What's wrong with an Ed Miliband led government?

As I wrote before, it is difficult to get enthusiasm for the past five years of Conservative led coalition government.  Yes, the economy has rebounded, but this is largely been a smoke and mirrors exercise that, if the Tories are honest, may well have been implemented by a Brown or Blair led government.  

It's what the Tories wont do that is the relief

It is based on two foundations.  

The economy is fixed?

One is just barely getting public finances into sufficient order, with a series of tax cuts, that bond markets are content and money that was once being transferred into largely wasteful public sector administration, and welfare handouts, are now in the form of tax cuts (notwithstanding the very damaging increase in VAT at the beginning). Public debt is still rising, the budget deficit is still £90 billion per annum, but the state sector as a proportion of GDP has shrunk from 45% to around 40% and the private sector has more than matched any cuts in state sector "jobs". The Conservatives promise to balance the budget next term (they promised to balance it this past term), but without tax increases.  This means the private sector growing to fill a net shrinking state sector.

The second foundation is printing money.  The Bank of England has maintained its base rate at 0.5% throughout the term, and credit is cheap.  The money is flowing into property, stocks and shares and other investments.  Few in politics question this, those who do point out that one cause of the last crash was the availability of cheap money, because low/virtually non-existent consumer price inflation doesn't reflect the asset price inflation that is part of the bubble of growth.

The boom and bust cycle has recommenced, so let's not think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is a genius, he is merely following Treasury advice and tinkering over priorities.  

If you want reasons to have a modicum of enthusiasm for the Conservatives there really are only two areas of policy where there is hope for those of us wanting a future of more freedom and less government.  Education and the European Union.

Setting the poor free from the council run education factories

2.2 million pupils are now educated in what are essentially independent "free" schools albeit within the state sector, but completely outside the dead-hand of council control.  They are established by enthusiastic educational social-entrepreneurs, whose focus is on excellence, diversity and choice in education.  They can hire "unqualified" teachers.  You know the ones: the scientists, historians, musicians, writers who can inspire through experience and who are excellent communicators.  Not the BA graduates who can pontificate about "white privilege", "equality", "sustainability" and get children all excited about voting to make decisions as a group, but also tell the brightest to "share their gifts" with others.  The Conservatives offer more of this, and to extend it further, as they pour funding into supporting new free schools according to what parents want, enabling them to remove their kids from the mediocre council schools that are emptying.  This offers a great opportunity to break education away from the deadweight failure of post-war progressive state education teacher union dominated conformity and mediocrity.

Brexit

For the European Union, that club once of free trade and open borders, balancing blatant protectionist rent seeking for agriculture and vanity construction projects.  I once hoped the new eastern European Member States would provide enough influence to drive it more towards the former, but the lure of billions of Euros in structural adjustment transfers has kept them mostly mute.  Moreover, Hungary own government has slipped back into a mode of xenophobia, state property confiscation and corruption of the media and judiciary, and the politicians and bureaucrats at Brussels do little about it. Yes, David Cameron wants the UK to remain in the EU, but the offer of a referendum on EU membership is a chance to change the UK's relationship with it.  It's a chance to leave and have a formal free trade agreement, and to leave behind the subsidies, the customs union and the ever growing regulatory burden of a bureaucracy that is fundamentally unaccountable.  The European Union represents increasingly the decline of Europe, as it remains impotent to demand the structural reforms needed of the sclerotic Italy (which has not had net economic growth for nearly 20 years) and France, whilst seeking ever more states to bring under its umbrella, primarily by offering subsidies from northern Europe including the UK.  It remains notable that neither the Norwegians nor the Swiss or Icelanders have decided to join (although between them they make some financial contributions to it and agree to follow some regulations)

Free schools and freedom from the deadweight bureaucrat behemoth of the European Union are all there is, besides a handful of tax cuts (which are too few).

However, on their own they aren't enough, but there is a reason to vote, in some cases Conservative, but not always, to do something more negative - to keep Labour and the Scottish National Party out.

Had Labour been led by David Miliband, and been a rehash of the previous government, there wouldn't have been much between it and the Cameron-led Conservatives.  However, his brother Red Ed has taken Labour and swung it to the left, with a manifesto and rhetoric that are the most statist, most anti-free market and more disturbingly, anti-personal freedom since the 1983 Marxist manifesto of Michael Foot.

