Three elections, none are likely to please: 1. London election

Yes it's been a while.  Having moved from one employer to another,  and with a load of house improvements I've been spending more time with life than pontificating, but there are two elections in the coming three months that I can vote in.  Of course the biggest one in the world is going on in the US, and from the point of view of a pro-capitalist objectivist libertarian, none of them seem likely to provide an outcome that is pleasing.  Why?

These are the London Mayoralty election, the UK EU referendum and the US Presidential election. First, the London Mayoralty.

London Mayoralty - 5 May:  The lowest profile one,  the least important, but also the election one that can't help but be disappointing.  Not one of the candidates is worth my vote, especially not the two leading candidates - Labour's leftwing candidate, Sadiq Khan, who nominated the neo-communist, anti-capitalist, totalitarian apologetic Jeremy Corbyn to be Labour leader (then didn't vote for him to be leader, and the "Conservative" leftwing Green candidate, Zac Goldsmith, who has spent much of his life lazily trotting out enviro-fascist agin-prop.  Despite some concerns, Khan is not an Islamist, and is less offensive than the vile old Castro-phile Ken Livingstone, but he has had poor judgment with those he associated with.   One of his former aides is a racist Islamist.  The imam at the mosque he attends rails against Ahmadi Muslims, like the murdered shopkeeper Asad Shah (killed by a fellow Muslim because he dared wish customers a Happy Easter - because Mr Shah was a model of tolerance, as Ahmadi Muslims tend to be).  Khan's response, and the response of the Labour Party is to shout "racist" at anyone questioning these links,  but that's almost stereotypical standard far-left identity politics laziness.  Bear in mind that his main opponent is backed by another, much more famous, much bigger Muslim political figure - Imran Khan (Zac is his ex.wive's sister after all).  Not that this endears me at all to Zac, because he is beyond the pale too.

Zac Goldsmith epitomises much of the worst of the Conservative Party, for he exemplifies the self-serving "generosity" of the inherited wealth entitled classes that decide that instead of producing anything or achieving anything (he dropped out of Cambridge), they can "serve" us by having power of us.  Much worse though, is the guilt-dripping  embrace of trendy authoritarian environmentalism, which drips of the greatest hypocrisy.  You see as Zac once fought genetic engineering (organics for him, to hell with the price of food for the poorest), he now fights airport expansion because of climate change - not that he shows any sign of giving up long haul travel, he just embraces policies that will keep the price high (can't have the oiks going to the Caribbean can we?  It's for their own good).

He follows from Boris Johnson whose main quality was that he is entertaining and has a slight libertarian streak, although he has a fancy for totemic vanity projects.  Zac is neither entertaining, nor has any libertarian streak.

More importantly, neither Sadiq nor Zac have any clue how to make a significant difference to the policies that the Mayor of London has powers to change, and which are the biggest London-centric issues the city faces.

On housing London has a crisis of supply.  It is usually talked of as a crisis in affordability, which is the result of the supply crisis, although far too many politicians think it is something different.  Khan and Goldsmith both admit supply needs to increase.  At the moment London's population is increasing by 10,000 per month, but the number of new home units is increasing by only 25,000 per year.  Given average occupancy of over two per unit, it is far below what is needed to accommodate a growing population.   Khan thinks the answer is more council flats and to hobble the rental market because he sees increasing rents as landlords ripping off tenants, not a function of a market where demand exceeds supply.  Indeed, Khan thinks that new private builds should be 50% "affordable", that nonsense euphemism in London for "subsidised".   What he (and many politicians in London) ignore is that to cross-subsidise cheap social housing for those on modest incomes, means the remaining 50% have to be priced to cater for high income Arab, Russian or Chinese investors (although they have decreased in number in the past couple of years).  Middle income or middle/upper income Londoners flee to the home counties and spend inordinate amounts of time on subsidised railways commuting into London.   Goldsmith isn't much better, but he is obsessed with new builds on public land and "brownfield" sites, but wont confront the two issues that constrain growth in housing - the strangling of the market by central planners.

London's housing problem is a function of the Leninist central planning approach adopted in the 1940s by the Atlee Government called the Town and Country Planning Act.  It nationalised land development and usage, giving local authorities large scale powers to control development and meaning any property owners needs to seek permission (and anyone can object to this) to build anything that doesn't involve repairing an existing structure.    Councils impose planning demands on home builders that range from a minimum subsidised stock, to a minimum number for the disabled to prohibiting any off road parking (except for the disabled) or even banning residents of new developments from being entitled to on-road residents' parking (Councils in London in particular see car ownership as pernicious and to be reduced by fiat).   The effect of this is that house building is a market dominated by a small number of large firms that can afford to waste months or years of lawyers' and architects' fees to meet the demands of Council planning committees.  Tens of thousands of pounds get spent just on meeting the demands of people who themselves put not a penny into developments, so of course, this adds to housing costs, but more importantly constrains supply because the market simply offers little realistic scope for small scale developers.  With the exception of loft conversions, there isn't much in the way of new housing build in London that isn't the preserve of large developers, and of course Council planners see them as full of money that should be spent meeting social policy goals rather than building housing the market demands.

A perversion of this is the encouragement this presents for developers to delay construction as prices continue to rise.  Former Labour leader Ed Miliband wanted to ban anyone from owning land they had permission to build on, yet not embarking on using that permission.   What he didn't admit was that the sole reason this practice exists is because of the scarcity of supply inflicted by the likes of him and his comrades.   Why build this year, when next year the sale price would be 15-20% higher with construction costs only rising by a tenth of that?  So a planning system that makes small scale development uneconomic, but demands large scale development meet the social policy goals of politicians rather than market demand is constraining supply.

London greenbelt, more land used for this than any other purpose

The second problem with London housing is more visible, and it is the blight of the Green Belt.   Khan and Goldsmith have vowed to protect it and not allow any new housing construction on it, but this is complete madness.   The Green Belt policy had two purposes.  One was to ensure that some open space would remain in a growing city, the other was to constrain sprawl.  It has profoundly failed to do the latter, as people live as far out as Ipswich, Brighton, Kings Lynn and Luton and commute into London by train.   London has sprawled using the railway network and the few goods that service its outer suburbs, by sheer factor of housing supply.   22% of the land in metropolitan London is Green Belt much of the image above is beyond that, but envelops greater London strangling people so that those with homes adjacent to it can enjoy ever increasing prices, undisturbed by new people.  Indeed,  another 43% of land is London is "green", that being parks, gardens and other green space that is not protected as Green Belt, so around two-thirds of London isn't built on.

However, only 22% of the Green Belt land has environmental designations, so 78% does not involve protected habitats.  59% of the Green Belt is farmland, subsidised by the EU, which if made available for housing would be worth many times what it currently is  (indicating that housing is more important than uneconomic farms).   7% of the Green Belt is golf courses, and 2% of the Green Belt is buildings, roads, railways or driveways/car parks.  

Furthermore, 60% of the Green Belt is within walking/cycling distance (2km or less) from an existing underground or overground railway station.  So there is much land that building on would simply enable more utilisation of existing transport networks. 

Green Belt defenders (and nobody is saying abolish the Green Belt, rather just let some of it be released to allow housing) talk about "paving over the countryside" yet less than 5% of the total land area of the south-east of England is built on (buildings, roads, parking lots/yards).   Only a small proportion of Green Belt land would be needed to transform London's housing market, but neither Goldsmith or Khan will touch it.   The votes of NIMBYs are worth more than those who can't afford to live in London.

