Things to do during Earth Hour

I loathe Earth Hour.  I called it "onanistic vileness" or rather the act of utter wankers who have the luxury to claim moral superiority, because they can stop using electricity.

In 2009 I said:

Oh yes, the sheeple in the relatively free rich world (and even the relatively unfree middle income world like China) will have a jolly ol' time switching off our lights for an hour. Makes you feel better a bit of enforced poverty doesn't it?

The Ayn Rand Institute rightly points out how perverse it is to celebrate extinguishing light:

Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

I've seen a city that has a constant earth hour - Pyongyang.  Dark, with lights in a few buildings, focused on the grotesque statues of the city's past Big Brothers, on the railway station and one or two other pockets of light.  It is dismal and dire.  To celebrate replicating this is unspeakably wrong.

Pity those who have no choice but to "celebrate Earth Hour".

Donate to LiNK - Liberty in North Korea.  Help people fleeing the darkness to experience light, heat and civilisation.

Otherwise, keep the lights on or maybe go for a drive.  Celebrate that a century ago, electric lighting was a delight, for being safer, brighter and opening up the evenings to more socialising, to reading, to enjoying more of life.    Celebrate that today, electric lighting is more reliable, safer and uses less electricity than ever before.

The future is not with those who would turn the lights out.

I bought the Sun today

I don't usually, but this is almost a work of art.  A damning indictment on a government that has failed to do enough for the economy, and is seeking to regulate the press.   Commentary and sarcasm that is all too clear.

UK budget - not one for growth

I wanted this being big tax cuts, funded by a serious capping on the welfare state, cutting of wasteful state spending and bureaucracies, supported by some privatisation.

We got this.

Small tax cuts on companies and on beer, a worthwhile increase in the income tax free threshold to £10k.  Small tax increases on other alcoholic drinks, owning a car, catching a flight and elimination of some tax credits and a mini Fanny Mae type mortgage guarantee scheme, and subsidised loans for home buyers.  There were some new exemptions on climate change obligations for some sectors, which is promising.

Overall, nothing much to see at all.  Public debt growing to close to 100%, budget deficit at levels higher than any OECD country and economic growth forecast to only be 0.6%.

No, the Conservatives wont be winning in 2015 at this rate, and no Labour offers nothing more than a bit more borrowing and a bit more money thrown at public housing and railway projects.  

Launching my UK blog

Yes, I have had enough of maintaining a dual existence in one place.  I have decided to put all of my writings on UK politics in one place, largely because that is where much of my focus now is.

Of course I am still following New Zealand politics and will write on them, and more widely here.  I will also still post short links to the UK posts here, but will not be clogging this up with UK focused material that NZ and other readers are uninterested in.  I simply couldn't go from writing about north Korea, then the NHS to whether Auckland should have an underground railway and think I had a consistency of target audience there!

So please go visit.  My latest post is on the cross-party agreement on press regulation in the UK, and the excellent editorial by City AM Editor Allister Heath, who is the UK's best and only libertarian newspaper editor.   Even if you are not interested in business and financial news, reading his editorial every day is a warm reminder that belief in capitalism, free markets and freedom more broadly, is not just held by a few.

Heath made some core points worth summarising here:

- Consensus in politics is a disaster. "Conformity stinks, it leads to freedoms being curtailed, pockets being picked and a conspiracy against the public interest";

- "There is no way that Britain's new framework would ever be possible in the US";

- The criminal behaviour of journalists was and is criminal, there is no need any new laws;

- "The many are paying for the sins of the few";

- "we have fallen out of love with freedom";

- "Freedom, ultimately is indivisible; the only reason why regulation of the media didn't happen any sooner was because newspapers were too influential.  Now that their power is waning, they are fair game, like everything and everybody else".

Cyprus is far too important to get wrong

One of the claims constantly touted by enthusiasts of the European Union is the much exaggerated claim that the EU and its predecessors "kept the peace in Europe" after two major wars.   There is an element of truth in that, simply because countries and people that trade more, travel more and do business with each other in ever increasing frequency, are less likely to tolerate the sort of mindless aggressive nationalism that is the hallmark of so much war.  There can be little doubt that free trade and movement of people and goods within the EU is good for that (although overwhelmingly it was NATO that has kept the peace in Europe, and both it and the EU failed demonstrably to do this in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s).

That peace prize is looking a bit fractious, as the actions over Cyprus in the past few days have indicated.

Let's be clear, I think taxation is legalised theft, in any case.  More insidious is the legalised theft of state sanctioned inflation and regulated interest rates, which are currently effectively stealing savings from the public in the UK.  13% of the value of Pound Sterling has been eroded in the UK alone, by inflation, about double that if you compare it to the US$.  

The British Labour Party and Liberal Democrats both believe in a wealth tax, taking money from you because you own a particular asset over a set value.  

Now the EU, having promised that the first 100,000 Euros of deposits of everyone's bank accounts are protected by government deposit insurance, is going back on that and pushing for the confiscation of 6.7% of bank accounts located in Cyprus up to 100,000, and 9.9% on deposits above that.

Consider what you would do if that happened to you.

You'd be angry, very angry, and some of that anger might be directed towards whoever you thought was responsible.  Banks, officials, politicians.

The wealth tax is to bail out the Cypriot banks, which overextended themselves, particularly being used by many larger depositors from Russia seeking to avoid scrutiny over transactions that may be illegal in other jurisdictions.  

Of course the real answer to this would be to led the banks fail, then the deposit insurance scheme would kick in and those with deposits over 100,000 Euros would lose it all. Which is the right thing to do.  However, the problem is that Germany, indeed the Eurozone believe it must bail out banks within the Eurozone.  This effort is a clumsy attempt to put some of the cost upon Cypriots, especially clumsy because it is unique to Cyprus (Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish depositors haven't had to pay), and because it sets a new precedent.

Who now believes bank deposits are safe in Greek (who believed it before?), Spanish, Portuguese or Italian banks?  There is ever chance of a run on bank deposits in some if not all of those countries, and in the Euro itself, putting those banks in jeopardy and devaluing the Euro some more.

