Has Brexit been a disaster?

It's not surprising that a decade since the UK's vote on leaving the European Union that the pro-EU media is crowing. RNZ has republished a CNN piece called "Ten years on, Britain counts the cost of Brexit" as if there is some grand consensus in the UK that it was a mistake. Given that the leading party in opinion polls is Reform (which is essentially a reconstituted Brexit Party/UKIP) that would seem like the same foolish arrogance that saw the bureaucratic/media/academic establishment, and most politicians (although some Conservatives and a handful of Labour politicians promoted Leave) be gobsmacked when the UK voted "Leave".

They couldn't believe that a majority of voters disagreed with them, and now of course they think most people regret it. No doubt leaving has imposed costs on businesses that trade with the EU, and no doubt both major parties in Government have barely touched the sides in setting Britain free but Michael Gove, whose career highlight, as far as I am concerned, was as Secretary of State for Education under David Cameron (when he pioneered free schools and enabled high rating state schools to become independent Academy schools), has written persuasively in the Spectator that it HAS been worth it:

The reality has been different: Britain is growing at least as fast as our major European partners (the countries growing fastest in recent years have been those which imposed the most savage austerity in the early 2010s). We took the lead among European nations in the fight against Russia when it invaded Ukraine. The City is flourishing: Britain remains the world’s largest net exporter of financial services, according to TheCityUK, an industry-led body representing UK-based financial and related professional services. Net exports were £84 billion last year, 12 per cent higher (in real terms) than in 2015. And however many masters there are in the universe, they still seem to be flocking to London. There were 162,000 people working in finance and insurance in the City of London in 2015, pre-Brexit, and 223,000 in 2024.

Could that growth have been more impressive? Of course. Is there still a long regulatory tail of EU legislation holding us back? Absolutely. But the choice to go further, faster is there – and can be exercised in a manner impossible while still in the EU.

Gove has identified policies both good and not so good, that leaving the EU has enabled.

• Cut tariffs on over 100 foodstuffs to counter inflation (EU Membership put the UK's entire trade policy in the hands of Brussels)

• Preferential trade agreements with the US and India (and Australia and New Zealand)

• Being outside the EU Digital Markets Act enabling the UK to outstrip investment in AI and technology compared to EU Member States

• Enabling gene-editing of crops (the EU effectively prohibits genetic engineering outside the lab)

• Turing student exchange scheme (globally focused) replacing the EU’s Erasmus (focused only on the EU)

• Liberalisation of agricultural subsidies and reduction of production restrictions (compared to the sclerotic Common Agricultural Policy)

• Increasing the UK share of the fisheries sector and reforming the sector (which was previously fully open to EU fishing fleets, many of which were subsidised).

• Potential of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (which has been used to insist on illegal migrants being granted refugee status in the UK, even if they have committed violent offences because of fear they would be mistreated if deported). 

• Measures to protect the remaining British steel industry including tariffs (up to 50%), subsidies and state ownership.

• VAT imposed on private school fees.

He noted on immigration, Brexit didn’t deliver what people assumed:

Taking back control of our borders was accompanied with the implementation of a points-based immigration system which enabled the inflow of many more workers, students and, crucially, dependents than the country ever envisaged or wanted. The higher-education, health and care sectors were already addicted to importing foreigners before Brexit – boosting vice-chancellors’ balance sheets and keeping labour costs low.

What Gove doesn’t say is that the UK political appetite to shut-down access to its welfare state including the NHS and social housing has been low. For that is a big part of the issue people have with immigration – people turning up to get something for nothing. If that tap were turned off, as is the case in plenty of EU Member States (some of which have language and national insurance contribution requirements to access healthcare, education and welfare), it would likely have a significant impact on demand.

For Gove the most important success is that it is now UK politicians fully accountable for UK laws. No more can they blame Brussels for requiring this or banning that, or taxing this or subsidising that.  Sovereignty in law making is no longer subservient to a higher level of government. As always that's a mixed bag, in some cases it was good for the EU to stop British protectionist politicians, but more often than not the EU was an expression of the stultifying "dirigisme" political economics embodied by France, which prefers protecting sunset industries and jobs, over allowing new ones.  I recall when France fined Google Maps for the audacity of offering a free map service, undermining the business of French map makers. The idea that the public benefited from Google Maps more than it lost is alien to the political culture of France, and that is also central to too much EU thinking on economics.

Gove concludes:

Brexit was a vote for a faster feedback loop between politicians and the people, the ability to yank the chain harder when ministers do not live up to their promises. That chain was yanked with great, cleansing, propulsive force in 2024 and I felt the spray. But that vote was not a repudiation of Brexit, it was its vindication. The failure I charted above to control migration, and indeed to go further, faster in re-building and re-balancing our economy, saw the Tories punished. Now it is proving Labour’s turn. The message from ten years ago – the demand that politicians change our society – has not diminished in force or fervour. That there is unfinished business is clear. But it is clearer still that Brexit alone makes that change possible.

