Christmas/Saturnalia no time to feel guilty

Most of my views about this time of year have been ably written by Peter Cresswell here, here, here and here, and for me it is a day to smile, to spend with people whose company I like (particularly for those of us with family far away or without family) and to enjoy life.  That means food, drink, music, conversation and all kinds of fun.   In the Northern Hemisphere it is particularly enjoyable given the snow, the cold and how well hot food, mulled wine and all of the other traditional foods go together with this season - as it is, essentially, a celebration of the winter solstice, shared with Christians who use it to celebrate the birth of the man for whom their religion is central.

It is a time for joy to be shared with children in particular and despite the groans and moans of naysayers, a time to give and receive gifts (and for many to enjoy the pleasures of shopping and earning a living from those who do).

Some will remind us all that there are billions for whom this is another day of work or struggle, under conditions of conflict, crime and poverty.  I was reminded when in a shop the nauseating song of Do They Know It's Christmas (2004 version) was blaring over the speakers.  Yet it is not a time to feel guilty for your existence, for your relative prosperity.  It is not your fault that many are worse off than you, just as it is not the fault of those better off that you don't have their wealth.   Nor it is your obligation to make life better for others.   The comments today from the Archbishop of Canterbury that effectively criticise the British government's cuts in public spending are just peddling guilt trips as he is critical the "rich" are not bearing their "fair share" of public spending cuts.  This utter nonsense ignores that those on higher incomes pay by far the greatest share of tax and don't take their "fair share" of public spending either.   Christmas should not be a time to be hectored by the socialist leader of a church entirely based on the proclamation of a hereditary monarch about "privilege".

Still beyond that, those who choose, celebrate how they can.  For many it is just another day, some are celebrating a birth, others including probably the family of Joanna Yeates will forever associate it with the loss of a loved one.   

For you, I wish you a Merry Christmas, superlative Saturnalia, Happy Hannukah, or simply a day of joy.

The story I can't really tell

As a self-styled polemicist, opportunities to genuinely promote freedom have largely been dominated by what I write and what I say.  What I do for a living generally doesn't offer much chance for that, as it is dominated by development of business strategies, public policy and analytics.  Various charities and organisations promote individual freedom as well, but nothing quite comes close as being able to act in a way that is contrary to those who suppress freedom - particularly freedom of speech.

So it is in that light that I visited four dictatorships this year, all countries where the state has direct control over the entire mass media, where rule of law is at the mercy of the leadership and ruling parties and where criticism of the political leadership can prove fatal.   Talking about political change in such countries is not something undertaken lightly.   As such I hope you bear with me in that I wont identify the country I visited where the following rather minor events happened.  The primary reason I wont identify the country online is to protect those in that country who I talked to and who committed political crimes with me.  For not only is that important, but it is more important that people like them, who have some privileges already understand the outside world.

The people I met were initially cautious and careful about what to ask and what to say, but after building trust over a few days they were willing to talk - in circumstances when no one else would overhear.   Questions were asked about other countries, about whether people know what it is like there and what life is like in other countries.  Questions asked about history and events that have been suppressed (and rewritten), as foreign books on subjects (and local translations) are rare.   Questions asked about whether I thought change would come and what might happen and what should happen.   The people I met had consumed news from the BBC and CNN, although only sporadically, as access was severely restricted.

Perhaps the most astonishing question was to explain World War 2, from a Western perspective, and to explain to a university educated man what the Holocaust was, and what Germany is really like. 

I brought in literature that I knew would not be allowed to be distributed there, and I left one book which was a Western book in English containing a description of the country in question.  I understood that it would be prized far more than the price tag.

However I also allowed one to listen to foreign broadcasts in the national language - a criminal offence punishable by execution.   This was done carefully, as I brought a multiband (shortwave) radio into the country quite openly, although such radios are not freely available in shops there.   Foreign news broadcasts were devoured as I listened with my new friend when the opportunities arose.   Every day I was asked about what was in the news from overseas, whether there was news about the country concerned, and I made a point of remembering what I heard from the BBC World Service, Voice of America and Deutsche Welle.  Information was devoured, whatever I had to tell.

