The victor vs the guilty and the scared : UK in the EU

David Cameron has laid it plain - if elected as a majority government in 2015, the Conservatives will offer a referendum on membership of the EU in 2017.

The intention as described in his speech today, is to renegotiate the UK's membership in the EU, with more openness, more flexibility and a relationship with more direct accountability, so that a referendum would mean that a "yes" vote was for a new EU relationship.  "No" of course, would mean departing the EU.  What isn't clear is what would happen if there was not to be a new EU relationship that made a substantive difference to the status quo.

David Cameron is obviously driven by politics.  He wants to sideswipe UKIP, so that its primary policy is, essentially, his.  Why vote UKIP (and risk putting Labour in) when you can vote Conservative and have your say on EU Membership?  Labour leader Ed Miliband has made it clear he doesn't support a referendum because of "the uncertainty" it creates, and the beleaguered Liberal Democrats have long had a love affair with the European project.

However, there is more to it than that, he wants to send a clear message to other EU Member States that  they better negotiate a good enough deal for the UK that he can sell it to UK voters, or those voters will say "no".

You see voters wont be choosing between the status quo and a new relationship that has yet to be negotiated, they would be choosing between a new relationship and leaving the EU.   So something will have to be negotiated.   That puts pressure on those Member States keen on the UK remaining to compromise significantly, for the consequences of failure would be considerable.

It's telling though that the consequences of a "no" vote remain vague.  For most campaigners for a UK exit from the EU, in UKIP, don't want to abandon the single market, they just want to abandon the customs union, EU law and the financial transfers to support EU programmes.  They want to keep open borders for trade and investment.  However, to say "no" to membership of the EU doesn't actually say that.  It is throwing it all away and starting from scratch.  That's a strawman that suits supporters of the EU, but isn't what UKIP wants and isn't what almost all opponents of EU membership argue.

However, what is this all about more fundamentally?  Why is there such antipathy towards the EU in the UK?  Why is there such a different attitude on continental Europe?

It all goes back to history and how it is taught at school to children in Britain and on the continent.  

The British view of history before the EU is fairly simple.  The UK fought and won World War 2 (yes with American help), as such it contributed to being a bulwark against Nazism and subsequently against the threat of Soviet invasion from behind the iron curtain.  Deep in the British national psyche is this belief in the justice of this win, that Britain protected Europe from freedom.   Britain doesn't and didn't see the European project as doing that for Britain, but as being a way of opening up markets and allowing trade and travel.  Britain didn't see it as a way of sharing its welfare state with those from far poorer countries.  

The countries on the continent think quite differently.  The citizens of the countries that believe they were victims of World War 2, i.e. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, believe that the European project is about peace, and is about defusing centuries of nationalist tensions and rivalries.   It is seen as protecting their freedoms, bear in mind these countries all endured years of Nazi occupation and fighting in the streets and fields of their countries.  Britain had the Blitz, but it was never occupied.   The strong belief that the EU is the foundation of keeping the peace in Europe endures because there are generations still alive who can tell tales of horror and poverty of how it was before.   That tale isn't told in the UK which won, rather than was occupied.

The citizens of the countries that fell on the wrong side of the iron curtain think differently again.  For them,  the war was followed by over 40 years of tyranny and totalitarianism.   For them, joining the EU (and NATO) is about turning away from Moscow and turning towards the West.  Notwithstanding the money that comes from EU cohesion funds for being the poorest countries in the EU, the likes of Poland, Romania and Latvia see the EU as part of their process of civilising government, of tackling corruption and promoting core principles such as the separation of powers.   Their view of the EU is understandably different given the darkness from whence they recently emerged.

Finally there is the guilty. Germany (and it wouldn't admit it, Austria).  Germans have hammered into them war guilt, Holocaust guilt, combined with part of the country also carrying relief of having emerged from the same totalitarianism as its eastern neighbours.  For Germany the EU is a way of doing good, of fueling prosperity, human rights and values of freedom, secularism, tolerance, productivity and accountability.  Germany embraces it as salving its conscience over what happened in the war, and what happened in the countries that were occupied.   

So Britain comes from it differently, and has done so fairly consistently.  Britain has long been critical of the Common Agricultural Policy, and gained a partial rebate of its contribution as a result.  Britain has long pushed for reforms for greater transparency and accountability for EU budgets for controls on major projects and scepticism over the growth in EU regulation and spending.

However, it is now coming to a crunch.  There is a profound widespread opposition among many in the UK to EU Membership, not because of free trade, not because of free movement to travel, but because of opposition to petty regulations, opposition to EU spending not only on a profligate polity and bureaucracy, but to well-heeled industrial farmers in France, to spendthrift Greek infrastructure projects.   There is opposition to people from poorer EU Member States claiming welfare benefits, free health care and education, having paid no tax in the UK.  There is opposition to mass uncontrolled migration from those countries.  

Some of the fears are genuine, some of them are beat ups, and there is a lot of bluster about how much the EU costs the UK budget, lots of nonsense that the European Convention on Human Rights came with EU Membership (it comes with being a member of the Council of Europe) and that all the EU brings is regulation (when it also brings prohibitions against governments subsidising businesses that compete with those from other EU Member States).

However, EU Memberships is a constitutional matter.  EU law is supreme in the UK, the UK government is bound to implement most EU law (it needs to negotiate a specific opt out or conditions otherwise, which it also needs agreement on).   The EU takes a small portion of national VAT revenue to spend on the Commission, and the European Parliament is not sovereign, the European Council is.  So imagine a supranational government where the elected representatives of the citizens are not in charge.

It is right for the UK to renegotiate its membership of the European Union, and I will write about why later.   What is wrong with the EU is plenty, what is good about the EU is few, but significant.   I believe it would be great if the UK could renegotiate EU Membership and indeed the European Union on grounds that would be outward looking, liberal, and working towards less laws, except those to bind the economic and social freedoms that Europe should be famous for.

However, I don't believe that this can happen, I don't believe any UK government can remotely negotiate EU Membership that can deliver more freedom and less government (because they don't believe in it at all), and I don't believe the EU is compatible with that.

Davos - when will someone talk about the elephant in the venue?

Regular readers of my blog know my views of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos.

In 2009 I wrote:

There is not inconsiderable hype in the business world and among some in governments about the annual exercise in mutual onanism called the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland. Like many conferences of high profile people, one of the key objectives is to get people to agree and put out nice sounding statements that will offend no one and look like some enormous intellectual capital has been applied to the economic issues of the world.

Liam Halligan at the Daily Telegraph calls for this year's WEF to actually do something useful, like dealing with the elephants in the economic room that never get discussed, because to do so would embarrass the inept, timid and unprincipled politicians that scurry about the venue at Davos, seeking to appear important and competent.   He focuses on the US fiscal cliff and the unsustainability of the "Western model" of growing state dependency, deficit spending and public debt.

However, Davos wont do that.   It didn't identify the financial crisis, it didn't debate solutions, it hasn't really done much at all over the years.   It does involve a lot of networking and back slapping.  Andrew Ross Sorkin in the New York Times has written about how many of the prophesies at Davos prove to be far from true, like Bill Gates predicting Google didn't really have a business, how Ken Lay CEO of Enron was a keynote speaker in 2001 (yes the one convicted of conspiracy and fraud)  and how C. Fred Bergsten, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said at Davos 2008 that it was inconceivable that there could be a world recession.