On transport, they are both equally uninteresting.  Khan is taking the traditional far-left Labour view that fares on the monopoly subsidised public transport services should be frozen for four years, whereas Goldsmith talks about bikes and electric cars.  Both pay lip service to controlling Uber.   However, neither ever suggests that the behemoth monopoly, Transport for London, get broken up and privatised.   Both say next to nothing about roads, which carry the majority of people and nearly all freight in London.   There is no suggestion that the competition coming from the likes of Uber should be encouraged and extended to buses, nor any suggestion that the main roads be run more on business like lines.   In short, nothing interesting to see here, just maintaining the status quo, which is driven by technocratic beliefs in what is good for people and business, rather than reflecting choices and embracing innovation.   Automation and connected vehicle technology, with ultra fuel efficient engines can transform urban transport (buses and trucks could run in train like formations on main corridors with a fraction of the pollution of today), but to make it work roads have to stop being managed like Soviet style tools for social change.

Both oppose expansion of Heathrow Airport, the hub airport of the UK that is at 99% capacity and can finance a third runway (and construct it in a location that reduces the numbers exposed to noise, which itself is dropping because of aircraft technology).  Khan is prepared to support a second runway at Gatwick, which, of course, is not actually in London, but itself is at 90% capacity and can also be justified (but is not a substitute for allowing the hub to expand).    For me, it doesn't help that he said the Airports Commission (the third study in recent years into what airport expansion in south-east England should look like) had a "pre-conceived" outcome already determined, although I spent a couple of years working on it including being one of a small team who screened through over 50 proposals into the shortlist.   Goldsmith didn't like the outcome of the study, so he criticised those involved, as he can't accept that he might have been wrong (he never admits that, just stops talking about it- like GMOs).

What the Mayoral campaign tells me is how utterly asinine local politics is in the UK.  Two mainstream candidates, one whose biggest achievement was becoming a lawyer (human rights lawyer) and the other who became the polite son of a billionaire, who are ultracrepidarians either unwilling or unable to conceive of the sort of transformations needed to fix London's biggest problems.   They are attention seeking, focus group informed professional politicians, and on housing they will continue to exacerbate the problem, not confront it - because they embrace the problem's sources to the core.

So I haven't voted for Mayor, I crossed out all options and wrote a short damning sentence about the lot - to hell with the anti-capitalist consensus.   London doesn't need a Mayor, it doesn't need a politician to develop a housing strategy of where to spend public money and how to fiddle with a broken planning system that is causing the problem.  It doesn't need a politician to decide how large transport networks are developed, it needs one who knows that he (or she) doesn't know what's best, but if decisions on these are left to suppliers and consumers, then they together might provide much more robust solutions.

So don't vote for Khan or Goldsmith, and ignore the protectionist  halfwit Peter Whittle from UKIP, who thinks that London's traffic can be solved by limiting the numbers of minicabs (because pricing people out of catching cabs is good for them), and focuses his campaign on immigration and leaving the EU.  Khan will probably win, in spite of his laxness towards Islamist lowlives.  However, Goldsmith does not deserve the vote of any supporter of free-market capitalism, small government and most of all, rational evidence based public policy (including science).  Far better for him to resign as an MP in a fit of pique because the UK Government has decided to approve Heathrow's third runway, and for him to depart politics for the life of leisure he has inherited.   He's fully entitled to be an annoying Greenie prat, but let's keep him away from power and punish the Conservatives for picking a candidate who is far removed from the party's values.

Why Boris Johnson beat Ken Livingstone

For all of the many reasons to be critical of the Olympics, it being a waste of future taxpayers' money, it being an unjustified corporatist suppression of free speech, the celebration of the world's most centrally planned universal health care system and most recently, the inability to flexibly manage access to tickets, and the lost opportunity to fix London's inadequate transport infrastructure, there are things to be grateful for - besides the great individual achievements by thousands of athletes (which is the true reason to celebrate the Olympics), Boris Johnson is Mayor rather than Ken Livingstone.

Why?

Boris has written "20 jolly good reasons to be cheerful about the Olympics"...

Including:

As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers. 

and

The Olympics are proving to be a boost to tattoo parlours. Plenty of people seem to want their thighs inscribed with “Oylimpics 2012” and other ineradicable mis-spellings. 

Who would ever expect Ken Livingstone to say such things....

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.

What's wrong with the Olympics? Part one - the economics

You’re going to see more and more hype in the next few weeks, as the world’s most political sporting event is held in London, and a vast wave of positive support will infiltrate the media, politicians and the event itself.

There is one good thing about the Olympics. It provides a showcase for the best in world athletics to compete and demonstrate the results of their hard work and training and be achievers. That is a good thing. The recurrence of this again and again, is a reason to smile. Opportunities to do this are special and remarkable.

Yet there is a lot wrong with it, so much I’m going to dedicate three articles about it.

• The first is on the economic cost
• The second is in the cost to individual freedom (and surrender to an authoritarian corporatist approach to sponsorship to fund the Games by "any means possible")
• And thirdly is a lesser important point, it is how the transport infrastructure in London has not been upgraded to cope, despite seven years of warning.

No business case

From an economic point of view, there was no “business case” for the British government to support the Olympics being held in London. It comes with a direct financial cost to British taxpayers including future taxpayers, a direct economic cost imposed on much of London, a subsidised platform for sponsorship and the self-aggrandisement and glory claimed by politicians.

The Olympics are political, they are a statement to the world by a country seeking to show off. I need not go through the list of recent hosts to demonstrate that. The previous Labour government bid for this event to try to show off, it didn’t do it for the economy.

£11 billion is the total cost of the infrastructure, hosting and the “regeneration” work undertaken related to the London Olympics. £2 billion is expected to be recovered from sponsorship, ticket sales and broadcasting rights, the rest is a transfer from taxpayers to contractors. Nearly £2 billion of the expenditure is in “regeneration”, code for government subsidised property development. The goal being to make Stratford (the main games site) into a desirable place to live and for businesses to locate (it now has three railway, two underground and two light railway lines serving it).  With the exception of Canary Wharf/Docklands, the evidence of government sponsored regeneration actually providing a catalyst to economic growth and jobs in the UK, is scant.

So financially, it will lose money.

What about the economy? Some economists would claim that this money will be returned in bucketloads because of the increased tourism and investment it will bring, except that this doesn’t bear close scrutiny.

I heard a story of someone in UK Treasury who told then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, that the Olympics would not create a net economic contribution to the UK economy. Gordon allegedly said “don’t worry, we wont win”.

London is already one of the most popular cities in the world for tourism. Indeed it bulges at the seams with tourists. There is evidence that the Olympics deter visitors who may otherwise have come. It brings athletes, who by and large, are not particularly high yielding tourists. It brings coaches, trainers, broadcasters and the like. It brings some spectators. However, it also scares off many others.

Moody’s produced a report saying it was unlikely that the Olympics will boost the UK’s economy. It claims the main sector to benefit will be hoteliers, with 90% occupancy estimated, although at this time of year London typically achieves 80% anyway. Given it was Diamond Jubilee year anyway it seems difficult to imagine that the extra numbers, if they turn up, will actually compensate for the for the taxpayer subsidy. In fact there is some anecdotal evidence that the numbers expected are NOT turning up. A quick look at Wotif.com for London in the next two weeks shows ample availability for hotel rooms with considerable discounts.


This is despite rather weak analysis from Lloyd's regarding the multiplier effect of spending, ignoring what people would have invested or spent the money on had they had it in their own pockets - (it isn't relevant that Lloyd's is a bank that was bailed out by the state and is now majority state owned).   Goldman Sachs says:

Goldman expects the Olympics will boost UK economic output in the third quarter of 2013 by around 0.3 - 0.4 ppt quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) (+1.2-1.6%qoq annualized), but this will be largely reversed in the fourth quarter.

