EU agricultural subsidies for the wealthy

The Times from London now has some figures showing the absurdities of agricultural protectionism in Europe. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is an abomination and French farmers receive more than British and German farmers combined from this obscenity.

Bono and Bob Geldof would have done better campaigning to abolish the CAP in order to assist the poor of the developing and developed world, than to bleat on about aid.

The Times reports:

131,000 French farmers receive €20,000 or more a year from the EU. 3,200 get more than €100,000 per annum, the biggest beneficiary was a rice farmer who got €866,290 in 2003. How can European taxpayers justify that?

French farmers received €7.38 billion in subsidies in 2003.

The average French farmer receives €16,693 per annum in subsidies – this is more than five times what the average person in the world receives in income.

Prince Albert of Monaco receives around €300,000 a year in subsidies for his farms. The Queen and Prince Charles also get subsidies for their farms.

Rémy Pointereau, a French senator, received €121,000 last year, and Luc Guyau, an ally of President Chirac, received €50,000 in subsidies.

Cees Veerman, the Dutch Agriculture Minister, received €168,000 for farms in France and €22,000 for farms in the Netherlands.

In Denmark, four Cabinet ministers received money from EU farming subsidies in 2004, as did the husband of Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU Farm Commissioner.

70,000 French farmers receive no subsidies from the CAP.

One word for all of them - parasites!

This exposes the utter bullshit of the arguments of poor French farmers that will get kicked off their farms unable to fend for themselves, since 70,000 fend for themselves now (admittedly in a protected market). It also exposes the level of political disinterest there is in some European quarters to end this outrageous waste of money.

3 steps for the EU:

1. Abolish agricultural subsidies;

2. Abolish restrictions on agricultural imports;

3. Abolish tariffs on agricultural imports.

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.