It's hilarious, for an event where the cost to send a delegate is a registration fee of US$20,000 a head, plus accommodation, airfares and other expenses of course, add a zero or two if you actually want to speak.

No doubt the business people attending see value in networking and discussing opportunities, but it is the fact it provides a forum to ignore some serious home truths about public policy in governments, whilst politicians are there talking about everything, but the hard issues, that makes the Forum more hype than substance.

No serious scholar of economics or finance would look at the Davos World Economic Forum as a locale of intense debate and discussion about any need for serious systematic change to domestic or foreign policy in any countries.

So what SHOULD be talked about?

How about this:

- The budget deficit and public debt of the United States, exacerbated by the unsustainability of social security and Medicare, and how it requires the US to choose between serious cuts in the role of the Federal Government, or serious increases in taxes, and what both options mean for economic growth and the long term future of the United States as the world's leading economy;

- The future of the European Union, particularly the nationalisation of southern European public debt by northern European economies, and how unsustainable the widespread European model of ever growing public spending and regulation of the private sector has proven to be in sustaining growth, employment and confidence.  In other words, how will Europe grow when so much of its economy and society is dependent on internal transfers;

- The risks and disappointment that quantitative easing/money printing/debasement and devaluation of currencies has proven to be in re-invigorating those economies that have engaged in it, and the emergence of new asset price inflation bubbles fueled by the fiat money manufacturing process.  In other words, real debate about the use of monetary policy to create money and the chimera of the short term "success" it creates.  Is there starting to be a shift back towards commodity money as a source of store of value?;

- The opportunities trade liberalisation in good and services can have in promoting economic growth, reducing poverty, increasing employment and improving the environment, if only the US, EU, Japan, China, India and Brazil could get their act together and launch a new WTO trade round, and how the creeping protectionism globally threatens to cause much harm.  How could world leaders catalyse a new open trade round for the 21st century?;

- The corrosion of economies and societies by corruption, through the effective confiscation of wealth by corrupt politicians and business owners using state regulation, protectionism, subsidies, exemptions from legal enforcement of contract, tort, criminal and property laws.  How critical it is for developing countries to seriously tackle corruption, with open independent courts, open free media and political systems that allow voters to remove those in power readily, and to protect the rights of all citizens from infringement by government, by gangsters and other thugs.  What does failing to do this encourage in terms of net emigration, the lack of interest from foreign investors beyond extractive businesses?

- The qualitative difference between governments cutting spending on consumption, and increasing taxes on wealth and income creation, and how one helps to create economic growth, whereas the other stymies it.

It wont happen.  Economic vandals like Gordon Brown will be speaking, a man who was one of the world's worst dealers in precious metals, but also an egregious creator of rampant state dependency and an unsustainable economy fueled by an endless addiction to promoting private and public sector credit.  His personal behaviour was notable for paranoia and an egotistical over-estimation of his own intellect and perspicacity, he shouldn't be speaking in polite company.

It includes Eurocrats, who demand austerity from Member States but more money for their own, unaudited, intergovernmental organisation.  The leader of a company that facilitated a country lying about its public spending and then seeking to profit from it.  A communist and finally a serial bigamist who jokes about rape.  Pardon me if I am not impressed by a group that invites individuals with such questionable intellectual and moral credentials.

Of course the World Economic Forum includes meetings in secret, but who really will take on the corruption,  the wilful deception by politicians of the monetary and fiscal positions of their countries, including those who promised unearned money, goods and services at the price of bankrupting future generations?

It wont be happening in Davos.

Yep, it's not worthy of the esteemed individuals who actually do attend.

Move along, there isn't a lot to see here.

UPDATE:  Helen Clark is at Davos.  Who is surprised? 5 star hotels, schmoozing and pontificating, whilst escaping the excoriating criticism of the substandard subsidiary of the UN she leads.   She is keen on how austerity is impacting on development, code for "how dare developed countries cut spending on aid funnelled through intergovernmental organisations because they have the temerity to try to balance their budgets by means others than taxes".  Rich, of course, for an international civil servant who pays no tax.

Politicians are to blame for Heathrow being unable to cope with snow

The news the last few days in the UK has been focused on the reaction of much of the country to what is really a fairly average dump of snow, albeit the first proper snow this winter.  Yes, some roads have been slow, yes some railways have been a bit slow too, and there have been some delays at airports across the country.  Most people accept this to be normal, which is true.  There needs to be more care in such conditions, and it is how people in colder climates manage this time of year.

However, the outrage has been focused on the one piece of transport infrastructure that the media has portrayed as being unable to cope, but which is actually coping the best it possibly could under the circumstances - Heathrow Airport.

Heathrow's owners, BAA (soon to drop that name), invested £50 million in equipment to clear snow from runways, taxiways and stands, and the airport has been accomplishing this successfully.  It is just as well equipped as airports in continental Europe, its problem is capacity.

No other airport in Europe runs at 98-99% capacity.  With low clouds, falling snow (which was the case yesterday) and low visibility, the key need is for planes to have a far greater following distance for takeoffs and landings, to build in a greater safety factor.  The problem for Heathrow is that its landing and takeoff slots are at tiny intervals of around 1-3 minutes (depending on aircraft type).  Simply increasing these by another minute cuts a lot of slots out, so suddenly Heathrow faces knocking 10-20% of flights out just so the remainder can operate safely.

You can do this at Stansted, where the airport is only running at less than 60% capacity (a few delays at some busy times, but that's it).  At Gatwick, which is operating at around 90% capacity, it can just manage.  Of course Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt all have spare capacity as well, but Heathrow doesn't have it.

The reason is politics.

Heathrow's owners have long wanted to build a third runway, but politicians stuck their noses into it because of the concern of more flights over properties of people who live under flightpaths.  The land for the runway has mostly been owned by BAA for some time and at no point has BAA wanted a penny of taxpayers' money to pay for it - it is commercially viable in its own right (A point largely ignored by the media, which treats infrastructure spending by the private and public sector as if it has the same impact, whereas only the latter is paid for by everyone).  However, the last government had inquiries and investigations into it for so long that approval was only given a year before the election.

The Conservative Party, supposedly a party of business, saw a chance to look Green, as part of David Cameron's efforts to "modernise" the party - code for embracing everything that looked new and trendy and "nice" to attract more voters, but actually included embracing the avowedly anti-growth agenda of the environmental movement.  So he promised no third runway at Heathrow Airport.  He's in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a party that warmly embraced that philosophy years ago.  Labour has since seen a chance to win seats in west London, so has jumped on the anti-runway bandwagon.

So that it be.  Whilst there is talk about airport capacity, and all sorts of lunatic ideas from a huge taxpayer funded airport at the Thames Estuary (talk of it being commercially funded is laughable), to using other airports with ample capacity that airlines aren't so keen on, there is a new inquiry looking at options, conveniently timed to report back after the next election, in two and a half years' time.

Heathrow Airport sits and gets jammed up with cancelled flights and upset people, few of whom will point the finger at politicians for their plight, but they should.  They should be blaming Nick Clegg, Zac Goldsmith, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and others who have hopped on this bandwagon.  You see they just wanted the votes of people who chose to live under the flightpath of Europe's busiest airport.

