

They have offered enormous choice about where people can live and work and play.  They offer privacy, comfort and flexibility.

Competitive Enterprise Institute spokesman Sam Kazman said:

"The automobile has improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in remarkable ways. It has taken the mobility once reserved for aristocrats and democratized it, immensely expanding the choices that average people have regarding where to live and work. Instead of pushing a misguided political agenda to reduce car use, we should be celebrating automobility"

The hatred for the car ignores that on a per passenger km basis, the number of deaths and injuries from cars keeps declining, that the fuel consumption of cars keeps improving, and the pollution from cars reducing.   Transport for London estimates that emissions from road transport will drop 30% by 2030 if it simply does nothing because of improved efficiency of engines.

The main problem which has cars as the symptom is traffic congestion caused by the ineptness of governments who run them as a commons, without proper pricing and without any concern for delivering a service to customers. 

The incredible growth in car ownership in China and India is not because people there are stupid, but because they want to have access to travel when and where they want to and carry their belongings easily.   It goes against the wide eyed certainty of planners who think they know best how to organise cities and how people move, but the simple truth is that cars bring good, and the growth in car usage will continue regardless of how cars are fueled.  Indeed regardless of the ways that planners find to tax and penalise car use (although thankfully all fuel tax in New Zealand now goes on land transport spending, which is 85% roads).

The car is one of the most liberating technologies the world has ever seen according to Loren Lomasky.
 He comments on why cars and roads are so well used:

In the end, highways are so heavily used because millions of people judge that driving enhances their lives. The striking feature of the critique of highway building programs is that what should be taken as a sign of great success is instead presented as a mark of failure. But the only failure has been with the critics’ attempts to talk people out of their cars and out of the neighborhoods and workplaces that their cars have rendered accessible. This failure is well-deserved. Automobile motoring is good because people wish to engage in it, and they wish to engage in it because it is inherently good.

If only politicians (and voters) would surrender roads from state control, and let them be run commercially by the private sector, like every other utility shown to be far more dynamic outside state control (e.g. telecommunications, aviation, electricity).

Regular service will resume shortly

I've been away, brief periods in France, Germany, Poland, Russia, China, transited Belarus and then spent a longer period in a small highly controversial country of which I can write precious little about here for legal reasons.

All I can say now is that I never thought that arriving in the People's Republic of China would bring with it such a sense of freedom.

UK, NZ and international politics writing will return shortly.