Noting that the economic impacts of the Sydney Olympics were negative compared to the forecasts.

Economic impacts of the Sydney Olympics

The effect is more serious than that when you consider that London hardly has any spare capacity in its transport infrastructure to cope with the deluge of people for major events. The result is that thousands of businesses are telling staff to take leave or to work from home during the Olympics. The reason being that significant parts of the public transport and road networks will be close to gridlock. Business trips are being deferred because of anticipated queues at immigration entering Heathrow. With business likely to be deferred over this period, and those undertaking business facing real increases in cost due to overcrowding on roads and public transport, it’s notable none of this was taken into account in the glowing self-justifying “business case” for the Olympics from the previous government.

The so-called “legacy” is also grossly exaggerated. The Olympic stadium is likely to be offered to a football team (yet to be selected) to be used at a price less than the cost it took to build it, effectively destroying some taxpayers’ wealth. The regeneration of the Stratford area will be seen in property values, but this remains a fraction of the total cost to taxpayers.

Unfortunately, what’s insidious is that it is completely politically incorrect for the media to talk about this now – in the run up to the Olympics. Any major newspaper publishing articles about it would be seen as churlish and spoiling something great. No major politician dare say that which millions of people are saying – how can a country with public debt expected to reach 92% of GDP, which is overspending to the tune of 8.3% of GDP, with a PM who talks about a decade of austerity, justify pouring billions of pounds into a two week celebratory event.

Yes most people will watch some of it, and enjoy that. However, they would’ve done so anyway. Yes, there will be a sense of national pride (except from some Scots and Ulster nationalists) about the event, and some London pride as well, but didn’t the Diamond Jubilee provide that too? Wouldn’t there have been pride if the British Olympic team competed and won elsewhere?

So I’m not celebrating. My money has gone into this event (more than the average, given my income). I am betting the net GDP effect, in the long term, will be negative, as it has taken money out of taxpayers’ hands. People who would otherwise have invested or spent it better, and will have deterred almost as many visitors as it will have attracted. It will have imposed significant costs on London businesses unrelated to the games, by almost gridlocking the transport network.

In short, a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.  It is a massive vanity project, and who really believes it will result in more than a short term boost to participation in athletics? Wishful thinking.

The Olympics should be left to profligate semi-authoritarian developing countries, willing to squander their national wealth on showing off, or by seriously commercially minded bids from cities that can demonstrate they can make money out of it, financially, without taking from taxpayers.

Let’s stop pretending the Olympics is an investment, it’s a legacy from a profligate, image obsessed former Labour Government, that is a commitment now. All that can be hoped for is that it goes off without a hitch, shows London in a positive light and that the property developed can be sold for the best possible price – and a lesson learnt to never ever do this again.

three elections - three stories - little reason

So in the past week or so there have been four elections which have had greater or lesser coverage in the international media.  What are the key lessons from them all?

1.  The all involve people choosing politicians, which is the worst form of government ever devised (except for the alternatives).  Nearly a million people think Ken Livingstone, a warm supporter of Fidel Castro, is a fit and proper person to spend billions of pounds on a city.  More than half of French voters think a man who has never created a job in his life, should run Europe's third largest economy.  A majority of Greek voters want to be told what to do by authoritarian Marxists and fascists.

2.  Boris Johnson is a funny engaging man who woos women and is intelligent and entertaining.  Moreso than Ken Livingstone.  He won because he captures people's imagination, and he didn't pretend to be offering that much.  He offered frugality, a 10% cut in the Council Tax levied by the Greater London Authority, but also didn't pretend to not be a private educated, Oxbridge, upper class chap.  In an age where being a celebrity and a character is more valued than most things, it worked.

3. Ken Livingstone is a bitter nasty old socialist who plays class warfare politics, who blamed the riots on austerity, who says one thing and does another, who plays fast and loose with comments about rich Jews and says one thing about gay rights whilst giving succour to Islamists.  He's a politician of the past, and cost Labour victory.

4. Beyond the London mayoral elections, Labour did well because over 60% of voters didn't bother at all.   The core opposition to the government was motivated, the core support was not.  The Liberal Democrats continue to erode into what looks like fourth party status.  The Greens, despite some efforts in doing well, have barely lifted their support as the environmental arguments don't wash well in a recession.  The socialist fascist BNP lost every council seat it defended, including losing what had been its single seat on the London Assembly.  UKIP gained some votes but not seats.   People are fed up with politicians, don't trust them and given the gaffes around the last UK budget, it's hardly surprising the UK coalition is uninspiring.

5. The French have always voted for socialism, it has long been a matter of degree.  Now they have voted for a hardened socialist rather than a softened champagne socialist who preaches austerity, but really lives it up large at the cost of future taxpayers and who preaches suspicion of foreigners when he himself is the son of a Hungarian migrant.  Now they can pretend that they can stop trying to live within their means, get taxed more and just borrow to prop up their socialist economy where, despite the mythology, manufacturing is no bigger a part of the economy than it is in Britain.  Bear in mind a fifth of the French are warm towards a fascist and another 15% are warm towards communists, then you see that liberte isn't as big as equalite in France.

6. The Greeks have voted in protest.  The two formely major parties responsible for decades of overspending, lying about debt, a culture of corruption and rent seeking, have been decimated.  The "centre-right" New Democracy party has the greatest number of seats, but 108 in a Parliament of 308 is far from enough to govern.  The "centre-left" PASOK party which led the last government is third with 41 seats.  Second is the Marxist "Coalition of the Radical Left" with 52 seats - a party of communists, Trotskyites, environmentalists and Maoists.  It promises to reject spending cuts, reject austerity and somehow magically produce a socialist motherland where money can pay for the big warm maternal state that makes everything happy again.   Fourth is the new Independent Greeks party, with 33 seats, which is an odd nationalist party wanting the Germans to pay war reparations, rejecting loan agreements with the EU and wanting politicians and officials responsible for the crisis to be prosecuted - well I can agree on the last one, but I think the Germans have done Greece enough good by lending to it when nobody else would!  Fifth is the Communist Party of Greece, which picked up to get 26 seats.  The party that is Marxist-Leninist and would have run Greece like a totalitarian twin of Bulgaria had the Greek Civil War gone differently, not that anyone noticed. However, everyone noticed that  Sixth is the fascist Golden Dawn Party with 21 seats.  It rejects the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, is radical Greek Orthodox, and wants removal of foreigners.  Greeks almost certainly will face no stable government that will enable their bloated state to be funded - indeed, the future looks bleaker now than ever before.

So for London?  Business as usual - nothing to see here.

For France?  A little man (shorter than Sarkozy) is going to fight austerity - that hasn't even happened- but will inevitably bow to reality, because he is, at the heart of it all, a man who will listen to the grand French statist bureaucracy.   Expect little change, although there are reports that real estate agents in South Kensington in London are facing record queries from wealthy Parisians seeking to flee punitive taxes Hollande has promised.

For Greece?   Hardly anyone has been telling people in Greece the only solutions to their problems are:
-  Accept the government has failed them, make their own arrangements for retirement, healthcare and education.
-  Move all their money into foreign bank accounts, preferably not in Euros, or buy precious metals.
-  Hunker down and accept that the next 5-10 years will be very hard for those who can't or wont make provision for themselves.