The current leadership was rarely mentioned, and none I talked to expressed enthusiasm or interest in their deeds.  They were simply acknowledged as "being there".  The overwhelming understanding was that the government was, by and large, not to be trusted.  Yet I could have talked for days and days about the outside world.   It was abundantly clear that none of them could easily get to leave.   What was also very clear was that these are intelligent and articulate people, who are looking for opportunities to reach out to the rest of the world, and to learn the truth, and who are anticipating change.  When and how that change occurs is unclear, but what is currently clear is that there is a political tinderbox which may ignite given half a chance - but one that is suppressed by a brutal secret police and climate of distrust.   Since then events have happened that might give hope for change in the near future.

When I left, I was told by one of them that eventually when he could leave, he would find me in London.   It was quite heart-breaking to realise how easy it is to visit and leave such places, when it is not the case for those who live there.  

What to do?  Despite what some political dissidents say, it IS important to visit such regimes.  It is important to bring books, bring a radio, learn a language and talk, let people know that you are interested, that you are not engaging in some macabre act of voyeurism, but that the outside world not only cares, but is friendly.  

So this time of year I want to give pause for those who do not live in a place where they can rant, blog, talk freely or simply insult the political leadership.  One cannot underestimate the importance of having such basic freedoms, and that those who are willing to compromise it are not deserving of it.  The darkness, stinking, cruel climate of fear that such dictatorship imposes on people is real.   Too many are unaware of what it is like, because their age or geography has meant they have not lived with such control, or lived in a world when more than half of it was under it (and promoted it).   

and the price of maintaining freedom is eternal vigilance.

Green MP uses abuse rather than debate

What happens when you challenge the co-leader of the Green Party in one of his blog posts?

He resorts to name calling.

Take this thread, where Russel Norman gets hysterical about cellphone towers, with scaremongering about them being near children's bedrooms etc.

The bogey is non-ionising radiation, and of course the Greens have decided the target on this one are cellphone towers which are commissioned by another bogey - evil privately owned telecommunications corporations (oh if only it was the Post Office, we'd still be testing to see if cellphones are safe or we'd have our own bespoke system with no roaming to rip people off when overseas).   Russel even claims the group of bureaucrats and industry representatives involved in setting standards for such things was:

another committee dominated by industry and government departments with one health professional. A group dominated by those trying to reduce costs for telcos.

So a conspiracy of those who don't believe the pseudo-science. Playing the ball not the people again.   If these people don't take it seriously then it must be vested interest, rather than being wrong.

Now let's be clear.  I do think there can be issues with continuous high concentrations of non-ionising radiation from sources like cellphones or laptops.   There is some evidence around very high volumes of cellphone use and effects on tissues that frankly tell me just to be cautious.  However it is about handsets NOT transmitter towers.

Why?  Well humanity has been testing non-ionising radio transmitters since the 1920s, and at transmission power many many many times that of any cellphone tower.  West Auckland has been bathed in high powered TV transmissions from Waiatarua since the 1960s, as has Khandallah and Johnsonville in Wellington from Kaukau.

So I wrote:

Suggest you shut down the AM transmitters for National Radio, the AM Network and Newstalk ZB in Titahi Bay since they have been transmitting non-ionising radiation blanketing Porirua City at levels of over 100x the strength of cellphone transmitters since the 1940s. Mt Victoria has had radio transmitters on it for some years as well, and then Khandallah and Johnsonville have had nearly 50 years of Kaukau blanketing them. 

I have a friend who was part of a detailed study into levels of non-ionising radiation in Australia. A group of unscientific cellphone site phobics demanded readings be made in one town, and it was found the local TV transmitter on the hill exposed residents to much more continuous exposure at higher volumes than those who would live within a radius of the cellsite. She told them the TV transmitter and local FM radio stations would need to be closed first before removing cellsites – naturally there was an outrage and people couldn’t stand losing TV and radio.

However, don’t let science and the fact that human beings have been bombarding each other with high levels of non-ionising radiation for a couple of generations get in the way of renewing scaremongering over something that hasn’t been remotely demonstrated to be dangerous to human health. Don’t confuse it with the issue of cellphone handset exposure to brains, which does have some merit as an issue (as people haven’t been doing that).