One claim is that the basis for this proposal was that Cyprus didn't want to upset Russia, by letting the banks fail or claiming the bailout by a far larger clawback from large depositors.  I doubt whether Russian depositors will be trusting Cypriot banks from now on in any case.  

A run on the banks will expose not only the lack of liquidity in banks to give you back your money, but the inherent risk in fractional reserve banking.  That being that banks issue credit for which they have no deposits, to an order of several times the value of deposits.  When those borrowers can no longer repay their debts,  consider how that affects your ability to recover your deposits.

What next?

The law of unintended consequences may unravel in the coming days, as banks in the Eurozone periphery start to see a panic appear, as people start to take out their savings, in fear Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal could be next, or Ireland.  Once people see queues at banks in those countries, they will join them, and there will be a snowball effect.  Their own national politicians may not be trusted, certainly the ones in Brussels wont be.  The more they get told it wont happen to them, the more they will point at Cyprus and say "actually myself and my family are more important than your empty promises", the more it will get worse and worse.

I believe the only way this can be stemmed is either to honour the 100,000 Euro deposit guarantee (and slam deposits above that level), or for Cypriot citizens to be guaranteed that amount alone (leaving foreign holders of accounts to take the hit).   The price for that would be paid by Eurozone taxpayers elsewhere, and I'll let them decide how to treat the politicians who decide better to thieve from northern Europeans than from southern Europeans.  There is only so much of this Germans will take as perpetual penance for a war that most of them were born after.

Resolution of this issue must happen within the next day or so.  Imaginations will wander, rightfully, after that.  Bear in mind Italy doesn't have a government.

Otherwise it becomes unthinkable.  Long lines of Europeans outside banks that close due to running out of banknotes, a general public becoming anxious that their savings are inaccessible.  How long before a brick is thrown, or a firearm brandished, and people demand access to vaults and safes?  

In other words, how long before the average, law abiding, middle income citizen discovers what an abject fraud it is to trust their politicians, and those in Brussels to look after them, rather than to protect people from failure?

Meanwhile, the damage is done to Cypriot banking.  Who now would place a deposit into a Cypriot bank?  What Cypriot is taking a cheque or cash and putting it into a local bank?  How many Cypriots are now changing their future banking arrangements to banks elsewhere (and how many are not in a position to readily do so?)?

Stepping back, how's that protection of peace in Europe looking now, when a small but sizeable proportion of Greeks embrace fascism it is easy to ignore, but when confidence in the Eurozone banking system plummets, does Brussels have reason to continue to prance about with this hubris about all the good that it has done?

UPDATE:  The Cypriot Parliament, which must vote on this law, wont do so until Friday.  Cypriot banks will remain closed until then.  Will this trigger panic more widely?  What would you do?

NZ Government's first full privatisation of the 21st century, unopposed

For all of the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth of the National-led Government's minority sale of a bunch of companies that have private competitors, you'd think that Labour, the Greens and NZ First would actually be holding the stop sign against the government selling ANY businesses at all.

Given the referendum, the claims that part-privatisation is anti-democratic and other hyperboles about the programme, you'd think if you believe in the state ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange like any socialist, you would want to stop the shrinkage of the state by all means.  The people (through the state) ought to own more and more enterprises according to any socialist, and the mere fact there is an undercurrent of "should we promise to buy them back" tells you how reactionary Marxist the NZ left has become.  So you might think.

However, I think they don't really give a damn, it's all about publicity and xenophobia.  For what is about to happen is no different, indeed this will be the first full privatisation by a New Zealand Government since the 1990s.

This little piece of news has received no comment from the Opposition at all, presumably because it is a government owned company that is doing the privatisation.  Kordia, which was once BCL, which was once a subsidiary of TVNZ and owns most of the TV and FM radio broadcast transmission sites in the country, is selling the ISP Orcon.

Orcon is in a vigorously competitive market, like Mighty River Power.  It sells services to end users, like the power companies.  

However, as Kordia is selling it, it isn't up to Ministers, so there is little political capital to be gained from opposing it, unless the Opposition wants to abolish the SOE model - which would mean it could never argue it wants to own businesses to make money for taxpayers, but rather go back to the politically directed approach of the age of Muldoon.  Yet I think there isn't even remotely that kind of coherence in the Opposition to partial privatisation. 

Chavez's destructive legacy

To the left he was a hero, a democratically elected socialist who used the oil wealth of his country to lift the very poor out of poverty and give millions a chance, up against criticism by "vested interests" who continued to tout capitalism as the answer.

To some on the right he was a communist dictator, who seized power and was running Venezuela like Zimbabwe.

Chavez ever a friend of a despot

Well both are right.

Despite a skewed electoral system, monstrous control of the media and bullying and intimidation of the opposition, it would be churlish to deny that Hugo Chavez had many supporters.  He did get elected, and it isn't hard to see why many people, granted handouts from the state, wouldn't be grateful.  When oil prices were at their peak, he used the money to pay for medical centres, welfare benefits, creating civil service "jobs" and infrastructure in poorer neighbourhoods.  While it is easy to pour scorn on all of this as being vote buying, it really is little different from what leftwing parties do in Western democracies, except Chavez did have money flowing in from the state oil companies.  He didn't need to tax the wealthy.  In that respect, it's understandable why some would think he was relatively benign, bearing in mind that other oil rich countries either keep the money largely within a tight ruling elite (Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea) or put it away into a rainy day fund to pay for pensions (Norway).

Yes he did spend the oil wealth of the country on massive welfare programmes, but he also spent it on subsidising Cuba's faltering economy, he spent it on arms and he even gave it to London, in the form of subsidised diesel for London buses, as part of a deal with then Mayor Ken Livingstone.   The moral compass of both men gets tested when money that should have been for Venezuelans is transferred to one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

His economic legacy was characterised by the most fundamental error common to almost the entire left - complete neglect of the creation of wealth and an obsession with spending it.