Those who voted Leave knew it. They braved condescension and endured years of frustration to have it delivered. They must not be let down.

I’d conclude that this is the problem. The opportunity to set the UK free from hoards of regulatory instruments imposed from Brussels has barely been touched. The fundamental problems around immigration haven’t been confronted – such as the attractions of the welfare state and the inability to deport violent criminals because it would deprive them “of a family life”.  Of course prospects for any useful reform under the current Labour Government are remote, but the chances of another referendum on EU membership soon are as well.

Either a future UK Government tries to take advantage of this opportunity fully, or it may as well rejoin and decline in concert with the rest of the western European EU Member States.

Loony leftwing teachers

In the UK...

"A Labour MP was prevented from visiting a school in his constituency because the teaching unions and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign do not like the fact that he believes Israel should have a right to exist. The MP in question is Damien Egan, who represents Bristol North East" ...

We know of this story only because Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, who describes himself as a Zionist, mentioned it during an address to the Jewish Labour Movement, without naming Egan. Reed said of the people who had scuppered Egan’s visit: ‘They will be called in, and they will be held to account for doing that, because you cannot have people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children.

Well, Steve, there’s people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children in pretty much every school in the country, save for a few free schools and some of those in the private sector

"In fact I cannot think of a single occupation more likely to be stocked with these pig-ignorant dunderheads than teaching, a calling which they gravitate towards because they are useless at everything else and also to acquire a soupçon of power which is otherwise wholly absent from their wretched, impotent lives"

Rod Liddle, The Spectator

Pity the UK

The 1970s are calling, and the UK is facing a sovereign debt crisis.  Let's be clear, it has next to nothing to do with Brexit (as France and Germany s face similar crises, although some other European countries definitely do not).  It has everything to do with economic malaise, a growing burden of welfare, pensions and the world's most centrally planned and provided health system (which is also the UK's biggest religion).  A punitive tax system, a sclerotic planning environment , a vastly over-generous state pension system, energy prices that have skyrocketed because of a blinkered commitment to Net Zero (with a planning system that makes new supply too expensive to develop in manu locations) and a fraying of public trust in institutions particularly around criminal justice and immigration, is creating a crisis in confidence economically and socially.

Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Allister Heath, believes that the Starmer Government will have to call an early election, because the Labour Party wont be able to reconcile demands to cut spending and/or increase taxes and not deliver on a sufficiently socialist agenda. The hard-left may splinter to Trotskyite tankie Jeremy Corbyn's party of Marxist/terrorist/Islamist sympathisers, and others will fear a loss to Nigel Farage's Reform, whilst the Conservatives are scrambling for relevance (given they governed for 14 years before).

 From Allister Heath, in the Daily Telegraph (formerly the Editor of business paper - City AM):

Let us, for the sake of argument, first consider the “optimistic”, best-case scenario. Another wave of punitive tax increases, targeted at those who work, save and invest, would intensify our existing pathologies. We would be doomed to stagflation, rising joblessness, falling industrial and energy production and declining living standards. The best and brightest would flee, but there would be no sudden collapse....

The worst-case scenario feels more likely, and it would begin by an abrupt loss of confidence in the credit-worthiness of the British government. We need to borrow obscenely large amounts of money from the financial markets every month, thanks to Reeves’ lack of fiscal discipline, and yet our creditors are becoming increasingly jittery. They worry that our deficit is growing, not shrinking, that the economy is barely growing and that Labour backbenchers are vetoing all cuts. They are already charging us a “moron premium” to compensate for the growing risk that we default or inflate away our debt, and these higher borrowing costs automatically mean even greater deficits, and thus even more borrowing. It’s a vicious circle. The 30-year gilt yield recently hit 5.6 per cent, its highest since 1998; another substantial increase would surely topple the Chancellor....

Britain is facing a historic reckoning. The economic and social model constructed since 1997 has turned into an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, a farrago of lies, obfuscations and delusions.

The maths don’t add up. On one side of the ledger, growth and revenues are stuck thanks to oppressive taxation, poor incentives, net zero, the destruction of the entrepot economy, the throttling of the City, labour and product market regulations, low-productivity immigration and planning rules that make building anything difficult. On the other, spending is out of control: our ruling class is content to pay out of work benefits to 6.5 million UK adults and to serve as the world’s welfare state of first resort. Our free-to-use, taxpayer-financed NHS can’t cope with an ageing population.

An honest UK politician would have to give up promises to continually inflate state pensions higher than inflation, it would have to take a hardline on able-bodied adults not working and start to reform and ration the NHS.  A scythe will be needed to cut through the detritus of decades of micro-economic regulation, and most of all the post 1940s failed consensus of planning control that kneecaps the construction of homes, business and infrastructure, inflating the cost of that which is approved far beyond the costs of comparable construction on the European mainland.