If Heathrow had a third runway, there would be more flights, no doubt, but the airport would probably be working at more like 75%-80% capacity, so would be unlikely to need to cancel flights in the conditions seen lately, of course in particularly heavy snow conditions it would close, like any airport must do.

So if you're stuck because of cancelled flights at Heathrow, recognise that BAA is not to blame, British Airways and the other airlines are not to blame, it's the politicians who consistently get in the way of a profitable privately owned business from expanding its asset to meet the demands of its customers.   

UK Treasury isn't on top of its own website

let alone the economy.

One may jest that it is hardly surprising that one after another there are UK businesses folding due to competition from the internet (Jessops, HMV, Blockbuster, Comet), when those advising the Government aren't even able to keep on top of their own website.

Do a search on the Treasury website for Treasury structure.  I did that moments ago because I actually wanted to find someone in the organisation.

You'll get not one, but two PDF files listed as follows:

Treasury Structure and

Treasury Structure

both very similar, both with the Chancellor of the Exchequer being one Rt Hon Gordon Brown. 

Now I wouldn't suggest that this means anything significant, other than the Treasury has failed to keep its website up to date or to maintain it properly.  

This sort of nonsense shouldn't happen, but then the incentives around Treasury getting things right (and the penalties for getting things wrong) are not quite as direct as they are for businesses.

Environmentalist reveals anti-science attitudes at heart of the movement

Whether you call it GE or GM, the debate about genetic engineering has been overwhelmed by vehement opposition from the environmental movement from day one.   Former NZ Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons said in 1998 that that Christmas was the last one when you could "trust a potato" and since then the rhetoric around GMOs has been simple:

- Genetic engineering shouldn't be allowed outside laboratories because once released into the environment anything can happen (visions of plants and animals overrunning the landscape);

- GM food is "Frankenfood"(visions of it coming from monsters, as if it involves something half fish/half pineapple) and so everyone has the right to know if there is any trace of GMO in it, so they know they are "safe";

- Organic food is safe and healthy and wonderful, and is not only the best for one's health, but is great for the economy.

Mark Lynas is an environmentalist, his credentials are here.  He was an activist against GMOs, and he has come out to admit he was wrong.  He gave a lecture on 3 January 2013 to the Oxford Farming Conference where he said so.   It tears at the heart of the rhetoric of the Green movement on genetic engineering and as a result gives good reason to question any time any of them try to quote science.

Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares.

These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with.

This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.

It is damning about the environmental movement, about Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.  Some of the choice quotes are:

What's next?

I've decided, in the interim, to keep doing what I have been doing, but to simplify tags.  I will have tags for the UK, NZ and other countries, and for specific generic topics.  I have too many tags as it is, so it is  time for them to mature - like me.

I will be writing about freedom, economic rationalism and the morality of having a society which is about consensual adult interaction, and a state which exists to protect that, and to intervene when people initiate or threaten to initiate force, or fraud.  I believe the purpose of life is to pursue your own goals, your own passions and to enjoy yourself.  People do that with family, friends, loved ones and many form partnerships, some get married and have children, but they are driven by what they enjoy.  That may be conversation, art, exploration, discovery, sport, cuisine, love, sex, hobbies or whatever.  However, that, for me, is the meaning of life.  It is about enjoying it, and then interacting voluntarily with those who complement it, which is about being social, enjoying your time with others, giving benevolently of your time, your property and your attention to those whom you choose.   That for me, is being human.

As a result I will also be writing about those who are against this.  Socialists who want other people's money taken by force, environmentalists who scaremonger and lie about science whilst selling anti-capitalism and state dependency as "solutions" for poverty, personal behaviour control freaks who believe that the solution to people who smoke, eat, drink or inject themselves to early graves is to make their behaviour illegal or tax it or berate them,  sensitive souls who want to criminalise people who offend them, Islamists who worship death and shroud their misogyny and other radical religious zealots who want laws to criminalise those who don't live according to their own selected moral code.

Frequently I will agree with those who are not objectivists and libertarians, sometimes there is common cause with conservatives (and obviously there is not on some matters), occasionally common cause with leftwing liberals.

An orgy of irrationalism in economics (where money printing is seen to be a solution to stagnant productivity growth) and moral relativism in education, media and popular culture gives enormous scope for commentary.

So it is time to go forward.  I hope you enjoy what I write, and that you engage with ideas. If it bores you, move along.  If it offends you, I couldn't care less.

Bye 2012, hello 2013

Beyond the tragic shooting in the United States, which Peter Cresswell has pithily written about, the time has come for me to reflect on 2012.  What themes were important, what really matters and how has the world changed in that time?

Economics

The big theme remains economic policy and what remains a crisis of stagnation, public and private debt across the OECD.  It was caused on the one hand by malinvestment by financial institutions obtaining cheap credit from central banks which were focused on inflation of consumer prices, not asset values, and on the other hand by governments which thought they could perpetually overspend using that credit and never face a collapse in tax revenue when the malinvestments collapsed.

Despite the (rather pathetic) efforts by some on the left to try to paint this as the collapse of "neo-liberalism" (their term) and free market capitalism (ignoring that fiat money issued by central banks controlling credit, and a US financial system that made some lending to the "uncreditworthy" compulsory), nothing much has changed.

An exercise in widespread economic guesswork has seen a range of "solutions" be adopted by larger economies.

The US has been printing money, as has the UK, which is meant to work by flooding the financial sector with money to lend to businesses, hoping they will invest and grow the economy.  Of course, this risks causing inflation, which is happening on sharemarket prices (and some commodity prices) largely because entrepreneurs are conservative.  Inflation on consumer prices is low, because consumers are largely deleveraging (reducing their exposure to debt) because of fear of unemployment.

This money printing is being undertaken largely because central bankers and government economists don't know what else to do, and are hoping that the flood of money will end up getting spent and circulated and revitalise the economy, ignoring the real effect on savings and threat of inflation taking off.

In fiscal policy there is a split between the Keynesians and the "austerity is necessary"advocates.  The former believe that government can spend its way out of a recession, and Barack Obama has been of that school (as have more than some leftwing parties in other countries).  Japan has also been pursuing this approach and has seen 15 years of continuous stagnation.  The austerity advocates believe (as I do) that a balanced budget is critical, which is all very well, except that they also see tax increases and spending cuts as essentially neutral in terms of net economic impact.

They aren't, as tax increases reduce the size of the private sector, whereas spending cuts reduce the size of the public sector.   Tax increases take money from people undertaking voluntary transactions, whilst spending cuts mean less of other people's money being spent.  This is qualitatively and morally quite different.

I don't expect much will come of the limited austerity being undertaken.  France is taking the extreme tax increase approach and is paying for it.  The European Union is continuing to preach that the solution to a crisis caused by its own monetary looseness and fiscal incontinence is for it to spend more money from European taxpayers, to pay lip service to liberalising reforms that could do some good, and to arrogantly regard European citizens who question is unaudited, unaccountable bureaucracy as morally questionable.

So all of that continues, and it continues to deliver little, and I predict that will continue some more, until the next short term boom and bust.

The problem is that rent seekers of the state are loud, and demanding, whilst those who lose from rent seeking (savers, and a subset of current and future taxpayers) are numerous (and in many cases not yet born).

