Proper political interviews from the UK...

Whether he stays or goes should be irrelevant, because incisive political interviewing on New Zealand television is, at best, as scarce as a Macaya Breast Spot Frog.

So for my kiwi friends, I thought I'd show you what exactly you are missing out on.  Bear in mind that while the UK is not devoid of decent political interviewing, it isn't common here, and the best of the current lot - Andrew Neil - has been prohibited, by the Conservative and Labour Parties, from interviewing the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

Why?  Because he asks straight questions, seeks sources, has research done to find contradictions between statements of others from the same party, stops politicians taking over interviews and refuses to let evasive answers be tolerated.

Enjoy, imagine this in New Zealand.... (and yes I know Lindsay Perigo would deliver, but New Zealand broadcasters have been braindead on current affairs for over 20 years now, so I've lost all hope)

Exhibit 1:  At 4:09 watch Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett get grilled on the parties far left spending spree lunacy and economic illiteracy, and belief that belonging to ISIS and Al Qaeda shouldn't be a crime in itself.

Exhibit 2: At 4:00, watch Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman tie herself up in her own party's policy contradictions, helped along by a proper interview.   

Exhibit 3: At 4:05  watch UKIP Leader Nigel Farage get grilled about the comments of some candidates (this is a year ago, before two Conservative MPs resigned, defected to UKIP and got re-elected at by-elections)

Exhibit 4: From the start, Scottish National Party Deputy Leader quizzed over its policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Exhibit 5: From 1:55 Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander, on the failures of increasing capital gains tax to raise additional revenue, including near the end, the Liberal Democrats not having paid the bill for policing at its previous conference.

Exhibit 6: From 1:04, Transport Secretary, Conservative MP Patrick McLoughlin, confronted about security at railway stations, environmental approach to transport.

 and more if you like....

A chance to hack at free speech

It has been impossible for anyone in the UK, and indeed anyone following foreign news to avoid the rampant coverage over the phone hacking scandal arising from repulsive practices from scandal mongering "journalists" at the now defunct News of The World.

Let's be clear, the practice of phone hacking and illegally accessing people's voicemail accounts is immoral, it is an invasion of private property rights and rightfully should be condemned.  Indeed, there should be no surprise that those who accessed the voicemail of a murdered teenager girl should be considered to be scum.  Bottom feeders of the lowest order.   That this should occur doesn't wholly surprise me, because "journalism" and "news" have long been strongly driven by feeding the vapid, scandal seeking, short-term "infotainment" appetite of so many people.  The same people who complain about government failures in areas from economics, to education and healthcare, are completely disengaged at any intelligent level with public policy, because they soak up "crime porn".  In a free market, it is little surprise that people supply this.

In the UK, the market is served by multiple providers, News International continues to publish The Sun, but there is also the left-wing Daily Mirror, the even more sensationalist Daily Star and hoards of celebrity scuttlebutt magazines.   The US has similar scandal rags, and New Zealand supplies this market through magazines, and television.

There is little doubt to me that those who undertook and authorised the phone hacking at the News of the World should face criminal charges and appropriate sanctions.  However, it is also worthy for there to be a wider reflection of a culture that salivates at the details and scandals behind crimes and the lives of celebrities.   Whilst in a free society I don't believe there is ANY role for the state in restricting speech around this, there is very much a role to debate publicly why so many prefer to be entertained about the lurid details of the victims of brutal violent or sexual crimes.

Yet the phone hacking scandal has barely scratched the surface of that issue in the rest of the UK news media.  No, a bigger hobby horse has been rolled out - it is the venal hatred of much of the media for News International and Rupert Murdoch.

The hatred has driven Leader of the Opposition, (red) Ed Miliband to call, in the Observer,  for the "dismantling" of Murdoch's "Empire" with new regulations on media ownership.   Miliband claims Murdoch has "too much power" over UK public life, because his newspapers have more than 20% market share.  Yes, 20% is too much power.   Indeed, the leftwing news media (Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC, ITN and Channel 4) have all been joining the circus to demand change, along with the competing right wing media (Daily Express, Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph) to cauterise News International.

Precious few journalists have pointed out that this is blatant self interest on behalf of the media outlets wanting less competition, and indeed no one has ever pointed out any issues with News International's other titles being The Times/Sunday Times or Sky News. 

The unadulterated lies spread by the left on News International are the heaving rabid frothing rants of the insane.  Let's look at this so-called "power".

The UK newspaper market can be split between serious, middle market and "tabloid" newspapers.

The papers owned by News International in the UK are:
- The Times/Sunday Times; and
- The Sun.

The Times/Sunday Times competes with the Daily Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph, The Independent,  The Guardian/Observer and the Financial Times at the serious end of the market.

News International doesn't have a presence in the middle market, which includes the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday, Daily Express/Sunday Express.

In the tabloid market, it does lead with The Sun, but competes with Daily Mirror and the Daily Star.

Beyond newspapers, it is the largest shareholder of BSkyB, the first and most successful pay TV provider, but with vigorous competition from Virgin Media and BT Vision, which further limited competition from Tiscali TV and TopUp TV.    However, whilst owning a pay TV network (that supplies over 700 TV and radio stations to its subscribers) is significant, it only runs one TV news outlet - Sky News - which is also broadcast free to air on digital terrestrial TV (Freeview).  This is one of 15 news channels, and of course access to news on free to air TV which is carried by BSkyB.   Including Sky News, it owns four channels on digital Freeview.

News International has no ownership of the British radio market.

Dominance? Hardly.  The newspaper market is open and vigorously competitive, so much so that of the serious titles only the Telegraph and FT are profitable.  Pay TV has never been more competitive.   Indeed, nobody need consume anything of News International without choosing to pay for it.

However, one organisation DOES have dominance. 

It has six free to air TV networks in the UK (plus a global satellite network), two of which are in the top three rating of ALL TV networks, and one of which is the highest rating TV news network.  Two channels it runs are continuous programming for children.  It has ten continuous broadcasting nationwide radio networks (including the most popular radio network and the most popular news network) and a nationwide network of local radio stations.  It has the highest rating news website in the country.  However, unlike customers of the Sun, the Times or BSkyB, this organisation is funded by force.  If you fail to pay, you face criminal prosecution and a fine.   It has been positively salivating over this story - it is, of course, the BBC.