Workers of the UK unite, you have nothing to lose but your private sector jobs

It has harnessed the class war that the trade unions, who backed Ed Miliband (and outvoted both the party members and the Parliamentary caucus to make him leader), never abandoned.  It's the class war of his late communist father, that Ed - the younger brother - couldn't let go of, and it's fundamentally deceitful, toxic and disturbing.

It's not just that he will end the free schools programme, meaning only wealthy parents can afford choice of schools for their kids, leaving the poorest stuck with the lottery of whatever monopoly school their council offers (but all teachers will have to be "qualified" and unionised you can bet). It's not just that he will introduce new taxes on owning expensive homes, on earning more than £150,000 and abolish the non-domicile tax status that encourages thousands of the best, brightest and wealthiest to live in the UK (and each pay in average income tax on UK earnings 2.5 times the average wage). It's not that he wants to ban household energy price increases, and require all new power generating capacity to be renewable (and so much more expensive).  It's not that he spreads the perennial (and always disappointing) rumour that the Tories are going to dismantle the NHS (they aren't, they're increasing spending).  

Profit is evil

It's that he is at best suspicious, and at worst hostile to entrepreneurship and free enterprise. His agenda includes making employment tribunals free to employees wanting to bring claims, which with his class warrior hat on (purely theoretical mind you, he's never worked in the private sector) couldn't possibly mean employees would invent grievances against employers for personal gain.  His readiness to establish new regulations for the energy, banking, property rental and railway sectors (including helpfully setting up a new state rail operator to compete with private ones), is based on a belief that there isn't a problem that can't be regulated away.  He wants laws to cap profits in the health sector, he wants laws to force energy companies to lower prices when wholesale prices drop.

Your land is our land

Yet it more intrusive than that.  He has said he wants the power to confiscate private land if a property owner obtains planning permission, but doesn't build the approved development within a fixed time.  You need council permission to develop, which can take months if not years, then if they grant permission (at your expense), you lose your land if the market conditions that prevailed when you applied no longer exist.  Not only did Miliband not think what impact this would have on new applications, he didn't think it was morally wrong to confiscate someone else's land.  He didn't think that maybe the problem of housing supply in the UK is because the planning system effectively nationalises land development in the hands of local authorities.

Yet this is all economics, par for the course socialism.  The entrenchment of the NHS and public sector school monopolies are to be expected, as is renewed growth of the welfare state.

Newspapers that oppose the Labour Party are bad

It's Miliband's views on free speech that chill me.  He embraced the findings of the Leveson inquiry and will seek to institute statutory press regulation if industry self regulation does not work.  Given how often he has rallied against Rupert Murdoch (who to Labour, made the sin of once supporting it, then turning its back on it), there is every chance Miliband will require newspapers to be licenced. The mere fact that Labour friendly newspapers, like the Mirror, also engaged in phone hacking and other illegal practices is not acknowledged.  Labour wants to "take on" the "vested interests" of newspapers that disagree with it.

Hating speech

Under Labour men and women are "equal" but separate in Islam

Moreover, Miliband's willingness to appease Islamists is more chilling too.  It's not the image of a Labour Party campaign meeting in Birmingham above, which segregates men and women of Islamic faith so much, but his commitment to outlaw "Islamophobia". 

As Rod Liddle in the Spectator wrote 

There is no such thing as Islamophobia, of course. There are people who dislike Islam and will continue to dislike it no matter what fatuous legislation is enacted by the forthcoming Labour/SNP coalition from hell. And they dislike it for perfectly good, rational, reasons.

Islamophobia? That seems to me an entirely rational response to an illiberal, vindictive and frankly fascistic creed. I am not a Muslimophobe — I am well aware that enormous numbers of Muslims do not subscribe to all of the particularly unpleasant tenets of Islam as it is practised and preached today. 

So it is, but Ed Miliband, as he seeks to woo intolerant Muslim voters, has decided to erode a bit more freedom of speech.  Expect Police to treat this as a form of Islamic blasphemy law, all the time he blames the government for not passing tough enough legislation on surveillance of personal communications to fight terrorism.