London mayoral elections - Back Boris to kick Ken

Whilst not as dire as the French elections, it is clear that there is no candidate for the London mayoralty who supports local government doing less and getting out of the way of people.  

The line up ranges from a Uruguayan candidate for the fascist BNP, to a former public servant standing as an independent, an anti-car Green, gay former cop Liberal Democrat and then of course the two main candidates - the Marxist Islamophile Ken Livingstone (George Galloway-lite) and the bumbling Tory toff Boris Johnson.

UKIP has a candidate who is campaigning on having a tax for visitors to London, a cap on immigration, free parking and other policies that the Mayor has no legal power to implement.   All this is a plain insult to my intelligence.

What I WANT in a Mayor is some fairly clear policies based on what the Mayor can actually do.  The role has some clear powers in transport, housing, policing, economic development and emergency planning.  

For emergency planning and policing, I want competence, commitment to accountability and with policing in particular a focus on real crimes, crimes against people and property, and to promote a culture that respects the public's right to go about its business in peace, but which takes a firm line defending people from the initiation of force.  This includes assisting with national agencies against terrorist threats.   It means not letting people riot day after day, it means not letting people "occupy" private property in mobs as a "protest", it also means being accountable when members of the police assault innocent members of the public.

Beyond that, I don't see a long term role for the Mayor.  Economic development should be about getting out of the way, lobbying central government and local boroughs to get out of the way.   The Mayor should be an advocate and promoter of the city, but not be trying to plan it.   For starters the Mayor shouldn't be opposed to expansion of Heathrow (or any of London's airports if the airport owners can fund it privately).

Housing?  Well the one thing London does need is a Mayor to get out of the way and eliminate urban development limits within Greater London, and set free land for private development.   Local government housing schemes have long been breeding grounds for anti-social behaviour, attracting desperation and criminality rather than aspiration and community.  The ridiculous overly prescriptive planning rules that stifle development and inflate housing prices must be scrapped.

Then there is transport.  You'll know I could write a post about this on itself, but that needs a wholesale shift.  The tube should be privatised, bus companies should receive the fare revenue paid on buses, the congestion charge should be expanded and made more sophisticated to replace council tax funding of roads and to fund a programme of major pavement renewals, the backlog of sign and line maintenance and targeted intersection and corridor improvements.  All traffic light controlled intersections should have pedestrian crossing lights.  Finally, private enterprise should be asked to investigate new road corridors to be toll funded, for both new Thames Crossings and new arterial routes to open up south London.  

Finally, I want a Mayor who will reduce council tax, who will shrink his role to policing, emergency services and advocacy.  For whom planning means property rights and transport means getting from central government enough of the share of motoring taxes paid from using London roads to pay for their maintenance and to maintain spending commitments to public transport upgrades.

Nobody comes near any of that.  Given the UKIP candidate doesn't even remotely dabble in any of this, it comes down to whether there is a qualitative difference between the two leading candidates.

Boris Johnson is the incumbent.  His mayoralty has been characterised by pet projects for bikes, buses, a cable car, giving everyone over 60 free public transport and building "affordable homes". 

On the plus side he has taken a tough line on crime which has achieved some results, even though early management of the riots was disastrous.  He's improved management of utilities digging up roads and put some money into improving traffic management more generally.  He cut wasteful spending on media, froze council tax and gave up first class air travel (Ken liked a first class trip to Cuba when he was Mayor).  Finally, he is proposing a 10% cut in council tax over the next four years, it's not much, but it is in the right direction.

Ken Livingstone is trying to regain the Mayoralty from Boris, having had it from 2000-2008.  Livingstone is promising a public transport fare cut to be funded from the surplus in the Transport for London accounts that has resulted from deferred capital spending on new tube trains.  A surplus that will disappear in one year, but he insists it can be afforded.  He is promising to resell electricity bought by the Greater London Authority to Londoners at a huge discount, as if running a massive retail utility is without cost.  He wants to set up a government real estate agency, and even introduce a welfare benefit for young people who stay at school.   Ken loves being the big man for outside politics he is nothing.

Ken is an expert at spending other people's money.  He spent £10,000 a year on subscriptions to the communist newspaper the "Morning Star" and spent money on first class junkets to Havana and Caracas to visit Marxist dictators.  He is warm towards both regimes, ignoring the Castro brothers' use of mental hospitals to incarcerate political prisoners or Hugo Chavez's bullying of media and supporters of the opposition.  His use of the London Development Agency as Ken's "bank" to back causes he supported, his support for Lee "black people can't be racist" Jasper, who also said Anders Breivik has similarities to Boris.

I couldn't care less about the allegations of Ken using a company to reduce his tax liability, except of course it proves his hypocrisy, as does his continued use of private healthcare whilst being a strong advocate of the NHS.  I do care about his embrace of Islamist hate preachers and wanting London to be a "beacon of Islam".  If Boris wanted London to be a beacon of Christianity wanting all non-Christians to understand the religion, he'd be laughed at for being some US Republican style religious zealot.

Ken Livingstone seeks to court the votes of gay and lesbian Londoners, and claims to care for the rights of women and the oppressed, but then worked for Press TV - the overseas propaganda TV channel of the Islamic Republic of Iran -  a regime that executes homosexuals and rape victims.  Even Labour stalwarts like Sir Alan Sugar are opposing him, following Livingstone saying he didn't expect rich Jews to vote for him.

Ken cites "achievements" of his time leading London in the early 1980s - when he called capitalists "filthy" as recently as 1992.  

He makes it too easy.  Vote for Boris to keep this vile little man out of power.  Boris is no libertarian and far from perfect, but he is promising less local government and he wont be appeasing Islamists, communists or funding his radical racist mates.  Finally, Ken has said he wont stand again if he loses this time - let's hope that's a promise he can keep.  Besides, who wouldn't prefer Boris at the Olympic opening ceremony quoting Latin and bumbling his way informally through it all, over the nasal whiny forked tongue envy peddling friend of George Galloway.

Ed Miliband's scapegoat for looters

It is the mainstream view in the UK that the riots reflect, in part, a breakdown of morals. Politicians across the spectrum have said this, even Labour Leader "Red" Ed Miliband said the riots were "inexcusable". He knew that taking the line of Ken Livingstone that the riots were because of cuts, would have ended his political career as Labour would have been sidelined, even by its loyal sycophants - the BBC and the Guardian - as being on the fringes. So he waited, now it is a moral breakdown, but not one that is the responsibility of the people who rioted or their parents.

The problem is not the systematic failure of the welfare state, education system and a fundamental breakdown of ethics among hundreds of thousands, it is “greed, selfishness and gross irresponsibility” he is reported as saying by the Daily Telegraph. He accused David Cameron of a “shallow and superficial response”. He ought to know, he is the master of it.

On the face of it, most would agree with such a phrase, but within it lies something far more pernicious.

For he deflects blame from those who actually committed the crimes, or those who negligently don't police their children (or even encourage them) to say:

The bankers who took millions while destroying people's savings: greedy, selfish, and immoral; the MPs who fiddled their expenses: greedy, selfish, and immoral; the people who hacked phones at the expense of victims: greedy, selfish and immoral

The moral relativism comes out once again, but most disturbing is how he can't see the underlying contradiction in his empty argument.