His social legacy is that of an authoritarian state increasingly based on obedience and deference, with violence used against those who dared oppose it.  It includes one of the highest murder and kidnapping rates in Latin America, with over 21,000 a year (an average of 75 per 100,000 people, compared to 4.8 in the USA), including 300 in the first half year in prisons alone.  It was 4450 in 1998, the year before Chavez gained power.  

How that matches with claims by the left that poverty causes murder is unclear.   The regime banned private purchases of firearms a few months ago, which of course has had no effect, which given the number of illegal firearms is estimated at between 1.6 and 4.1 million, is unsurprising.   However, if you were Venezuelan would you trust the state to protect your rights?

Dennis Rodman in Pyongyang is interesting for more subtle reasons

Had anyone said a week or so ago that ex.NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman would be hugging Kim Jong Un, all North Korea watchers would be thought it absurd.

Yet it has happened.

First North Korean leader to hug an American

Now I'm not going to go into what Rodman said, Curtis Melvin's blog - North Korea Economy Watch - has the best coverage, and you should watch George Stephanopoulos's interview with him, where he takes on Rodman talking about Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il being "great man" and slips into moral relativism.   Rodman is at best naive, and at worst a willing idiot for a despot.  If he reads the Human Rights Watch report, accepts it and visits Kim Jong Un again to discuss it, then he truly will have made a breakthrough unheard of before.

However, what it looks like is a young dictator happy to accept a childhood hero.  Kim Jong Un loves basketball, probably from his days from being schooled in Switzerland (unlike his father and grandfather, he has not been raised away from the West).   He's just pleased to have such fun, although he will probably have been made aware of the political significance of the move.

For a start it makes the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) look cuddly and friendly, and Rodman has been an almost perfect diplomat,  for the DPRK, in making the place look detoxified, somewhat.  The hope is it will put pressure on the Obama Administration to talk, shown by Rodman saying Kim Jong Un just wants Obama to "call him".  Seems simple right, but it is what the DPRK has wanted since 1953, it wants to sideline the Republic of Korea (ROK) in Seoul, which it considers to be illegitimate, and negotiate directly with the US, which it constantly claims as occupying south Korea.   Of course, Kim Jong Un knows this to be a nonsense, but the Kim regime's priority has always been to one-up the ROK.  Obama calling Kim Jong Un, weeks after the people of the ROK elected a new President - a woman no less - would be a huge snub to her.  A core component of US policy (and indeed Japanese and dare I say Chinese policy) is for the two Koreas to talk to each other.  The US role is to maintain a military deterrent (including nuclear) against the DPRK, as the ROK does not have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (the DPRK has all of those).

So that wont happen.  Obama wont be calling Kim Jong Un.

The more curious element is the image above.  The DPRK is fervently racist, as described by Brian Myers in this book (although I disagree with some elements of it), with Koreans thinking they are pure and clean.  The regime has forced women who bear children of Chinese men to abort, it looks down upon non-Koreans, and has countless images depicting Americans as hooked nosed and dirty (reminiscent of how the Nazis portrayed Jews).

The idea that an African-American could touch, let alone hug a leader of the DPRK is utterly unprecedented.  The extent to which that image is disseminated in the DPRK is unclear (most north Koreans don't get television, as they don't get reliable electricity outside Pyongyang, so they will get reports from radio and newspapers).   However, while Kim Il Sung shook the hands of umpteen African dictators, the embrace given to an American sportsman would have been absurd (although he did meet Jimmy Carter and Billy Graham, they are hardly of the same ilk).

Perhaps Kim Jong Un thinks that Obama will listen to Rodman, because of racial brotherhood?  It seems a little absurd, but from a Pyongyang perspective could it be a factor?

I don't think what has just happened in Pyongyang is significant from a diplomatic point of view, I think it shows a young dictator having fun.   One who wants the outside world to come, on his terms, and wants to be noticed.  Just as noticeable is the significant boost to tourism, as there has been a dramatic increase in tours to the country.

That's a good thing, as the more exposure locals get to foreigners the better.  My hope is that if Rodman does go back, he can deliver a message from the US and ROK administrations (and he should visit the south before he visits the north again), which is one of wanting to defuse tensions and to encourage the north to actually open up and reform.   Bear in mind that absolutely nothing else has worked in the 21 years since the end of the Cold War, and it would morally wrong and futile to continue the endless cycle of talks, bribery, DPRK lashes out, sanctions, talks.

Italy's long decline

So Italians have voted primarily for the socialist, the corrupt philanderer and the comedian (whose main joke is that he isn't even standing because he has a conviction for manslaughter).   The socialist opposes austerity, the philanderer opposes it too, promising to reverse tax increases and give everyone their money back (nice try) and the comedian wants to halve the working week and give everyone free internet access.  For Italians to have bothered supporting any of these buffoons is comedy extraordinaire.

Italians don't trust politicians or bankers much, but also are averse to change.  It's why on the one hand public debt in Italy is over 120% of GDP its private debt is very low.  Around 30% of Italians don't have bank accounts, because of a history with a Lira that past government simply inflated away, so they don't trust their savings with banks.  Italians don't take our credit to pay for a holiday or a car, they save, they have tightly integrated families.  There is a lot to be said for not borrowing to consume, and the tradeoff of the intact families is a female employment rate 12% lower than the EU average.  Whether the stability of families offsets the loss of economic and human potential from low employment of women is a moot point.

However, on the government side Italy is a disaster.  It has had fiscal incontinence for many years, so needs to get spending under control.   Mario Monti was the man appointed by the European Commission to sort the country out - and he was punished for that by his party coming a distant fourth.  Not, because he is not respected, but because he was a tool of Brussels.  The European Union, the great arrogant entity that proclaims whenever it can that it kept the peace in Europe, now has on its record the imposition of rule from Brussels upon a Member State.  That wasn't going to last.

Yet Italy's problems are deep and cancerous, with endemic corruption, of which Silvio Berlusconi is only the leading figurehead for.  Of a labour market that would make unions in the UK, US, Australia and NZ groan with envy, but which effectively makes it nearly impossibly expensive to make people redundant, and so keeps so many Italian businesses just below the threshold for such a law to come into place.