The UK needs another Thatcher.  Conservative Leader, Kemi Badenoch, at another time, could perhaps have been that person. However, it is illegal migration and the provision of housing, welfare and health care at future taxpayers' expense (through debt), and the crimes committed by illegal migrants that is the focus of so much attention and concern.  Britons, both locally born and legal migrants regard this to be at best unfair, and at worst an invasion of people seeking to take advantage of what the country has to offer. 

It seems highly unlikely that Nigel Farage has what it takes to fix the economy malaise facing the country, when he is campaigning to nationalise water.

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....

Forgotten Posts from the Past: Gordon Brown's campaign of lies was failing in 2009

The campaign in Norwich North for Labour set the scene for how the 2010 British election was campaigned by Gordon Brown - quite simply that the Conservatives will cut and burn at the British welfare state, but that Labour will protect the working classes from the evil greedy ones.

Forgetting of course that Gordon Brown has systematically engaged in fiscal child abuse for nearly his entire term of office, running deficits in the good times, as Labour spent up large on welfare, with people of all incomes eligible for child benefits, for example, pouring money into the NHS while getting nothing in return in terms of productivity or better outcomes. The Labour record is a disgraceful waste of money, hiding the true cost of its spending in ongoing deficits. Its stealth taxation has meant that it uses taxes on fuel and car ownership predominantly to pay for welfare and education, with only a quarter of those taxes going on roads and nearly the same again on railways.

The record is damnable. National debt is set to climb to 90% of GDP partly because Labour did not pay off debt during the good times, but also because it wont let any banks fail, even though deposits of up to £50,000 (which would cover most voters) have been guaranteed. Labour now will not cut spending, even though its own "pump priming" of the economy has been a fizzle, because it knows the spending cuts that are needed are fierce, but if it can hold them off until after the election - it wont be a Labour problem.

The Conservatives will face spending cuts on a scale likely to be worse than that faced by Thatcher in 1979. Labour will oppose them through and through, spreading the filthy lie that Labour wouldn't have done the same - when of course it would have faced it as well. That then sets the scene for another class based election, whereby Labour is the one helping out the poor and the needy (always needy of the government), but the Conservatives protect their rich friends from higher taxes (even though the Conservatives haven't even promised to cut taxes).

Matthew D'Acona in the Sunday Telegraph describes Gordon Brown as too cadaverous to be an asset for campaigning, which is quite right. Gordon Brown paints a picture of the UK succumbing to a global recession, but fails to note why the UK is more badly hit than many other countries.

He needed only look at himself.  The supreme arrogance of a man who thought that by milking a credit fueled economy with taxation largesse to buy off the Labour constituency of public sector workers and welfare recipients, that he had got rid of boom and bust.

Now it is the supreme arrogance of one of his right hand men, who now leads Labour, who blames it all on capitalism and on banks in the US.  

London 2012 < that phrase breaks the law (or what's wrong with the Olympics Part Two)

As I wrote previously, the Olympics can be a great cause for celebration of personal achievement my people striving to achieve the very best in their chosen sport or athletic event. As an advocate of capitalism, I’m not a supporter of the anti-capitalist protestors objecting to specific sponsors at the games. 

The patronising and precious attitude of protestors that having sponsors like Coca Cola and McDonalds means people will associate those brands with health living is insulting the intelligence of spectators and those at home watching the games. There wont be ads of Gold Medal winning athletes saying they did it drinking coke or eating McDonalds, but even if there were, then so be it. The do-gooding health bullies who want to restrict free speech because they think they can regulate, tax and berate everyone into eating and drinking as they want should just shut up. The simple response to sponsors whose products you don’t like is to not buy them or organise a boycott. Funnily enough had the Olympics actually come within budget as originally proposed by the government when it bid for the games, then it may be that sponsorship and ticket sales would have meant it broke even. The original budget being £2.4 billion excluding the external costs to related agencies, such as the Police. Now it is £9.3 billion plus those costs at around £2 billion, it’s easy to be cynical about the games from an economic perspective, but also desperate to maximise sponsorship to cover the costs.

You’d think that from my point of view, whatever it takes to get sponsorship is good. Well no. There is nothing wrong with granting the rights to be official sponsors, to use the logos and slogans trademarked for the Olympics. This, of course, is like any other event and any other corporate sponsorship role. Sponsors pay for certain exclusivity related to that which those organising the event have the right to sell. However, it goes a lot further than that here. 

For a start, Lord (Sebastian) Coe, Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has said that ticket holders to events wearing items of clothing carrying the brands of competitors to the sponsors could be prohibited from entering the events. He said it was “probably not” ok to wear a Pepsi T-shirt (Coca Cola is the competing sponsor), but “ok” to wear Nike trainers (Adidas is the competing sponsor). There has been some backtracking on that somewhat (only wanting to prohibit large groups engaging in “ambush marketing”), and frankly if all of that had been made clear when tickets were sold, then it would be fine. Yet it’s more insidious than this. 