I’m amazed you haven’t jumped on cordless phones at the home, wifi base stations at home, electric blankets (sleeping on an electrical element), the people sitting in front of cathode ray tubes for the last couple of generations (LCD, Plasma and LEDs are ending this). How many of the people who you’ve scaremongered about cellphone towers happily have any number of these devices and let their kids use them and don’t think twice about it? 

Or is this really about beating up privately owned telcos instead of a balanced rational debate about science? Otherwise you would have long campaigned for National Radio’s 500kW transmitter at Titahi Bay to be shut down years ago.

 

However, that doesn't matter to Russel.  He doesn't want to tell people to turn off the radio stations or TV.  It's a war against corporations as you can see by his response to me here:

I’m interested that a blogger called Liberty Scott seems to have so little concern with freedom. The state ties people’s hands over the control of cellphone towers so they can’t resist telcos and you applaud – rather typical Act Party position – freedom for corporations and no rights for individuals. CaptivityScott might think that the people are illinformed to be concerned about a cellphone mast outside their kids bedroom, but genuinely freedom loving people would defend their right to tell the state and corporations to move away, as the courts have done in france.

Kadin, bj and Kerry, there are of course many other sources of non-ionising radiation already present. The question is should we be concerned at adding to the increasing background level. We are doing it with wifi quite extensively at the moment. And there are studies raising issues around it. I say keep an open mind.

So he lazily associates me with ACT, and then starts engaging in childish name calling, then claims to want "the state to move away", which of course is the antithesis of his politics.   He then admits there are other sources, but that it is about adding to the background level.   This is scientific hogwash.  The issue, if there is one, is not lots of radio signals on different frequencies, but intense application of one continuous transmission over a long period. 

Sue Kedgley then lifts it to her usual heights of calm reasoning by claiming conspiracy.  Even Radio NZ must  be in on it:

The whole saga is a classic example of vested interests manipulating the policy process in Parliament. The media are also complicit. When the Green party tried to alert people to the so-called National Environmental Standard, and its effects, the media completely ignored it. Only the Wellingtonian reported on it. Could this have anything to do with the massive advertising by our telecommunications companies?

Didn't occur to her that most people don't believe the scaremongering and that being ignored can simply mean people have rolled their eyes and decided they have better things to worry about.
 
Without me responding, Russel plays the man not the ball again:

 It seems that you and DungeonScott are very proactive talking about freedom except when the rubber hits the road you are all in favour of restricting people’s rights and increasing corporate rights. the freedom you are after is the antithesis of human freedom, it is corporate freedom.

Well done Russel, you refuse to consider the issue on its merits.  You have hitched yourself to a bandwagon embraced by all sorts of snake-oil merchants because it suits your big company bashing agenda.  You can't actually answer the counter-claims about non-ionising radiation partly because you know nothing about it, but also you don't appear to have the humility to admit you (and Sue Kedgley, chief scaremongerer) are wrong.

North Korea's winter of starvation, discontent and being ignored

While the usual suspects hop on the trendy bandwagons of embarrassing the USA, there remains a story of horror, death and misery they largely ignore. 

Oh and by the way, she's dead now.  

If this has upset and angered you then go tell Professor Tim Beal, who takes the North's side on the recent attack on Yeonpyeong Island, and claims that his own observations of how well things look in Pyongyang (which is true) are representative of the whole country.  He is closely associated with North Korea's useful idiot in New Zealand, the Reverend Don Borrie who has visited the country frequently and given glowing paeans about Kim Il Sung.   This NZ-DPRK Society campaigns in favour of the US withdrawing from South Korea, against New Zealand supporting the liberal democratic capitalist South Korea in the event of a military conflict and for the full legitimisation of this slave state at an international level.  

Who knows if these men are simply useful idiots, incapable of understanding the fundamental evil and vileness of a regime that complete and utterly destroys individual thought, initiative and goals, whilst sucking up enormous resources into a combination of empty lie-infested personality cults and a futile partly racist ultra-militarism towards the south, USA and Japan.  Maybe they are themselves sucked into the propaganda and the thin veneer of niceness that pervades and surrounds what North Korea presents to outsiders.

