Blair's days start to be numbered?

I’ve already stated before on this blog why I, on balance, like Tony Blair. This was only enhanced by the release of his education white paper, which essentially called for the administration and running of state schools to be transferred to self-governing trusts. These trusts would allow the schools to be responsible for their spending, the curriculum, their property and what staff are paid.

This would be a major step forward in shifting education away from bureaucratic state control and being autonomous – maybe even private (though even New Labour could never countenance such heresy). New Conservative Party leader David Cameron has stated that he will support all of these measures to give more autonomy to schools, and so he should.

However now the left of the British Labour Party has smelt blood. The teachers’ unions oppose these moves, because it will mean they wont be able to lobby for a collective approach to pay and the last thing they want is for schools to be accountable to parents and local communities. After all they are teachers, it isn’t their fault when children fail at school, or if parents think they are poor performers – for some reason teachers’ unions believe they must be immune to the performance pay and accountability measures others have in their professions. Around 100 Labour MPs are reportedly not happy about the proposals – which could put them in jeopardy, unless the Tories back them. However if that happens, then Blair will feel like a lame duck, needing the Opposition to pass his legislation. This plays into the hands of those who want him to resign and pass the banner over the Gordon Brown sooner rather than later.

The reform agenda of the Blair government appears to be waning. The Daily Telegraph (leftwing wits call it the Torygraph) claims Blair is a lameduck PM, which is going a bit far - but it looks like the Labour Party left is starting to come out from under the rocks as it sees a time to get Gordon Brown into number 10. At that point it would have four or so years of stalling reform, moving policy to the left, with the intention of getting a mandate for it at the next UK election which is unlikely to be before 2009 (there was one earlier this year after all!).

It may well be that as Blair loses his ability to implement reforms of education and welfare, that the Conservative Party, revitalised with a young and vibrant leader in David Cameron is in the ascendancy.

Qantas orders 65 Boeing 787s

Qantas has announced it has ordered 65 Boeing 787s for itself and its el cheapo Jetstar subsidiary (which is going to fly low cost international services long haul) with options on another 50. These will replace the 767s which have long provided some of the services to and from New Zealand.

Besides fuel economy etc etc, the most notable thing about 787s is that there will be larger windows and higher humidity levels, so you wont be so dehydrated on long flights. The plane will be largely made of composites, so higher humidity levels will not corrode the fuselage. I'll be happy with larger windows and more humidity, it is not pleasant spending 12 hours in the air and waking up feeling dessicated by the artificial atmosphere.

Air NZ has already ordered 4 787s as the second customer for the plane to replace its 767s on medium distance flights to Pacific destinations, Australia and Asia.

Related to this, Qantas is not buying any aircraft to operate London-Sydney non-stop, partly because neither Airbus nor Boeing could make a plane guaranteed to fly that long non-stop fully-laden, and also because the demand was unlikely to be sufficient (it would have commanded a premium fare).

Greens on poverty

The Green’s have a press release out saying there is a “need to tackle the causes of child poverty”. Sue Bradford is upset that some poor children in South Auckland didn’t know when their birthday’s were – which is sad. At the most it indicates their families can’t afford presents. Then she lists other tragedies of poverty as having not traveled over the Auckland Harbour Bridge, or not traveled on the adjacent motorway.

Now at worst these are sad signs – it is a sad that a child doesn’t get birthday presents, though it isn’t really a big deal if they don’t get to travel on a road. This isn’t a big deal in terms of poverty, not compared to starvation, lack of shelter or clean drinking water.

However, you guessed it, Sue Bradford wants Nanny State to throw more money at these families (although the causes of child poverty aren’t noted).

Charity is a fine way of giving people in poverty a leg up, and a chance to move forward- but having the state use force to take money from others to give to these families is not. It is state violence justified because some children have “sad lives”. Whose fault is that? Well the primary responsibility for children lies with their family – it is up to them to have children when they can afford them and provide for them.

The main causes of child poverty come from people having children when they cannot afford them. Taking more money from those who can and giving it to those who can’t increases the incentive to continue the behaviour of breeding irresponsibly.

The Greens want to use welfare to "fix" this problem, a problem that is better fixed by people choosing to give, and by actively assisting those who are poor, such as the work Auckland City Mission does. You’ll do far more for the poor giving to organizations such as them, instead of paying more in taxes so bureaurats can dish out money.

