Con-Dem anti-reason anti-business coalition

Well it's out, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has shown its true colours, and they are colours of a red and green coloured wolf in the sheep's clothing of Cameron and Clegg. The new government is no more friendly to capitalism and to reason than the last one.

The coalition agreement now published gives the impression of being pro-business, and the impression of dealing with the budget deficit, but it commits to a vast range of new spending measures, and to interfere with private businesses on a grand scale in multiple sectors.

The envy-touting, dependency supporting left should be relieved, and the Greens thrilled.

Take the following:

- "The parties agree that funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament, while recognising the impact this decision would have on other departments. The target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid will also remain in place." Yes, the NHS, subject already to record spending increases in the past, can continue to extract ever greater inefficiencies, and not be accountable for it. Meanwhile, the British taxpayer will have to mortgage to continue increasing state aid to developing kleptocracies.

- "We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats" So the retired wont have to face any austerity, just their children and grandchildren. Why? Well given they voted for profligate governments in the past you might well ask.

- "We further agree to seek a detailed agreement on taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income, with generous exemptions for entrepreneurial business activities" No income tax wont be coming down, it is about increasing capital gains tax. Yes, if you get capital gains for your OWN profit, not for "business" then screw you, Clammyegg wants your money.

- "We agree that a banking levy will be introduced. We will seek a detailed agreement on implementation.. We agree to bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector" Why? Well let's tax one of the country's most successful service sectors, never mind which banks never needed a bailout and those that did. Oh and let's deter the most successful people in the sector being tax resident in the UK, to please the envy ridden proletariat. So it's off to Switzerland for that lot then?

- "We have agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work" Don't worry, you'll not be attracting the best and brightest anyway, they'll be leaving. Nice sop to the BNP though.

- Finally, taxpayers will prop up a massive programme of Green fetishes and an effective end to growth in the British aviation sector including "The creation of a green investment bank" (quite where the money comes from is irrelevant), "Measures to encourage marine energy" (again, whose money?), "The establishment of a high-speed rail network" (ah the grand show off project that has next to no positive environmental impact), " The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow. The refusal of additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted" (privately owned airports and the airline industry can go to hell, less competition for European airports and airlines), "Mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles" (with whose money?).

So that's it. More spending, more taxes, more regulation of the current crop of hated businesses (banking and aviation), and worshipping at the totem of environmental fetishes regardless of cost and benefit.

No reason behind most of it, and a distinctly anti-business agenda particularly if you are in finance or aviation.

Anything for freedom? Well, besides scrapping ID cards, ending the storage of internet and email records without "good reason", and something called a "Freedom Bill", there isn't much. Free schools, paid for by taxpayers maybe, and talk of some tax cuts (which don't offset tax increases of course).

Anyone who voted Conservative expecting less government, less interference in business and a more reason based view of policy should be sorely disappointed. When the Treasury briefs the new government on the fiscal debacle, it will become clear how little of this can be afforded, and so it will be a lie, taxes will go up dramatically, other spending will be slashed substantially or a conbination of it all. Furthermore, with a new agenda of faith based Green initiatives, reason appears to be distinctly absent from this administration. The government wont be shrinking.

Fortunately I didn't vote Conservative.

My (extremely reluctant) choice in the UK election

I don’t feel clean or enthusiastic about it. I voted for UKIP.

Why UKIP?

The point was really about what does a vote mean. A vote has next to no effect, but to me it is an expression of my moral values and what I endorse for government. It is not, as many describe it, as a choice between poisons and picking the one that hurts the least. I wont grant moral sanction to govern me on terms I disagree with.

Because of that, I could not endorse a Conservative Party that has embraced the agenda of environmentalism, that has agreed to increase taxes (national insurance) even if it is less than the others, and which has chosen to posit a new form of big government (Big Society and national service), rather than tackle the budget deficit and repeal the big government that Labour introduced. A Conservative Party that has failed miserably to confront the economic mismanagement of Gordon Brown, but more importantly the infantilism of the public. It could have said it would not reverse the NHS increases, but instead it seeks to increasing spending on it ABOVE inflation. It could have said it would abolish welfare for middle classes, but it promised to largely preserve it. The Conservative Party has thrown off its bigoted xenophobic past, to embrace the bigoted anti-individualism of the left. It is devoid of remotely consistent philosophy, on the one hand saying people know best how to run their lives, and on the other calling for a “big society” imploring people to sacrifice their lives for others.