By the way this is one reason I no longer give any financial support to Amnesty International.   Its website almost ignores North Korea.  It campaigns against many things quite rightly, but virtually ignores North Korea.  A search of its website shows it campaigns in FAVOUR of more UN agency based aid going to North Korea despite extensive evidence of such aid being co-opted by the state for the army and party.  It's only press release about North Korea this year was about the health system collapsing and the need for the regime to get help to save it.  Why would it nearly ignore a country that is second bottom in press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders and ranked in the bottom country by Freedom House?  How hard is it to get around your heads that this country imprisons small children for the political "crimes" of their parents?  

What sort of human rights organisation campaigns for aid that assists a totalitarian dictatorship the likes of which is almost unparalleled in human history for its Orwellian enslavement of an entire people?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, that the UN should provide aid to the regime's "health system"?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Holocaust, that there should be aid to help ease the plight of the Jews?

So ask yourself this?  Why is this starving, murdering slave state continuing to be treated with kid gloves by the left-oriented supporters of human rights (the same ones who damn Burma to hell and damn China far more now than they ever did when Mao was in power)?  I don't believe any of them embrace the Juche Idea or the North Korean regime (although some do like the UK based Stop the War Coalition), but their continued unwillingness to actively campaign against it speaks volumes .  Is it because virtually no foreign companies (the true evil in their heads) have a commercial presence there?  Is it because damning North Korea would appear to put one on the side of the relatively free, open and capitalist South Korea and the US?

Bad parenting, not lack of money is harming poor kids

"Chinese children from poor families as a group do better than all other non-poor children (except non-poor Chinese children). Growing up in an ethnically Chinese family in England is enough to overcome all of the disadvantages of being poor. This surely has much to do with parental aspirations and attitudes. It would be a betrayal of all our children if we were to say that what this group already achieves cannot be achieved by all British children."

This is a report written by British Labour MP Frank Field, who was commissioned by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition to investigate child poverty.   It has produced a muted response in leftwing circles as he has effectively destroyed the myth that intergenerational poverty can be fixed by increasing benefits.  The report in full is here (PDF).

One of the standards of the left is that one of the biggest issues in modern society is child poverty.  That doesn't mean children who are malnourished (in fact many of them are overweight), it doesn't mean they are homeless, or lack access to health care or schooling.  No, it is about relative poverty, so it means households where children don't get to go on holiday, where they have few choices of clothes, they might not have a Playstation/Wii/XBox, they might not have broadband internet access, there might not be a family car.   In fact, poverty today would have been middle class comfort a couple of generations ago, and positively wealthy for most people on the planet.  

Frank Field agreed to help the government, much to the chagrin of his Labour colleagues, he agreed, largely because he was more interested in getting results than in snarking on the opposition benches.  He has a particular interest in child poverty, but his report also indicates his own increased disaffection with the "more welfare fixes poverty" school of "thought":

Since 1969 I have witnessed a growing indifference from some parents to meeting the most basic needs of children, and particularly younger children, those who are least able to fend for themselves. I have also observed how the home life of a minority but, worryingly, a growing minority of children, fails to express an unconditional commitment to the successful nurturing of children.

The issue about child poverty is not about kids not getting enough stuff, it is about whether being raised in families with low incomes damages their "life chances" and whether the opportunities for children to develop, excel and pursue lives that realise their potential are significantly harmed by poverty.    

The standard leftwing answer is that it is all about money.  Groups such as the self-styled "Child Poverty Action Group" campaign for higher benefits, essentially claiming the solution is simply to give the parents of such children more of other people's money.   In particular they support such money being without conditions, but simply about "fairness" (as if it is unfair to make more money than others).   In other words if only poorer families got more money then their kids would perform as well as families from middle income households.

Field's report disputes this saying that the real indicator of a child's life chances is not money it is quality of parenting.   That factor above all others is critical.  His report makes for stark reading and has thrown the proverbial cat among the pigeons for statements like this:

(This report) questions the almost universal assumption over the last hundred years that increases in income alone will automatically lead to social progress. Over the post-war period we have experienced a considerable increase in the real incomes and yet we still find that too many children now start school who are unable to make the most of their school lives. It is from this group that tomorrow’s unemployed and low paid will be overwhelmingly drawn.