It's not "your" Banksy

Who owns graffiti?

Let's say you own a building.  Yes, I know that for some this concept of property rights is rather alien, but humour me for a moment.  It's your building.  You have a wall on the property line up against the footpath or another public space.

If someone spray painted it you'd think that you had every right to do what you wish with your wall, as long as you don't put others at risk.  You could leave it, remove it/paint over it, or even remove the wall right?

Banksy Wood Green

No.  You see this is exactly what has happened in Wood Green, London.  

The anonymous artist 'Banksy' had painted this image of a child working in sweatshop conditions making bunting.  The owner of the building, a pair of property developers, cut out the wall to sell it at an art auction in the United States, sparking outrage.   Locals were outraged considering that the art was "theirs", because it could be seen publicly.

The sale was halted as even the FBI allegedly asked Scotland Yard to "investigate" according to the Evening Standard, but Scotland Yard has refused to investigate as it is not a criminal matter.

The locals who thought a wall, that they didn't own, was theirs, managed to gee up a few local politicians, ever keen to hop on a bandwagon and treat property rights as ephemeral.  Alan Strickland, a Labour councillor (big surprise) for Haringey has said he wants it returned.  Local MP, Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrat - another party with little respect for private property rights) has also called for it to be returned asking "will we get it back"?  Who is this "we"?  

Why do politicians think that just because a (relatively small) group of loud people demand other people's property that this is "ok"?  Do they really think that the future of graffiti on a private wall should be put to public acclaim?  Does it mean anyone can paint your external wall and if he gets a gang of locals and a couple of leftwing politicians on side, that you can't paint over it?

One of the owners points out the irony:

I cannot believe it’s over graffiti on a wall that has caused this. We had a case with one of our buildings where we had graffiti and the council told us they would fine us over £1000 if we didn’t remove it.“The council have done nothing to protect it. They’ve not helped us in any way. They’ve just caused us more problems and more problems"

So on your own property, the council fines you if it doesn't like it, but then harasses if it does?

It ought to be simple.

If Banksy (or anyone) chooses to paint on a wall of a building that he doesn't own (or without the permission of the owner), then he takes the risk that it is removed, obliterated or left as is.  Bear in mind that using someone else's property temporarily is the crime of conversion, and that the painting may be seen as vandalism.  Art it may be to some observers, but it isn't their property.  You don't have the right to tell other people what they may do with their property.

The owners were quite within the rights to ignore the baying crowd and remove the wall.  The baying crowd that didn't offer to buy it, that didn't do anything to protect the wall, that are only too willing to demand something that isn't theirs becomes theirs.   Cheered on by politicians that belong to parties that would tax the property owners every year to pay for the bloated states they support.

Not one of them offering to buy the wall themselves with their own money, they just want to regulate and interfere.

What of Banksy?  Well if he wants his art to be protected then he might approach the property owners before he paints on their walls.   Yes that "isn't the point" and is part of the anarchy that the anti-establishment loves, but property rights are important.  Because when you can't control what you own, then you don't own it.   So if he wants to be "pure", then accept that sometimes the property owners wont like it, sometimes they will accept it and sometimes they will say "thank you, that's our wall".

The end result of the welfare state culture

Truth is stranger than fiction, and the editors of the Daily Mail and The Express cannot be disappointed at the discovery of Heather Frost, 37, who personifies the caricature of a welfare parasite (although the same can be said of the feckless sperm donors who abandoned their offspring in her).  Don't worry, she is in the Daily Mirror as well.

She "struggles" to live at taxpayers' expense, in two adjacent houses in Churchdown, Gloucestershire, with her 11 children, 2 grandchildren and unemployed partner Jake.  She would love to have more children, but is sterile (due to cervical cancer), and says she is married.

She also bought a horse and keeps it for one of her daughters, at £200 a month.

Now none of this would matter if her and her kin were sustaining themselves or other people were sustaining them by choice.  I couldn't care less if she wants to breed.  

However, this is a family that costs other people money, and not through ill fortune, but by lifestyle choice.  In fact, this choice, facilitated by the generous UK welfare state, has given the woman the gall to demand more.  

She has been complaining to the council that the housing provided at the expense of others is inadequate, so the Council is now building a brand new house for the family at the price of £400,000.

A true libertarian would cancel her benefits, tell her to get the money from the kids' dads, get a job and warn her that when the house she has asked for is built, it will be sold and the rent where she currently is will go up to market rates.

It is easy to moan about this, but what is needed is answers and a broader reflection on why this happens, when it is blatantly goes against the values of most of the population.

Quite simply, the incentives are set up to encourage this.  

Money and housing is offered in exchange for breeding, without employment and without a call upon the other party responsible for the breeding.  The more breeding, the more money and the bigger the home.  The quality of parenting (which would appear to be at least questionable) is irrelevant.

Defenders of the status quo on the left would hold their hands up and say "what else can you do", and claim these cases are so rare that it is wrong to destroy or reform a system that makes these cases news because they are rare.  Yet these very same people will protest and harass companies that legally seek to minimise their tax bills, and wonder why they do so?

After all, if you invested your hard earned money in a business, would you want a penny of it going to the likes of Heather Frost? 

The culture bred by the welfare state is this one of entitlement, which isn't just about expecting the Council to give you a new house for nothing, but raising children who expect to never have to work, who are resentful of those who have worked and have things they want, and who believe that it is right to raise kids the same.  Her eldest (21) already has a child of 2, who lives with them all.  

Consider the effect of promoting this culture has on business, employment, crime and society as a whole.  Indeed the left ought to consider how it breeds undying resentment amongst the broad mass of people who resent being the host to the parasitical claims of those who choose to be unproductive.

The only answer to this culture is to stop guaranteeing people every growing income for breeding and housing to accommodate it.   Would Heather Frost have kept breeding if she knew she wouldn't get more money or a bigger house to accommodate the children?  She claims that if she could have more children, she would. Maybe she would have named the fathers and they would have had a portion of their income taken to help pay?  If she had been denied more money and housing for breeding, would the social services system let her raise the children in such poverty or take them away so they could be fostered or adopted?  