The left don't give a damn when it is the state dominating the media, because it almost inherently gives it a fairly easy ride.   For your political future is significantly affected by how the BBC portrays you, but for the likes of the Milibands, Poly Toynbee or others that is something they like, because the BBC has never been warm towards the free market, scepticism about the EU or concerns about the size of the state, but has always been warm towards more welfare, environmentalism and belief in government as a solution to problems.  As Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph explains:


It is worth asking in both the British and American contexts why people who regard themselves as believers in free speech and liberal democracy can be so openly eager to close off – silence, kill, extinguish – different political views from their own. This is the question that is at the heart of the matter and which will remain long after every News International executive who may possibly be incriminated in the current scandal has been purged. 

There is scarcely any outfit on the Right – be it political party, or media outlet – which demands the outright abolition of a Left-wing voice, as opposed to simply recommending restraint on its dominance (as I am with the BBC). That is because those of us on the Right are inclined to believe that our antagonists on the Left are simply wrong-headed – sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes malevolent but basically just mistaken. Whereas the Left believes that we are evil incarnate. Their demonic view of people who express even mildly Right-of-centre opinions (that lower taxes or less state control might be desirable, for example) would be risible if it were not so pernicious.

The Left does not want a debate or an open market in ideas. It wants to extirpate its opponents – to remove them from the field. It actually seems to believe that it is justified in snuffing out any possibility of our arguments reaching the impressionable masses – and bizarrely, it defends this stance in the name of fairness. 

News International brought immense choice in British broadcasting, beyond the means or the imagination of the encumbents.  It created a fourth US TV network at a time when the big three were looking  sclerotic (and there was much talk of one of them dropping network news entirely), it created a TV news network that competes with CNN and MSNBC by taking a different political stance from them.  One that has been immensely successful, which of course upsets those who were always given an easy ride by the media. 

News International has been successful because it has delivered options that millions have been willing to pay for or watch.  The behaviour of some at the News of the World has been disgraceful, and quite frequently I don't like how News International deals with some news stories, as I do with others.  However, I don't have to pay for it, I wont get a criminal record if I don't pay for it.   It doesn't stop others competing with it.  It is one of many in the broadcasting or online news markets, and is one of many in the newspaper market.   It has shaken up news broadcasting in the US, not always in ways I agree with, but it is better for it.

It should be time for the rest of the news media to realise that in joining in the leftwing wailing and moaning about News International, and calls for regulating the media, it is risking its own freedom and supporting a political motivated war against one media outlet, driven by many years of distress at not getting an easy ride from that company's news outlets.  

You either believe in a free press and free speech, or you don't, and as long as News International is accountable for the criminal actions of its employees, that should be the end of it.  You may disagree or hate the views expressed, but if you want them shut down by the state (while turning a blind eye to the media outlets that ARE dominant, particularly those state owned) then you are simply another petty fascist, who has no interest in free speech at all - and shouldn't start pretending that you're a friend of freedom or liberal democracy.

Daily Telegraph's offence to New Zealand

I'm livid, beyond livid.

The Daily Telegraph being one of the serious UK newspapers, and one of the only two remaining true broadsheet format newspapers (the FT being the other) is one of the great newspapers of the world.  Yes, it tends to side with the Conservative Party,  but this political slant is well known and understood.  In the UK you know the politics of your papers, but they write for a broader church than that.  The Daily Telegraph exposed the ridiculous expenses claims of MPs from all parties before the last election, and did not hesitate to expose Conservative MPs as well.

One of its writers is Geoffrey Lean.  He is considered an "environmental correspondent" having previously been environmental editor for the more left leaning  Independent.  His Telegraph blog is here, but his insult is not located here.

It is this headline:

"New Zealand earthquake : the vengeance of Mother Nature".

Yes, the implication being that some anthropomorphised entity has inflicted vengeance on New Zealand.  For what? Why?

He goes on:

"as the people of Australia and New Zealand have been the latest to find out, she also has a nasty and highly destructive temper."

The female is "mother nature", so again he implies this is a cognitive being who is angry.  I am sure he doesn't really believe this but he goes on...

"And she's getting more irritable as the years go by. The devastating earthquake in Christchurch, and Queensland's cyclone and floods, which have so tumultuously ushered in 2011, follow the second worst year for disasters on record."

The end is nigh.  So what?  What have people done to reap this?

"Munich Re says that 90 per cent of last year's disasters were due to the weather, providing "further indications of advancing climate change". Sceptics disagree, and certainly no particular disaster can be attributed to global warming. But the increase is what most scientists have long predicted would happen as the world warms up."

So a reinsurance firm is making a link, but he naturally say no disaster can be attributed to global warming, but the increase is what would happen as the world warms up.

Sound like he is blaming the earthquake on global warming.  He goes on talking about droughts, floods, storms and hurricanes and then says:

"And, of course, earthquakes, like the disaster that has hit Christchurch, have nothing to do with it."

Whew, thank goodness for that, except hold on. What the hell is that headline about?  Why write about it now?  Why the fuck say "New Zealand earthquake: The Vengeance of Mother Nature" unless you are making some link?

"But whatever the cause of the increase in disasters, humanity has made their impact far worse."

He then says buildings make things worse, which of course implies we should live in caves or tents, a rather inane comment really.

He backs out of linking the earthquake to anything:

"Christchurch aside, maybe Mother Nature sometimes has reason to be annoyed."

Who?  Aren't you the annoyed one?

Not as annoyed as me.  You see he didn't mean anything, but he did try to get attention because of the earthquake.  He had a headline that is vile, as if Christchurch was the result of nature's "anger" at humanity, he did it while corpses are still being pulled out of the rubble.  Even ignoring his hatred of humanity in treating nature as if it is a living being that emotes, it was in appalling bad taste.

Even worse bad taste was that this article was one of the "Editor's choice" on the website.

For shame Daily Telegraph.  For shame!

Last UK papers declare their hands

The Daily Telegraph stuns the nation by calling for a vote for the Conservatives. The editorial for Wednesday rightly says "Tony Blair's "project" was undermined from the start by two fundamental flaws. The first was the conviction that only big-government solutions can bring about lasting change; the second was the belief that to throw money at a problem is to solve it. The consequence was a spending binge of unparalleled profligacy conducted by an ever-expanding state machine – almost a million people have been added to the government payroll since 1997. When Labour came to power, public spending accounted for 40 per cent of GDP. Last year, the figure was 52 per cent."