I'm sure Ed believes he opposes Islamist terrorism, it's just that his appeasement of those who expound it, and opposition to those who criticise it, says something else.

Bye bye Scotland

It goes further of course.  Polling indicates that Labour is likely to lose between half and all of its seats in Scotland, primarily because when the 45% who voted for Scottish independence cast their votes for one party in a first past the post general election, it's enough to sweep aside those who believe in the union, since they are split between four parties. 

What this means is that it is almost certain that for Labour to form a government, it will rely on support from the SNP (despite Ed Miliband's protestations).  What does this really mean?

Let's be clear, despite the claims of the SNP, its primary interest is in getting a majority of Scots to vote for it at the Scottish elections, get another referendum and to win it.  It wants independence.

To achieve independence it needs there to be Scottish disenchantment with the Westminster government, not a comfortable arrangement that delivers what it promises.  Its ideal outcome is a Conservative led government, for then it can shout on the sidelines, finger point and say "look, we never voted for the Tories, we must get ooot".  However, what if it, and Labour can form a "progressive coalition", which is what its Marxist leader Nicola Salmond claims?

The SNP says it will push Labour to the left and wont agree on any legislation or budgets that don't meet its demands.  Either Labour will surrender to it, and face disenchantment from voters from elsewhere in the UK that they are subsidising Scotland (more), or Labour will say no, and call the SNP's bluff and say "go on, bring us down and risk a Tory government".  For the SNP, either works.

If Labour gives it what it wants, involving much more money being transferred north of the border, the (mostly) English disenchantment will make it easier for another Scottish independence referendum to be held, because English voters will express a similar antipathy towards Scotland as the SNP has promoted against England.  Much better to get both sides to resent each other.  However, Labour may hope that it gets credit for supporting Scotland. 

If Labour calls its bluff, the SNP will revert to the "Red Tories" line and say that Scotland doesn't get what it wants from the Union.  It can abstain from supporting a Labour budget or indeed a Conservative confidence and supply motion, and claim the moral highground, although it is undoubtedly the risker line to take.  Labour wouldn't mind this of course. 

What it all means, is that any Labour option lies within it the seeds to break up the United Kingdom. Yes, that might seem like lancing a socialist boil, but it is my ancestral homeland and also the land which brought us Adam Smith, David Hume and Francis Hutcheson, as part of the Scottish Enlightenment.  Did the descendants of all of that really all emigrate?  I don't want the union to break up, and I don't want the Labour Party to facilitate it.  Labour did create Scottish devolution, after all.

Hold your nose

There is a lot to loathe about the Cameron government, but a Miliband one will not only steal from the productive and kneecap the most promising reform in education since the war, but will further limit freedom of speech, and will further erode property rights.  

If you're in a safe seat everywhere but Scotland (which has no such seats anymore), you can do whatever you wish, it wont matter.  That's roughly two thirds of all seats that wont change sides. Beyond that, if you think you'd rather not sit by and let a government emerge from the election muddle without ticking a box, here are some ideas.

1. Positively vote for a few Tories.  Steve Davis, Kwasi Kwarteng and David Davis positively deserve your vote, they are positive, proven friends of liberty.  

2.  Positively vote the one libertarian UKIPper likely to win.  Douglas Carswell. 

3.  In Conservative/Labour or Liberal Democrat marginals, consider voting Conservative, except in Hampstead and Kilburn, where Lib Dem Maajid Nawaz will be a formidable battler against Islamism.

4.  In Labour/Liberal Democrat marginals, consider voting Liberal Democrat except Bradford East (to oust the vile David Ward).

5.  In Labour/UKIP marginals, vote UKIP.

6.  In Scotland, vote Conservative, to hell with the two cheeks of the arse of socialism and nationalist socialism.

7.  In Bradford West, vote Labour to oust George Galloway. 

8.  In Ulster, vote Conservative or the Alliance.  To hell with the sectarianism.

9.  In Wales, it doesn't matter.

10. Have a long bath, consider your strategy to protect your investments and assets and watch the circus.

What's going to happen?

You're going to pay more, you're going to get more of your life regulated, and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs (and a bunch of others will be eager to do stuff to affect your life).

