Bits and pieces

Yes, I do now have broadband internet at home, but this little interregnum of blogging will be brief as I will be away for a couple of weeks sans any sort of electronic communication at all.

So what's been happening?

1. The right concerns but the completely wrong answer. While Nicolas Sarkozy proves there is nothing a French politician likes doing more than regulating the lives of others, Old Holborn makes the point quite succinctly here. After all, plenty would be offended by the scene of a man walking around with a woman on a collar and lead, but why should it be banned? Meanwhile, is one of the key reasons for this issue being raised because the liberal socialist left refuses to confront Islamism directly, and is willfully blind to the oppression of women by most Islamic cultures because it sees any enemy of the West as a friend?

2. The Con-Dem British government is off in several directions, primarily focused on cutting spending it has decided to slash spending on its core responsibility - law and order. Whilst there are undoubtedly efficiencies to be gained in the sector, and undoubtedly many people shouldn't be imprisoned for a whole raft of offences that are more civil (e.g. not meeting child support payments) than criminal, is the question being asked as to whether there should be less criminal offences at all? In other words, if there is no victim, why should it be a criminal matter? Prison is effective at its core role - protecting the public from criminals. One report suggests that replacing prison time with community sentences will increase crime.

3. The Obama Administration is showing how empty headed and vapid it really is, by its continued embrace of xenophobic anti-capitalist rhetoric against BP. Now it is accusing BP of lobbying to release Libyan terrorists from British custody, when Exxon-Mobil and Shell did exactly the same thing. It is accusing the British government of being a party to providing succour to terrorists, when it happened over a year ago under the Gordon Brown regime, and was in fact the devolved Scottish government (albeit with Downing St tacit approval). Quite what the Obama Administration thought would be gained by hassling the newly elected Prime Minister about something he had nothing to do with, is rather curious.

4. Australia is having a Federal election. A choice between a feral unionist and a feral evangelist. Neither are deserving of a vote from a libertarian. Whilst it is tempting to back the "mad monk" Abbott, because of climate change alone, the Liberal Party remains liberal in name only.

A better choice, given the preference/AV based voting system is the Liberal Democratic Party which lists Ayn Rand as one of the great classical liberals of history. It seeks to abolish victimless crimes, significantly cut taxes (income tax would have the first $30,000 tax free then a flat tax of 30%), engage in a major privatisation programme, replace welfare with negative income tax and promote free trade. Think of it as ACT with balls AND a belief in personal individual liberty.

It has more to it than the Secular Party which seems more a reaction to the Christian politics of Abbott and the now defunct Rudd. It is broader based than the Shooters Party, which is essentially just about the freedom of peaceful people to own firearms. It also doesn't have the obsessive believe in anti-discrimination laws of the Australia Sex Party, as tempting as that party may be to some.

4. A city councillor in Wales is suspended for Tweeting "I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off." Apparently this is against the local authority code of conduct according to the Public Services Ombudsman. If ever there was a reason to abolish this body or to make those on it undertake training in fundamental individual freedoms, this is it. Britain is a country where expressing your opinion about a religion is restricted, because it might upset the precious little flowers who believe in ghosts.

5. New Zealand's government continues to disappoint. The weak will surrounding mining in national parks, the continued evasion of reality over climate change and the inability to lay down an agenda that directly confronts the anti-human anti-science statism of the Greens, and by default the Labour Party, should cause many more National and ACT voters to weep. Now you're going to vote for an Auckland Mayor who will be more of the same.

UPDATE: Well it would appear the Australian Liberal Democratic Party is more disappointing than it may seem. I have been informed privately that it is largely marketing driven, and that the presence of Ayn Rand on the front page was for marketing purposes. I'd be curious if any Australian libertarians and especially objectivists would interrogate Liberal Democrat politicians as to what they REALLY believe in. A laudable goal would be to return the Liberal Party to its core principles, but the chances of that may be as much as there is in getting the (New Zealand) National Party to do so as well.

Mines, railway or jobs

I just had to comment on this.

Green MP Catherine Delahunty is waging war against Nightcaps, a small town in Southland I have long been aware of, as it is the locality of a collection of lignite mines. Well it isn't the town, but the mines she hates.

There is some local concern about the pollution arising from the mines, which have existed in one form or another for over a century. The mining is carried out by two companies. One is Australian (boo hiss bad) which she mentions as "Eastern Corporation of Australia", the other she doesn't mention is state-owned Solid Energy.

Now let's be fair here, if the mines closed, then the town would be a shadow of its current self. Jobs would be lost, and people would have to relocate (although Catherine would probably want a generous welfare state to keep people living there off the taxpayers' back).

What she neglects to mention is that the government COULD actually cut back the mining there rather easily. Solid Energy is the obvious first target. Presumably the Greens would close the company down.