Yes, of course, and largely right (although exaggerated) to say "Britain has become the most spied upon, regulated, nannied society in the Western world. Virtually our every move is caught on camera, ever more of our personal details are kept by agents of the state (and frequently lost by them, too). The state dictates where we can smoke and tries to tell us what we should eat and drink. This is not so much big government as Big Brother."

Sadly the Telegraph unwinds itself by saying "The Tory vision of the Big Society plays strongly into these new political realities. Built on the concept that the state should do less, better, and that decisions are best taken as closely as possible to where they impact, it addresses the straitened circumstances of the time. There is a coherent body of policies to support this vision, notably on education, welfare, law and order, and immigration. A smaller state means lower taxes"

There is nothing small government about the Big Society, there is little in the Conservative manifesto about a smaller state and precious less about lower taxes. The instincts and philosophy of the Daily Telegraph has a lot to commend it, sadly the Conservatives are letting them down.

The Independent unsurprisingly calls for a vote for the Liberal Democrats, or if that has no chance of success, a vote for any party to keep the Conservatives out. The key agenda is electoral reform, a rather odd priority at a time of record public debt, budget deficit and the risk of the economy slipping back into recession. However, the Independent hasn't been a successful business for years, so it is hardly surprising that it is incapable of understanding economics.

Finally, the most sane editorial yet comes from Allister Heath in City AM. He is supporting the Conservatives, as the least worst option of the main three. At least philosophically that newspaper has a positive grounding in capitalism. It isn't objectivism, but it is light years away from the rest:

City A.M. is proud to be an independent newspaper; yet that does not mean that we are free of values or devoid of a worldview. We support the City, London’s financial and business community, capitalism, economic growth, hard work, low taxes and a real free-market economy with no corporatism, bailouts or handouts. Good firms should be allowed to make (and keep) vast sums of money; bad ones should go bust. Success as well as failure should be privatised. We stand for meritocracy, where anybody, regardless of background, creed or gender, can get on in life; as well as for a truly compassionate society, whereby the better off have a duty to give the poor a helping hand and support those who cannot look after themselves.

A newspaper that supports capitalism, a free market economy without subsidies is a rare thing. Oh and City AM is free, funny how greedy capitalists can give away something for free isn't it? Herein lies one of the grand myths of the statist self-righteous "we know best" left.

He continues:

"We stand for internationalism, free trade, cultural openness and global engagement but shun unaccountable global bureaucracies and despise totalitarian movements. We like competition and open markets and dislike monopolies, cartels and state-granted privileges; we support knowledge, scholarship, sound science and evidence-based policies and reject irrationality, hysteria and obscurantism. In short, we are classical liberals in the tradition of Adam Smith, David Hume, Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek."

Yes, stone the crows, the UK isn't just about who can compete for the socialist vote, although Heath makes it clear that the choices are not great:

"None of the parties in Britain truly reflect this strand of thought. All have concealed the need to cut spending. All have promoted a simplistic, vote-winning narrative of the crisis which trashes the City indiscriminately, rather than trying to understand the complex and often policy-induced causes of the recession."

So he supports the Conservatives on the basis that most candidates are pro-free market and have the right instincts.

I can only hope he is right.

Meanwhile, as Labour faces accusations of lying about Conservative policies on child tax credits only ONE major national UK newspaper supports a vote for Labour in this election. The Daily Mirror. It's only useful contribution is flooding its working class readers with cries to not support the BNP.

Of the rest, the Guardian and the Independent are supporting the Liberal Democrats, and all of the rest are supporting the Conservatives. As newspapers like to back winners, it is more likely to be wishful thinking than any real influence upon voters. For most papers they back who their readers are likely to back. The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and the Independent would support the Conservatives and LibDems respectively regardless. The Sun and The Times try to back the winner. The Guardian is the most interesting decision, turning its back on Labour.

None of these means very much, but it DOES mean that the UK papers are full of a diversity of perspectives and columns across the mainstream political spectrum, albeit not as wide as I would like. None of the main parties get away without strident criticism and critiques of their policies (although the perspectives of those critiques are not necessarily that diverse).

Contrast that to the near empty void of the NZ press.

UPDATE: London's Evening Standard is backing the Conservatives, because it fears a hung Parliament and believes change is needed.

Erosion of private property rights in the UK

Three issues in the past few days have exemplified how the notion that private property rights are sacrosanct has been seriously eroded in the UK. They are around pay TV, mobile phones and bed and breakfasts.

First, Ofcom, the UK media regulator deemed that the UK's most successful pay TV operator - BSkyB - must be forced to sell content from its Sky Sports 1 and 2 channels to competitors at 23% less than it currently chooses to do so. The reason? "Sky exploits this market power by restricting the distribution of its premium channels to pay TV providers." This "reduces consumer choice." "

Now BSkyB has brought more choice to British TV viewers than any other broadcaster. It offers 615 TV channels, and people pay for it voluntarily, unlike the BBC which is paid for by state enforced demand notice. The story of BSkyB is how it started operation to the UK without a licence, because it was operating entirely from outside the UK. It easily bet the state endorsed BSB, bought it out and became an enormous success story, against the odds (the story is in this book). It lost money for many years, never seeking a penny from taxpayers, and became successful because it took risks, it bought broadcasting rights for major sports events and people wanted to pay for it.

In other words, it was a great British entrepreneurial success story, something to be proud of. So what does the state do? Kneecap it. It wants to boost the competitors, the lacklustre Virgin Media (which bought out the poorly performing cable TV companies NTL and Telewest), BT's (once the focus of Ofcom diktats till it was cut down to size) Vision service and even the barely known Top Up TV. What it does is say the broadcasting rights Sky bought from various sports codes are NOT Sky's, but the "people's", so it is helping out Sky's competitors.

What will be the result? Sky's competitors wont bid for the sports broadcasting rights, so the price paid to the distributors and clubs will be lower, since Sky will only be bidding against the beleagured commercial networks ITV and 5, and state owned Channel 4 and the BBC. It means Virgin Media, BT Vision and Top Up TV will have to make less effort to appeal to viewers, they can be clones of Sky.

