What to cut? Here’s a conservative list

With the party conferences of the Socialist Liberal Democrats and the Nanny Labour Party out of the way here in the UK, next comes the Conservative Party. Can it inspire so that instead of Labour simply losing the election to it, that it positively wins? I have to say it is unlikely.

However, with First Past the Post, the realistic alternatives have extremely remote chances of getting anywhere. UKIP is a party that is welcome on scepticism about the European Union grand state collectivist project, but also painfully stupid on economics with a protectionist streak. The embryonic Libertarian Party UK on the other hand is so limp wristed with its “libertarian” policies, that it looks to the left of Thatcher.

So, given the UK’s enormous public scepticism about politicians, the widespread belief that the state has grown too much and the understanding that the budget deficit must be drastically cut and eliminated, so that the huge burden of new Labour inspired public debt can be cut, I thought I’d pull together a list of spending cuts that any half arsed decent Conservative government ought to have the courage to implement:

1. Scrap the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and terminate all subsidy, loan and other forms of state support for businesses. The best support British business can get from government is to cut taxation and get the hell out of the way. No picking winners, no corporate welfare. Phase out all schemes to give money to employers to recruit and train people.
2. Lead a determined campaign at Brussels to cut the size of the EC budget substantively. Declare that the UK will cut its contribution regardless, and that if other EC member states don’t like it, then they can be reminded of their own widespread breaches of rules regarding budget deficits and the Euro. A first priority should be an immediate suspension of all export subsidy schemes, and a nominal freeze on the growth of agricultural subsidies.
3. Start a new round of privatisation. The Royal Mail and Channel 4 should be the top of the list. However it is time to be really bold and include the motorways. Don’t do the lot in one go, start by selling the tolled crossings separately, then regional networks of motorways, for extended lease periods. You’ll have to find a way to pay the new owners from taxes you collect, but give the owners a period to introduce electronic tolling, then cut back on fuel tax.
4. Cut spending on unprofitable railway projects. No new high speed railway. Let projects proceed only if Network Rail accepts full risk of borrowing and paying it back from track access charges. It is time the railway started paying for itself. Crossrail should be the last big taxpayer supported rail project.
5. Scrap the ID card scheme. It might only save £40m says the Home Office, but it is unnecessary and immoral. Write it off.
6. Scrap a wide range of major IT projects, like ContactPoint, NHS National IT Programme, the expansion of the DNA database to include innocents.
7. Scrap subsidising rural broadband. In the meantime, restore BT’s property rights over its own network. It is increasingly seen as a legacy system anyway.
8. Abolish all regional development agencies and suspend further funding of regeneration schemes. There isn’t the money to spend on state property investment.
9. Charge people on the NHS who are “no shows” for any appointments, charge all people who visit A & E with anything less than an urgent emergency, introduces charges for more than 1 GP visit a year for everyone 18-65 who is not below the poverty line. Freeze NHS spending in nominal terms.
10. Radically reform funding of the Scottish Executive, so that funding is proportionate to actual taxation raised from Scotland. Let the Scottish Executive cut what it can.
11. Eliminate extra welfare for people already on welfare who have additional children.
12. Negotiate an end to EU welfare tourism that entitles EU citizens to claim welfare in each others’ member states. The UK will withdraw from such provisions, meaning UK citizens cannot claim welfare elsewhere in the EU, and vice versa, except for old age pensions on a like for like basis.
13. Freeze all public sector pay until the budget is in surplus.
14. Terminate immediately all new taxpayer contributions to public sector pension schemes and announce that there can be no new members. This is exactly what New Zealand did in the early 1990s.
15. Abolish all new agencies created in the past 12 years. From those regulating childcare to those regulating the postal sector. Britain lived quite happily without them before, it can do so again.

Meanwhile, do not increase any taxes. Prepare for a simplification and general reduction in taxation once budget deficits have been eliminated. Announce what these are likely. Don’t cut defence. It is your core role and the mission in Afghanistan is hamstrung by appalling management and budgeting. Whilst Iran and Russia continue to sabre rattle, now is not the time to cut Trident.

Oh and really, this list is shamefully short. I have barely touched welfare, housing, health or education. This should be the easy stuff politically, although some (like Europe) will take some backbone.

What are the chances even a third of this list could be adopted?

Something else Israel's neighbours wont allow

This post, criticising some of Netanyahu's speech, in a major Israeli newspaper.

You see, the only permitted press in Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, or indeed most of Israel's neighbours (Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon far less so), would not contemplate printing a column being profoundly critical of an address made by their political leader.

It shows that there IS real debate within Israel about such things as whether the IDF acting excessively or not against Hamas in Gaza, and noting some of the treatment of Palestinian protestors.

What struck me was not the criticisms themselves, but that Israel, unlike its neighbours, has a vibrant civil society, open press and has the sorts of debates that we take for granted in the western world. The sorts of debates that are more difficult to have in other states in the Middle East, or banned in the case of Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia.

In other words, Israel's enemies fear their own people turning on them, which says volumes about their own legitimacy.

Harriet Harman ignores the US constitution

There is, in the US, a rather unpleasant website called Punternet. It effectively is a website for consumers of prostitutes to rate their experiences. It is legal in the US, indeed it is constitutionally protected free speech. The speech may be highly offensive to many, but that is not a ground to prohibit it, it is, after all, just a series of opinions about consensual experiences between adults. For many it is no doubt a bit of prurient reading, for some it may be useful. It rates prostitutes in the UK . Again, this is protected by the First Amendment. Nobody has to go there, and no crime is committed to produce the website.

However, these are boundaries that enemies of free speech don't respect. They believe free speech which offends should be banned. So what is the result?