What is needed is true austerity, an end to taxpayer support of all business, encouragement of personal savings for retirement income and healthcare, an end to taxpayer support of children in middle income households, the end of QE and the removal of restrictions on competing currencies (to allow a shift towards commodity currencies if there is market demand for it).  That is the necessary minimum, to avoid the rolling bankruptcies of governments, to avoid the fiscal child abuse that is now rampant and to reduce the risk of future booms and busts.

By Country

UK:  The UK ends the year under a cloud, with continued moaning by rent seekers of state largesse about relatively small cuts in spending, and rising debate about the future of the UK within the EU.  The two bright lights at the end of the year has been the intelligent decision to reject Lord Leveson's call for a state regulator of the press (given his most recent comments wanting a level playing field between bloggers, tweeters and publishers, it ought to, but wont shut up the foaming at the mouth haters of Rupert Murdoch lying about his market presence), and rejection of mandatory internet filtering.   The year ahead will be full of hope of a recovery, which is unlikely, and full of arrogance and hatred of successful business from a revitalised more leftwing Labour Party - which will continue to argue that its slower programme of spending cuts (not saying what those are) will miraculously save the economy and mean that by spending more, the government will somehow be overspending less.   The mainstream hate filled class warfare against the "rich" will continue, and the national religion of the NHS (the world's largest non-military public sector employer) will remain almost impossible to challenge.

USA:  So Obama has won, thanks to a massive campaign of negativity, and he has succeeded in introduced a 2% increase in tax on all working Americans, whilst claiming all he did was increase taxes on the rich.  The US will continue to limp forward, printing more money, and the Obama Administration will do little to constrain the budget deficit.  The US taxes like a small government country and spends like a big government country,  this year wont be the one when it reconciles which of those it wants to be.  For those noisy about higher taxes also have an equal number noisy about losing the money they receive from borrowed loot.

New Zealand:  Politics will continue to be dominated by who may lead Labour, the Greens will continue to shroud their radical statist racist agenda with "oh so reasonable" sounding policies, with a media incapable or unwilling to challenge it, and the Nats will continue to ride slowly down their wave of disappointment and public cynicism.  The remains of ACT and libertarian/pro-capitalists will be developing a new platform forward for the local government elections.

Elsewhere:

Germany feels lucky, but it has its own fiscal problems, with public debt approaching 90% of GDP.  It will have to embark on austerity sooner or later, but is hoping the global economy will recover enough to avoid this.

France is following a path of socialism that is chasing away business and successful entrepreneurs.  Those on the left should watch and learn.

Russia survives on energy prices that remains buoyant due to Chinese demand, but if Western Europe ignores the environmentalist luddites on fracking, it will decimate gas prices and hurt Russia and Putin. Russia still has net population decline because the rampant corruption, brutal state and lack of opportunities for anyone who doesn't buy into the culture of corporatist corruption that surrounds Putin makes anyone with vision to not be a gangster, leave.  As long as Russians remain complicit in this, it will continue to bubble on, and become less and less relevant.

The Middle East will see a series of contrasts.  Libya will be increasingly a friend of the West, Egypt will face ongoing civil conflict,  Assad will fall, but the rebels will not be enamoured with the West.  Israel will continue to be hardline towards the Palestinians given the events in Egypt and Syria.  Iran will continue to stagnate, and there will be some efforts to reduce its isolation due to economic reality (and collapse of its ally in Syria).

Japan will stagnate, more.

China's growth will slow down, as its property bubble and its own sub-prime loan crisis gets absorbed by the state in one way or another. The biggest story in China is the rampant free speech seen online and the debates internally about politics and government policy through that medium.  China's new leadership wont embark on radical change, but watch to see if local politics become more pluralistic.   Meanwhile, China will sabre rattle over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands, and the islands in the South China Sea, until the US makes it clear that any battle over any such islands will not be tolerated.

Finally, Australia or China's mine, is hoping China's lowering growth doesn't hurt its grossly imbalanced economy.   It continues to be competitive in little beyond digging dirt and selling it, it continues to engage in massive transfers to support inefficient parts of the economy (e.g. motor vehicle assembly).   It will get a shock if China takes a shock, and NZ will be not far behind.

Culture

The year ends with the greatest influence on culture being the pervasiveness of the internet and communication technologies.  It is radically transforming how people interact, how they meet and what exposure they have to ideas, images and sounds.  Children and teenagers dive into it, parents either embrace or fear it, governments seek to monitor and control it, businesses are struggling to get to grips with how to use it and how it affects their businesses.   It remains dynamic and unpredictable, and will frighten governments more and more, but will also drive populist politicians to want to "do something about it" as people use it to bypass tariffs, taxes, censors and monopolies.

Me

This blog will be changing, I will be making it primarily about the UK and world affairs, with a separate page for NZ matters that I care to care for.  I will be writing slightly less frequently, but with a bit more reflection, and with a few more pieces that are less "current history" and more strategic in focus.

As much as I am an objectivist, libertarian and vehemently pro-capitalist, all that in itself is not enough to affect change and influence.  More important than politics, is culture and the philosophy underpinning that, and at the moment there is has been a yawning gap abandoned by traditional conservatism that has been filled by a post-modernist cultural relativist mush of constructed fiction.  Only by taking that on can those of us who believe in individual freedom, capitalism and small government provide convincing arguments against the status quo.  However, on top of that we also have to demonstrate the moral case for capitalism and individual freedom is not the vampiric caricature of a strawman that the post-modernist left paints all too lazily, but of generous, benevolent, positive and social people who are defined by themselves, and how they live their lives.

The case for freedom is not based on economics, it is not based on religion and is not based on a nihilistic hedonism, but on a belief in life as the highest value and that humanity and civilisation is reflected with consensual adult interaction in all affairs.

Basin Reserve flyover opponents are grandstanding

The noise from Labour and the Greens on the Basin Reserve flyover is utterly remarkable.   

For Labour it is grandstanding hypocrisy because when it was in government, Labour endorsed a transport funding packages for Wellington that explicitly included provision for grade separation of roads at the Basin Reserve.

For the Greens it is disappointing, as it is a continuation of the hyperbolic hysteria that Sue Kedgley use to peddle, which I thought may have been moderated under the more thoughtful Julie Anne Genter.  

For both they may want to claim the project is akin to some major urban motorway project of the sort that once activated large groups of "rent-a-mob" leftwing protestors in the UK, but really it is no big deal at all.   Furthermore, the absurd claim that Wellington City Council is being bullied because NZTA questions the value of duplicating Mt Victoria Tunnel and associated road improvements towards the airport without the flyover, is astonishingly hypocritical.  For I doubt that the Greens endorse any of those projects (and if you believe road capacity improvements are the spawn of the devil, then doubling highway capacity between the city and eastern suburbs ought to be opposed as Sue Kedgley thought at the time).

Labour once happily supported funding major highway works at the Basin Reserve

During the Clark Government, Labour released a transport funding package for Wellington, which included money for the new Matangi electric multiple units, replacement signalling, electrical and track infrastructure, replacement trolley buses and to support a range of major road improvements.  The calculations for this funding including provision for capacity improvements at the Basin Reserve, with the implication clearly made at the time that this is about grade separation. 

Indeed, it was seen in the Wellington Regional Council's endorsement of "Basin Reserve capacity improvements" as the 4th highest priority in 2005.