It is another example of pseudo-entrepreneur Richard Branson seeking the gloved fist of the state to take from his competitors to help him out. A charlatan indeed.

Remember, what did Ofcom ever do to increase consumer choice? The UK has one of the most vigorously competitive pay TV sectors in the world, one which has not been subject to the ridiculous rules on price and content that is seen in the US, and the content rules in Australia. As the Daily Telegraph says "the UK desperately needs strong media conglomerates that can compete internationally. In a globalised digital era when Google is eating ITV's lunch, that means we must stop being so parochial and let British companies grow and succeed.That might mean, say, Sky and ITV gaining an uncomfortably strong domestic position. But – like a monthly subscription to Sky Sports – that's a relatively small price to pay."

However, dare the politician speak up against the wide open mouthed "consumer" in favour of the property rights of the producer.

The second issue is about mobile phones. In the UK four companies operate national mobile phone networks of their own - O2, Vodafone, Orange/T-Mobile and 3. In all they, and their wholesalers (for example, Virgin Mobile uses the Orange/T-Mobile network), have 121% market penetration. In other words, there are mobile phone accounts for every adult and child in the UK, and a fifth have a second! With a vigorously competitive industry, multiple network providers, you'd think the free market could reign. Oh no. Ofcom, yet again, sets the price those companies can charge other operators (including fixed line operators) for terminating their calls.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the current price is 4.3p/minute, it is to drop to 0.5p/minute by 2014. Allegedly it is partly due to EU pressure, as clearly it thinks it has some moral authority to set prices for contracts between private companies. Orange and Vodafone are unimpressed saying respectively:

"If these measure are put in place they will stifle innovation. Any incoming government should be mindful of what these ill-considered proposals mean for the future of their country. Handsets may no longer be subsidised, you may have to pay receive calls."

and "A cut of this magnitude deters future investment, makes it less likely that the UK will continue to lead in mobile communications and is at odds with the Government's vision of a Digital Britain."

Of course the bigger question is "Why the hell should the state interfere in contracts between companies in an open fully competitive market"?

Naturally, those advantaged by it are happier. "3" is a relatively new network, so its customers make more calls to competitors than it receives. BT, long been battered into submission by the state for being the former monopoly (and which has withdrawn from a long line of overseas investments in recent years) has also welcomed it.

What WOULD happen if Ofcom said "Set the price you wish"? Well the operators would negotiate rates based on what they thought their customers could bear. Their customers don't want to be on networks nobody wants to call after all.

Again, the UK has spawned one of the world's most successful mobile phone companies, with Vodafone the largest mobile phone company in the world by revenue, and second largest by subscribers. It's UK competitors are French-German, Spanish and Hong Kong owned, and it has thrived. New Zealanders might note that without it they would have waited far longer for text messaging, prepaid mobile phones and competitive pricing with Telecom.

However, what incentive does Ofcom have to NOT meddle?

Finally, a gaffe. Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling was recorded, off the record, by an Observer journalist saying that those who run bed and breakfasts from their homes have a right to turn away gay couples. This is contrary to "human rights" laws which say otherwise. His point was that there should be respect of people of faith who have genuinely held beliefs. His point is the wrong one.

Now, he has since felt the need to backtrack on this, pointing out he voted for the said laws which ban such discrimination, and he voted for civil partnerships to be allowed. There is little sign he himself holds so-called "homophobic" views. Of course, those on the left are out like sharks to claim the Conservatives "haven't changed".

The point he should have made IS about private property rights. It is your home, you decide who enters it. If you run a B&B then you should also be able to turn away anyone, for whatever reason or feeling you have. Simple as that. If you, as a prospective customer or visitor don't like it? Then use free speech to say so, but don't expect the state to come banging down the door to force anyone to let you in.

You don't have a right to enter anyone's property without the owner's permission. Now had Grayling said that, he might have escaped some of the dirt thrown at him. If you had children and ran a B&B, you might not ever want single men staying, or you may not want priests or whatever. You don't need to justify yourself, it's your property.

Sadly, in the UK today, the argument of private property rights is peripheral. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats actively reject such rights and will surrender them at will. However, the Conservative Party hasn't the wherewithal to argue differently.

It's about time there is a choice that does!

Have we not learnt from 1989?

Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph asks:

"Why do the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the anniversary of which we have been commemorating in a low-key way, and the collapse of communism which followed feature so little in the education curriculum and in the popular renditions of modern history?"

Indeed. She thinks those who had responsibility for curriculums and many commentators were shocked by the sudden implosion of the political system that had kept half of Europe under its jackboot for nearly half a century.

She notes that while Marxism expected capitalism to collapse, it collapsed instead, at least in its most hardened forcefully imposed form, but capitalism simply cannot:

This brings us to the delusion permitted by historical ignorance about the present economic crisis: capitalism, whatever the BBC says, has not collapsed. The banking system very nearly did, but that is a different thing: the banks are simply businesses through which capital flows. They were badly run and they failed due to mismanagement. Capitalism was badly served. But it has not – and cannot – collapse for the same reason that it cannot be overthrown: because it is not a structure that is imposed from above whose perpetrators can be forcibly dislodged.

Yes, you see capitalism is about individuals, about them applying their minds to the world around them and seeing how they can offer people goods or services in exchange for money (or goods and services), and then paying others to provide them services (with minds and hands) to assist in that production. Capitalism is simply human.

She says that if there was a greater observation of what 1989 was about (perhaps especially in Europe where far too many were enthralled by the eastern bloc as offering an "alternative way") it would teach us far more of the risks of rejecting capitalism and the human condition:

"If we had dared to look long enough at the events that followed 1989, as have many of those Eastern European countries which lived through them – if we had produced the plays and films and television documentaries and school texts that they had actually deserved – we might now have a fuller appreciation of the terror that follows from the need to extirpate individualistic impulses. An ideology that attempts to re-engineer human nature in the name of the collective good did not, as its founders had believed, require just a "temporary dictatorship" but a permanent one that bred corruption, victimisation and – most paradoxically of all – a bleak, inexorable poverty both of material goods and of aspiration which eventually became intolerable."

