Pakistan sadly spirals towards theocracy

The assassination of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, Pakistan, should send shivers down the spines of all within and outside Pakistan who do not wish to see that country become another Iran.  You see Taseer was a secularist, he wanted Pakistan to be a secular state that allowed citizens to choose not to be Muslims.  He himself was a Muslim.  His most recent campaign has been to oppose laws on blasphemy, as he defended Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, from being convicted and executed.  Not only it is a crime to blaspheme against Islam in Pakistan, but it carries a mandatory death sentence.

He was murdered by one of his own security guards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri.  He aimed at AK-47 at Taseer and shot him 27 times. Notably, his other guards didn't shoot and kill Qadri, who is now under arrest.  

As is to be expected, Facebook pages have emerged for Taseer AND for his murderer.  Yes, his murderer has much support among Islamist violence peddlers across the world.  

The whole idea of Pakistan was a mistake, it was a recipe for disaster from the start and the blood of hundreds of thousands have been spilt because of this mindless religious sectarianism in what was India (and Hindus are not innocent of this either).  The contrast today is palpable between an outward looking growing liberalising India, and a poor, backward, terrorist ridden Pakistan.  If only Pakistan could shed Islamism it could join with its fast growing neighbour and be a country that didn't chase its best and brightest overseas to flee violence and seek opportunity.  

Have little doubt, the war in Afghanistan is as much about keeping Islamism from overrunning Pakistan as it is about keeping the Taliban confined in Afghanistan.  A Western-Indian strategy to keep Pakistan from becoming Islamist is essential to ensure the worst possible outcome does not arise.  For if it does, then prepare for blood to be spilt on a grand scale.  India knows this too well, it would be good if the Obama Administration, NATO and others did so as well.

Monbiot says share your house or else! (UPDATED for Monbiotbots)

I visited the Green Party website for the first time in age today, nothing quite as funny as seeing Catherine Delahunty on the front page claiming 1 in 5 New Zealanders experience disability (it being pretty obvious that she is one of them), but one of the pin ups of the Green Party is British radical environmental moonbat - George Monbiot.  Monbiot is an advocate of all sorts of compulsion, including banning patio heaters, replacing gas pipelines with hydrogen, abolish superstores, cut airport capacity, as well as calling for an end to economic growth.

His latest missive is his brilliant solution to the high cost of housing in the UK - make people rent out their spare rooms.  Not rooms they define as spare, but ones that the Great Leader George Monbiot has deemed as excessive.  He thinks that people shouldn't have spare bedrooms, that there should be a housing footprint.  That means a couple in a four bedroom house should rent out two rooms.  Spare rooms should be occupied by people seeking housing.

Monbiot is such the little central planner control freak, that he believes pensioners should rent out spare rooms so people can live with them and provide home help and assistance.

He seems to have completely ignored the simple point that most people like to choose who they live with and to decide what to do with their own property.   He has decided there are enough homes around if only people used less rooms.  Are there limits to this bullying wannabe thugs willingness to stomp over the rights of others?

Nothing says more about his complete contempt for property rights, lack of any understanding about personal achievement and reward for effort and value than this statement:

While most houses are privately owned, the total housing stock is a common resource. Either we ensure that it is used wisely and fairly, or we allow its distribution to become the starkest expression of inequality.

A common resource?  How much of a communist is this man?  Its "distribution"?  Who "distributed" it?  If you buy land and build on it, who "distributed" it?  It is as if he thinks some holy economic father dishes out money and resources, and all that is needed is someone to reverse it.  He either doesn't know or willfully blinds himself to how the diffuse ownership of property is due to millions upon millions of decisions by billions of people who buy, sell, earn, consume, destroy and build, in spite of petty thugs like Monbiot who prefer the Khmer Rouge approach to government - do whatever it takes to reach a final solution.

He wants to tax empty rooms.  He is just a thieving little religious evangelist who deserves no more attention than the hate filled Westboro Baptist Church.

Monbiot has no respect for property rights or individual rights at all.  He is chief priest of the high church of environmental armageddonism.

Of course, the Green Party gleefully links to him approvingly on regular occasions.  Will it soon be promoting housing footprints?  Is not the Green belief in planning laws to promote high density housing based around railway stations a form of embracing this agenda?

Ed West in the Daily Telegraph calls him a fascist and carefully explains why.  It is about time that Monbiot was ignored for the raving lunatic crank he is.

Meanwhile, Tim Blair points out that Al Gore achieves five rooms per inhabitant in his home.

UPDATE:  Some have said Monbiot doesn't actually say force people to share their homes, but what does this tell you:

He says of housing footprints: " Like ecological footprints, it reminds us that the resource is finite, and that if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need".  Zero sum economics.  Sheer utter nonsense.  As if you cannot increase housing capacity without destroying something valuable.  Even ignoring land, he's forgotten airspace or is that precious too??

However, he carefully shrouds his iron fist in his glove by saying this:  "none of the major parties wants to pick a fight with wealthy householders. So it’s up to us to give them no choice, by turning under-occupation into an issue they can’t avoid. It cannot be left to the market, as the market works for the rich."  He doesn't intend to persuade anyone, he wants to give "no choice" he doesn't want the market, he wants to use force (the only alternative).   It is semantics to claim otherwise.