There are some relatively gentle responses that take us down the path of more individual responsibility.

Doctors' attempt to tackle obesity is middle class statism

There is nothing new about the latest report from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges calling for state intervention to prevent people getting fat.  It demonstrates the fundamental error of people who are well intentioned, and intelligent, moving beyond their core expertise of medicine, into public policy and human behaviour.

For example, virtually none of them realise that the price of food overall, including fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products and fish would fall, if the quotas and tariffs imposed by the Common Agricultural Policy were abolished (which do not apply to highly processed sugary foods made in the EU).  However, that requires an understanding of public policy beyond health into trade.  Bear in mind the largest UK recipient of EU agricultural subsidies in recent years is sugar refiner and retailer Tate & Lyle.

The doctors also seem to have ignored the Danish fat tax failure, unless they think the problem was taxing fat, not sugar.   Danes introduced a classless fat tax, which of course meant gourmet cheeses and butter got hit the highest, and many Danes simply took to fat tax evasion trips into Germany to stock up on their favourite foods.  Doctors in the UK presumably think a sugar tax could only target the products they disapprove of (not be based on all simple sugars in products) and would avoid encouraging people to shop internationally (Northern Ireland would be home to a new black market in smuggled Coca Cola).   Policy experts? Hardly.

You see the key obesity problem is not the lack of hectoring, lack of information or lack of laws to make people do what they want, but a culture of irresponsibility and a lack of medical understanding as to why people behave in ways that make them overweight.  What is particularly galling is the implication that it is only certain foods, perceived to be "junk" consumed by the poorer classes, that are the problem.  In fact, if people predominantly ate the rich, butter intensive foods of some celebrity chefs, in particular their butter and sugar laden desserts, they would also be obese.  However, it is perceived that the people who will bother to make such foods or eat out, know how to look after themselves.  This battle against obesity is one about class.  For the wealthy man who loves steaks, Beaujolais, chocolate mousse and fine cheeses is not the target of the hectoring doctors - even though such a person equally faces a risk of heart attack as the poorer man who loves fish and chips, chocolate and beer.   Yet it is abundantly clear from the communications behind these reports that it is the latter that is targeted, presumably because the latter person is not thought to be competent, but the former "understandably enjoy delicious high fat high sugar foods".

Most of the proposals outlined reinforce a culture of irresponsibility, and the hectoring culture whereby doctors think people will do what is "right" if only they keep telling them to do so.  The implicit message is that it is only one group that is irresponsible, and it is not those doctors socialise with.

So I'll rank the proposals from least to most acceptable based on qualitative measures of promoting responsibility and preserving individual freedom.

DPRK commences another round of bad cop, good cop

As was fully expected, Kim Jong Un has shown off that just because dad died, the DPRK still can pack a nuclear punch.  It follows the satellite launch in December of Kwangmyongsong 3-2, which is widely thought to have also been a display of rocket technology might that could be used to launch missiles.

Youth Hero Motorway approaching Pyongyang

It's useful to largely ignore the hyperbolic Western media on this, driven partly because the DPRK has understandably being caricatured as some weird insane little country with a silly leader who does crazy things.  I understand that caricature, but it is deceptively simplistic.  Weird dictatorship, bad man who likes showing off his military might, but as this week's Economist reports, the reality on the ground in the country is quite different.   For example, despite the rhetoric, it is comparatively easy (though not cheap) to travel to the DPRK.

You see, the DPRK has gone through a cycle of provocation, isolation, face saving dialogue, engagement and then provocation, since Kim Il Sung died.  It doesn't demonstrate a genuine desire to wage war with its neighbours, rather it is a technique to extract booty from them, like a truculent child who wants attention, and has a tantrum when you stop giving it any.

Trolley bus in Kim Il Sung square

You can't blame Kim Jong Un, because it worked for his father.  

Five big issues - five government responses - five libertarian answers

The UK has had high profile news items all week, so I thought I'd quickly summarise the issue, what the government said and what it should have done...

The issues being:

Gay Marriage

EU Budget

NHS deaths

Horsemeat

Paying for long term care of the elderly

NHS kills thousands due to neglect - no one held accountable

The United Kingdom's state religion - the Anglican Church NHS

A foreigner visiting or moving to the UK discovers soon after arrival that, unlike any other country, there is a remarkable pride and enthusiasm over its state owned, operated and (pretty much) fully taxpayer funded health service.  The initials NHS are more than just a state institution or a public service, but hold a near sacred status in the UK public zeitgeist about healthcare.  You saw it in the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, directed by the leftwing Danny Boyle, who decided to celebrate the NHS as something distinctly British to be proud of.

It seems, given that universal health care is pretty much universal in the developed world  (even the US has only had a small minority excluded from health care), a trifle odd.  Setting aside the issues of the United States, there are no fundamental issues of access to health care elsewhere in the developed world, even though it is difficult to find other countries that adopt the NHS model - whereby the users never pay for anything (except nominal prescription, dental and optical services fees for some), where there is little choice of provider (your choice is dependent on where you live and you cannot travel to select a different primary health provider) and funding flows from a centrally planned and directed system to mostly state owned providers.

It declares that:

Since its launch in 1948, the NHS has grown to become the world’s largest publicly funded health service. It is also one of the most efficient, most egalitarian and most comprehensive.

If it does say so itself!

A core mantra is "the NHS remains free at the point of use for anyone who is resident in the UK".  Setting aside the rather loose approach it takes to charging non-residents or

It's proud of its size, which it shouldn't be, as it speaks volumes about what is fundamentally wrong with it:

The NHS employs more than 1.7m people. Of those, just under half are clinically qualified...Only the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Wal-Mart supermarket chain and the Indian Railways directly employ more people

The UK Treasury world view is that having overseas holidays is bad

Now I am not one to accept on face value a report commissioned by an industry sector for political lobbying purposes.  For that is exactly what the report on Air Passenger Duty is.

So, it is not unreasonable to be sceptical about some elements of the analysis.   The Treasury has completely dismissed them, as has the leftwing environmental lobby group AirportWatch.