You shouldn’t need to pass laws to host an event, but the Blair Government passed legislation, which explicitly prohibits unauthorised use of certain words. Typically, protection of sponsorship is about protecting trademarks and logos that you have registered or fraudulently passing yourself off as officially endorsed by an event. Existing laws are quite capable of doing that, but the Blair/Brown and Cameron Governments had been lobbied by the International Olympic Committee and sponsors to do more. So there are now officially banned words and phrases in relation to trade: 

“Using the words Games, Twenty-Twelve, 2012, or Two Thousand and Twelve, in conjunction with one of these words - London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver or bronze - is also banned.” 

You can have a brief laugh at how this demonstrates that the quasi-authoritarian nanny-state approach to British politics, embraced by the Labour Party is now mainstream and uncontroversial among major parties. It is also illegal to take photos of the Olympics rings in public places to be used in publicity. This includes the taxpayer funded quarter million pound rings on Tower Bridge. 

To those who think the British constitutional monarchy system is a great guarantor of freedom, surely this shows it up for the emptiness that it is. The government has restricted free speech around the Olympics. Why? Well to protect the official sponsors, because they can’t possibly have a small local café selling muffins under a sign not using the logo saying “Olympic Muffins”.   Conversely, no airline other than British Airways can advertise "fly to London for the Olympics", which is patently absurd.

This overbearing, corporatist nastiness is exactly the sort of bullying that anti-capitalist protestors rightfully condemn. It’s not free market capitalism to pass laws so that sponsors don’t just register trademarks, but prohibit the use of general phrases and descriptions. So on that I’m with the protestors. 

 

How can any politician in the House of Commons hold his or her head up high and say it’s ok to pass laws restricting public usage of words that are NOT brands. I can’t say “Summer 2012” without it being seen as some insidious attempt to undermine the sponsorship of the Olympics.  To his credit, Mayor Boris Johnson has called overzealous policing of sponsorship as “insanity”, which should hopefully take the sting off the tail of cops who see new laws as a chance to grab some new criminals. Hopefully it means that some local businesses who have contributed in taxes for this grand event wont face prosecution for using words from common usage. He has pointed out the suburb of west London called Olympia and how absurd it should be if businesses around there with that name might be forced to change. Sponsors who use such laws to beat up on smaller businesses who are not using their logos and who are not claiming to be official sponsors should themselves face the opprobrium of the public. It’s not your language, taxpayers are the biggest sponsors of these Olympics. Just because you have convinced a bunch of lilly-livered politicians and gutless bureaucrats to pass laws to restrict free speech, doesn’t mean it is right. For if the Olympics has a spell of petty bullying from bureaucrats, Police and lawyers from sponsors forcing people to not use verboten words, then it deserves to be accompanied by moaning. Britain should no more be beholden to rampant corporatism, than it should be to rampant statism. 

Ironically, there has been one freedom granted - Sunday opening hours, which are currently heavily restricted for shops over a certain size, have been abolished for the period of the Games.   However, Britain doesn't have a Government sufficiently committed to economic growth to allow this to continue, as City AM's Allister Heath bemoans.

West Bradford shames itself

I don't need to say much about George Galloway, he is one of the most repulsive politicians in Britain today.  As Christopher Hitchens once said "the man's search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends".  He has been a sycophant of Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  He misses the Soviet Union - the stale stinking behemoth of blood stained lies, oppression, imperialism and terror.  He supported the Islamist terrorists who festered in Iraq after the Western invasion, he supports Hamas, he said the Syrian people are lucky to be ruled by Bashar Assad.  On top of it all, this Dundee Catholic fifth columnist lies - blatantly - denying that for which there is video evidence.  He blames 9/11 on US foreign policy.  He claims to not support the Iranian system, yet said explicitly he supported the campaign of Ahmadinejad on Iranian TV.  His direct relationship with the Hussein regime was demonstrated with evidence, but he continues to deny it.

So how did such an odious creature get elected in a low profile Bradford West by-election?  Simple.

He has a high public profile (he appeared in Celebrity Big Brother in 2006).  He spent money and time in the constituency spreading his latest brand, of being a teetotaller who has always supported Muslims, who opposed the war in Iraq, opposes Western forces in Afghanistan, supports Palestinian militancy and opposes Western intervention in the Middle East.  He played to the tribalist, anti-Western bigotry of many ethnic Pakistani voters in the constituency.  He benefited from a week of appalling mismanagement by the government, and the continued ineptness of Labour leader Ed Miliband.  It was a protest vote, apparently driven also by Galloway targeting young Pakistani voters who otherwise may not have voted.  It has been alleged that some of his supporters voted for him as a rebellious action, for his shenanigans with Celebrity Big Brother were looked down upon by some of his Islamic support base.