MPs' expenses are an easy target, not one anyone will disagree with. He included it because it looks “introspective” for an MP to blame “his own”. However, it is curious that it took a Conservative leaning newspaper – the Daily Telegraph – to “out” all of this, and it “outed” MPs from all parties. It wasn’t Ed Miliband who did it. Of course the qualitative difference between MPs who get legitimate expenses paid and those who got more is rather insignificant, although Ed will claim it is material. It is OK for MPs to be paid for by taxpayers, who have no choice to pay them, not OK if the MPs get more by committing fraud and lying about it - noting that obfuscation of the truth, and telling half stories is the stock and trade of being an MP.  Ignoring his acquiescence during this entire period, and his full participation in the last government is a demonstration of that. 

He raises the phone hacking case, because it is part of Labour's vendetta against News Corp for turning on it, when they had been getting on so well when Blair led the party.  The phone hacking cases are under investigation. They are alleged cases of trespass into people’s voicemail accounts. Certainly a serious concern, but then again it is not quite the same as destroying someone’s home, or business, or murdering them, or raping them. Is it Ed? However, this is part of Ed’s monologue that you can point fingers at “big business” or in this case privately owned media that isn’t slavishly sycophantic to his view of the world, or he himself. Phone hacking is an initiation of force, but is different dramatically in terms of degree of impact and consequences to the riots.  Yes it is a criminal case, but why not raise the spectre of the students who looted the Conservative Party headquarters, or the shootings and knivings in low income areas?  That would be shifting blame to the perpetrators you see.

However, note how he put his enemy number one in the sights.  Labour has a new scapegoat to blame for the economy, the deficit and now social breakdown and disorder.  

He said that the looters were acting like the legendary “bankers who took millions while destroying people’s savings”. Who were they Ed? Doesn’t matter, as it has become part of Labour folklore that the recession is entirely because of bankers, and the budget deficit is because of bankers. What people’s savings were destroyed Ed, when the government guarantees up to £85,000 in personal bank deposits? Who did bankers “take” from? Their employers? Since when is being paid your salary and bonus, but making bad business decisions “taking” something like committing arson, murder, rape, vandalism or thieving? Yes some banks made out loans to people who couldn’t pay them, but these were decisions made by consent. The more fundamental problems were around those who invested too heavily in property in some locations, when moral hazards weren't identified and monetary policy that offered fiat money as unearned credit.  The financial crisis was a series of errors and mistakes, largely by people who took decisions that were legal and unsustainable, including politicians.  Bank bailouts should never have happened, but does Miliband truly think people who make monumental catastrophic business and public policy errors are like criminals?  By what measure does he rank himself, his own colleagues, and his former leader Gordon Brown as being a part of all of this?

As Allister Heath said today in City AM:

Many of the looters – especially the younger ones – would have had no idea that MPs abused their expenses. Britain’s dispossessed minority does not watch the news or read papers; many are functionally illiterate, having been let down by sink schools, collapsed families, terrible neighbourhoods and gang culture. The vast majority are so far from the mainstream of the economy that they don’t understand what investment bankers do. The only rich people they are properly aware of are footballers, entertainers or local gang leaders. There is no empirical link between the crisis of 2008, the subsequent bailouts and the looting of 2011.

The moral bankruptcy of his moral relativism is astonishing. Ed was happy being part of a Labour government with billions of tax revenue fed from banks and their staff, to pay for its generous welfare state, Leninist style health system and overexuberant capital expenditure. However, now he treats them as “the enemy”. Fine Ed, close the City of London, see how much of the UK’s GDP disappears when you treat an entire sector of the economy as if they were feral youth who do nothing but destroy.

After all Ed, when have you EVER created wealth? You’ve never created a business in your life. You’ve never really worked for the private sector, for the people who pay taxes. You’ve spent your life living in a very exclusive part of London, absent of poverty and those you claim to give a damn about. Raised on Marxism, you’ve never seriously questioned what you were weaned on, and now you want power, and you damn thousands of people who bring income into the country and live lifestyles that are NOT criminal (but pay buckets of tax that you and your colleagues live off of).

Think for a few moments about the moral equivalency Ed Miliband has put together.

Bankers who made poor judgments about investments that bankrupted their employers, (but not the politicians who used taxpayers' money without consent to rescue the banks) are the same as the:

- Driver of the car that mowed down three young men on the footpath in Birmingham;

- The boy who beat an old man into a coma for complaining about a fire lit in front of his home;

- The boy who raped a girl of 13 in the riots after mugging her;

- The men who stole from the student who already had a broken jaw;

- The man who set fire to a shop just to watch it burn down;

- The groups who lined up in a queue to steal from shops.

Ed Miliband doesn’t pick on the people who raise feral children, doesn’t pick on the ASBO laden chavs who have hounded pensioners into early graves, doesn’t pick on the multi-billion pound deficits his government created that the next generation of children and grandchildren have to pay back, doesn’t pick on the unionists who constantly want more money from struggling taxpayers.  He doesn't think they are selfish.  Not the salaried medical staff in the NHS who have absorbed much of the doubling in real health expenditure in the last government.

No, you see Ed Miliband is the politician for the looters, the dependents, the people who have jobs paid for by the effort and entrepreneurship of others.  Ed is the politician for the welfare beneficiaries, who aren’t grateful for the taxes that others paid for them to be housed, fed, clothed or for their kids to be raised, educated etc. Ed is there to demand that even MORE money be borrowed from future generations, that even MORE taxes be taken from the peaceful, productive, hard working and entrepreneurial, and that it is because if you don’t, the feral underclass will riot – and it is because there are bankers who make bad decisions.  Ed is there for the public sector workers, the people who get paid, on average, more than the private sector.  The people who get more generous pensions, more pay rises and who are all carried by the private sector.

He should be an easy target for the Conservative Party, but it is a zone of philosophical vacuousness, as is seen by the disgusting Louise Mensch who in a matter of days has both embraced statist authoritarianism in suggesting the government “shut down” social networking sites at times of crisis, and in accusing History Professor David Starkey of racism, because he clumsily claimed there were many youths of the white underclass who now talk the language of the black underclass. 

The Conservative Party is incapable of fighting the cultural battleground in favour of individual liberty, personal responsibility, respect for property rights and disrespect for those who seek to promote violence as a way of life. It is palpable in its unwillingness to defend bankers in public as a sector, because mindless populism overrides principle, which is the norm in the party of people who believed they were born to rule.

Miliband's call for responsibility is achingly hypocritical, when he evades any responsibility for his part in a government that created the economic conditions for the financial crisis, for its part in overspending every year after Labour's first term, for its part in creating a client-voter sector of welfare dependents, suckling off of the state tit, with Labour's endless "programmes" to help them into work, whilst never letting Nanny State ever really take away the milk.  Never confronting the client-funders, like the teaching unions, who resist pay or conditions that reflect performance. 

The people who take responsibility in Britain the most, are the people he is least interested in.  Those are the entrepreneurs, the business people, the employers, the families who raise children at their own expense, the people who aren't dependent on the state.   He preaches wholesale abdication of responsibility in his embrace of the Leninist NHS, which has a philosophy of people not having to ever take responsibility for their health, for the state will pay.  He preaches the same with state pensions - don't save for retirement (a chance to tax you), the state should pay.  He preaches the same with housing - if you buy a home, pay a tax on the transaction, if you don't buy a home or pay private rent, the state will pay.

His philosophy is bankrupt, his approach to public policy has palpably failed, and now he shifts blame on the perpetrators to bankers, MPs and the news media.  

He has no answers, and through his disgusting moral relativism, has shown his own moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

A prescription for the UK

It has been a week since thousands of mostly young people across London decided it was time to steal, destroy, assault, abuse and ultimately murder others, in a decadent frenzy of Anthony Burgess style amorality.  The responses have been extremely varied, but the overwhelming one has been concern about the need to restore law and order.  Two main concerns have driven the discussion, one has been the importance of adequate policing, the other has been discussions as to "why".