Treasury's view is simple, as scrapping air passenger duty would reduce the tax take to government by up to £4 billion a year.  The assumption is that the people who would retain that money couldn't possibly spend it as wisely as Her Majesty's government.  Business travellers and tourists, both local and foreign, would presumably be expected to fritter away their money on such trivialities as goods and services they want, or to save/invest in businesses or for later capital or consumption goods (most of which will generate tax as income or in consumption).  The leftwing anti-aviation environmentalists of course believe that more money spend on state institutions like the NHS, Police and schools must be a better good than people keeping their own money.

However, part of the argument against scrapping Air Passenger Duty is purely mercantilist.  Air Passenger Duty reduces the incidence of British residents engaging in overseas tourism.  The UK has a "tourism trade deficit" which essentially means that Britons spend more in travelling abroad than foreigners spend on their trips to the UK.  More curiously is that this deficit only exists outside London, so that despite the preponderance of London origin business traffic, most inbound tourism expenditure is in London.  In short, tourism is part of London's economy in a positive way.  The rest of the UK generates a "tourism trade deficit", because the number of locals (outside London) flying overseas for holidays is not offset by foreigners visiting those areas.  In short, foreigners don't come to Britain to visit Birmingham, Manchester or even Scotland and Wales in sufficient numbers, or spending enough money to compensate for the locals keen to flee.

So what?  If Britons can afford to go on holiday to foreign countries it is something to celebrate.  They spend money on holidays to Spain, Italy, France, the United States or wherever, because they get more utility out of that than spending it on a holiday to the Isle of Wight, the Lake District or Skye.  It isn't a direct financial benefit to the UK, but they enjoy themselves.

That freedom to enjoy life, to visit where you want with your own money is none of the business of the government.  Treasury acts as if the money spent by UK residents on overseas trips is a loss that it should be concerned about.  That's simply wrong.  It isn't your money, and the people who return from these holidays are refreshed invigorated and are more likely to be productive, happier citizens, who work hard, raise happy families and are less of a burden upon others.

Treasury doesn't understand that.

Abolition of Air Passenger Duty would increase UK inbound tourism and outbound.  The inbound is a win for the economy, the outbound is a win for residents, and the inbound win may offset the shift of UK residents holidaying overseas instead of in the UK.   The abolition of duty would reduce tax revenue, but the state spends ten times that subsidising housing costs that it constrains the supply of through planning restrictions.  The state spends double that on contributions to the European Union.   The state spends the same on subsidies to preferred industries. 

Of course abolishing Air Passenger Duty would mean demand for air travel would increase, and it would confront the spineless approach to airport capacity around London that has meant the government has vetoed expansion of any of London's three largest airports.  Good.  So it should.  Get out of the way, and let Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted expand without your interference, if their owners wish it.

Naturally it benefits UK based airlines, which is why they are lobbying for it.  Of course, why shouldn't they? It is a tax on their business.  They don't get any specific services from the state that justify it, so Air Passenger Duty should go.   It should go, not primarily because it would boost inbound tourism and reduce the costs of doing business from the UK to other countries, but because it is a tax on people undertaking an activity that not only generates business, but gives them pleasure.

What about the environment? Well the argument that as aviation fuel isn't taxed it is "unfair" compared to land based modes, is ludicrous.  The response to that is that it is equally valid to reduce fuel tax, and besides almost all rail services competing with airline services are electrically powered.  In addition, fuel tax is not specifically an environmental tax.   

Air Passenger Duty is a tax on flying.   It isn't for airports or air traffic control, and isn't about compensating anyone for noise or other pollution (nor could it or should it be so).  There is an economic case for phasing it out, but more compelling, in my view, is the philosophical case.

When UK residents fly, they do so either for business reasons or personal reasons.  The business reasons are typically about generating wealth, and are good for that reason alone.  The personal reasons can range from leisure to visiting friends and relatives to attending a funeral.  The more of that people do, the happier they are, and as long as they pay their travel costs, there is no good reason for the state to tax them over and above that.

Waitangi Day is the annual picking of a sore

Whilst Peter Cresswell makes much of my point for me, I want to add a couple of others.

It's easy to criticise those who embrace the notion of Maori ethno-nationalism (that being a nationalism based not on a shared history of a common political body, but based on an ancestral heritage), who engage in patronising monologues about "partnership" and "engagement" and "dialogue", when anyone who disagrees with them is simply branded as racist and ignored.

It's also easy to criticise those conservatives who are dismissive of anything Maori that makes them feel uncomfortable, who disapprove of the use of the Maori language, of Maori immersion schools (because they are Maori, not because they are state funded) or those who consent to using Maori customs on their own property or in their own business relationships, or indeed those who worship Maori supernatural beliefs.  For after all, if people want to embrace a culture and a language in their personal lives and openly express it, that is their choice.

However, what's largely ignored is that most people in New Zealand do not see Waitangi Day as a day to celebrate anything, except for a day off work.  So many see it as a day when they will be reminded by people who are themselves elites, on well above average salaries, frequently paid for by taxpayers, claiming there isn't "justice".  They will be reminded of the desire of these elites to take more of their money, through the state, to enrich a new generation of trough feeders.  They will have noticed that a generation of settlements are not seen as enough by the loud and angry, a group who have been influential in teaching a new generation of young Maori to share their view of entitlement, and belief in the legitimacy if not the wisdom of using violence to achieve their aims.  It isn't helped by a Race Relations Commissioner who is sympathetic to the view of those seeking to use the state as a way of extracting more money from everyone else.

Most people see it as rent seeking, by those who have not personally suffered any specific loss, and more importantly, being paid for by those who did not create the loss.

It is a sore around individual identity vs collective identity, and the role of the state in overriding the former with the latter.  It is one Don Brash clumsily attempted to raise in the 2005 election (Kiwi/Iwi posters were scratching the conservative "dismissive of Maori" viewpoint, rather than confronting the strongly held belief that there is a small Maori elite gaining rents from the state).   It is one that needs confronting, but wont be, as long as the Maori Party (which is patronised by such an elite) is necessary for a majority government.   Evading the debate or labelling all those wishing to engage in it as racists, is not going to make it go away.   Indeed, that very evasion is the source of vast clouds of irresponsibility that are allowed to wash over those who abuse their children, neglect their children and engage in a frenzy of mutual destruction of themselves and their whanau.