Bear in mind also that turnout was low (25% or so down on the general election), and it was meant to be a safe Labour seat, which motivates less supporters for major parties to bother voting.

Yet while much analysis will focus on why the major parties, especially Labour, did so badly, the real menacing implication is that a man who has long provided succour to Islamists and dictators, can command such overwhelming support.  Was there not sufficient media scrutiny of Galloway?  If there had been much more, would his campaign have been harmed (and is it not for the other parties to do that?)?  Or do his voters agree with him - that Iran doesn't have such a bad President, that Syrians are lucky to be ruled by Assad, that criticism of Syria is because of the "good things" Assad does, that Saddam Hussein deserved to be saluted for courage and indefatigability, that Hamas is a force for good, that Islamists who shot dead 58 people at a Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad were to be supported, or the ones who bombed 48 people at a restaurant, or who let off a bomb killing 54 Shia on a pilgrimage, etc?

George Galloway has always done well out of politics, he has connected himself to whoever he can who opposes open, free, liberal Western democratic capitalist societies, and embraced variously Marxist, Soviet, Islamist, Ba'athist dictatorships.  He says one thing on the broadcast outlets of his favoured dictatorships and another in the West.

So it's about time that proper efforts are taken now to hold this friend of thugs to account, to reject his evasion and deception, and expose him once again.  However, although I hope most of his supporters are naive young voters who see him as a high profile protest against the mainstream parties (and their parents), I fear more than a few embrace an agenda that is anti-British, anti-Western, sympathetic to Islamism and believers of the rampant conspiracy theory ridden nonsense that passes for "theories" in some parts of the world.  Is anyone confronting this?

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.

To AV or not to AV

As part of the coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party agreed that there be a referendum on electoral reform in the UK. The Liberal Democrats as the UK’s long standing third party has always sought this in order that it get a more proportionate share of seats in the House of Commons. However, whilst it has always supported a form of proportional representation, the best it could get is a referendum on perhaps the smallest possible change to the electoral system – it is called the Alternative Vote or AV, and is similar to the Preferential Vote system in Australia.

Of course New Zealand went through electoral reform in the 1990s, because Jim Bolger was willing to hand it up on a plate for no good reason at all, in the midst of the economic reforms being continued by Ruth Richardson. New Zealand’s electoral reform process was complex, and was undertaken in a period of heightened anxiety about the economy and distrust of politicians (mainly because Jim Bolger lied in the 1990 election campaign, fully aware that the Nats had to backtrack on promises to abolish student fees and the superannuation surtax because of the massive deficit Labour left it with).

The electoral reform debate in New Zealand was ably driven by a coterie of leftwing politicians, celebrities, activists and a compliant media, all dissatisfied that both Labour and National had policies that today might only be seen with ACT. The left drove the Electoral Reform Coalition, and opponents to MMP only campaigned late in the day, with Peter Shirtcliffe (and later his daughter Janet) arguing largely on the basis on what was wrong with MMP. National and Labour both had no official view on the matter, whilst NZ First and the Alliance, with their pinups of Winston and Jim Anderton self-servingly advocating MMP (although the media rarely challenged that self interest).

In the UK it has been quite different. AV is NOT a proportional system. It simply means every MP would need a majority of preferences to get elected. Constituencies where the leading candidate gained less than half of the first preferences, would see the second preferences of those who voted for the bottom candidate get reallocated. This would continue until one candidate crosses the 50% threshold.

The real arguments for and against change are actually quite simple. A strong argument can be made that in a fully representative system an MP should have the support of the majority of voters in a constituency. That can either be done by having a runoff ballot (as in the French Presidential elections) or some sort of preferential based voting. If the highest value in an election is that majority counts, then AV can be supported.

The argument against is that people’s second or third preferences shouldn’t decide who gets elected. What AV would enable is for people to vote for whoever they like as a first preference, including any small party, safe in the knowledge that given the low probability that minor candidates could do well, second preferences could be given for the least offensive major candidate. It gives those with views not represented by major parties a better chance, which may be seen as benefiting those parties unfairly.

However, the debate has not been about that. The Pro-AV campaign has been claiming it will “change politics”, make MPs more accountable and should be supported because the Tories oppose it. It has been supported by the Liberal Democrats and some in Labour (including Ed Miliband), largely because they think a majority of UK voters are leftwing oriented.

The anti-AV campaign has been pushed by the Conservative Party based on a whole host of erroneous reasons. It is claimed AV is a lot more expensive, which it isn’t. It is argued that it is wrong to support a system only adopted by Australia, PNG and Fiji (with a quasi-neo-colonial/racist overtone that such countries are inferior). It is claimed first past the post is popular, yet the only developed countries that share it are Canada and the US. It is claimed AV is too complicated, yet somehow the Irish can get their heads around STV and continental Europeans all have far more complex systems. Most stupidly an analogy is drawn between an athletic race and the person who came third winning.