It's grim and depressing, but it truly is the case that David Cameron is better than Ed Miliband, because of what he wont do.

Envy - Labour's favourite base instinct

Next week is George Osborne's third budget, and the big rumour is that he may drop the top rate of income tax, 50%, which applies to income above £150,000.  It was introduced in April 2010, literally weeks before the 2010 election, designed cynically by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to corner the Conservatives.

A totemic tax on "the rich", designed to play into the well cultivated class envy.  To spread the bigoted discrimination against anyone who has managed to get a job or set up a business or inherit a business that generates that sort of income.  Because those how don't have it think the state taking half of every extra pound earned makes up for it.    For salary earners, add on the pseudo income tax "National Insurance" (which isn't insurance), it is 52%, add on the employer's contribution to "National Insurance" and it is 58%.  Yes, 58% of every pound in income over £150,000 really goes to the state.

Those vindictive little envy mongers in the Labour Party demanding a "banker bonus" tax dishonestly neglect to say that over half of the bonuses go to the state in taxes in any case.   

The top tax rate is paid by around 1% of income earners, around 308,000 people, but those people pay 27.7% of all income tax.   Fair?  Why doesn't the Labour Party tell its low income supporters that almost the entire health budget is paid for by the "rich"?  Well it would make people less hateful and envious, and less likely to demand Labour get the power to take more.   

£2.8 billion was the estimate for revenue, but other estimates put the real revenue gained as less, because actual revenue from self assessed taxpayers (high income) has dropped half a billion. In other words, they have re-arranged their affairs to reduce their liability.

The debate around the 50% tax rate is full of misnomers.  Claims like "bankers are to blame they should pay".  Yet most of those on that tax rate are not bankers, and how are they to blame for massive state overspending?  They tend not to claim welfare, housing benefit, use the NHS more than anyone else or use state schools.  They are more likely to employ people and consume on levels that keep others employed.  To blame the successful for the economic situation is dishonest.  Even if one claims that some bankers made bad decisions that caused them to fail, this is hardly a fair way to "punish" people who, by and large, lost their jobs in the first place.  Besides, who punishes politicians who make bad decisions?  

Who holds Gordon Brown to account for selling a significant portion of Britain's gold reserves when it was at a nearly all time low?

The 50% tax rate is not just an envy tax, but is deterring investment and deterring entrepreneurs from basing themselves in the UK.  It is a disincentive and earns little revenue, and besides with the rate below that 40%, it's not as if people on higher incomes are not paying substantially to the state.

If George Osborne abolishes the 50% tax rate, he will deserve enormous credit for sending a signal that the UK is not besotted by an attitude of envy, one that doesn't hate success, that doesn't hate entrepreneurs and doesn't see the purpose of high income earners being to fund a state that spends around 50% of GDP.

He ought also to raise the income tax free threshold to £10,000.  It is Liberal Democrat policy and will make a positive difference to everyone, as long as the tax band thresholds aren't increased so that people in the higher bands don't lose out.  It will be a enormous step to drop the top rate and have a healthy income tax free threshold.   

However, more important than that is to confront the envy, confront the acceptable class hatred cultivated by the left, that people on higher incomes not only should pay more tax than those on lower incomes (flat tax does that), but should pay higher proportions of income in tax.  The moral question is why should anyone surrender half their income to the state, especially when with most purchases they also pay 20% VAT on many goods and services, and draconian taxes on petrol, air travel, alcohol and tobacco.  

That's why abolishing the top tax rate MUST be accompanied by a lowering of the total tax burden, by pulling people at the bottom out of income tax, and being honest about how much tax is paid by those on the highest incomes.

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Bono appears at Tory conference

After years of ingratiating himself with the Blair/Brown regime, Bono decides if the electorate likes the Tories "I will follow". In the hope that with David Cameron two hearts beat as one on aid, he wants to save people living in cities where the streets have no name. You see talking about helping Africa, spending other people's money to help Africa is even better than the real thing to him. Bono believes sometimes you can't make it on your own, so he needs the support of the incoming government to continue his campaign (yes I know, enough of the song "humour").

