Venerate the Great Leader

See this photo? Save it. Print it out, and use it as you see fit to denigrate the image of the man who, more than any other, saw George Orwell's 1984 not as a warning, but as a manual on how to run a country.

It's his birthday today. He'd be 98. Sitting on a newspaper image or folding the newspaper incorrectly constitutes a criminal offence, but I am sure you can do better. I am thinking it gives something to aim at.

Why? Well he started the Korean War, his policy includes imprisoning young children as political prisoners, orchestrated several deadly terrorist acts and has single handedly produced the most totalitarian dictatorship and personality cult run state in history. Go on, make it something the whole family does, they can all learn something.

New Labour - Trust us, we know how to spend other people's money.

Yesterday, the British Labour Party launched its manifesto. The title "A Future Fair for All" reminded me of a witticism of Sir Bob Jones who once remarked on the use of the word "fair" using the school report meaning. "Fair" is less than good and only better than "Poor". It is apt in this case, as Gordon Brown and what was "New" Labour have mediocre ambitions for Britain, as is seen by their willingness to continue to pilfer so much from those who ARE ambitious and successful.

So what was promised? The Guardian sympathetically has reproduced the whole thing.

• A significant expansion of the welfare state with a "National Care Service" taxing everyone so that the children of those who own their own homes don’t get their inheritance touched;
  
• Allowing good schools and hospitals to take over poorly performing ones, decided by bureaucrats of course;
• More powers for dour protestant local government to ban betting shops and lapdance bars;
• "Create" jobs, guaranteeing jobs for everyone under 25 by taking from those who actually create jobs, banning more jobs by raising the minimum wage and forcing longer paternity leave on all employers (except the self employed of course);
  
• Borrow from unborn taxpayers to create a "Green Investment Bank" (so the government has a set of all colours);
• Borrow from unborn taxpayers to build a flash high speed rail line to Birmingham that can't be funded from those who would use it because the time savings aren't worth enough to them;
• Tax all users of fixed phone lines to pay for people who choose to live in remote locations to get subsidised broadband (i.e. the elderly subsidising farmers);
• Government able to intervene in poorly performing police forces, guaranteed 24 hour response to anti-social behaviour (useful if you're getting harassed on the spot!) and making rich criminals pay for their prison time;
• A right of recall for "errant" MPs, a referendum on introducing the Australian style preferential voting system and for the voting age to be reduced to 16 to increase the size of Labour's demographic of people who like the government to spend other people's money.

Finally, there is a promise to not increase income tax or the scope of VAT, which of course leaves the point that:
- National Insurance is going up, which is income tax by another name;
- VAT could STILL go up, and at 17.5% it isn't low;
- Labour promised income tax wouldn't go up in its last manifesto, and created a new top tax rate of 50%;
- Labour increases fuel tax every year according to inflation and none of the extra money ever goes on transport.

So the promises are vacuous.

City AM calls it a "rejection of capitalism", because it proposes that corporate takeovers require a "TWO-THIRDS" majority of shareholders to approve them, effectively giving a veto of minority shareholders to any such takeovers. In addition it proposes a "public interest" test to allow political vetoing of takeovers of infrastructure and utility companies, bureaucrats naturally knowing best how to maximise wealth of businesses none of them own.

Labour has no strategy to cut the structural deficit and the monumental public debt accumulated on its watch. It has ever grown the size of the state with intrusive powers to regulate the internet and most recently require everyone who spends regular time with children to be vetted by a non-judicial bureaucracy which anyone can complain to if they think someone is "a bit funny". Most disturbing of all is its playing of Marxist envy politics - that it is moral to keep taxing those on middle and higher incomes more and more, borrow more from future taxpayers, and to keep those on lower incomes permanently dependent on the state for income, housing, retirement and to decide on their health and education.

It is fundamentally dishonest about economics, and immoral in its view of the relationship between subject and the state. It sees the public as subjects to be regulated and taxed and told what to do, and they better be grateful for it. Government as a percentage of GDP went from 38% in 1997 to 45% today and debt as a percentage of GDP from 42% to over 100%.

The Conservatives? Well that Manifesto was launched today.... I'm underwhelmed and more on that later.

Pope's moral authority destroyed

As an atheist, what the Roman Catholic Church does or does not do or say amongst its own flock is of peripheral interest to me. What is of interest is when those working for it commit serious criminal offences, and the Church and by implication the Vatican State seeks to cover it up.

There can be little doubt that many people in the Roman Catholic Church are deeply concerned about the litany of cases of child abuse committed by priests. Furthermore, the extended efforts by many in the church to cover up the cases, to demand silence from the victims and then to shepherd the abusers to new flock, which naturally they abused -given the sanction for abuse was simply to be sent somewhere fresh.