It was the next logical stage after the one-way road and on-ramp that comprised the much maligned "Inner City Bypass" (which simply enabled the one-way system across Te Aro to be shifted a block and a bit south).   So Grant Robertson and other Labour politicians jumping on this bandwagon are being hypocrites.  Annette King in particular is being disingenuous, because she supports a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, which without the Basin Reserve bridge would simply mean longer queues at the Basin Reserve, as two bottlenecks would be cleared.   She didn't utter a peep when Transit/NZTA was investigating this very project when Labour was in power.

Greens are being utter hysterics over a two-lane one-way bridge

Sue Kedgley consistently claimed the Wellington Inner City Bypass would be a "multi-lane motorway extension through the heart of Te Aro".   It wasn't.  I wonder how many people who went on "path of destruction" tours still think Te Aro's historical heart has been "destroyed".

The "path of destruction" of the Wellington inner city bypass looks a lot like the other two lane roads

The two-lane 50km/h city street called a "multi-lane motorway" by the Greens

Now the claim is that this project will "destroy the character" of the Basin Reserve, an entirely subjective value judgment, but itself is rather extreme.  It will affect it, some may think negatively, but destroy?  Really?

The next claim is "it will affect Wellington's green belt and access to eastern suburb sports facilities and will cost tax- and rate-payers $97 million to move traffic congestion 300 metres"

Really?  The green belt?  Utter nonsense:

The green belt is off to the left of the Basin bridge, affected?

How will it affect access to eastern suburb sports facilities? Other than improve them for those leaving the eastern suburbs.  How will it cost ratepayers, given it is fully funded from NZTA as a state highway project?  How will it "destroy the Basin as a sporting and cultural venue"?   

Just pure hysteria.

Julie Anne Genter is a bit better on this.  She says it is a waste of money because the road has "declining traffic volumes", although this isn't apparent in the severe congestion and of course the Greens typically say new roads generate new traffic, so she can't have it both ways.

She says "The vast majority of people coming into Wellington take public transport, cycle or walk", yet this project isn't about people coming into Wellington, but bypassing Wellington primarily between the airport and the Hutt, Porirua and wider region.  In fact the travel survey by NZTA (excel file) of travel across the country indicates that 68-69% of trips in the region are by car, with 5-7% by public transport. Greater Wellington Regional Council even says only 17% of commuter trips are by public transport, with it being 21% in Wellington city (excluding the Hutt and Porirua).  Cars are important in Wellington.

Then there is the utter nonsense of this:  "A massive concrete motorway flyover is an invitation for future urban decay and crime. It is the exact opposite of smart transport planning".  Once again, she has Kedgley disease in calling it a motorway, but there are several motorway flyovers in Wellington, let's look for this urban decay and crime:

Bowen Street motorway overbridge - car park, housing and offices

Thorndon Quay motorway overbridge, commercial and retail premises

Dowse Drive/Hutt Road overbridge, commercial and retail premises

Yep, lots of urban decay and crime in those scenes.

In fact the only argument she has is economic.  It doesn't have a good benefit/cost ratio, with various studies indicating it ranges from below 1 to above 1.  The argument can be made that there are better projects.  Yet the Green Party's pet project - the underground rail loop in Auckland - doesn't have one either, in fact they argue that the conventional benefit/cost appraisal of the project doesn't take into account all of the criteria important to them.   So it's a bit rich to claim a road doesn't stake up on one set of criteria, but that same criteria is inappropriate for a rail project.

What is clear is the Greens will oppose road improvements on any sort of cooked up criteria.  A flyover may be ugly to some, and it may not be the best use of money spent on roads in Wellington, but it is far from the worst, and unlike the proposals for more rail, it wont need subsidies its entire existence. 

Save the Basin campaign is equally hysterical

The actual opposition campaign against the project is at best misguided and naive, at worst beholden to the same hyperbole that besets the Greens.

The claims are:

• It will blight the streetscape and surrounding neighbourhoods

Well, few things blight the streetscape as much as large volumes of traffic circulating around this enormous roundabout.  As you can see above, bridges need not blight streetscapes.  The claim it will "blight" surrounding neighbourhoods is hysterical.  After all, the presence of a busy road tunnel since 1931 has had a bigger impact.  Thorndon has had a motorway blasted through it since the 1970s and is hardly "blighted", neither is Kelburn "blighted" having it running at its base.  

• It will overshadow the Basin Reserve and place its future as an iconic international cricket ground at risk

Oddly, this was never really raised as an issue for the 40 years that there have been serious plans to push a major highway along this alignment.  There is no authoritative statement that this is true, just a rant by a reader to a website.   

• It’s unnecessary. Road traffic volumes in New Zealand are declining and so is trucking:

So what? The route is congested and the current problems are severe.  At peak times, queues from the Basin back up all the way through the Mt Victoria Tunnel, they back up around the Basin from Buckle Street, and create delays for buses. 

• Now that a tunnel is being built under Memorial Park, it makes no sense to emerge from a tunnel and go up onto a flyover

Yes, and nobody is expecting that to happen because the flyover is a one way road towards the tunnel.  This basic mistake indicates how very shallow this opposition is.

• There are good, well-researched alternatives to a flyover. One, Option X, looks even better financially now that a tunnel will built under Memorial Park. Another non-flyover alternative has recently emerged.

Except that these alternatives actually don't deliver benefits and Option X creates new problems.  The professional assessment (i.e. highway engineers not architects) indicates that Option X has safety issues, would cost more, would have lesser benefits and has significant gaps (e.g. it is depicted as offering no road access to two of the schools at the Basin Reserve).   

This claim from its website is just nonsense:

This vote follows other cities throughout the world which have rejected flyovers – Boston, New York, Melbourne, Toronto, Seoul, Boston, Milwaukee, Vancouver, Trenton, Portland, Chattanooga.

Oh really? The Big Dig in Boston?  Melbourne's Citylink, EastLink and soon to be built East-West link? Toronto's 407ETR? Boston twice (paying attention then)?  Well Auckland has had a host of flyovers built in the past decade, Napier has had two built, Hamilton has just seen one built, Christchurch has just seen one built.  Indeed, the Hutt Valley recently had one open (Dowse Drive Interchange)

Funnily enough, the claim that the bridge will generate more traffic is now not made, presumably the great fear is that it will work and make a positive difference to traffic, like every other grade separation highway project in Wellington in recent years (underpass of Vivian Street, Dowse Drive Interchange, Newlands Interchange, Mungavin Interchange). 

A simple claim is made that anytime there is new road capacity provided, it quickly fills up because there are simply thousands of people who would have driven before, but for whom the existing congestion puts them off.  The improved road is said to "induce" demand, and so make things worse, because the additional trips (which are presumed to have little real value) simply take the road back to a congested position in the first place.  This is known as the Pigou–Knight–Downs paradox, but it is so grotesquely misquoted out of context by politicians (particularly Green ones) that it is worth remembering what the authors actually meant.

The situation they talked of was when the road improvement directly reduced congestion for a trip where there was a parallel public transport service offering similar travel times to driving.  A perfect example in Wellington would be trips between the Hutt Valley and Wellington city, so that adding another lane to the motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay would directly improve travel times between driving and taking the train.   It's a bit more difficult when very few of the trips on the route being improved are undertaken by public transport (or could reasonably be undertaken by public transport), even moreso if the route improvement directly reduces delays on public transport.