Sadly he undoubtedly will get vertigo if he actually learns about the problems of Africa, how much it is to do with poor governance, a lack of individual right protection and property rights, how much the protectionism of the EU on agriculture impoverishes, and how the solution to Africa's problems is to look at other continents that are far more prosperous and see that it's about capitalism, it's about government that protects rights and is impartial.

So Bono asking that the UK government spend 0.7% of national GDP on aid, is not just morally dubious, it simply wont work. It is good money after bad. Aid has made Africa addicted to other people's money, addicted to the notion that its problems can be solved if only other people wiped debt and paid it more money. It's simply wrong.

Bono has good intentions, I don't doubt that, but he needs to understand that the causes of Africa's relative poverty are multifaceted, and perhaps the biggest external limit on Africa is trade policy. If he embraced free and open trade he'd be embracing trading out of poverty. However, beyond that Africa needs good small government, it needs a culture of respecting individual rights and rejecting mysticism, tribalism and socialism. It needs the rest of the world to stop providing any form of comfort and support to the gangsters who run too much of that continent.

You think the small government vote is split?

Forget ACT vs Libertarianz. If you really believe in really big government, then the two main ends of THAT spectrum, the Marxist and the conservative are all very split as below:

If you have a Christian bent to politics:

Kiwi Party- The Future part of United Future, divorced. It wants to raise the drinking age, criminalise buying sexual services, make drug laws on a par with murder, raise the minimum wage and use GST instead of road user charges to fund roads? Weird - a mix of all sorts of stuff. Shame Rebekah Clement hasn't left, she is brighter than Gordon Copeland.

Family Party – Destiny NZ with a new name. Tougher version of the Kiwi Party and little regard for separating church and state. The morality of Brian Tamaki and all that is about.

Pacific Party – Philip Field, and the morality attached to him.

Ah better than Christian Heritage right?

However, if you miss the Soviet Union, loathe capitalism, individualism, business and believe nothing would be better than to unite the workers so they’ll never be defeated by the beloved people’s government, and you think Helen Clark is a sellout to global capitalism. You can choose:

The Alliance – Yes, nationalise, keep those foreigners and their money out, make everything free and pine about Muldoon (quietly) and how Jim Anderton is a sellout.

RAM – Foaming at the mouth conspiracy theory led Marxists who think big money is running everything, and only when they control things through the state can they look after themselves, I mean you. This is where the really crazy Alliance people went, I know, I talked to one and I wondered where her straight jacket went.

Workers' Party – You can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs, so think of the firing squads, gulags, political prisons and the 100 million slaughtered by communism as a small price to pay to defeat capitalism. Workers' Marxist Leninist dictatorships have such a record of poverty, executions, torture and despair, but hey that was all cooked up by the American Zionist conspiracy - all those fake witnesses to murder in those workers' paradises. Not quite North Korean friendly, but wouldn’t have been distressed had North Korea won the Korean War.

Greens – Yes the Marxist party you have when you want to seem respectable. Policies on almost everything, science replaced with faith based ideologies, enthusiasm to regulate, ban, compel, tax and subsidise all they hate and love respectively, AND most of the MPs have Marxist backgrounds. Allegedly about the environment, but doesn't let reason, science and economics get in the way of a good bit of telling people what to do.

David Cameron - what DOES he believe in?

Widely acclaimed as one of his best speeches, David Cameron was lining up the Conservatives as a future government.

It was a mixed bag, but plays to the philosophical middle of the road in the UK. Some snippets:

Supporting the armed forces "We are going to stop sending young men to war without the equipment they need, we’re going to stop treating our soldiers like second class citizens we will do all it takes to keep our country safe and we will do all it takes to protect the heroes who risk everything for us."

He thinks freedom is anarchy, sadly "But freedom can too easily turn into the idea that we all have the right to do whatever we want, regardless of the effect on others. That is libertarian, not Conservative - and it is certainly not me."

Sensible personal responsibility extended to obligations towards others, your existence allows others to claim upon you. Is that what this means? "For me, the most important word is responsibility. Personal responsibility. Professional responsibility. Civic responsibility. Corporate responsibility. Our responsibility to our family, to our neighbourhood, our country. Our responsibility to behave in a decent and civilised way. To help others. That is what this Party is all about. Every big decision; every big judgment I make: I ask myself some simple questions. Does this encourage responsibility and discourage irresponsibility? Does this make us a more or less responsible society? Social responsibility, not state control. Because we know that we will only be a strong society if we are a responsible society."