In fact a good start would be to abolish taxes for people on the lowest incomes - Libertarianz support the Green Party policy for a tax free threshold to be implemented immediately. Of course Libertarianz would ask for a higher one - I think $10,000 tax free would be a good start, of course you wouldn't have state welfare either :)

Government murder toll

Hat tip to PC for his linking to the story about democide or death by government action.

The left like to focus on what companies do, and on the cost of war in terms of lives, but war is a drop of blood in the bucket compared to what government’s do. Democratic peace defines democide as:

“any murder by government, and includes genocide, politicide, massacres, mass murder, extrajudicial executions, assassinations, atrocities, and intentional famines”

He categorises democide into several groupings, and has detailed results on his website here.

262 million people murdered by governments – over 76 million in communist run China alone, 50 million from colonial governments (a good deal being Leopold’s Congo, probably the most brutal colonisation in history).

This is six times higher than those killed in combat. That is why peace between countries is important but not the MOST important pre-requisite for civilisation.

The WTO is good!

The WTO is the one intergovernmental organisation that I hold in high regard. It advocates consistent, non-discriminatory rules on trade, has a dispute settlement mechanism for it and is pro free-trade.

There are umpteen protestors now in Hong Kong claiming that the WTO is unfair. Mostly these are South Korean farmers who can afford to fly to Hong Kong protesting against the looming opening up of the South Korean rice market to cheaper foreign rice from the likes of Thailand (which is far poorer and a far more efficient rice producer). South Korea is a very small country with a high population, so in all likelihood there will be less rice producers in South Korea over the longer term, as the pressure for land shifts the country further from agriculture to manufacturing and services (which it is very good at).

The WTO puts pressure through its members for global liberalisation in trade of all goods and services. It puts the same pressure on the EU to abolish its export subsidies for agriculture as it does to India to abolish tariffs on car imports. All countries should liberalise – but what is happening is that the two largest blocs at the WTO are saying “you first”.

The US is willing to abandon agricultural export subsidies if the EU does so, and developing countries also abandon protectionist policies for agriculture.

The EU is willing to provide special access to products from least developed countries, thwarted the MFN principle which states that all WTO member states should be treated equally (though the EU itself is a great example of thwarting MFN!).

Both the EU and the US want liberalisation in manufactured goods and services in developing countries. Developing countries want an end to export subsidies and protectionism for agriculture and textiles in developed countries.

Most of them are right! However, no deal can be struck without agreement between member states - which is more fair than any United Nations organisation (the WTO is not part of the UN) which works on majority most of the time (and since the majority of countries are corrupt and often despotic, the result is clear).

New Zealand fortunately can step to one side given that it has almost totally liberalised trade (tariffs remain thanks to Jim Anderton’s deal with Labour when the Clark government was first formed), and can argue philosophically for free trade in agriculture, goods and services.

Even this French dairy farmer admits that New Zealand dairy farmers can produce milk at half the cost French ones can. If the Greens were in France, they would argue that New Zealand (foreign) milk cannot be allowed to undercut local producers- in short, the Greens would argue to render New Zealand a small country backwater unable to earn foreign exchange from agricultural products, and unable to afford the capital goods produced in other countries.

Interesting the steel worker in this BBC interview in Brazil understands things a lot better than his US counterpart – arguing that US car manufacturers would be more competitive if the cost of steel were lower for them (which means importing steel from more efficient producers), and that Brazilian steel mills are more up to date and competitive than US ones. Remember Bush agreed to reintroduce tariffs to protect the US steel industry.

Free trade is a no brainer. Professor Jagdish Bhagwati is a world renowned author on free trade. His website contains copies of many papers and articles he has written on trade and related issues. His latest book is In Defence of Globalization which I am currently reading.

If you think that the government should limit imports from other countries or tax them, then explain why you need to be forced to buy local, or penalised if you don’t. Also explain why the arbitrary national boundaries that exist are so precious to anti-free traders? Why not impose tariffs on products moved from the South to the North Island (that damned Mainland cheese!) and vice versa, why not impose tariffs on products coming from Northland or the Bay of Plenty into Auckland, or vice versa? Silly? Well imagine the USA did this, with 50 states – looks a bit like Europe then. Consider Africa, which is covered in protectionist states, most of which have GDP levels a fraction of New Zealand, with many times the population – see what a lack of free trade does for them.

If you are still not convinced, what if we extended the protectionist principle to its logical conclusion. You are now heavily taxed if you buy anything from outside your own home, but not on anything you grow or make yourself – see how wealthy you are now? Free trade is what happens everyday between you and your community, town and country – if it works within your country, where councils have differing levels of taxes and laws, it will work between countries.