Yes, the Conservative Party is, marginally, better than the two parties of unabashed statism, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. However, it is only because Gordon Brown has been such an unabashed liar about his own record, which has been one of gross fiscal mismanagement, that the Conservatives look good. The only substantial shining light in the Conservative manifesto is the commitment to reform education, by allowing free schools to be set up, away from state control, with funding following the student. Even that is a half hearted copy of the successful Swedish model.

To give the Conservative Party my moral endorsement to govern, and more specifically to govern me means I have to accept an increase in national insurance (a form of income tax) for me. I have to accept the embracing of the climate change interventionist agenda, the totem of which is a multi billion pound taxpayer funded high speed railway, whilst openly explicitly stifling the expansion of the British airline and aviation sector by stopping a private company from paying to expand the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passengers. If that isn’t little Britain thinking surrendering to the luddite like idiocy of the environmentalist movement I don’t know what is.

Five years is a long Parliamentary term. The Conservatives might surprise me and be Thatcherites in sheep's clothing, but I doubt it. On top of that I considered whether the Conservative candidate himself was worthy of my endorsement, but he wasn't. His own blog has been entirely uninspiring, he would fit in well with Cameron's Conservatives. I wouldn't condemn the man, but there isn't enough in his own statements to offset the negatives about the Conservative platform overall.

So I voted UKIP. It wasn’t an easy choice. UKIP is anti-immigration, and I am an immigrant (albeit one with the entitlement to citizenship by birth). UKIP thinks the budget deficit can be largely solved by withdrawing from the EU, but it’s wrong. UKIP is a ragtag mob of disgruntled conservatives, unified by hatred of the EU, but with ideas and philosophies ranging from the libertarian to the xenophobic. My vote for UKIP was simply to say that the EU is now a fundamental problem for the UK and those who believe in less government. It was also an endorsement of UKIP having a few other worthwhile policies, such as supporting a flat rate of income tax, allowing people to contract out of the NHS and cutting state spending to 1997 levels. It’s not enough by any means, and it isn’t libertarian, but it does comprise of some policies the Conservatives should embrace.

So if the Conservatives do not win my constituency by a margin of the UKIP votes, it may make them think. The message should be that a belief in less government is NOT inconsistent with social liberalism, and social liberalism does not mean initiating force against those who disagree with you.

To take an alternative view is to effectively say, if the Conservative Party wins and follows its manifesto, I have no reason to complain as I will have endorsed it. Quite simply, there is not enough in the Conservative manifesto that is good for freedom and for the UK to offset the banal embracing of the Cameron vision of big government for me to endorse it. Voting for UKIP was a protest vote, knowing the git who was standing wont win, but also knowing that it makes a small statement about believing in less government. Next time I am hoping to do something about creating a better choice.

Oh and before anyone says it, if Gordon Brown or Nick Clegg are Prime Minister after the election, do NOT blame me. My refusal to vote for Cameron is not an endorsement of the other two. Besides, the differences between the lot are, in most cases, marginal, and where it really matters (defence) the Liberal Democrats are outvoted by the other two parties.

The shine comes off Cameron the unprincipled

After a honeymoon run, and on the verge of the beginning of the Brown premiership, it is becoming clear that the David Cameron remaking of the Conservative Party is no longer looking that attractive to voters.

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David Cameron, as you may recall, has been rebranding the Tories towards the centre, his top priorities being the NHS (as if that model isn't fundamentally flawed) and the environment - advocating taxes on aviation for example. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown increased tax on aviation, but also reduced the middle rate of income tax by 2% in his latest budget. Cameron has been unable to commit to tax cuts at all, terrified that he can't defend it on principle (how can you defend something when principles seem so easy to sell out) .

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None of this was helped by the grammar school debacle, with the party having two different policies in concert!

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Now Tory MP Quentin Davies has defected to Labour. I hardly approve of course, given his constituents voted for a Conservative MP - had they wanted Labour they would have voted Labour. Nevertheless, according to the BBC Davies made some very good points about Cameron:

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"Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything.... It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda....Although you have many positive qualities you have three, superficiality, unreliability and an apparent lack of any clear convictions, which in my view ought to exclude you from the position of national leadership to which you aspire and which it is the presumed purpose of the Conservative Party to achieve"

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Indeed, although why Davies thinks Labour is any better is unclear. All I can say is that more points of principle seem to come from Blair and Brown than from Cameron anyday, which shows you how much of a vapid marketing exercise politics now is.