Why should this be so? The Foundation Years argues that the exclusive concern of the adult world about how financial poverty affects children’s life chances has prevented a more comprehensive understanding of why life’s race is already determined for most poor children before they even begin their first day at school.

In other words, despite massive improvements in real standards of living, there is still an underclass of children who grossly under perform at school and then end up being those who end up being the poorest adults (and the cycle repeats). 

Minette Martin in the Sunday Times (subscription only) noted that parental lack of attention and ignorance is a core issue.   Apparently children from poor homes in the UK hear 616 words spoken an hour on average, compared to 2,153 words an hour in more wealthier homes.  She points out that by age 3 this is 30 MILLION less words that the poorer children are hearing, and learning and remembering.   A gap in language and understanding that is almost impossible to get back.   

Field also notes the role that planners and state intervention in housing has had:

Post-war housing policy has also enjoyed more than a walk-on role. Mega developments, sweeping up communities, shaking them around, and scattering them onto new estates, often on the periphery of the towns where they had long established roots, also played a major part in the break-up of the extended, matriarchal family hierarchy and in so doing destroyed the support that this informal network provided for couples as they began the process of starting a family.

He doesn't note that this was driven by the Labour Party, and Conservatives happily went along with the clearance of the poor into estates that were away from their voters.   Field notes how little is done to make fathers pay for their children:


communities have insisted from time immemorial that men who beget children should be made to support those children and the children’s mother, usually by marriage. In a fit of what at best can be charitably described as absent mindedness, or of not wishing to cause a fuss, a whole number of governments forgot that one of its primary duties in safeguarding the wellbeing of children is to enforce the father’s financial responsibility.

Absolutely key is parents being interested in their child's education.  Field's research indicated this is
independent of the parents' own education.  The report noted an effect of the early home learning environment on age five outcomes over and above parental background factors such as socio-economic status, maternal education and family income.







Yes in other words parents who give a damn, who read to their kids, who are involved in their education and help them make far more of a difference than money.   Single parents families are also an issue as:

Fathers’ interest and involvement in their children’s learning is statistically associated with better educational outcomes (higher attainment as well as more positive attitudes and better behaviour) even when controlling for a wide variety of other influencing factors. A number of studies both from the United States and the UK have shown that father involvement has an independent effect from mother involvement and effects have been demonstrated both for younger children and for later educational outcomes.
 
However, this doesn't fit the Marxist monologue that it is all about wealth and if only the rich had more of their money taken and given to the poor unearned, it would all be better. 

Education doesn't get off the hook either:

Most studies also find that schools, and in particular teachers, have an impact on the gap in attainment between the richest and the poorest...Teaching quality was a significant predictor of progress in both reading and mathematics over Key Stage 2. Analysis of the attainment of older children showed that being taught by a high quality (top 25%) rather than low quality (bottom 25%) teacher added 0.425 of a GCSE grade per subject

In other words the fatuous self-serving nonsense peddled by teachers' unions that they can't be paid or judged on performance is just that.   Good teachers make a difference, which means setting their pay by some central government fiat is as nonsensical as setting the pay of chefs by the same means, but far more damaging.

No person who genuinely gives a damn about fixing child poverty would simply reject these findings out of hand and continue with the mindless belief that the welfare state can fix the problems of intergenerational poverty.  It is about parents, it is about education, it is not about money.
 

Frank Field's recommendations are heavy on intervention.  He wants monitoring of children in what he calls the "Foundation Years" (the first five years of life) and a concentration on support of parents and training of parents for those years.   He recommends freezing child benefit (which gives parents money for having children at all income levels, but which the government will be capping at parents who earn no more than £44,000 p.a. (well above the average income in the UK) and redirecting money towards services for children in the first five years of life.   I think far more needs to be done to change the incentives around breeding when one can't afford to do so,  and that education needs to be freed from the shackles of state control and direction.   

Yet what is more important is to finally ditch once and for all the Marxist based myth that the reason children from low income backgrounds do badly is about money (and the solution is to pillage money from other people), when it is about parenting.   If groups like CPAG really gave a damn about child poverty they would cease their obsession with increasing taxes and benefits, and engage in hands on assistance for parents who need help, and encourage people who are in poverty to concentrate on improving their own lives, not on breeding.