To some Christians it appears a new crusade is being fought, primarily by atheists, to destroy the Church. They will see it as unfair, in that there are clergy in all churches who are abusers. Nobody suggests for a moment that the Church has a monopoly on child abusers. However, it is never a defence to a crime to point out that your neighbour commits the same crimes. Particularly when you hold yourself up as a source of moral authority, guidance and trust.

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken strongly about the incidence of child abuse, and many Catholics will have seen his recent statements as showing some contrition and interest in remedying the situation.

However, the basis upon which he can do this now looks wanting. The New York Times has found a letter signed by the then Cardinal Ratzinger. The letter is about a 38 year old priest, who tied up and abused two young. The Cardinal said that "the case needed more time and that “the good of the Universal Church” had to be considered in the final decision. In other words, he put the good of the church above prosecuting and expelling this sadistically abusive priest.

The New York Times continues...

"John S. Cummins, the former bishop of Oakland who repeatedly wrote his superiors in Rome urging that the priest be defrocked, said the Vatican in that era, after the Second Vatican Council, was especially reluctant to dismiss priests because so many were abandoning the priesthood."

Now the priest concerned had already been convicted of child abuse a few years beforehand, apparently not enough for the Church to judge someone unfit to be a priest. The Pope to be considered it a bigger priority to think of the good of the church, that it retain a recidivist sadistic child abuser as one of its own, that to remove him.

Despite the efforts of Bishop Cummins who wrote to the Cardinal in February 1982: “It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry.”

"Cardinal Ratzinger requested more information, which officials in the Oakland Diocese supplied in February 1982. They did not hear back from Cardinal Ratzinger until 1985, when he sent the letter in Latin suggesting that his office needed more time to evaluate the case."

More time? He already had THREE years, he had been convicted in 1978. In 1985 he started volunteering at a youth ministry.

The Pope should explain himself, explain why he thought the interests of the church itself were greater than the interests of children or indeed their parents, who trusted the church.

Given the Pope is now implicated quite seriously in engaging in the same sort of suppress and deflect behaviour that has been highlighted most recently in Ireland, does he not have some sort of moral obligation to confess his own failings?

How can anyone, objectively looking at the Roman Catholic Church, seriously believe that its leader can hold moral authority in damning those who have done what he himself has done?

How can people venerate a man who has preferred to protect the reputation of his employer than the safety of children?

Will the UK contribute to South Africa's energy crisis?

For the past two years South Africa has faced a serious electricity crisis. Demand has been exceeding supply, with the reasons for this being multi-faceted:

- Electricity generation remains dominated by a state owned company (Eskom), which has been severely undercapitalised (so not investing in new capacity) as the Government refused to inject capital into a company it was seeking to privatise. State ownership without the state seeking to invest;

- Electricity tariffs have been generously subsidised (described by the Chairman here), so that the price of electricity is around a third of the cost of generating it. The reason being the political desire to supply cheap electricity to the population Eskom makes a substantial loss, so cannot finance expansion from its own revenue. Socialism is crippling electricity generation (although tariffs are increasing by 30% to start to address this);

- Privatisation of Eskom has been stalled for political reasons and because no new owner would want to buy a company that loses money without the power to increase tariffs to address this;

- The government deregulated the electricity market, but there is no foreign interest in building new capacity whilst the state continues to bear Eskom's huge losses as it continues to price electricity well below cost.

So South Africa has been stuck, with ample coal reserves, but without the capital investment to translate this into electricity generation, and pricing a scarce resource so cheap, it gets rationed through blackouts.

Now the appropriate answer to all this is to split Eskom into three or more companies, privatise them one by one, letting each privatised one set its own tariffs. This would effectively allow new entrants to decide how to invest in new capacity and match price and demand.

In the meantime, South Africa has sought a World Bank loan to help pay for a new power plant for Eskom. Setting aside whether this should happen at all (it should not), the UK government is apparently considering vetoing it at the World Bank. Why?

Not for economic or financial reasons, but because Greenwar, Foes of the Humans and Christian Aid oppose it as the new power station would be coal fired.

They want money into so-called renewable energy, even though the cost would be twice as much per unit. Not that these organisations are planning to build and fund power stations themselves. No, they would rather South Africans endure blackouts and keep their economy crippled than to let some coal be burnt.

Why is the UK interested? According to the Times, Gordon Brown is looking for a way to capture the "Green" vote, though it is interesting to see how this clashes with the interests of some of the poorest on the planet.

So if the UK vetoes the World Bank loan, it will be about pandering to a Green agenda - it wont be about incentivising South Africa to engage in serious reform of its electricity policy.

After all, even if South Africa did privatise and reform electricity, the anti-human environmentalists would no doubt continue to oppose new coal fired power plants, also oppose more nuclear power, and want to force taxpayers in wealthier countries to subsidise "renewable" energy.

Five more years? Not likely

Gordon Brown has threatened that if Labour is elected again he will serve out another full FIVE year term.

I don't think saying that will have the effect he wishes.

Look at the comments under the Times article about this, find any POSITIVE ones...