He sounds good on cutting spending: "It means ending Labour’s spendaholic culture it means clamping down on government waste and it means destroying all those useless quangos and initiatives. So I will be asking all my shadow ministers to review all over again every spending programme to see if it is really necessary, really justifiable in these new economic circumstances. But even that will not be enough."

He says taxes are YOUR money: "I know it’s your money. I know you want some of it back. And I want to give it to you. It’s one of the reasons I’m doing this job. But we will only cut taxes once it’s responsible to do so once we’ve made government live within its means. The test of whether we’re ready for government is not whether we can come up with exciting shadow budgets. It is whether we have the grit and determination to impose discipline on government spending, keep our nerve and say “no” - even in the teeth of hostility and protest."

Then he starts to want to spend your money, on ridiculous pet projects, while stopping the private sector spending its money: "I have never believed in just laissez-faire. I believe the government should play an active part in helping business and industry. So when our economy is overheating in the south east but still needs more investment in the north the right thing to do is not go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow but instead build a new high speed rail network linking Birmingham, Manchester, London, Leeds let’s help rebalance Britain’s economy."

Then he swings back to not believing in Nanny State: "Labour are clutching at it as some sort of intellectual lifeline. It goes like this. In these times of difficulty, we need a bigger state. Not just in a financial and economic sense, but in a social sense too. A Labour minister said something really extraordinary last week. It revealed a huge amount about them. David Miliband said that “unless government is on your side you end up on your own.” “On your own” - without the government. I thought it was one of the most arrogant things I’ve heard a politician say. For Labour there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance."

Just when it sounds good he wants "efficient government", and more obligations upon people: "No, when times are tough, it’s not a bigger state we need: it’s better, more efficient government. But even more than that we need a stronger society. That means trusting people. And sharing responsibility."

So that's the choice in the UK. A party that will offer more choice in education, and reform welfare, but believes you do owe others a living, believes business should be subsidised, believes in less government, believes in personal responsibility, but also collective responsibility for others.

Truly this is what the centre-right is about - half of it I can vote for, support, and know it is a lot better than Labour - but then it still wants to waste money on subsidies, interference, and the NHS. Have no bones about it, this is about change, it is different from Labour - unlike National in New Zealand - but it is still disappointingly weak for a libertarian. I can hope the Conservatives can shrink the state, but it really is only a start - well, continuing from what Thatcher did (and reversing some of what Labour has done).

British Conservatives remain a mixed lot

You wouldn't notice it, but the Conservatives have been having their party conference - overshadowed completely by the financial crisis.

The policies coming from the Tories are all over the place:
- Council tax to be frozen for two years (a bit wimpish but a start);
- Private rooms for single mothers in hospitals (more government);
- University scholarships for apprentices (still more government);
- Abandon central government housing plans and reduce regulations that hinder construction (ok);
- Wasting £20 billion on high speed rail links and stopping a private company from building a third runway at Heathrow airport with its own funds (appalling);
- Scrapping national child database (excellent); and

Boris Johnson has announced a council tax freeze for London.

However one of them blames career women for the breakdown of society.

Oh dear oh dear, doesn't he recall who one of the most successful recent Tory Prime Ministers was?

So it's better than Labour - but that's about it - it can't stop spending money, and it can't stop interfering with the private sector. *sigh*

Why the Family Party is just so wrong

From a press release:

"Family Party Candidate for Northland, Melanie Taylor, is concerned over The Edge FM competition being held nationwide at 4.30pm today.

The station is encouraging girls to publicly kiss for about 20 seconds, with one girl/girl couple winning a trip to Melbourne to see Katy Perry, singer of the hit song "I kissed a girl and I liked it."

This follows this report in the Press about the contest.

Shouldn't the Family Party care about actions where people really get hurt?

No it shows itself to be oppressed, shame filled and judgmental.

Some simple points:

1. It is not a crime for two girls to kiss in New Zealand, never had been. It is not sex. It is not dirty, it is an expression of affection and love.