In other words, the argument has been infantile and insulting. It is presented either as a radical change that will make a big difference (which it wont), or as a complex, expensive system that only Australians use.

The Conservatives simply think they cannot get a majority of support and will lose if AV is put in place. The entire campaign for first past the post is based on retaining strong single party government (which outside the context of the Thatcher administration is hardly welcome).

So the question for me is what to do? Most of those who I have some broad political alignment with will say “no” to AV, because it will benefit the left. Yet, inherently any system based on representation should, at least, gain the endorsement in some way of a majority of voters in any constituency. Whilst AV may benefit the Liberal Democrats, the truth is that the party faces serious losses because it is in coalition with the Conservatives, so the future political map is difficult to predict. UKIP came third in the last by-election, comes second in the European Parliamentary elections and is a serious alternative for those who want less government.

So I am going to vote for AV. Primarily because, in principle, I want to be able to vote for a smaller party and for that vote not to be wasted by enabling me to choose a tolerable second best option. I think it may enable politics to be more diversified on the “right” by giving UKIP more of a voice. It will do the same for leftwing parties like the Greens and BNP (nationalist socialism), but I am NOT beholden to thinking that the Conservative Party really holds the monopoly on political sanity in the UK – it needs to be challenged. It is a rather inept and bumbling advocate for capitalism and a highly inconsistent supporter of freedom and less government.

However, I do so holding my nose – because as much as the left in the UK will take solace from an unlikely win for AV (polls are strongly against reform), I think it is a misguided measure of an electorate that is actually more conservative, more euro-sceptic and less keen on government than they may think.

Vandals and thugs are children of the Labour philosophy

UK Uncut, a radical leftwing protest group, has been exposed for what it really is - a bunch of young angry violence prone thugs who, as usual, misuse the term "peaceful protest" for "vandalism, trespass and intimidation".

It is they that formed the backbone to the breakaway protests in London on Saturday, and the cover for the so-called anarchists who went on a vandalism and trespass spree across London's West End.  I say "so-called anarchists" because if they really were anarchists, they wouldn't have wanted the Police to step in had the owners of the premises they trashed used force to defend their properties.

UK Uncut are an odd bunch, you see they want more government (not exactly aligned with anarchists then) and want more tax, so the government can spend more money, presumably on them. UK Uncut is waging war on successful British businesses because it wants to strongarm them to pay more in tax - not that any of them are alleged to be breaking the law - but UK Uncut doesn't think these businesses should arrange their affairs to minimise tax.  The philosophy being that when businesses make profits, the state is entitled to take part of that.

I can't quite understand how anyone, particularly groups of students can get excited about getting businesses to pay more tax, like they worship the state as big mother, which has weaned them and gives them what they want.  It's so anti-aspirational as to be pathetically sad.

Tim Worstall of the Institute of Economic Affairs has fisked this lot with ease, showing the economic illiteracy of UK Uncut.   UK Uncut assumes bizarrely that British companies would remain if taxes were raised dramatically, it assumes that when companies pay more tax that somehow that means that "rich fatcats" lose - when many of the companies have shareholders which are pension funds and the like, with profits shared among thousands of shareholders.   Full details of the fisking here.

However, the mob who vandalised are more than just disenchanted idiots.  They vandalised the Ritz Hotel because they were "anti-rich", they occupied the exclusive department store Fortnum & Mason; Mason because it is upmarket (one wit said "Proper Tea is theft", as Fortnum & Mason has an excellent tea section).  Banks including ATMs were wrecked because they just oppose banks.  Didn't matter that the banks attacked in some cases were not bailed out.   In fact nothing mattered other than trashing the property of businesses they had an ill-conceived prejudice against.  Nice.

However desperate the TUC and Labour are to distance themselves from these thugs, there is a more fundamental underlying point.  Whilst neither entity provoked or encouraged the vandalism (and both are embarrassed by it), the simple truth is that they all share the same philosophy - a fundamental hatred of entrepreneurial success and a belief that the property of others is not sacrosanct.

Both Labour and the TUC perpetuate the myth that the recession is entirely the fault of "the banks" and that "the banks" must pay - they blame the budget deficit on the banks, when it is palpably not true.   Labour had been running large deficits for years, only the collapse in tax revenue has made it more rapidly unsustainable.   

Labour and the TUC want to tax banks more, vandalise them in a far more civilised way, without sticks and stones, and make Britain even less attractive for the financial sector.   They want more of your money, they want to give the money to those who haven't earned it, they want to spend it on monopoly state run health and education services, regardless of whether they meet your needs - because government is good, government always knows best.

They hold the same empty belief that capitalism doesn't really work, that the reason the world isn't the way they want it is because people trade, people make money, people produce goods and services and sell them to people who are willing to pay, employ people who are willing to work, and that life isn't fair!  They belief there aren't equal opportunities (there aren't, the Khmer Rouge tried to fix that), that everyone has a right to a job (a right provided by whom?) and that the "rich" make money off the back of the poor.