Once one takes away the vile ambulance chasing point scoring of many on the left (and the Green Party in NZ has disgustingly decided to take advantage of the suffering of others to advance its own agenda of "give 'em more money and make some jobs for 'em"), and the undertones of racist anti-immigration and calls for serious violent intervention from some on the right, there must be an acknowledgement of a whole series of government policies which can be said to have failed to address the creation of what is at best, a feral, parasitical underclass of people with no hope, little aspiration beyond hedonistic whim worshipping and with substantial "chips on their shoulders".

The ridiculous argument that this was about racism is shown up for its absurdity in the overwhelming diversity of those arrested and filmed participating.   However, there is certainly an element of distrust of police in areas dominated by, in particular, the Afro-Caribbean community.   Yet the same is true of the "chavtowns" filled with neanderthals.

The link with poverty has more substance, but it is not real poverty in the sense of starvation, homelessness or no access to education or healthcare, but poverty of aspiration, concentration and determination.   However, this doesn't answer why the roll call of people turning up in courts are from backgrounds of being in middle class employment, or university graduates, or even upper class schoolkids.  These "individual examples you can pick out" as one leftwing commentator claimed, are inconvenient, for they don't fit the race-poverty classification that fits the philosophy.

So what should be done?  As I wrote before, I naturally resist "throwing money at the problem", the idea that more government welfare and manufactured government jobs (which takes money from others who create jobs) is a solution is simply absurd, for there has never been this much welfare, and making people less independent and less successful by making them clients of the state even more, is not going to change attitudes of esteem and expecting others to solve their problems.

Furthermore, simply adopting an authoritarian kneejerk approach to policing, including the notion that the state should shut down social networks at times of crisis, is simply too late, as well as sacrificing the freedom of the law abiding on a grand scale, to address the criminality of a small number. 

So my approach is to look at the stages of life of a typical member of the underclass, and to pinpoint the failures of public policy in all of them.  The key is that the government is not the solution, but changes in public policy should make a difference.  However, there is no quick fix unless one wants to take an authoritarian eliminationist approach that would permanently deprive any criminals of freedom, and have the state police parenting on a terrifying scale.  That could eliminate a feral underclass by creating a feral police state. 

The areas that matter are, in summary:

- Welfare policy should not reward breeding by people unable or otherwise unwilling to be parents;

- Welfare policy should not remove responsibility for raising children or paying for children from both parents;

- Welfare policy should not reward additional breeding by people already on welfare;

- State and council owned Corbusier style hothouses for crime demolished and the land sold.  One of the grimmest failures of social engineers has been putting large numbers of underachievers together in close proximity;

- People on low incomes should not pay income tax;

- Parents, teachers, police and others in loco parentis should not fear disciplining their children using reasonable force for restraint or to protect themselves, others or their property;

- Serious violent and sexual criminals should never be permitted to reside in the same household as anyone under the age of 16;

- Schools should no longer be funded based on politically specified criteria, but on whether parents send their children to a school (or do not);

- Governance of schools, including curriculum, rules and philosophy of education should be driven by those with the greatest vested interest in its success, parents of children at the school;

- Schools should have freedom to pay good teachers what it takes to attract and retain them, and the means to incentivise better performance by poor teachers, or remove them;

- The criminal justice system should be focused on protecting the public from the acts of criminals, particularly recividists;

- The criminal justice system should offer one chance for rehabilitation for first time offenders that are not a danger to the public;

- Parents of underage offenders should be presumed to have civil liability for the acts of their offspring, and criminal liability for incitement to commit crimes;

- The justice system should not spend time and money on victimless crimes;

- The state should not fund culture, music, television or other media that may be implicated in promoting a sub-culture of violence, hate and misogyny;

-  Tax and economic policy should allow people to keep the fruits of their efforts, and not be seeking taxpayer money;

-  Laws and regulations should positively support private property rights and welcome entrepreneurship that respects this, and not welcome those who seek to restrain such rights to protect their own businesses and homes from competition;

-  Laws and regulations should not make it difficult to hire people at pay and terms and conditions they are willing to accept, nor to remove them if they fail to meet the terms and conditions of the contract;

-  Politicians and bureaucrats founds guilty of theft from taxpayers or corruption should be subject to the full force of the criminal justice system;

- The state should not bail out businesses that fail, nor those who invest in them.

None of that is detailed, but it is in recognition that decades of welfarism and "we know best" interventions by politicians have failed.  They have nurtured an underclass that is willing to attack and destroy those that pay for its very existence.  They have nurtured an education system on the wistful hope that everyone will be equal, but which rewards poor quality teachers and starves funding to pay excellent teachers well.  They have promoted a culture of entitlement and dependency whereby large numbers of people expect they have "a right" to the money of others, and fear having to fend for themselves.  They have promoted a culture of blame and bigotry by the underclasses towards anyone but themselves.  Never blame those who didn't study at school, never blame those who bred with little thought of the consequences, never blame those who don't turn up to job interviews, never blame those who vandalise, steal and assault, always blame those who set up businesses and "didn't put anything back into the community" (one excuse I heard in the past week), always blame "the rich", the so-called "lucky", the "racists", the police, the council, the government.

For decades now, the Western world has been beset by this corrosive philosophy of:

- You have rights, you should always assert rights, many of those rights are over other people to give you what you demand;

- You can't get anywhere unless other people "give you opportunities", you're implicitly unable to take care of yourself without the government, the council or other people giving you "respect";

- You have a right to express yourself, however you wish, to whoever you like, and they have to give you that right, and after you've abused them, and even vandalised their property, they STILL should give you a job, paying you what you want, to work when you want, how you want, dressing how you like, turning up when you feel like at, because "it's your right";

- It isn't your fault if you do anything wrong, it's because of "society" or "the government" or any other group you care to feel aggrieved by;

- You're not responsible for your life, other people are responsible for giving you what you need to stop you attacking them;

- If you do something wrong, it's ok, because "everyone else does it" and because "some people don't respect you" and because "the system doesn't fit people like you".  

It is ALL that.  That is why there were riots in the UK, it is why some parts of the UK are feral no-go areas for anyone who look half respectable.  It is why a significant minority of children leave school functionally illiterate, innumerate and socially inept, and then go on to do the one thing humans are good at, breeding, because they get rewarded for it.   It is the culture and philosophy of post-modernist, moral relativism, it has a Marxist thread running through it, and it is de riguer in universities, local authorities, teachers' training colleges and all left wing political parties, and more than a few in right wing parties.

It is bankrupt, and the vast bulk of the population knows it is so.  The empty calls for "more jobs", and "understanding" are wrapped in demands to effectively pay protection money for those who have failed.

The road out of this cesspool is going to be long.  It requires fundamental welfare, housing and education reform at the root and branch.  It requires a change of approach to the criminal justice system.  However, more than anything it requires a long term cultural and philosophical change in attitudes towards the family, communities and the individual.

I'll write more about these policy areas in due course, and the fundamental philosophical changes that are needed.  This is not a call to go back to times when women were treated as second class citizens, or when one set of religious teachings were to be imposed on all, nor to return to the patronising bigotry towards people because of race, sex or sexuality, but it is about recognising an age when people did respect others, had consideration for the lives and property of others, and took responsibility for their own lives and actions.

It is, most of all, about removing the state funded safety blanket for anyone whenever they do anything harmful to themselves or others, bearing in mind that nothing stops people choosing to provide whatever they want to others on whatever terms they wish.