According to The Times, Harriet Harman, the Equalities Minister (an Orwellian role if ever there was one) thinks the Governor of California should ignore the US Constitution, and ban the website, because it offends her for encouraging the "commodification of women". Whether it does or does not is besides the point.

Sorry Harriet, just because the UK doesn’t enjoy protection of civil liberties by Constitution, and just because you have a petty fascist attitude to that which “offends you”, doesn’t mean you can extend your bullying ways to the USA.

Harriet has been criticised by Carrie Mitchell, of the English Collective of Prostitutes, who said "Once again instead of prioritising dealing with rape and other violence, Harman is prioritising censorship and repression”. So not even those who represent prostitutes believe in this supposed attempt to protect them, they'd rather the Police better dealt with real crime.

Nobody has a right to not be offended, for it were true, then I’d ban Harman and most of the utterings of this contemptible government for offending me and millions of Britons every day. This latest extension of the authoritarian "do as we say for your own good" nanny state shows further how vile the British Labour Party is, wanting other countries to break their own Constitutions to extend the nanny state into their jurisdiction, because of the limits of their own authoritarian reach.

Oh and well done Harriet, you’ve made Punternet’s day by undoubtedly increasing the hit rate from the UK by a significant factor. Today it is ranked 1053rd in the UK (according to Alexa), with 36576 hits yesterday. Let’s see how it is in the next two days….

Can't rural women pay for their own broadband?

The call by Rural Women New Zealand to force taxpayers to pay for them to be able to watch Youtube more easily, listen to foreign radio broadcasts, swap holiday photos and play multiplayer computer games (and no doubt some looking at porn) is outrageous.

There is no right to high speed broadband services. Just as there is no right to free car parking next to your job, or no right to have paddocks to keep horses on.

If Rural Women New Zealand want fast broadband access, nothing is stopping them paying for it, signing long term contracts with prospective suppliers and seeing who will provide it. If no one will, nothing is stopping them entering the market themselves and providing these services which they claim are in demand.

Nothing except, they don’t want to pay the cost of providing it.

If they don’t like how much it costs, they can always move into one of the main centres where such broadband services are available. You see, if you live in remote areas why should you not be surprised that you don’t get everything that is economic to provide in cities?

In the meantime, they might contemplate why, if taxpayers are forced to subsidise their choice to live remote from telecommunications infrastructure, why they shouldn’t pay for car parking for people at work in cities (which rural people “unfairly” get for free at their jobs), pay for city home owners to acquire an acre of land each upon which their kids can play and they can keep multiple pets including ponies, and pay for increases in road capacity so city dwellers can enjoy uncongested trips, like country dwellers do. After all school children in cities miss out on having open spaces to play in, and the opportunities to interact with nature, and it is “unfair” that they don’t.

Instead, you might just accept that where you live has advantages and disadvantages, and if you live in remote areas, you get cheap land, wide open spaces, empty roads, in exchange for being remote.

Iran or Israel, how are they equals?

I fully agree with the sentiments of Not PC on the simply brilliant speech by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The video is here (in 4 parts)

However, the text is here.

He refutes the ridiculous Holocaust denial claims of the dictator buffoon Ahmadinejad, he describes the Islamic fundamentalism of Iran correctly as follows:

"Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death."

He points out the wonder of human achievement, the application of free minds to the world:

"The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet."

He describes how Israel withdrew, unilaterally from Gaza, in the hope it would bring the advancement of peace but:

"In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent."

Meanwhile, far too many think Iran can't be pursuing nuclear weapons, or if it is, it is "ok", because Israel has them. Israel has had them for some years, but hasn't threatened to ever use them, except in retaliation for use against Israel. Iran's recent military coup and election rigging is "ok", because after all, it has to be better than the USA, what with George Bush invading Iraq (another "legitimate" state perhaps) and Afghanistan. The very same cover their eyes when told of the execution of political prisoners in Iran, the second highest execution rate in the world after China, and ignore the execution of homosexuals or minors for sex crimes - being consensual sex. The very same people ignore the persecution of those who want to choose to reject Islam, and ignore the systematic oppression of free press and media.

The same who claim to give a damn about freedom of speech, about womens' rights, supporting gay and lesbian rights, but are happy to let Iranians live with none of the above.

It reminds me of the wilful blindness of the old left who wanted to "listen" to the men who rewarded snipers who shot desperate East Germans trying to cross the Berlin Wall, or "understand" what Nicolae Ceausescu's new way for Romania, without Soviet troops, or recognise the advantages that the Soviet Union brought for education, employment and in housing. The same lickspittles and sycophants who regard Western claims of militarism and human rights abuses with disdain, so denying the victims of dictatorial regimes the legitimacy of their experiences.

In which case I say this.

If you think Iran has a legitimate government with rights, then why do you not endorse a similar government for your own country? If it is good enough for Iranians to get political candidates chosen for them by a theocratic council, to have election results gerrymandered by the incumbent, for political protests to be put down by a state security agency that arrests and imprisons, for newspapers, radio and TV to be fully state controlled to prevent messages "unwelcome" to the regime being distributed, and for bloggers and others online to be persecuted and arrested for criticising the regime, then why not for YOUR country?

If you think it's ok for a theocratic dictatorship to acquire nuclear weapons, then presumably you embrace widespread nuclear proliferation.

If you think it's ok for a theocratic dictatorship to call for Israel to be erased from the map, then presumably you think so too. So go on, explain how you'd propose that be achieved? Explain how little bloodshed that would entail and how that would promote freedom, human rights and secularism in the Middle East? How would it be compatible with your opposition to the invasion of Iraq?