The Basin Reserve flyover primarily benefits traffic travelling between the airport/eastern suburbs and the wider region to the north and the western suburbs.  Whilst there are a few bus services that offer alternatives to some, all focus on passenger starting/finishing trips in the CBD, so are slow for trips that are bypassing it.  In other words, the time savings wont result in any mode shift which is the source of the "induced demand" claimed by that theory.  Beyond that, it is difficult to envisage that anyone will relocate businesses or homes just because a flyover will knock a minute or so off of traffic queues, certainly not in volumes that will mean it gets filled up with traffic.

Furthermore, the secondary benefit of the flyover is to take east-west traffic flow away from the north-south traffic flow at the Basin, which includes some major bus routes.  Those bus routes are held up by substantial delays which will be relieved by the flyover, a point almost entirely ignored by the naysayers.

Local authority opposition is misguided and should be ignored

For many years both the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Wellington City Council have supported major road improvements on this corridor.  Regional Councillor Paul Bruce, a Green Party member and activist against motorised transport (the guy bikes most places) has been central to seeking a review of this, and at Wellington City the Mayor has been.  This is the first time this opposition has been realised at the Councils, and shows just how difficult it is to plan major infrastructure when politics swings against it, particularly when there was strong support before.

Yet it largely shouldn't be up to them. The project requires no ratepayer money, it isn't on local roads (although it interfaces with them), and it fits clearly into the various strategies that are relevant.  It demonstrably improves access across the city, and will deliver huge benefits to public transport users, cyclists and pedestrians (in part because a damned silly cycling/pedestrian bridge has been included in the design).  

Opposition to it is hysterical, illogical and based on hyperbole or simple nonsense.  

It is a two lane one-way westbound bridge to connect one tunnel to another.   A second Mt Victoria Tunnel can't possibly replicate the benefits of this, and in fact will make the current situation worse.   Labour opposes it because it is being pushed under a National Government and Labour wants Green votes in Wellington.  The Greens oppose it because it's a road project and it panders to hyperbole about road projects. The Save the Basin lobbyists suggest alternatives that are inferior and unsustainable.   The two Councils are pandering to Green activists within their ranks, who offer no rational alternative (exhorbitantly expensive light rail lines that wont do a thing to reduce congestion are just chimeras).   If any of those opposed were truly concerned about generating more traffic they would stop improvements to the motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay and demand Transmission Gully be stopped, but the latter is politically popular, so they are largely keeping their heads down on that one.

The Basin bridge will improve the environment for all road users, reduce delays and emissions, and is a necessary pre-requisite to building a second Mt. Victoria Tunnel.  It should proceed.

Connecticut children are relatively lucky compared to the gulag kids

Whilst the US and other mainstream Western media continue to interview children going to school in Connecticut following the shooting, milking the sadness and showing concern for how they cope with the stress of the appalling crime (which is fair enough), I thought it was time to get some perspective.

At the moment in North Korea there are over 150,000 people in gulags. This includes children.  It is impossible to know how many are children, but it is likely to be in the low thousands.

They are slaves.  They get little food.  The temperature averages at -10 Celsius, the gulags are unheated.  They are awoken at dawn and expected to work every day, doing menial tasks.  Those too young to work get beaten, neglected, sexually abused and tortured for sadistic pleasure.  They are told every day how useless they are, as sons and daughters of counter-revolutionary traitors, lackeys of Americans and Japanese.  

"Id just turned twelve, and I remember wishing I would die soon”  (Kang Chol-Hwan "Aquariums of Pyongyang")

So note that whilst the world paid attention to the DPRK's rocket and its now failing satellite, and the propaganda around the first anniversary of Kim Jong Il's death (and placement in a mausoleum), it doesn't ever pay enough attention to the children in the gulags there.

As I've said before the prisoner children in the DPRK are:

Forced to live in prisons high in the mountain valleys, from babies.  They receive rations that are starvation level, those who survive do so by eating bugs, mice and other things they can forage or hunt for.  Many are physically abused, some sexually abused, when old enough they are forced to work from dawn to late in the evening, every day.  It is one step removed from Nazi concentration camps, in that it isn’t gassing used to eliminate them, simply hard work, cold and malnutrition.

So this Christmas, whilst you may naturally spare a thought for the parents of the children who were killed in the shooting, and the kids left behind, you'd do worse than to be distressed and angry at the ones in North Korea.  Angrier still at the willing idiots in the West who defend it, and angry at the Western politicians who have been too scared to bring this issue up at every appropriate opportunity.

As cute and amusing as North Korea is, it really isn't.  It's unspeakably vile, and at this time of year that vileness will seen many many children die of malnutrition, hypothermia and torture, because of a state, a philosophy and a system that devalues life and dehumanises in a way that is difficult to exaggerate.

Future of this blog? Updated

So, should I continue this blog?

I've not lived in New Zealand for over seven years, and I am unlikely to return in the near future.  I follow NZ politics less and less, in part because it shows little sign of any intelligent debate in the mainstream media, and it becomes ever more obsessed with personality and image over substance.

I am following what is happening in the UK, and Europe more generally, as well as international affairs.

I have a number of options:

1.  Continue, whimsically, writing about NZ, the UK or whatever, according to what I want to vent about, but being a bit more thoughtful and occasional about what I write.

2.  Give up writing about NZ, and concentrate on the UK, with NZ really only being of importance if it is a major change of long term consequence.

3.  Split the blog into two, with a new one that focuses on the UK (or NZ).

I have a preference for now, which I'd rather not reveal, so I'd appreciate some feedback.  I blog partly to vent, partly to try to influence.

UPDATE:  I have also had the suggestion via email that I shift transport specific posts elsewhere, which I will do regardless.  That is a different project, and is about taking a rational approach to transport policy that is evidence based, and is not based on the subjective sociological velvet glove planning approach to the sector.   The Auckland Transport Blog exists for those who think cars and trucks are bad, railways are good, and that one sector of the economy works best when a small number of people seek to subvert the preferences of the majority.   I don't want to focus on NZ on that, because it is far wider than the current fetish of some for big railways and others for big motorways.

Worried about child poverty? Well use your own money then

If ever there was a reason to close down the Office of the Children's Commissioner, it should be this report on child poverty (pdf).  It is the classic socialist/statist treatise on taking more money from some people to spend money on others.  Philosophically it takes the view that the people primarily responsible for children are not those who created them or have taken responsibility (typically by default) to care for them, but the state.  It's hardly surprising given that the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty consists almost entirely of those who embrace a philosophical position of statism.

Let's take some of its key points:

Child Poverty is costly:  The counterfactual that children who are well fed, housed, taught and loved tend to thrive is true, but to claim that you can monetise "costs" that are born by society presumes that they are to be born by everyone.  Yes having children you cannot afford to feed, house or clothe restricts their likely opportunities and ability to thrive, but that isn't the fault of everyone else - it is the fault of the father and mother for breeding without thinking of the consequences.  The report claims that it "should not be tolerated".  Who by?  Is everyone who raises children in adequate conditions or does not raise children have to be obliged to bear the costs of those who do not take reasonable steps to prevent raising a child in poverty?  The claim is that child poverty affects the "nation's long-term prosperity", but all that really means is a presumption that government will tax everyone else's prosperity to pay for those who go on welfare because they have few saleable skills, those who commit crimes because they want the property of others or are angry at others, or who breed without concern for the consequences.  Maintaining that presumption denies the fundamental cultural shift needed to promote responsibility for the consequences of ones own actions.  That isn't promoted by the welfare state or the idea that all children are the responsibility of all adult.  They are not.