Left has the most to lose from the riots

Whilst leftwing commentators and the Green Party in New Zealand feel safe blaming the riots in the UK on “neo-liberalism”, UK Labour politicians have tried to be more careful. Whilst Ken Livingstone came out on automatic saying it was about spending cuts, Harriet Harman was cornered into saying she condemned it all, “but” and Ed Miliband more wisely has simply condemned the violence, with there being “no excuse” for it. This, of course, goes against his political instincts, for the bog standard Marxist/socialist point of view is that riots are related to class and race. Labour politicians wished they could parrot a “told you so” view that would say “this is inevitable”, much like the NZ Marxists have, but they can’t do so without alienating the vast majority of voters, including their own supporters.

For a start, few believe there has been such a massive turnaround in economic or social conditions in the just over one year since the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition took over. All to easy for Conservatives to say “you were in power for 13 years, what did you do about it”. A reasonable point for reasonable people. Now the true Marxist would claim Blair and Brown were the Tories in slow-mode, but when so many Labour MPs and candidates came from that era, it doesn’t wash well either. Ken Livingstone being the clear example of one who figured he could get away with it.

Secondly, the victims of the rioting are mostly people in Labour voting areas, who are either small business owners, their staff, or people whose homes have been destroyed or trashed. They live in the more dangerous, crime ridden, poorer parts of town, but they didn’t riot. In fact they hate crime as much as anyone, because they are more likely to be victims of it. You see, despite the identity politics of the left, the poor/dispossessed (if they ever did possess) attack their own, they rarely go elsewhere, and the majority of them do have morals, don’t steal, don’t vandalise. They have aspirations for themselves and their families like anyone else, which is why when anyone achieves it, they would tend to leave the rest behind and move to a nicer part of town.

Thirdly, whilst calling someone racist or making people even fear being accused of being racist has been their stock in trade in debate for decades, again so many victims are of racial minorities. South Asian Muslim or Sikh voters aren’t going to tolerate the claim that Afro-Caribbeans find it hard in British society, when they just get on with working or owning businesses, and ensure their kids get a good education. There are more than a few Afro-Caribbeans disgusted by this behaviour as well. The “race consciousness” that once tied is awfully frayed when people turn on their own.

Fourthly, many people have found it rather hard during the recession. Those who have had pay cuts, lost jobs, found it harder to make ends meet don’t tolerate the notion that when people are poor, they become criminals. Most people have self-discipline, and don’t have the “class consciousness” that the left so disgustingly implies those in poverty as having. In short, the racial and wealth stereotypes are as appalling inaccurate for the left as are the more banal ones on the far-right.

Finally, most want criminals to be punished and kept out of harm’s way. It is natural, human benevolence to feel pity and sorrow for those who have lost everything to deliberate vandalism, left and arson, and anger at those who did so to get luxury goods, or pieces of tat, or just to have a good time. It is immoral, and that sense of outrage and distress is what keeps civilisation together. People want a hard line against those who commit crimes, they don’t accept excuses because most people work hard for what they have and would do all they could to defend their families. They regard the rioters to be the enemy of all they have, and they’d be right.

The answers the left will offer will also fail to inspire. Of all the talk about poverty and compassion, and addressing the causes of crime, they have two answers:

- Give poor people more money (in one form or another) for doing nothing;

- Hire more bureaucrats to help poor people.

The bribery with welfare has already been tried, and Labour knows with the country nearly bankrupt, it can’t promise more money with any credibility (even Labour would have halved the budget deficit, albeit by simply cutting the growth of spending and increasing taxes). However, the far left (read, Green Party of England and Wales)will argue for more money for better housing, better state schools and more benefits so people don’t feel “desperate”, or in their own words “creating employment and training opportunities, advice, youth centres, and community services”. “Creating jobs” by taking money from those who actually create jobs by generating wealth, and building more youth centres and state services.  It isn't about producing anything, it is about using the wealth of others, taken by force, to keep people busy.

The language always used is the royal “we” by making everyone responsible. You’re not responsible for yourself, your family, your kids, your business alone, but for everyone else, including the feckless, the “breed without consequences” mob and those who are “alienated” – those same kids who bully your kids. You are responsible for them. This justifies this sort of statement:

we need to create a society where youth are not so extremely alienated in the first place

Not the parents, not the state schools who they are put through like widgets, but “we”, which means “give us more of your money so we can spend it”.

The thing is that taxpayers don’t want to do that. Even setting aside my libertarian hat, the majority view is not to increase taxes or welfare benefits. The far left couldn’t care less of course, because it will just keep saying “if you want this to stop, you need to pay more”, but democracy (which they putatively respect) says people don’t want that. They don’t vote for it. The British Labour Party tried selling that to voters in 1983, 1987 and 1992 and they didn’t say yes.

The UK is a liberal democracy. Most people believe people should get a fair go, that people shouldn’t be homeless, but also that if they wreck that home or make their neighbours’ lives a hell, they should lose the home they are given. Most people believe kids should all get an education, but if they waste it, or wreck the education of others, they shouldn’t be there. Most people believe people should work for a living, but if they are idle on welfare, don’t bother and then attack those who do work, they should lose their benefits.

Even if the public did vote for spectacular increases in taxes and welfare, it would be incapable of delivering. As thousands of entrepreneurs either arranged their affairs to avoid tax, or simply left, the purported revenue would not appear. In addition, the membership of the EU would guarantee growth in welfare tourism, ensuring the UK faced a sovereign debt crisis due to declining tax revenue and increasing welfare claims. Of course true socialists would leave the EU to put up trade barriers, so would chase away more businesses that don’t want to be excluded from their markets. Ultimately, the spiral of decline and stagnation would see the flight of more of the brightest and wealthiest, which could only be stopped by either reversing policies, or making it difficult to leave with ones’ money and assets. The latter would ensure the UK was abandoned even more rapidly as it would look more like east Berlin, where a wall was built explicitly to keep people from leaving.

In short, most people believe in people having opportunities, but if they ignore them, abuse them, or at worst turn on the people who took advantage of them to work hard to earn a living, they want little mercy. They don’t want their taxes spent on criminals, and don’t want them getting endless chances, following numerous offences for stealing, vandalism or assault. They want their homes, businesses and families safe, and don’t want to pay more taxes for people who aren’t grateful for what they get from others, and who will act parasitically towards them.

The answers so many on the left offer involve taking more money from employers, from people who strive for themselves and their families, and giving it to people who expect to be handed money, homes and jobs with no obligation, or paying for more people to be “employed” by the government in pseudo-jobs that don’t need doing anyway.

Add these carefully shrouded demands to throw money at potential rioters to the hand-wringing slogans of “racism” and “poverty causes crime”, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the vast majority. Most taxpayers are not rich, by definition the majority of them are around the average in income and wealth, they consider vandalism and theft to be wrong, especially when the victims of that are people who are themselves not wealthy, or who have clearly strived to make something of their lives from little. They don’t think the way to solve the problems of immoral behaviour is to pay people to not be bad. In fact they are far more likely to demand that they no longer pay people who are!

It is why the British Labour Party has, by and large, been avoiding talking about anything other than the need for a tough approach to law and order.

NZ Herald disgraces itself

As if to prove my long held view that finding proper journalists in New Zealand is quite difficult, Graham Baker of the NZ Herald comes along and spins absolute nonsense about the criminal violence that beset England since Saturday, and which has thankfully largely dissipated. It has dissipated in part because of the enormous increase in Police presence, but also the rain. You see people who “can’t be arsed” turning up for a job interview, or getting out of bed before 11am, or working are incredibly resistant to getting wet and cold. For that reason alone I hope it rains every night through the next few days and especially the weekend.