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Brown is perceived, quite rightly, as being strong. He might seem like a grumpy old sod, but he also speaks when he has something reasonably intelligent to say.

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Don't get me wrong, I'm no friend of the Brown administration, it has failed miserably in its core goal of law and order, with overcrowded prisons and moves to defer prison sentences and encourage some early releases. This is when there is someone under 18 stabbed to death every week in Britain. Money has been poured into public spending, often with derisory return and local authorities continue to be the new generation of fascist enterprises, keen to regulating and prosecute to ensure people follow the religion of recycling. Meanwhile, Labour signs up to a new EU treaty, which increases the role of Brussels in British affairs and continues to expand the bureaucracy of what should simply be a glorified free trade agreement. There is nothing much to celebrate from Labour, at best it has slowly taken some of Thatcher's reforms further, and in some instances backwards. It is distinctively uninterested in personal freedom, and uninterested in challenging the cultural wasteland of underclass worshipping Brits.

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The point is, the Tories are probably a slight improvement - but how can you trust political prostitutes who will sell everything they once stood for, for power. This is what happens when you're ashamed about freedom and capitalism, and don't know why they are both practical and moral.

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David Cameron has done a bit of good for the Tories, taking it out of the gentrified grey haired old bigoted white men brigade, ready to pass judgment on non Anglo-Saxon immigrants, gay couples and people of other religions (or none, good god!). However, he hasn't stood up for anything that couldn't also be seen in Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

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I wonder what other political party, and especially leader does that? and I wonder how long that honeymoon will last?

Where is the Conservative Party?

I cautiously welcomed David Cameron as leader of the British Conservative Party. I thought he might bring some energy, ditch the old-fashioned fuddy duddy school prefect type “tell you what you do” nonsense that IS conservative, and provide an electable alternative to New Labour. Britain is one helluva nanny state, you seriously cannot believe how much the media and politicians regard government as the solution to almost anything. There are regulators for just about every sector, deregulation means reregulation, and the state is there to hand hold them all so people don’t do anything that might harm themselves – while taxing ever more and more.
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Cameron might have sold a Conservative Party that wanted to reduce nanny state, and start to wind back the nauseating bureaucracy that is UK central and local government. Well maybe, there is a little bit of that, but the latest policy takes the cake on outflanking New Labour on the left. It is a tax on aviation. The purpose is to cut the number of flights and tax more polluting aircraft (which is ridiculous since most airlines optimise fuel efficiency with their fleets for obvious reasons, traded off against capital availability).

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The Tories want to tax domestic flights, and to tax international flights on the basis of everyone being permitted one shorthaul (European) international flight a year (return), beyond that you pay. Consider first the bureaucracy of a ration book system for flying, but mostly consider why this is to happen – to combat climate change.
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Reason has gone out the door on climate change policy in the UK, the two main parties believe in unilateralism with absolutely no evidence of any benefits from their climate change policies. Taxing aviation will do nothing besides give David Cameron a new source of income, though he says he will cut other taxes in exchange – which is shuffling money around. Especially as it is another tinkering of tax in the form of "a new transferable tax allowance for couples with young children". Typical politician, wont cut basic taxes - just hand out little lollies - like Dr Cullen.

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Taxing aviation will do absolutely nothing to change temperature around the world, it wont change behaviour (airfares are too high relative to the taxes talked about for it to matter or be factored into travel decisions) and at worst will see a shift in airport hubbing away to other countries in Europe. Heathrow is the best airport hub in the world, and this may reduce its competitiveness.
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However, besides all that, it is absolutely galling to see the Tories propose a ration card type tax on aviation as if to say “you’ve flown once, now go off and sit in your flat and think of England – you’re not allowed to fly more unless you can pay – and we all can, rah rah rah”.
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UKIP is a hopelessly incompetent alternative protest vote, and I want rid of New Labour, primarily because of ID cards, but also because I don’t believe Gordon Brown can bring anything essentially new and exciting to free up Britain – quite the contrary. However, vote Tory and pay aviation taxes makes me go cold. Where has the party of Thatcher gone?