It is the same belief that other people owe you a living, an education or health care.  The idea that if other people have property or money, then you have a right to some of it.  It is moral cannibalism, the idea that the mere existence of someone gives them unchosen obligations to give the fruits of their labour, effort, exchanges and mind to others who demand them.   It is the Marxist myth - from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.  The cleverer you are the more of that is demanded from others, and what you get back is just 'what you need'.

The only way this can be imposed is by force, by violence.  The anarchist protestors are willing to do this directly, the politicians and unionists will use the state to do it (and already do).

The best response to this is an unashamed defence of capitalism.  A defence of the principle that people should be entitled to set up businesses, make money, hire who they wish and keep the proceeds, as long as they don't use force or fraud to do so.  It is more than just pointing out that waging war on capitalists means they will leave, with their money, Zimbabwe like, and the looters and vandals will have nothing left.

UK Uncut is ridiculously stupid - if it got its way, businesses would flee the UK and so would wealthy entrepreneurs rather than be taxed. 

Of course if you are weaned on a state education that teaches you how wonderful the things are government does, and to be envy and hate filled about those who have more than you, then you're going to concentrate on hating rather than creating.

That's what you saw on Saturday in London.

Give us more of your money

That was, effectively, the catchcry of the 150,000-250,000 people who protested in London on Saturday. They all opposed government spending less of other people’s money, largely because most of them are beneficiaries of it. The Trade Union Congress initially said 250,000 turned up, more independent accounts indicated the figure was between 150,000-250,000 before the TUC started claiming 750,000.

Labour leader Ed Miliband liked to claim the people opposing cuts are in the majority, a claim that seems more credible than him comparing the protestors to those who opposed apartheid in South Africa or fought for civil rights in the US in the 1960s. Yes Ed Mandela, Ed Luther King. How pathetic and vile it is for this pitiful privileged Primrose Hill living Oxford graduate son of a communist to compare himself to two of the notable historic figures of the 20th century, when he will be but a footnote in comparison.

However absurd and disgraceful that comparison, his claim that the protestors are in a majority is almost as fallacious. The leading leftwing paper in the UK - the Guardian – has a poll showing quite the opposite view. A Guardian/ICM poll showed 35% think the spending cuts go too far, 28% think they are about right, but another 29% think they don’t go far enough. Yet if you read the details behind the poll there is an even more interesting story (PDF).

For feminists who think women are hard hit, well 32% of women think cuts don’t go far enough, 25% think they are about right – so women want MORE cuts compared to men.

How about young people? Don’t they feel betrayed about past generations living it up large and now they have to pay? No. A staggering 43% think cuts have not gone far enough, 36% think they have gone too far and 17% think they are about right.

So isn’t this just a mob of taxpayer funded (or rather future taxpayer funded) beneficiaries demanding that taxes go up and borrowing increase to sustain their dependence on the money of others? Well yes.

Bearing in mind that the cuts themselves are rather pitiful when you look at the big picture. Allister Heath at City AM today points out that the Conservative Chancellor George Osborne is only cutting spending by 0.6% in 2011/2012, and peaking in 2013/2014 with a 1.3% cut in spending. In other words, he is undertaking the minimum necessary to avoid a cut in Britain’s credit rating and to maintain confidence. Of course spending is being most dramatically cut in a number of areas, notably tertiary education, local government provided services and defence, but not health nor foreign aid.

So these aren’t “savage cuts”, the size of the UK state as a proportion of GDP within five years will have dropped, from around 50% to just over 41%, largely because the private sector will have grown.

In addition, the socialists and planners always demand to know where the new jobs are coming from, no free market advocate can tell because free market economies are far too complex for anyone to have a handle on new innovations or entrepreneurial opportunities. Compared to the final quarter of 2009, public sector employment is down 123,000, but private sector employment is up 428,000. You see you can’t predict where or how these jobs appear, but they do.

Those marching are mindless that the road they want is the one to lead to where Greece and Portugal have now head – where government can’t borrow money anymore because those with money see it as too risky, and demand ever higher interest rates. The government then engages in the barely disguised theft of the elderly and those on low to middle incomes, of inflation. Inflating the currency so that debts are devalued, along with the cash savings of those with too little knowledge and too little money to protect themselves from inflation. It hurts them more than anyone.

No doubt many marching don’t even understand what a deficit is ( it is spending over income, NOT debt) and somehow think that government can borrow ad infinitem, or pillage more money from taxpayers who will sit back and take it.   The current government is being so meek it will only be breaking even by the next election, the massive public debt will have grown by then.  However, the TUC sees the people receiving this money as children as seen by this video - adults should get pocket money.   Given the TUC throughout much of its history has been more closely aligned to Moscow than anywhere else, it should be ignored as it has spent so long advocating an attitude of get paid more for doing less and hire more people doing less.  It is a dinosaur that serves no purpose other than to be a rallying point for those too stupid to know better (you can't be too bright to have your interests represented by people who couldn't create a business if they tried).