Indeed, nothing must frustrate the left more than the current recession NOT being a collapse of capitalism and not causing people to embrace the reality evasion of Marxism. However, it is timely at the end of this year to remind us all, and the young who knew not of what things were like in eastern Europe, of what the brave people of those lands were seeking to escape in that year.

The cold bleak crushing brutality of the steamroller of socialism.

Food, booze, spiders, breasts, idiots, Chirac, trick or treat and trolley buses

From today's Daily Telegraph:

A chef produces what he claims is the world's healthiest meal, a chicken and blueberry curry with goji berry pilau rice, which given the chef is British-Indian, makes some sense. Now the combination sounds interesting. Each serving contains the nutritional equivalent of 49 helpings of spinach, 23 bunches of grapes or nine portions of broccoli. The recipe is in the article, and given

"Each plateful contains 25,000 'ORAC' units - the scientific measurement of antioxidants in foods.

Foods higher on the ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) scale have been proven to counter the onset of cancer, Alzheimer's, coronary heart disease and diabetes.

Most “healthy” meals like salads have less than 5,000 ORAC units, while traditional curries have fewer still."

it has to be worth a taste.

The French are drinking like the British. Is it true? Well this is Celia Walden simply describing her own observations in France, for what that is worth.

There are 750 million spiders in the UK. Breeding conditions have apparently been favourable, and let's bear in mind that they are fairly harmless.

India Lenon, a student at Oxford writes about the Cambridge female students who chose to pose semi-naked for a student publication called The Tab. She says:

"And if these girls are clever enough to know what they are doing, we might even have to accept that the ones in the national press do to. And then we might have to let go of one of the finest bugbears of modern feminism. But we wouldn’t want that, now would we? So it is far better to assume that the female students of Cambridge University, just like Stacey, 22, in The Sun, are too thick to make their own decisions. That way we can carry on sticking up for them."

Quite, although men aren't apparently allowed to comment on such things.

Newest winners of the title "world's stupidest robbers" are these pair who used marker pens to "disguise their faces". Children can do a far better job.

Jacques Chirac is facing charges of embezzlement from when he was Mayor of Paris, the accusation being he awarded contracts for non-existent work to friends or associates. Gee who'd have thought?

The Vatican joyfully condemns Halloween calling it "a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death". Given everyone I've known who has done anything with it just regards it as a bit of fun, isn't it being a tad too serious? I don't think Halloween is competition for other religions. Indeed, could not the commemoration of a crucifixion be seen to be about terror, fear and death too?

Poneke will be pleased that trolley buses are likely to return to the UK (with CGI video), in one city at least. Leeds is pursuing a state of the art system, and apparently has most of the funding needed to do it, as it is a fraction of the cost of putting in a tram system. It will have dedicated lanes and is certainly the first city in the English speaking world to build a new system from scratch in many many years. If successful, it could mean the era of expanding tram systems in the UK could come to an end - £20m per mile for a trolleybus line including buses compared to around £45m per mile for light rail (in Edinburgh) means you better have a need for more than double the capacity.

London's capitalist paper

I've quoted a few times from City AM. It is London's less well known morning free paper. It focuses on business and finance, so for many will have little appeal. For me it is the one paper in the UK that consistently, without fail, supports free markets and opposes government intervention to prop up failure.

So I recommend looking at the editorials by Allister Heath at least, even if you are uninterested in shares, banking and markets generally. For the philosophy expressed is a positive one. Indeed, Heath wrote last week just this:

"unlike others, we have refused to go down the road of demagogic class warfare and the politics of envy. City A.M is the only newspaper that stands up for City workers and believes in their values. We support a real free-market economy and oppose bailouts as well as crippling tax hikes; first and foremost, we are the paper for London’s capitalist classes. "

Now that's something work looking at for me. So read City AM, and to start how about this little piece on the financial crisis.

It's not libertarian, but it does seek to embrace the creation of wealth and decry those who destroy it. That in itself is a good thing.

BNP on Question Time?

Probably a mild win for the BNP - unprecedented platform for publicity. Nick Griffin came across as defensive, but relatively moderate, claimed he had transformed the BNP from being racist and fascist to being a party for indigenous British people to defend their rights.

He would have solidified his own supporters, except the profoundly racist who might think he's a sellout. However, who knows what other side the BNP shows in private.

For the rest of Britons? He probably gained support for his views on Islam and immigration generally, but every single non-white person who confronted him, he said he was happy letting them stay in Britain.

So in conclusion? Well done BBC - you probably gave the BNP more than it lost.

TV licence fee payers will be thrilled you gave them this oxygen of publicity, paid for by them.

Protect certain ghost worshippers from insult

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent says:

"Muslims, Asians and Black people are human, too – experiencing the pain of gratuitous invective piled on us, day after day, by toffs like Martin Amis and Wilder and racists like the BNP. Words do violence to humans, more sometimes than sticks and stones. They can disable you to the point of insanity"

Of course she's right about racism and the BNP. However, Martin Amis and Wilder have not expressed racist views, as far as I am aware. Race is not something one can choose, and racism is demonstrably irrational and abominable.

However, Amis and Wilder have both condemned Islam. Islam is a choice, or rather it should be (the "crime" of apostasy makes it anything but a choice in some countries), so criticising it should be like criticising Christianity, or Hinduism, or Shintoism or indeed any non-religious based philosophy. Objectivists and supporters of capitalism know this too well, but indeed so do socialists, conservatives or environmentalists. When you decide a particular philosophy is for you, you will inevitably encounter criticism from some, and derision from others. It is part of being in a free society.

Now I don't believe in gratuitously seeking to insult people for the sake of it, but I do believe that people should take direct criticism about their chosen philosophy. If you want to do violence to those who criticise it, it demonstrates your own lack of self control and your own inability to justify your position through persuasion.

However while Alibhai-Brown decries the condemnation of Islam, she also says "Only libertarian fools and fanatics would give set-piece answers" to issues of free speech. Whether she refers to all libertarians as fools or just the ones who are fools is unclear, but it certainly looks offensive to me.

So is she saying if I am an atheist believer in a small state she can call me a fool, but if I believe in a ghost and the words of a long dead prophet who had sex with a preteen child, I should be protected from insult?