Baker is the NZ Herald’s news editor and is from the UK. Maybe he left because he couldn’t earn a living writing for the Morning Star, for I suspect the Guardian is not left wing enough for him, nor is Ed Miliband.

A journalist is meant to report on events, investigate and provide insights into the news. Baker didn’t do that, he interviewed his laptop. In this age when anyone can read for free most major UK serious papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, the Independent and the Guardian, as well as the numerous tabloids, why would one even bother reading the NZ Herald for news about the UK, when it puts out an article that could have come from the Marxist-Leninist (pro-USSR) Morning Star. The NZ Herald may a well have reprinted this, to help keep the ailing Morning Star from collapsing.

So what did he say? Consider it a rant worthy of Matt McCarten, and indeed it was embraced by my good buddy Russel Norman.

Baker claimed:

British politicians have espoused neo-liberal dogma for the best part of 30 years. A dogma based on consumerism and selfish individualism over shared responsibility.

Really Graham? Find a single speech by the current PM, Deputy PM, or indeed the past four PMs which has exemplified what you have claimed. Did the welfare state get dismantled, because I’ve watched it grow to the point where people on above average incomes get benefits for breeding, where people get up to £400 a week in housing benefit to have a four bedroom home (after the cuts!), and where pregnant teenagers are handed a free flat by councils. Yes, I’ve noticed health spending go through the roof in the world’s most centrally planned health service. I’ve noticed a top marginal tax rate of effectively 42% (now 52%). Most tax collected is on people in the top third of income earnings, but don’t let facts get in the way of your neo-Marxist dogma.

He goes on, expecting that a one year old government might have worked wonders...

Cameron's nebulous ideal of "Big Society" - that communities are stronger than the government in sorting problems out - has yetto prove of worth. (sic)

So government is the solution Graham. No shared responsibility in that, and funnily enough I thought the large numbers of people who turned out to clean up the town centres that had been vandalised might actually prove communities ARE stronger, but you ignored that, doesn’t fit your neo-Marxist love of “government can sort problems out”. 

Then he makes the riots a cause and effect of the recession...

in a time of austerity and a global recession lasting years, when people see their opportunities narrowing, services cut and the disappearance of the things they have for decades been told to expect, this is what happens

Most people have seen opportunities narrow for now, but spending cuts are largely just a reduction in the growth of spending. The government is spending more this year than last year. However, what’s this “things they have for decades been told to expect”? How many decades do teenagers expect things? Yet so what? Shared responsibility which Graham embraces doesn’t mean not having any of your own? This actually isn’t what happens Graham – all of Eastern Europe had its economies turned upside down, with mass layoffs and expectations of free social services and guaranteed jobs abolished when the mass of the population overthrew the dictatorships the Morning Star had lauded as examples. 

He asks plaintively (of a place he left to find a future)...

Where does one find a future? There are 400-odd unemployed people for every job advertised in Tottenham, many of those part-time shop or cleaning work for minimum wage.

Funnily enough Graham, London is bigger than Tottenham and one can catch a bus anywhere for £1.20 each way. How about the tens of thousands of immigrants from far poorer countries who come with next to nothing and set up small businesses, working seven days a week to scratch out a living? Of course they are displaying “selfish individualism” and so are part of the problem, right Graham? Is concern about your future a reason to mow down three young men on a footpath, or beat up a young man till his jaw is broken, or indeed just set fire to a store to watch it burn?

Then comes a mistake or a deliberate misrepresentation...

It now costs about $24,000 a year just to study at university in England.

No Graham. That’s complete nonsense. You have misrepresented it in three ways. First, the figure you quote is false. The MAXIMUM a university can charge is £9,000. That’s NZ$17,900 at today’s exchange rates, but far better to put it over NZ$20k, good for your “story” right? Secondly, it is a maximum. Quite a few charge less than that. Most importantly, nobody has to cough up that amount upfront. Student loans are available to cover the entire tuition fee that do not have to be repaid until the graduate starts earning above the average wage, and then only in increments. Guess the full story doesn’t fit your agenda does it Graham?

He then refers to someone the Guardian talked to who said:

“University fees have gone up, education costs money. And there's no jobs. This is them sending out a message."

One point ably made by Allister Heath of City AM is that a significant number of those rioting probably could never have got into university because they would have performed so badly at school. The three reasons this happens tend to be negligent parents, poor quality schools and the corrosive culture of criminality that pervades many areas. Free university education doesn’t address this issues in Scotland, so why would it in England?

However, then he talks about circumstances as if they are all about luck. 

My generation was lucky. University was affordable, social mobility was a reality, and just over a decade ago I entered an economy that worked. The situation young people find themselves in today is the very antithesis of the word "lucky".

Well actually many young people are “lucky”, many work damned hard to do well at school, go to university, or find employment and make a life for themselves. Most of them don’t vandalise and steal. Graham might have reflected that decades of overspending by governments and promising unaffordable pensions for older generations have proven to be unsustainable, but we don't get anything about solutions from him.

Does he have a solution? No, of course not, in fact almost none of the leftwing commentators do, all they do is blame past politicians. He says:

It is no irony that a country which has pursued consumerism and social nihilism has been blighted by people who - when it all goes wrong - believe in and respect nothing except consumer goods.

Did it suddenly go wrong? No. The social nihilism Graham damns is actually because of the breakdown of families, and the embrace of moral relativism and post-modern theories of power and identity politics that teach and disseminate the view that nothing is ever your fault. They claim everything is stacked against Afro-Caribbean youth because of “racism”, and everything is stacked against those on low incomes because of the view that wealthier people are just “lucky”, and that it has nothing to do with hard work and discipline. In fact the word discipline has been eschewed as “self expression” has been embraced. It is an embrace of a perverse individualism that demands the right to do whatever they like, whatever they consequences, and demand what they want, and to complain if you don’t give it to them. This corrosive culture has been catalysed by a subculture of gangsterism, embracing the “music” and attitudes that celebrate violence, misogyny and expectations that education and hard work are for fools, and that easy money is what matters. This isn’t about capitalism or even individualism, it is parasitism.

What really happened Graham is that a handful of people decided to take on the Police in Tottenham Hale, and the Police were overwhelmed and outnumbered. This was seen by criminal gangsters and the underclass of feral youth (the ones that parents and teachers are scared to discipline for fear the kids will call Social Services, and who will complain about their rights whenever anyone tells them off for breaking laws or being obnoxious) as a weakness, and so they networked loosely and went out on a spree. They were laughing, joking and boasting about what they did. They weren’t on a political demonstration, they weren’t complaining about racism (most of the rioters up North were white), they weren’t looting for food or essentials, indeed many times they didn’t even loot, but just destroyed. Not that far removed from the Sex Pistol’s in “Anarchy in the UK”, which was written in the 1970s, before Graham’s “neo liberal” revolution.

Graham doesn’t have an answer. Maybe because he doesn’t know it, or because if he said he wanted taxes to go up, and more to be spent on welfare, education and state subsidised jobs, his economic illiteracy should show.

So I urge those who think this sort of journalism is not worthy for New Zealand to give up buying or subscribing to the NZ Herald.  If this is what passes as professional journalism in that newspaper, then it's worthless.  A mixture of half truths, complete falsehoods, and agit-prop dressed up as analysis, without any answers.  You'll get more sense from the centre-left Independent.

UPDATE:  Seems the Greens have swallowed it all hook, line and sinker, and continue to be barren in their answers.