My second point is simpler, and easier to confront.

Titewhai Harawira is a thug.  She brutalised the mentally ill, and she is treated as deserving respect because of her age.  If she were a man of non-Maori descent, he would be treated by her sycophants and apologists for what he would be - a thug.

The mere fact this woman, who attacked Maori who were vulnerable, is granted a shred of respect, is disgraceful.  No one, Maori or otherwise, should give her a public platform and given the atrocious statistics for Maori on Maori crime, she should be ostracised, for she is part of the problem.  A woman who normalised and institutionalised violence, and has never offered contrition for it.  

John Key should ignore her, should refuse to engage with her, and she should be told why.  It's not her politics or that of her vile racist rent-seeking son (for there are many of that ilk), it's what she did.

Those who express concern over racism always say they want people judged for their deeds.  It's time to do just that.  Titewhai Harawira is a violent criminal offender, let's treat her as such.

HS2 - Why politics needs to get out of transport

The announcement today of the proposed route for the second phase of a high speed railway out of London beyond Birmingham to Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds should be read in future as a textbook case as to why politics needs to be removed from transport policy.  It is, encapsulated in a tidy package and £33 billion of money that will have to be borrowed from future generations, an almost perfect example of a political "boondoggle" as they are known in the United States.

Almost all of the claims made about this project are dubious.  It wont deliver economic nirvana to the areas it serves, it wont generate economic benefits above the costs of building it, and it is highly unlikely to regenerate more than a handful of small areas.  What it will be is a massive transfer of wealth from future taxpayers across the UK to a handful of construction companies, engineering consultancies, property developers and finally the relatively small numbers of people who will use the railway.

What is worse is that the Government portrays opposition to the project as being solely about people living along the line who will be affected by its construction and the noise, intrusion of a new railways through their properties.  NIMBY is a term used by anyone who wants to demean the interests of private property owners who don't want their property taken for someone else's purpose.  These NIMBYs wont stop the project.

However, the real opposition to the project is the shoddy business case.  You can always buy off NIMBYs with compensation and new routes (after all, it's just about borrowing more money from voters who haven't been born yet, so can't punish you for wasting their money).  It is harder to argue economics, especially when so few Ministers are able to tackle officials and lobbyists on the big issues, and when it is seen as being politically positive.

The opposition itself, the Labour Party, doesn't make that argument, because it simply can't, as it started the project in the first place.  

Besides, HS2 is a symptom of a wider problem.  The belief that politicians are able to make these strategic infrastructure decisions wisely.  Given the UK's history at failing to do so, you'd think they might learn.  Concorde, as beautiful and technically magnificent as it was, was an economic disaster and left no sustainable legacy for its monumental expense.  Indeed, the UK's entire commercial airliner manufacturing sector was largely decimated by inflexibility and state demands that it provide bespoke aircraft for the UK's then state owned airlines BEA and BOAC.  

So why is HS2 wrong?

Holocaust Memorial Day 2013

With so much media, so much exposure to violence and awareness of the grotesque cruel inhumanity that people can inflict upon others, it is not altogether unsurprising that a few are blase about the Holocaust.  The most recent utterance being the "Liberal" Democrat MP David Ward, who wondered how "the Jews" could suffer under the Holocaust and then oppress the Palestinians, as if a lengthy essentially civil conflict between two groups over one set of territory is akin to a government engaging in a systematic programme of rounding up and exterminating a whole segment of the population.  

I used to make that error.  When I was much younger, I saw it as one of many grotesque mass murders by governments.  Of course, Mao and Stalin murdered, starved and oppressed many many more than Hitler.  It really is splitting hairs about how morally empty they are in comparison, but there is a whole context of the Holocaust that needs to be made clear to all.

It really was different.

1930s Germany was a modern society.  Most people went about their business untroubled by the state, although it was increasingly clear that opposing the government wasn't a good idea, there hadn't been wholesale nationalisation of businesses big and small.  While media and education increasingly glorified the Nazi Aryan ideal and Germanic culture, they also spread the poison of virulent anti-semitism, setting the stage for the removal of all state legal protections for Jews (and others deemed sub-human), encouraging private and state boycotts, harassment, vandalism and assaults, and ultimately the state organised labelling, deportation, incarceration and ultimately execution of Jews.

There have been incidents of mass pogroms against groups, incited by political or religious leaders.  Rwanda's genocide is of that nature.  However, no other modern society, otherwise seen as civilised, engaged in organised, efficient eliminationist genocide. 

Of course, Jews have throughout history faced orchestrated organised discrimination and genocide before, but this is still in living memory, and it remains distinctive.

In 2008 I wrote:

Today Sunday 27 January is International Holocaust Memorial Day. It marks the day of liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. It is about remembering all those murdered by the Nazi state, from six million Jews to 200,000 disabled people to gypsies, Poles, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, political dissidents from socialist to liberal persuasions. The utter complete dehumanisation of all those effectively declared "unpersons" by the Nazis remains a horror unparalleled in its comprehensive efficient single mindedness.

That today is what we should all commemorate.  Those millions executed, starved and tortured to death by the state, seeking to remove those individuals it deemed were not human.

I should not be demeaned by those politicians who dare try to compare such events to anything less than a systematic eliminationist slaughter of a whole category of people, by a government in peacetime (for it is a distraction to imply that this was an event "of World War 2", as if Nazi Germany would not have undertaken genocide had there been "peace" in Europe between states).  

So I urge you to spend a moment in quiet reflection, of those who suffered, died, fought and resisted those who wanted them dead, for no reason than their ancestry, their education, their wealth or their private beliefs.   Bear in mind those today, who continue to deny it, who diminish it and who relativise it, and what you can do to keep the memory alive of the unthinkable.