No she is a fool. She doesn't understand that free speech means the state getting out of the way, and allowing people to express themselves as they see fit, as long as it does not interfere with the right of others to do the same, or result in infringement of private property rights (including the rights of crime victims and the right to one's reputation).

Indeed, she cannot even accurately describe the events around the Wilders visit saying "I was proud Muslims responded with good sense". Not all, surely?

Daily Telegraph headlines this morning

Gay man 'tried to poison lesbian neighbours over three-legged cat feud'

Female predator pedophile stalked public lavatories

The pill gives women a taste for boyish men like Zac Effron

German banker used fake documents to work as a surgeon

Get the sense that Britain really IS about tabloid headlines?

Pictures from a nearly car free society

The Times has a new photo-gallery of, where else?

(and yes it is a trolley bus not a tram)

London's free Evening Standard

When I first arrived in London, the Evening Standard was the only evening paper. It started in 1827, It was owned by Associated Newspapers, owners of the Daily Mail, and I noticed it mainly because it loathed Mayor Ken Livingstone (not without some just cause, and the feeling was mutual). Of course, it didn't stop Ken getting re-elected. The Times notes it sold 450,000 copies a day on average five years ago. However, it soon faced intense competition.

From September 2006, TheLondonPaper was launched by NewsCorp, the difference was it was free. Associated Newspapers launched London Lite, to pre-empt it, another free evening paper, which was primarily focused on entertainment news and lifestyle items. London Lite was aimed at young female readers (unlikely to buy a newspaper).

The London Paper distributed over 470,000 copies, London Lite around 401,000 copies, but the Evening Standard had plummeted to 236,000, according to a June 2009 survey reported by the Guardian. In short, free papers had cannibalised the evening market.

The Evening Standard has been losing money for some years, so much so that Associated Newspapers sold 75.1% of it to Russian businessman, Alexander Lebedev for £1 in January 2009.

A couple of weeks ago, NewsCorp announced the end of TheLondonPaper, largely because of the collapse of advertising due to the recession. So now, the Evening Standard is to be relaunched at the end of next week. Free. With 650,000 copies to be circulated. Presumably, London Lite will disappear at the same time.

What remains, of course, are paid for national papers in the morning, but when London can't sustain an evening paid-for newspaper then it says a lot about trends in that industry.

The Evening Standard expects that by commanding the evening advertising market, it can be profitable, and it may well be. I found value in having a good paper on local issues, but admittedly I bought it less than once a week on average. I never pick up London Lite, but did use to read TheLondonPaper from time to time. In the mornings I read City AM, a financial news freesheet, as there is no newsagent between home and central London on my commute route.

Oh, and if you want to get some order of magnitude of the Evening Standard, if the Evening Standard is a giveaway of 650,000 copies, the NZ Herald SELLS around 171,000 and the Dominion Post around 90,000. Bear in mind also that greater London has a population of around 8 million.

James Murdoch: libertarian hero?

Authoritarianism

That's how he describes the British broadcasting regulatory environment in the MacTaggart lecture he gave to the British television industry.

and he's right. A system that coerces all people with a TV set to pay up under threat of prosecution to fund a non-commercial broadcaster that is ever expanding its TV channels and radio stations, and which pays enormous salaries to attract popular stars from going to commercial TV - but thinks it is special and always demands to force the public to give it more money. The BBC. He decries the "land grab" this compulsorily funded state broadcaster has made to be everything to everyone, whilst the private broadcasting sector has strained to compete. Indeed, the decline of regional news on commercial TV whilst the BBC well funds its own equivalent is telling. Meanwhile, many do not know that Lonely Planet is now owned by the BBC - at what point should the state own a travel publishing operation?

Meanwhile, commercial broadcasting is heavily regulated as to the amount and types of advertising, so much that one channel cannot show an Indian show because of product placement of a company that doesn't operate in the UK.

In a brilliant speech he attacks OfCom, the UK's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, effectively implying it is useless by deciding whether it is ok to describe Middlesbrough as the worst place to live in England, or this brilliant piece of sarcasm about how Ofcom published:

"the no doubt vital guide on ‘How to Download’, which teenagers across the land could barely have survived without."

He decries how the state is more concerned with throttling capitalism and spreads fear of its influence whilst "Nearly all local authorities already publish their own newspapers with flattering accounts of their doings. Over 60% of these pocket-Pravdas carry advertising, weakening the local presence of more critical voices". This, he argues, undermines independent journalism in towns and cities struggling to make a living which CAN impartially report on how local government operates.

He argues that people should be trusted to make good choices:

"People are very good at making choices: choices about what media to consume; whether to pay for it and how much; what they think is acceptable to watch, read and hear; and the result of their billions of choices is that good companies survive, prosper, and proliferate.

That is a great story and it has been powerfully positive for our society.

But we are not learning from that. Governments and regulators are wonderfully crafted machines for mission creep. For them, the abolition of media boundaries is a trumpet call to expansion: to do more, regulate more, control more"

Furthermore he decries the idea that independent balanced news comes from a state broadcaster:

"On the contrary, independence is characterised by the absence of the apparatus of supervision and dependency.

Independence of faction, industrial or political.

Independence of subsidy, gift and patronage.

Independence is sustained by true accountability – the accountability owed to customers. People who buy the newspapers, open the application, decide to take out the television subscription – people who deliberately and willingly choose a service which they value"

You see public broadcasters have only accountability to politicians who decide whether to force the public to fund them - that's it. It is time that there was a proper debate about the role of the state in broadcasting in the UK.

However, that debate rarely happens, and one reason is because the chief beneficiary of the status quo dominates the entire broadcasting sector - the BBC. The BBC can't be trusted to impartially engage a debate about its future, if it risks coming to the answer that the BBC is unnecessary, or should be a fraction of its current size. However, it is up to politicians and the rest of the media - the media that rises or falls on attracting audiences, customers and advertisers - to hold that debate.

For otherwise, the broadcaster that runs seven TV channels and ten national radio networks (plus numerous regional stations) will continue to say it is good for us, and please can it make us pay it more.

So James Murdoch is the libertarian hero of the day - confronting the authoritarian regulatory structure of broadcasting in the UK, which stifles the private sector, whilst allowing the BBC to be an ever growing leviathan of unaccountability. The BBC isn't good for us, just because it is convinced that it is, and makes us pay for the privilege of seeing and hearing it say so.