2. Most men (especially when you exclude gay men) and quite a few women like it. If you don't, then look away.

3. Why do you think it is acceptable for young children to be smacked in public but not for young women to kiss in public?

4. Many families believe that kissing is acceptable and positive, just because you teach that it is shameful and that children should grow up feeling shame about their bodies, doesn't mean the rest of us should buy into this abusive philosophy.

Leave peaceful people alone, let women snog in public and get concerned about something that hurts people you busybody ayatallohs!

Boris for Mayor of London?

I am pleased Boris Johnson is going to have a stab at being the Mayor of London. Not least because his profile gives him a chance of unseating the angry Marxist embarrassment known as Ken Livingstone. Boris is far from perfect, frequently amusing, but is bound to be better than Ken.

I have no idea what Boris would bring, other than a healthy dose of skepticism about Nanny State. After all when criticising Jamie Oliver he said "I say let people eat what they like. Why shouldn't they push pies through the railings. I would ban sweets from school - but this pressure to bring in healthy food is too much" later describing Jamie Oliver as a "national saint" and "messiah" given David Cameron's glorification of him.

I want a few things from a Johnson mayoralty - but what it boils down to is less government, less spending and more accountability.

Top Gear, David Cameron and City bonuses

Top Gear is back, has been for three weeks. With Richard Hammond back fighting fit, the series is better than ever. This is truly one of the best series ever produced by the BBC, and ought to be on commercial television because it would make the BBC a bomb in advertising.

The first show included the video of Hammond’s accident, enough said. In fact it outrated the final of Celebrity Big Brother, showing that there is still reason to have faith in Britain (imagine the single TV households with teenagers fighting with dad about what to watch).

Since then there has been the Bugatti Veyron taken to its limits on a track in Germany by James May – the perfect car for bullying the average anally retentive ecologist, and at £800k the perfect car for one of the 4000 or so city traders who earned their £1 million bonuses. Finally, last night Clarkson, May and Hammond did a road trip from Miami to New Orleans, which was a hilarious hour watching them face challenges – the most threatening being to paint each others clapped out American vehicle in the most provocative way for driving through Alabama.

Clarkson’s car said “Country Western is rubbish and I hate Nascar”. May’s said “Hilary for President and I’m bi” and Hammond’s said “Man Love Rules”. The three of them, plus the camera man were being chased by a service station owners’ “boys” who threw rocks and wanted the queers to be run out of town. Don’t mess with redneck inbred troglodyte Americans!.

Needless to say, the show is absolutely brilliant, a breath of fresh air and fumes, of good humour, a sense of life and adventure and fun. Now who would you rather spend an evening with, naysayer humourless do-gooders or this lot?

Secondly, David Cameron actually has become more interesting. It has been hilarious seeing the newspapers and television get hysterical about revelations he smoked cannabis at 15 at Eton – when his colleagues and even politicians from other parties have been doing a “so what?”. What absolute wankers the media are? You could hardly find an industry more filled with drug takers than the media – no doubt some were hoping it would be a huge national scandal. Thank the British public for being sensible on this.

Cameron also has made some sensible statements about citizenship and immigrants signing up to the values of British society. He said that Muslim extremists are a mirror image of the pro-white supremacist British National Party. Good! He said “Those who seek a sharia state, or special treatment and a separate law for British Muslims are, in many ways, the mirror image of the BNP.” Indeed, and if you come to Britain wanting to turn it into an Islamic state expect a robust rebuttal of it. The right to free speech does not include a right to not be offended.

Finally, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain is calling on those earning huge city bonuses to hand them over to those who didn’t earn it. He said two-thirds should be compulsorily paid to charity – which is code for tax surely. City bonuses are already taxed of course, but more importantly they reflect London as the leading financial centre of the world – attracting the best and brightest to work extraordinary hours for pay which is almost unrivalled outside personal entrepreneurship or the entertainment industry.

Simple point Mr Hain – the people earning it already benefit London by spending much of it on goods and services here, many already contribute to charities by their own choice, and frankly without London being such a financial centre it, and the UK would be far far worse off than it is at present. Mr Hain, you live off of other people’s compulsorily confiscated income – fuck off and get a real job before you start telling others what to do with theirs!