Child poverty can be reduced:  Yes, demonstrably, it has been happening for centuries.  It has been achieved through economic growth, and the growing amount of time that parents can dedicate to raising children.  That is not encouraged by a growing state demanding ever more taxes, restricting the supply of land for housing and so increasing the cost of living and the amount of work people must undertake to achieve their desired standard of living.  The main motivator for reducing child poverty has been parents who have strived hard to give their children a life better than their own.  Mine did that, countless others did, and they didn't do it because the state told them to do so, or handed them a cheque.  They did so because they were responsible and human.

Specific recommendations:  The overwhelming thrust of these measures is to treat children as a national asset that needs a national solution.  It wants universal benefits for children up to a certain aid, making all children rich or poor a source of income taken from taxpayers.  It wants taxpayer funded universal healthcare for children up to age 17.  It wants the state to build more houses.  It wants legislation to bind a Minister to targets that are primarily about what families, mothers, fathers and children do on the ground.  It is absurd and ridiculous to use law - an instrument which typically defines rights, mandates actions or prohibits them, to be necessary to hold a politician to what is a politically set policy goal.   It undermines democracy and clogs up the legal system with a law that is not fit for purpose.

It seeks to make every additional child worth the same amount of additional welfare from the state, promoting breeding for cash, a phenomenon that has hardly been a great success.   Why is it good for children for their parents to get more money from the state because they breed more?   It wants welfare benefits to grow according to GDP, in effect meaning welfare always looks like a reasonable option regardless of actual poverty levels.  

It wants the state to lend money at favourable terms to people in poverty seeking to get back into work, presumably because it doesn't think the public would support such a charity.

It wants a massive state intervention in housing to regulate rental housing, build more homes, but also subsidise low income people's mortgages.  The words "sub-prime" should come to mind, but then when middle income people struggle to save for deposits in Auckland and Wellington facing higher taxes to subsidise poor people in Timaru and Kaitaia buying houses, there might be some concern over equity.

Special money for Maori households to buy homes, because they are ethnically predisposed to not earn as much money as everyone else.   Nothing quite so readily breeds resentment as a pair of low income families and one getting special help because of who their ancestors were.  That's the nationalistic race based policy thinking, based on neo-Marxist structuralist theory (which means all Maori are disadvantaged and powerless, so the state must take from non-Maori to benefit Maori and "even the outcomes"), which simply does not reflect reality or responsibility.  

The reason more Maori are in poverty is overwhelmingly because they disproportionately make the wrong decisions in life, devaluing education, valuing whim, devaluing entrepreneurship and individual innovation, valuing "being one of the group" and valuing "not thinking you're better than the rest of us".  Giving them more money wont fix that.  Of course, this is a report that wants you to pay for "the development of Mäori-centric data that acknowledge and capture Mäori concepts of poverty and wealth".  Don't go there.

Having problems because you stupidly borrowed too much money?  Never fear, the state would bail you out if this recommendation was implemented:

We recommend that the government investigate and implement a public-private--partnership micro-financing model with the banking sector and community groups, with the aim of providing modest low-interest and zero-interest loans, as a mechanism to help low-income families access affordable credit and effectively manage debt.

How about promoting saving as a way of getting enough money to buy consumer goods and services, rather than tax everyone so that the least able can borrow more?

It wants a "child nutrition strategy" without saying what that really means, I think Sue Kedgley would love it, but those who want to promote personal responsibility will not.

It wants support for children with parents in prison to be increased, which isn't entirely silly, but doesn't for a moment suggest that the criminal justice system be reviewed to eliminate victimless crimes, such as drug laws, to reduce the rate of incarceration of parents who are relatively low risk offenders, nor does it blame parents when they have committed real crimes.

Conclusion

There are some worthy recommendations in this report, but it should be up to those who embrace it to raise the money themselves, voluntarily, and implement the measures, for only then will they have the incentives to get it right, to avoid people claiming inappropriately and have the moral authority to provide support given by those who want to support those less fortunate, rather than forcing people to do so.

However, the report's number one failing is its blatant disregard for the breakdown of family structures as being one of the key sources of poverty and abuse among children.  That has been sustained by the growth of the welfare state, and a cultural norm of responsibility for children not being primarily with parents but "society".   It is seen in the use of language that nationalises children, that treats all children in the country as being the responsibility of everyone else, but actually means that net taxpayers bear the cost and burden of raising the children of net beneficiaries.  It means that there are taxpayers who are earning money not only to raise their own children, but another parallel family.

The answer to child poverty is twofold.  One is economic growth, with more wealth, employment, opportunities for starting up business, to save money without it being devalued through inflation and to provide the legal and monetary environment to allow people to succeed.  The second is individual.  If you don't want children in poverty, don't have them when you are poor - contraception is cheap, and not difficult to obtain.  If you don't want other people's children to be in poverty, cough up, help out, give some of your own money, spend time with charities, use your imagination with other like minded people.  Do something directly.

One thing that wont help is this report, or the functionally inert Child Poverty Action Group - which has as its sole purpose, actually doing nothing substantive for child poverty, simply producing reports which demand the government take more money from taxpayers to pay the parents of children in poverty, because they are poor.

The philosophy behind this report has failed, it has been tried in one way or another for the last 40 years, to go this far would bankrupt the economy and chase enterpreneurial or aspirational people from New Zealand to elsewhere, further reducing the ability of the economy to catch up with the rest of the developed world.

However, the Greens will love it, because it buys into their "your child is everyone's child" nationalisation of children philosophy, and their admiration for a huge welfare state.  Now go to southern Europe to see what a roaring success that approach is proving to be.

Oh and New Zealand has had this sort of hand wringing, fiscally extravagant approach to social policy presented before.  The Royal Commission on Social Policy reported in 1988 wanting benefits and taxpayers' money for just about any group or individual identified as not having a "fair go".  The Lange Government to its credit ignored Rosslyn Noonan's post-modernist structuralist treatise on recreating a grand social welfare state, and it was called the most expensive door stop in history.

This report is shorter, and cheaper in real terms, but should have the same fate.

The Trouble with Aid

That's the name of the documentary on BBC Four I am watching right now, and it is damning of how aid during humanitarian crises can be more harmful than good.

It cites the following examples:

-  Biafran secessionist war and famine:  Aid effectively got diverted into the secessionist movement, which saw that images of starving women and children attracted more aid, prolonging the civil war for two more years (which resulted in defeat for the secessionists);

- Cambodian civil war/ post Khmer Rouge famine:  Hoards of people were seen starving and dying at the border with Thailand, it was thought it was due to mass famine in Cambodia.  Investigations by a couple of officials on the ground in Cambodia saw no evidence of famine (this was in the year after the Khmer Rouge regime had fallen), but this was suppressed by Oxfam and others who feared that such a picture would hamper efforts to raise money.  As the UN was not operating aid programmes (because of Western vetoes against official support for a country under a regime that was said to be an occupation force from Vietnam), NGO aid agencies saw this as a chance to establish themselves, on the basis of a lie.