The victor vs the guilty and the scared : UK in the EU

David Cameron has laid it plain - if elected as a majority government in 2015, the Conservatives will offer a referendum on membership of the EU in 2017.

The intention as described in his speech today, is to renegotiate the UK's membership in the EU, with more openness, more flexibility and a relationship with more direct accountability, so that a referendum would mean that a "yes" vote was for a new EU relationship.  "No" of course, would mean departing the EU.  What isn't clear is what would happen if there was not to be a new EU relationship that made a substantive difference to the status quo.

David Cameron is obviously driven by politics.  He wants to sideswipe UKIP, so that its primary policy is, essentially, his.  Why vote UKIP (and risk putting Labour in) when you can vote Conservative and have your say on EU Membership?  Labour leader Ed Miliband has made it clear he doesn't support a referendum because of "the uncertainty" it creates, and the beleaguered Liberal Democrats have long had a love affair with the European project.

However, there is more to it than that, he wants to send a clear message to other EU Member States that  they better negotiate a good enough deal for the UK that he can sell it to UK voters, or those voters will say "no".

You see voters wont be choosing between the status quo and a new relationship that has yet to be negotiated, they would be choosing between a new relationship and leaving the EU.   So something will have to be negotiated.   That puts pressure on those Member States keen on the UK remaining to compromise significantly, for the consequences of failure would be considerable.

It's telling though that the consequences of a "no" vote remain vague.  For most campaigners for a UK exit from the EU, in UKIP, don't want to abandon the single market, they just want to abandon the customs union, EU law and the financial transfers to support EU programmes.  They want to keep open borders for trade and investment.  However, to say "no" to membership of the EU doesn't actually say that.  It is throwing it all away and starting from scratch.  That's a strawman that suits supporters of the EU, but isn't what UKIP wants and isn't what almost all opponents of EU membership argue.

However, what is this all about more fundamentally?  Why is there such antipathy towards the EU in the UK?  Why is there such a different attitude on continental Europe?

It all goes back to history and how it is taught at school to children in Britain and on the continent.  

The British view of history before the EU is fairly simple.  The UK fought and won World War 2 (yes with American help), as such it contributed to being a bulwark against Nazism and subsequently against the threat of Soviet invasion from behind the iron curtain.  Deep in the British national psyche is this belief in the justice of this win, that Britain protected Europe from freedom.   Britain doesn't and didn't see the European project as doing that for Britain, but as being a way of opening up markets and allowing trade and travel.  Britain didn't see it as a way of sharing its welfare state with those from far poorer countries.  

The countries on the continent think quite differently.  The citizens of the countries that believe they were victims of World War 2, i.e. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, believe that the European project is about peace, and is about defusing centuries of nationalist tensions and rivalries.   It is seen as protecting their freedoms, bear in mind these countries all endured years of Nazi occupation and fighting in the streets and fields of their countries.  Britain had the Blitz, but it was never occupied.   The strong belief that the EU is the foundation of keeping the peace in Europe endures because there are generations still alive who can tell tales of horror and poverty of how it was before.   That tale isn't told in the UK which won, rather than was occupied.

The citizens of the countries that fell on the wrong side of the iron curtain think differently again.  For them,  the war was followed by over 40 years of tyranny and totalitarianism.   For them, joining the EU (and NATO) is about turning away from Moscow and turning towards the West.  Notwithstanding the money that comes from EU cohesion funds for being the poorest countries in the EU, the likes of Poland, Romania and Latvia see the EU as part of their process of civilising government, of tackling corruption and promoting core principles such as the separation of powers.   Their view of the EU is understandably different given the darkness from whence they recently emerged.

Finally there is the guilty. Germany (and it wouldn't admit it, Austria).  Germans have hammered into them war guilt, Holocaust guilt, combined with part of the country also carrying relief of having emerged from the same totalitarianism as its eastern neighbours.  For Germany the EU is a way of doing good, of fueling prosperity, human rights and values of freedom, secularism, tolerance, productivity and accountability.  Germany embraces it as salving its conscience over what happened in the war, and what happened in the countries that were occupied.   

So Britain comes from it differently, and has done so fairly consistently.  Britain has long been critical of the Common Agricultural Policy, and gained a partial rebate of its contribution as a result.  Britain has long pushed for reforms for greater transparency and accountability for EU budgets for controls on major projects and scepticism over the growth in EU regulation and spending.

However, it is now coming to a crunch.  There is a profound widespread opposition among many in the UK to EU Membership, not because of free trade, not because of free movement to travel, but because of opposition to petty regulations, opposition to EU spending not only on a profligate polity and bureaucracy, but to well-heeled industrial farmers in France, to spendthrift Greek infrastructure projects.   There is opposition to people from poorer EU Member States claiming welfare benefits, free health care and education, having paid no tax in the UK.  There is opposition to mass uncontrolled migration from those countries.  

Some of the fears are genuine, some of them are beat ups, and there is a lot of bluster about how much the EU costs the UK budget, lots of nonsense that the European Convention on Human Rights came with EU Membership (it comes with being a member of the Council of Europe) and that all the EU brings is regulation (when it also brings prohibitions against governments subsidising businesses that compete with those from other EU Member States).

However, EU Memberships is a constitutional matter.  EU law is supreme in the UK, the UK government is bound to implement most EU law (it needs to negotiate a specific opt out or conditions otherwise, which it also needs agreement on).   The EU takes a small portion of national VAT revenue to spend on the Commission, and the European Parliament is not sovereign, the European Council is.  So imagine a supranational government where the elected representatives of the citizens are not in charge.

It is right for the UK to renegotiate its membership of the European Union, and I will write about why later.   What is wrong with the EU is plenty, what is good about the EU is few, but significant.   I believe it would be great if the UK could renegotiate EU Membership and indeed the European Union on grounds that would be outward looking, liberal, and working towards less laws, except those to bind the economic and social freedoms that Europe should be famous for.

However, I don't believe that this can happen, I don't believe any UK government can remotely negotiate EU Membership that can deliver more freedom and less government (because they don't believe in it at all), and I don't believe the EU is compatible with that.