However a less visible target is Kiwirail. You see most of the mined lignite leaves Nightcaps on a railway branch line, which has a daily coal train. The line is the last railway branch line in Southland (other than that there is the Main South Line running from Dunedin to Invercargill and onto Bluff), and if it was being run commercially it would probably face closure. Unless, of course, the mining companies would pay commercial rates for freighting the coal (they did under privatisation, but the line needs bridge and track replacement as it has not had serious renewals since it was built).

Yet with Kiwirail now state owned and subsidised, a policy endorsed and cheered on by the Greens, it effectively subsidises the mining operations they despise.

On top of that the mine she talks about is apparently on local authority land. Presumably she believes in empowered local government, yet Southland District Council doesn't do what she likes

So one state intervention - propping up a railway, is having results (keeping open some mines) that those who PROMOTE state intervention, despise.

So what will it be Catherine?

Keep subsidising the railway?
Keep local people employed in mining and supporting those employed?
Let local authorities continue to own land used for purposes you don't like?
Close the mine and the town?

What a choice for those addicted to planning the world around them.

What would I do?

1. Run the railway commercially or offer it to the mining companies to buy if it is that important to them.
2. Enable the property owners of Nightcaps (and across New Zealand) to enforce property rights against noxious levels of trespass of gases (smoke) and dust.
3. Tell the local authority to sell the land (as it should with any surplus land).
4. Leave the mining companies to do as they wish.

What law do you want abolished?

Yes, it may be hard to believe, but the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government is asking just that.

Now it would be too much to hope for taxes, planning laws and much much more to be abolished, but there IS a chance here to do some good.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said in today's Daily Telegraph:

"today we are taking an unprecedented step. Based on the belief that it is people, not policymakers, who know best, we are asking the people of Britain to tell us how you want to see your freedom restored.

We are calling for your ideas on how to protect our hard won liberties and repeal unnecessary laws. And we want to know how best to scale back excessive regulation that denies businesses the space to innovate. We’re hoping for virtual mailbags full of suggestions. Every single one will be read, with the best put to Parliament"

Now you may be cynical, and I am a little, but this is STILL a great step forward. Imagine anyone from the Brown/Blair regimes saying anything like this. Administrations that thrived on passing new laws to fix problems.

So it is a great chance. The website to make suggestions is here. It helps if you have a UK postcode and probably helps most to vote for the best ideas (there are many wingnuts out there and people wanting new laws passed).

So what would YOU abolish?

Osborne’s emergency budget accepts Labour’s larger state

The Conservative-Lib Dem emergency budget, presented yesterday by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, was meant to fix the fiscal nightmare created by Gordon Brown’s decade or so of profligacy. The man who borrowed and spent up large in the boom years, increasing public debt year on year, and then suddenly switched to a half-baked version of Keynesianism (whereby he does the same in the bad years, ignoring that Keynes did say that in boom years such debts should be paid down).

The fiscal position Britain is in is stark. It is NOT because of the government bailing out banks. By 2016 the UK public debt will be £1.3 trillion, that is even WITH the cuts in spending and increases in taxes from the emergency budget, being over 70% of GDP (and that does not include PFI and pension obligations which are not counted as debt). What Osborne has done is effectively halve the deficit – deficit being overspending – by 2015. He is making the problem grow at half the speed of Gordon Brown before the UK reaches a theoretical balanced budget by 2016.

How is he doing it? Well if you listen to some it sounds like he’s been tough on spending. He hasn’t. 23% of the reduction is by pilfering even more from British taxpayers than before. In other words, the Con-Dem administration is ACCEPTING that Gordon Brown was right to spend more. The argument is a matter of degree. As much as George Osborne is cutting spending, he isn’t cutting it back to remain within the relatively high tax envelope Britain has, he is raising taxes as well.

Most stark is that VAT is being increased from 17.5% to 20%. A significant hike which will choke off retail spending and hurt almost everyone. Perhaps it is the price for the inane British worship of the NHS, but it isn’t presented as that. A Bank Levy is being introduced, punishing all banks for the foolishness of some. Capital Gains Tax is increased as well. He is even investigating a “Financial Activities Tax” (or a tax to chase finance out of the UK to Switzerland). Hopefully that will go nowhere.

There is some modest good news on tax.

Some tax thresholds change, which lowers taxes on some smaller businesses and those on the lowest incomes. Company tax is being dropped by 1% a year every year for four years to reduce it to 24%. That in itself will be positive for business growth in the UK. Small companies will only pay 20%. A stark contrast to some! A proposed tax on phone lines is to go. Fuel, tobacco and alcohol taxes have not been increased. The minimum income threshold for income tax is being increased slightly. However, of course none of this offsets the hit on VAT.

On spending the picture is very mixed as well.

He announced an average of 20% spending cuts across departments (excluding health and overseas aid), which will be detailed later in the year. How that might affect core spending such as defence, justice and police will be curious, but the devil will be in the detail. Sadly he hasn’t simply decided to abolish departments to make that easier.