UPDATE: Amanda Andrews in the Sunday Telegraph says the BBC budget should be cut by a third. A good first step, I'd sell all BBC regional radio, BBC Asian Network. Radio 5 and 5xtra, Radio 1, 1 xtra, Radio 2 and CBBC. Cbeebies and BBC3.

Daily Telegraph odds and ends

Greek woman sets fire to British sexual assaulter: After resisting his advances, after pouring Sambuca on him to cool him down, the guy wouldn’t stop. So the woman set fire to the man, to the cheer of onlookers – gave herself to the Police claiming self defence. The young man’s dad said “He's not the kind of lad that gets himself in trouble – he's a kind-hearted, generous boy”. He now has second degree burns for being a drunken fool.

HIV genome decoded: Scientists at the University of North Carolina claim to have decoded the entire HIV genome, raising hopes of new treatments to neutralise the virus. Given that drug therapy in recent years has significantly extended the life expectancy of HIV carriers, this may well be the next chance for a breakthrough.

Beetroot juice increases stamina: The University of Exeter's School of Sport and Health Sciences has found that a glass a day of beetroot juice can help men work out for 16% longer.

Woman who drink two glasses of red wine a day have better sex lives: You might expect the University of Florence to undertake THIS study. Overall, women who drank two glasses a day scored an average of 27.3 points (sexual arousal points), compared to 25.9 for those who drank one glass and 24.4 for the non-drinkers. Whether this continues to rise with each glass is a moot point, but it no doubt makes the drink feel like it is better! No doubt it also improves the sex lives of the men (and even women) they meet too.

BBC move to cost over £800 million: Whilst businesses sometimes shift from London to the regions to save money, the BBC’s move of the sports department and Radio 5 to Manchester is going to cost money. Proving once again, how unaccountable government organizations can be when the money they have to spent was taken by force by people who may not want its services anyway.

Iran executes 24 drug traffickers in mass execution: The second biggest (known) executor of prisoners continues form (I say known, because there are more than one or two governments that do this rather informally and privately). 219 people are known to have been executed in Iran since the start of the year. The total last year was 246. Of course many don't sympathise with drug traffickers, assuming of course the said individuals had a fair trial, that they were violent and forcing drugs on people or supplying children, hmmm. Oh and Iran has a horrendous drug addiction problem, demonstrating how effective a deterrent this is!

Sonia Sotomayer confirmed as latest US Supreme Court judge: True to those who value what is skindeep over character, most of the publicity about this is that she is a Hispanic woman. That is a first for the US Supreme Court. However, this is also a woman who once said "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life”. Objective is she? The Cato Institute thinks she wouldn’t be in the running if she were not Hispanic.

Gordon Brown's popularity

Gordon Brown went on Youtube in the past week, though you have to wonder at his incongruous smiles in the video. The Daily Mail reports that a Downing Street spokesman said "it had banned comments on its own site – where the video was also published – because the task of ‘moderating offensive comments would be too arduous’."

However, it doesn't beat the British Government's efforts to be democratic, by allowing people to set up e-petitions to go to the Prime Minister. What a great idea Kalvis Jansons thought.

Just check out which one is by far the most popular.

(Hat tip: BBC Have I Got News for You)

The BBC on Ayn Rand

This time it was Newsnight on Friday night, the culture segment chose to review Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The episode is here, which probably cannot be watched outside the UK, but give it a go (get past the Vince Cable nonsense first and the Rand bit finishes at about 12 minutes). Why is it mentioned? Because sales have taken off.

Now I criticise the book in only two points. Firstly, it IS too long. It makes the same point repeatedly, which to me (given I already was an objectivist when I read it) was unnecessary. Secondly, it became increasingly predictable what would happen . As such I much prefer The Fountainhead, although Atlas Shrugged is a great tale, it was one which had an outcome I expected. Many better written books exist, but still it makes an important point.

What would happen if the inventors and producers DID go on strike?

It starts with Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute explaining the point of Atlas Shrugged and does so well. However, then Kirsty Wark is generally annoying, but to get Ayn Rand mentioned on the BBC is an achievement in itself. However, it was Rosie Boycott, who was once editor of the Express (barely a step beyond a tabloid rag) who missed the point of the book, and so described it as "full of Aryan heroes" which was disturbing.

The BBC showed it was completely incapable of getting a panel on its show of people with differing points of view - NOBODY who supported Rand was presented.

More disturbing is Boycott didn't bother to investigate Rand's own history as a refugee from totalitarianism, a Jew and a despiser of all forms of fascism. Boycott, who has edited the Independent and the Express (neither known for either being that independent or clever), is a Liberal Democrat, and, and it was "dehuman". "Nobody in the book is vulnerable and human. Every transaction is financial", which of course is total nonsense as well.

The swarmy Andrew Roberts, a historian, said "you simply can't abolish income tax and sack government employees" which is nonsense. The narrowness of this view is astonishing. He calls her a strange if not mad woman, who was chucked out of every political organisation she tried to join.

Sarfraz Manzoor (A Guardian writer) criticises it as lacking humanity and any doubt. all heroes are individuals, but in the real world most things are done as teams. He sees it is too easy to blame government intervention, when it should be the lack of intervention that is the issue.

So there you have it - the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation bringing on three people who largely agree with each other who think radical free market capitalism can't be defended, and that Rand was mad and dehumanising.

Looking forward to the debate the BBC has on whether people who disagree with it should be forced to pay for it - nope, wont be hearing that one soon.

Britain loses its toy human

Jade Goody is a name that provokes much emotion. She died today, a young woman of 27 with cervical cancer. That is mildly notable, perhaps a useful warning to young women to be aware that cancer is not necessarily a disease of the old.

However, for me I’ve known far too many people already, younger and older than me, who have battled cancer. Those are people I give (and gave) a damn about, and so the narcotic the media is addicted to regarding Jade Goody’s illness tastes rather bitter to me. It is why I have refused to comment until today. Young death is sad, but nobody I know who suffered from culture was thrown millions by the media because a guilty tasteless public wanted to watch.

The Daily Telegraph calls her “the poster girl of the curious contemporary cult of talentless celebrity”. This was something I noted some time ago when I hoped her career would end after she was obnoxious to Shilpa Shetty. She seemed an anomaly, hopefully she has been a lesson.