Monbiot's suggestions about council tax discounts are besides the point.  Council tax is a charge for individuals using council services with a relationship to property prices to have some reflection of income.  As a libertarian I'd scrap council tax altogether, because all council services can be funded by direct or indirect users.  The council tax discount is virtually irrelevant in any case, as it would be a small fraction of the annual cost of housing.

Monbiot does have a four bedroom house and this great hero lives in it with his daughter and two lodgers.  His own choice is a shining example to us all of course.

Ending the subsidy to breed

Cactus Kate has written about two interconnected issues, the chronic rate of extreme abuse and neglect of children in New Zealand disproportionately by Maori adults, and the way the state subsidises breeding from the taxes of others.

She is right of course.  Despite Marxist reality evaders like John Minto and Maia excusing brutal child abuse as being about poverty, precious little is needed to disprove that.  If it were true, children in poorer countries would be getting beaten up and murdered in record numbers.  The problem is not material the problem is a poverty of aspirations, a problem of people breeding recklessly and keeping the kids because they bring in cash, or wanting to be parents, but also wanting to party, get drunk, leave children with relatives, friends, neighbours and then psychologically abusing the kids who want attention.  People who themselves wasted their education, don't read, don't study, don't work hard and don't want kids who know they can be better than them, are the source of abuse and despair.   They destroy the lives and futures of children because they have made their lives a daily search for instant gratification, sensation and mindless hedonism.

Her answers are good as well.  The first priority for the welfare state should be to cease paying the DPB to new claimants, and to end all other benefits/tax allowances for children, in exchange for lowering taxes across the board.  People shouldn't be rewarded for breeding.  Indeed, breeding whilst on welfare benefits should be penalised on the basis that the last thing someone should do whilst unemployed or sick is to breed.

By contrast, imagine if there was an income tax free threshold of NZ$15,000.  What if GST could go back down to 12.5% (!), then families who do work hard to make a difference wouldn't be penalised so much for what they do.  

However, to do that you'd need to vote for political parties that believe in more freedom and less government.  These don't apparently exist in Parliament at the moment.

The bigger message is that breeding carries responsibility and to give up some of your money, time and effort for children.  It costs you to breed.  Nobody else owes you or your children a living, except the source of the sperm (or egg) of your child.   Along with such welfare and tax reform would be the legal obligation of each parent to be responsible for the basic needs of the child (unless one has been removed from this by contract/court agreement).  

While we are at it, why not deny custody of children of all those convicted of serious violent and sexual offences - for reasons that are rather obvious.

Fascist council of the day

If the British Government ever needed reasons to cut funding local authorities and to reject the stupid Tory policy of devolution of powers to local government, it is the likes of Bedfordshire Borough Council.

The Daily Telegraph reports how a man who put up 20 A4 posters, home made, seeking his lost cat, was threatened by council goons for "fly posting" (it being illegal to just put posters up on lampposts).  He was phoned by the council and a letter was sent telling him of his offence, and threatening a £1000 fine.

A spokesman said: ''Our Environmental Enforcement Team discovered more than 20 of Mr Harding's 'lost cat' posters. Some were nailed to eight trees along The Embankment. ''As well as damaging trees, fly-posting is also illegal and may lead to fines of up to £1,000. 

That's what a power of general competence gets you.

Yes the local government policy of the National Party originally came from the UK and the Blair administration.   

2011 comes with a UK tax hike

Despite all the nonsensical blusterings of the British Labour Party and others on the left who think that government halting the rise of the state is somehow some neo-liberal revolution, the truth is that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government is not driven by an ambition to shrink the state.

Proof of this has been seen twice in four days.  On 1 January, the UK's fuel excise duty (fuel tax), one of the highest in the world, went up by another £0.0075 a litre.  Not much, and yes it was a decision from the Brown Government, but the money is entirely to help reduce the budget deficit.  You seen, unlike NZ, the UK's fuel excise duty is entirely revenue for the Crown, none of it is dedicated to roads or transport spending at all (and it corresponds to about five times the total government expenditure on roads).  Fuel tax in the UK is now nearly 59p per litre (NZ$1.18).  That plus VAT makes tax more than half the price of petrol.

Speaking of VAT, that rises to 20% from 4 January, up from 17.5%.  Now VAT in the UK does not include food not served in restaurants, childrens' clothes, books and other items, but this tax increase has provoked considerable buying of bigger items such as cars, electronics and clothes in the post Xmas sales.

All in all, it is more money for the UK government, less for consumers, retailers, wholesalers, producers.  Labour's Ed Miliband is opposing the increase, but like an ostrich in the sand he never says what spending he would cut, what taxes he would increase, and given Labour is so overwhelmingly to blame for a decade of reckless overspending, he has no credibility except for the whinging unionised public sector workforce and those who don't want to be weaned from the state tit. 

The Opposition's only response is to say that the UK government should not cut its overspending so fast, delaying the inevitable, and increasing overall public debt levels - but if you're a socialist who wants to remain willfully blind about government borrowing why shouldn't you just be on the side of "the people" in promoting the same ignorance?

Of course there is no need to increase either tax, it will suppress demand and suppress the private sector.  There is still plenty of scope to cut public spending, such as eliminating child benefits and winter fuel allowances for those not in poverty, getting rid of subsidies for "green energy", not pursuing an unprofitable high speed railway pet project and not increasing foreign state aid.   The British state has grown like an obese nanny never sated on desserts.   Tax increases delay economic recovery and help cement the fact the UK economy is now 50% consumed by the state.

Thatcherite government? hardly.