Fortunately a majority disagree, and either think the spending cuts are right or not courageous enough. I’m strongly in the latter category, although when it comes to policing the other story in London on Saturday shows a different story.  The more leftwing one gets the more violence is part of your bread and butter...

Privatisation reveals high speed rail is a dud

For the Blair Government, building a high speed railway from the private built, funded and owned Channel Tunnel was a matter of national pride.  The "business case" was questionable, with a benefit/cost ratio of less than 1, propped up by estimates of "regeneration" impacts at Ashford (which have by and large failed to come about).   However it was about Britain have a high speed railway because France had one at the other end (and Belgium too).   The support for a high speed railway was driven by emotion, because the economic (and the monetised environmental) case was not driven by reason.

The main beneficiaries of the line are not freight users (freight trains don't operate at high speeds, and the lines bypassed were not near capacity), nor those who move road vehicles by shuttle through the Channel Tunnel, but travellers on the Eurostar international service.   Many of them are business people who otherwise would have travelled by air, leisure travellers are not so time sensitive so would largely have gone by rail anyway. 

Why does it matter now?  Well the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government has privatised it.

Yes amazingly coalition government in the UK, (which includes a party that has been solidly leftwing for some years)  is not shy about privatisation.  It doesn't upset the government that railway unions are upset about it, because most people don't care.   

It was bought by foreigners.  Yes!  A foreign consortium dominated by two Canadian pension funds is paying £2.1 billion for a 30 year lease on the rail line from St. Pancras to the Eurotunnel railyard near the tunnel entrance.  If you believed socialists you'd think that it will result in the asset being run into the ground, services deteriorating and becoming too expensive, in actuality the expectation is that there will be more services, as new train operators are expected to be allowed to use the line.

Yet the real tale is what an atrocious "investment" this line was in the first place.  You see the line cost £5.8 billion in the first place.   Taxpayers' money (well borrowed on their behalf).   A 63% write down on the initial investment.   Yes, it can be leased out again, but in 30 years the interest on that write down value is more than double the sale price.

So yes, the first high speed railway in the UK was a deadweight loss, a destruction of wealth for the British economy.   Even a bid that goes beyond expectations shows that the new owners can't even expect to recover half of the capital cost from train companies.  

So you might wonder if that was such a dud "investment" then why is this deficit cutting government so keen to pour money into another one that wont even come close to covering its costs from users?   More grandstanding, national pride and totem building.

Of course if it's lousy for Britain, it is many times more lousy for the USA.

How can we cycle without a quango?

One of the numerous QUANGOs to be abolished by the Con-Dem government as part of its programme to cut government spending to the levels of around 4 years ago is "Cycling England".  This entity had a budget of £5 million in 2005 which has now ballooned elephant like to £60 million this year ("oh but the deficit is due to bankers" cry the wilfully blind on the left).   Quite why it needed a 1200% budget increase at a time of deficits is astonishing, and even with its abolition this funding wont disappear.

What is the response of the Green Party of England and Wales?  Hysteria

"A big question mark now hangs over the future of cycling" says Green Party representative Ian Davey (a city councillor in Brighton, not an MP).

Really Ian?  Does cycling need a government agency spending vast amounts of other people's money?  Do people not buy bicycles unless bureaucrats are paid to promote it?  Will people stop biking because Cycling England no longer exists?

What sort of hysterical hyperbole is this?  The type that states that if anything good exists, it can't survive without the government spending other people's money on it.

Now I am not saying that cycling isn't good, in fact the measure about whether it is good is up to the individual.   Some find it a lot of fun, it keeps them fit etc.  Others are uninterested.  That's ok. 

However there IS a solution for those who promote cycling.   They can keep Cycling England or reconstitute it through (take a deep breath, the concept I am about to describe bamboozles statists) their own efforts and their own money.

Yes, remarkable though it may be to those on the left, but you don't need the government to make things happen in your community.

I'll try it another way - "take the energy you put into placards, marching and generally being a nuisance to peaceful citizens going about their business, and use it to help do what you like Cycling England doing".

You see the government doesn't get enough money, from already high taxes, to pay for everything you want.  Which means you're going to have to pay for some things you like yourself.  

Oh and if you don't, cycling isn't going to end.  For the same reason that there isn't an organisation called Blogging England to help fund this activity.

Where did the Liberal part go?

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

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

British government cuts modest and unimpressive

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is good?

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

What is tolerable?

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

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

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

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

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

What is disappointing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep calm, the cuts are going to be pitiful

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday Maggie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Destroying the welfare state

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

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

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

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

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

The British welfare state is not under threat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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