The history of Jade Goody says much about the taste and standards of the British tabloid media, which of course reflects its keen consumers. Jade herself did well materially out of being a toy the media and public could abuse, embrace and abuse again, before embracing her (after briefly abusing her again) on news of her terminal illness.

It is a spectacle that should cause more than a few to reflect on how a young woman became a national sport.

Most of the media is being kind to her memory, but the Daily Telegraph’s obituary best describes how Jade Goody’s media career progressed and regressed. The interest in Jade Goody has been perverted. It glorified in her being dim, laughing at her like a retarded child who didn’t know better. It savoured being as unspeakably cruel as possible, both the right wing and left wing tabloids ripped into her. The Telegraph reporting:

“The Sun called her a hippo, then a baboon, before launching its campaign to "vote out the pig". The Sunday Mirror rejected porcine comparisons on the ground that it was "insulting – to pigs"…"Here she is: fat-rolled, Michelin girl Jade in all her preposterous lack of glory," thundered the Daily Mirror”

The Daily Mirror is purportedly centre left too. What culture glorifies in such sadistic language. Jade, after all, was hardly any worse than millions of the British lumpen proletariat, except she was making a lot of money out of simply being that way. She typified the desires of the barely educated hedonistic poor, who wanted to be rich and to get there by doing or being nothing other than their talentless selves. Yet they were jealous. What were the people who “travelled across England to the BB house, where they waved placards and greeted her emergence, spilling out of a pink dress several sizes too small, with chants of "burn the pig"” saying about themselves?

Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph concludes this for me well:

“A streak of callousness goes with being young, and always has done; but the peculiar brutality shown by twentysomethings towards the cancer-stricken Jade, for no better reason than that they didn't like her, is a miserable and worrying sign of the times.”

Many think her cancer story will save lives, maybe it will help some in the short term. However, she will be forgotten as her memory was always timebound by the short term memory of the tasteless who enjoyed her foibles and revelled in hating her.

A better outcome would be for those who joined in the consumption of a rather clueless woman's life as entertainment to move on and treat culture as a celebration of life, achievement and beautiful things and experiences that inspire us to wonder and awe - rather than inspire a near schizophrenic fascination and vitriol for someone who was none of those things, but similarly hardly deserving of the parasitical sadism that earned her money (and the loathsome Max Clifford who did well out of her too).

A good start would be to stop buying the Daily Mirror and the Sun, for obvious reasons.

It's time to move on and up, but many in Britain need to reflect on this sad little episode and what it says about the psyche of all too many.

World weirdly thinks National/ACT is conservative

so says CNN, so think how little you really learn about other countries from such media, when it gets this all so wrong.

Imagine a US party leader who was atheist, who led a party with openly gay members, which doesn't have a party position on abortion and who had a previous leader who was a woman who went along to a gay parade.

Funny how ACT isn't mentioned either - too hard for them to comprehend?

CBS does it too because both relied on a rather poor Associated Press article.

The Observer calls it conservative too

The BBC does a reasonable job though

The Times has an odd article with assertions like: "He surprised many when he took over the leadership of the party in 2006, after his predecessor Don Brash led National to a humiliating defeat." Who did he surprise? How was Brash humiliated taking the party from 22% to 38%? Although much of the rest of the article is quite good.

The Independent describes John Key as "a baby-faced former currency trader" but the word conservative is for "two small conservative parties, ACT and United Future". It gets it wrong twice saying "National and its allies had secured 59 seats in the 120-member parliament"

£500 billion of socialism

Sorry kiwis, even Auntie Helen can't undo Gordon Brezhnev Brown with socialism - and certainly Gordon outdos the US Federal government.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the UK government is going to inject £50 billion into British banks, in particular HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland, to save both banks, making them both majority government owned. This adds to Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, giving the UK government control of four of the biggest financial institutions in the country. This is despite a deal by Lloyds TSB to buy HBOS which it reports is still on track. The government is also seeking to inject funds into other banks, like Barclays and Lloyds, making the government a shareholder of them all.

United Soviet Socialist Kingdom or what? Well this is part of a £500 billion rescue package. Yes that isn't a mistaken zero. It is more than NZ$1.4 trillion. That is ten times the GDP of New Zealand. Half of it is to underwrite debt, £200 billion injection into money markets and the rest to partially nationalise banks. Compared to the US$700 billion package from Washington, given the US has five times the population of the UK, it shows new Labour is old labour once more.

Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph points out that with Gordon's nationalisation while painted as saving the UK from disaster "the consequences of his having done so could be catastrophic, too, because the socialist experiment rarely ends up with people feeling happier, richer and more free until it has ended."

"The liability and risk to the taxpayer is terrifying. The political cost to Labour if all this fails will be as nothing compared with the cost to the British public.This is what socialist economics brings. The intervention, or rather interference, of the state in financial and economic matters can only lead to sclerosis, the suppression of enterprise, the raising of taxes, starvation of investment, lack of innovation, technological retardation and the rise of the power of organised labour."

"The partial nationalisation of banks would provide a golden opportunity for Labour to return to the glory days of the George Brown National Plan of 1965, which saw the then Secretary of State for Economic Affairs write to every company in the country and ask them how they did their business. This included such fatuous questions as what they expected to be producing in five years' time. Protests from industrialists that that depended very much on what people were demanding in five years' time were met with incomprehension by the Labour government. "

Indeed some on the left in the US and UK are asking that, if the government can conjur up incredible sums of money to bail out banks, it can do so to build state hospitals, schools, businesses and there is no end to what the benevolent state can do.

What the great wish of Brown is that the financial sector will be buoyed and that there will be no need to guarantee debts, and government capital in banks will result in a significant return that can be privatised.

However the main discourse today is how "capitalism has failed" and how "Roosevelt saved the US in the 1930s". What is most important is for those of us who believe in freedom over statism, and markets over central planning, to ensure that this discourse is not dominated by the left. As PC says in an excellent article at Solopassion "When we see the destruction caused by the depression of the thirties and the means by which the Roosevelts of the world both extended it and then used it to permanently enthrone big government, it should be clear to anyone with eyes to see that what politicians do in the next few months will effect us all for good or ill for at least a generation."