- Ethiopian famines of the 80s/Live Aid:  The natural disaster was exaggerated, and the efforts of Geldof, Band Aid and Live Aid saw vast amounts of aid being taken by the Marxist-Leninist Ethiopian regime to support its war against Eritrean secessionists.  The regime purposefully denied aid to regions to ensure the images of famine would reach the West.  Live Aid was going on as the Ethiopian government was forcibly kicking thousands off of their land out of their homes to politically "cleanse" areas to support its Maoist campaign for a new communist society.  That provoked famine by destroying the agricultural sector.  In effect Live Aid and Band Aid prolonged the Ethiopian government's ruinous, murderous policies because of political naivete and blindness.  Medicins sans Frontieres abandoned Ethiopia early on because it did not want its aid supporting the government.   Oxfam and others thought that "working with" the government that caused the problem in the first place.

- Somalia:  Aid was confiscated by warlord factions who used it to support their own fighters and to sell on the black market.  Somalia's situation was exaggerated, famine was dying down as agriculture recovered.  The famine was over by the time the relief campaign peaked.  Military intervention failed miserably, was badly targeted, and after a short period of stopping warlords from confiscating aid, the Western military had to flee, after it killed demonstrators in Mogadishu, before leaving Somalia to civil war and next to no humanitarian presence.   

- Rwanda: The Rwandan genocide ended because the Hutu "tribe" were defeated by the Tutsi, Hutu fled in  large numbers.  Cholera epidemic appeared in Goma (DRC).  Aid came to Goma in substantial numbers, but Rwanda got little.  The Goma refugees included thousands of those Hutu militia who had embarked on the genocide, and they started using the aid to help rebuild and regroup.   Hutu militia effectively ran a mafia ring in the refugee camps, taking percentages of food aid, stockpiling it, training military, bullying and recruiting soldiers, even renting vehicles and equipment to aid providers.   The newly resurgent Hutu militia were effectively rebuilt by aid.  MSF, again to its credit, left, refusing to support the militia.  The Hutu militia would attack Rwanda periodically, until the Rwandan army had had enough, and invaded and destroyed them.  It was sick of the genocidal militia that had slaughtered hundreds of thousands being supported across the border and continuing attacks.  Aid had effectively supported one side in the Rwandan civil war.

- Kosovo:  NATO built refugee camps on the Kosovo/Macedonian border, a key part of the exercise being to demonstrate military capability in being humanitarian.  Aid was looking more like middle class consumer goods to people who were not starving, beyond providing tents and sanitation.  Aid agencies worked with NATO on the ground, and were now perceived by Serbia as being partisan.

- Afghanistan:  Afghan government demanded all aid agencies sign onto its policy of supporting the regime.   The Taliban treated them as targets, so all aid agencies ended up being behind militarily guarded bunkers.  NGOs started being seen as sources of cash and resources for the government.  It became impossible to work outside areas controlled by the government, but also made it impossible to operate without being a target for the Taliban.

One statement was that 95% of women and children in that situation survive without intervention, so it is simply arrogant and deceptive to claim that aid is the difference between life and death.

In short, aid can cause more harm than good.  It would be nice if the British government, which perversely has become obsessed with following the UN target of foreign aid (funded by taxpayers) of 0.7% of GDP, would think again.

Leveson's demand for legislation would breach European law

After the Leveson report,  Ed Miliband and leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, were only too quick to agree with the entire report including the recommendation of press self-regulation, which included legal sanctions for newspapers that did not wish to participate.

The subtlety of the position of the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party, to support all of the recommendations, except enshrining industry self governance in legislation (which would have meant licensing newspapers), was lost in the tirade of victim worshipping, venom about Rupert Murdoch and utterly false hyperboles about the "power" of that one newspaper proprietor.

Hugh Grant for one continues to make an utter fool of himself with his ranting Marxist hysteria that media barons run the country, of course he says this on the state owned taxpayer funded BBC that owns and operates more TV and radio stations than any other broadcaster.

While those like myself who think that the state should not licence those who wish to print newspapers or magazine get smeared by the likes of him, and the unfortunate victims of illegal behaviour by some journalists, the Director of human rights organisation "Liberty", Shami Chakrabarti, has been reported in the Mail on Sunday as saying that that one dimension of Leveson would be contrary to UK law, which is the British implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Bear in mind Liberty is not libertarian, but rather a liberal leftwing "civil" liberties group, highly regarded by leftwing intellectuals and politicians, and the European Convention on Human Rights is warmly embraced by the Liberal Democrats (and excoriated by conservatives).

Some of her points have been:

- The so-called "Hacked Off" group of celebrities doesn't really know what it is talking about "There has been a great deal of ill-informed debate, with people bandying about terms such as “statutory underpinning” with little grasp of what this would mean".  Indeed, the sheer contradiction between saying that a system created by politicians, overseen by a body appointed by politicians is "truly" independent, eludes them, because they are actors, authors and singers.  Not lawyers, not policy wonks, not philosophers.

- A compulsory legal press regulatory framework "would mean the press was being coerced in being held to higher standards than anyone else, and this would be unlawful.’ On Miliband, she commented on the fact that when he made his promise to back the report on the day it was published, he could not possibly have read or weighed up the contents of its 2,000 pages.  ‘He should have been more careful about what he said,’ Ms Chakrabarti said.  ‘To declare his full support so early, when he cannot have read it, was hasty. He should have reflected on it. This is a policy that must not be rushed.’

Now it is right to want another source, given the Mail on Sunday tends to be a conservative newspaper and regularly expresses hatred of European laws generally, so the Liberty website explains further:

- "The Leveson Report recommends a robust independent self-regulation of the press of a kind that has not been provided or suggested by the industry up to now....It must set and promote ethical standards, handle complaints and crucially offer a swift and cheap alternative to court action for members of the public whose rights (e.g. privacy and reputation) have been violated. No statute is needed to create such a body and editors and proprietors should take the Leveson characteristics and seek to build one without delay"

- "Leveson does not recommend compulsory statutory regulation of the press and Liberty believes that he is right not to do so. However, he moots the very difficult question of what would happen if all or significant portions of the press failed to rise to the challenge of his Report and create and support a sufficiently robust and independent body. He reflects on (without recommending) the possibility that parliament and the public might feel the need to impose some level of compulsory statutory regulation on outlets that refused to play their part. It is this alternative that Liberty cannot support and which would in our view, breach Article 10 of the ECHR and Human Rights Act. As this last-ditch alternative is not even a recommendation of the Report, it is misleading to suggest that Liberty or its director is in any way dropping a "bombshell" on the Lord Justice's Report, not least as this position was clearly footnoted in it."

Behaviour that is illegal has been disgraceful, but when the law hasn't been followed or enforced then the answer is not to create another law.   Just because someone hates a particular newspaper proprietor does not mean it is right that the newspapers, which say things they don't like, should be subject to state control or regulation.  

Defending free speech means defending the right of those you despise, whose views you find reprehensible, to express themselves.  It means books, photos, songs, movies, newspapers and tweets you find offensive are not to be banned just because you find them offensive.

Unfortunately, all too much of the rhetoric around Leveson has been from those who say free speech is important, but...

There is no but...