Public sector pay is frozen for two years, when it should be frozen until there is a surplus. Quite what business would increase pay when it is bleeding red ink (especially for people often unemployable elsewhere) is beyond me. Those earning less than £18,000 wont be subject to the pay freeze, but are all getting flat pay increases – regardless of performance (and Labour say the Tories hate the poor?).

The retirement age is to be raised to 66, but pensions have become another huge bribe. Future state pension increases will be linked to earnings, not inflation, producing a huge demographic based fiscal nightmare for the medium term. Nobody is telling pensioners they don’t get back what they put in, but what their children and grandchildren will be paying in taxes.

As welfare spending increased 45% in ten years, that had to be tackled too. Benefits are only to be increased according to consumer prices, not retail prices (a lower level). A host of tax credits will be wound back. The ridiculous £190 grant to pregnant women (which the last government said was to encourage them to eat healthy, when it typically was used to buy a TV, clothes or any other luxury item) is being abolished. Child benefit is frozen for three years, but absurdly is NOT being taken away from those on middle to higher incomes.

Housing benefit, which costs more than the police and tertiary education combined, is being scaled back by capping the total amount paid. Apparently some families with earnings of over £100,000 have been getting housing benefit legitimately!!

Privatisation is part of the picture too. The sale of the high speed rail line to the Channel Tunnel, the NATS (air traffic control system), the student loan debts and the Tote were announced. None of this is controversial.

Yet so much more could have been done to avoid any tax increases. Simply ensuring all benefits/tax credits were only available to those in the bottom quartile of earnings could have saved billions. There could have been a clear and decisive end to corporate welfare of all kinds. Finally, whilst it would have been politically unpalatable, the greatest gains could have come from raising student fees and charging for basic NHS services (say half the cost of doctor visits).

Yes, the Con-Dem government has avoided the UK facing the kind of run on its currency and public debt that the socialist countries of the Mediterranean are now facing. However, it has retained the dependency mentality of entitlement to benefits because you breed, health care on demand rationed by queuing and enormous bureaucracy and government always “being there” to help individuals, businesses and the like.

Gordon Brown’s big state is still there, most of the cuts are not cuts, but just stalling of the growth of the state. The fact that 23% of the deficit reduction plan comes from increasing taxes should tell you that this is a conservative government with a small “c”, it is not a government of smaller government and free markets.

Cuts are not painful

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is preparing the country for austerity, mk III.

Mk 1 was the easy part, the 1% trimming of public spending to save £6.2 billion in the current year, essentially the spending the Conservatives had promised to cut. Was not much, but a taste of what was to come.

Mk 2 was last week. £2 billion worth of projects were cancelled, and another £8.5 billion deferred. Almost all of it spending approved in the dying years of the Brown regime. This included the absurd "investment" of £80 million that the government didn't have to "create" 200 jobs, although I doubt the average wage was close to £400,000 each!!

Mk 3 promises to be much much "worse" say the papers. Actually, it mostly wont be painful, if it weren't that 20% of the austerity will comprise of tax INCREASES in one form or another. Capital Gains Tax and VAT are likely targets, and it is they that will threaten the recovery, not the spending cuts.

There will be major cuts hopefully. Public sector pay is expected to at least be frozen if not cut, and public sector pensions are expected to face severe cuts because they are becoming unaffordable. Welfare benefits are likely to be frozen as well, with a scythe taken to the "middle class welfare" Labour built up to buy votes. One of the absurdities of the UK welfare state is how many recipients are on above average incomes. Hopefully it will be the end to that and more.

You see the Tories have stupidly ringfenced health and overseas aid spending for no cuts, which means it will be welfare and public sector pay that get hammered. Painful?

No. It isn't painful unless you think living within your means so you are lumbered with debt (or your children aren't) is painful. It is called being prudent. It isn't painful to stop stealing money from future generations. The UK public sector is already better paid that the private sector - yes you read right, the average income in the public sector is 2% higher than the private sector for similar jobs.

It isn't painful to wean people who are on average and above incomes from the state tit, so they actually bear the cost of raising their own children. It isn't painful for the private sector to no longer be shouldering the burden of competing against a bloated public sector staff.

Already the government is announcing new privatisations, the latest being the high speed railway between London and the Channel Tunnel.

It would be too much to hope for no tax cuts, or for the NHS to start charging for GP visits and face its own cuts, or for student fees to be at least 50% cost recovery, or for welfare to be time restricted (and only restricted to UK citizens!). However, it will be the start of rolling back the creeping (and bankrupting) state of New Labour.

Labour's lies about it are too easy to refute. It "threatens the recovery" if the state doesn't keep borrowing at record levels. Furthermore is the deceit that the deficit is about bailing out banks, when the truth is that the proportion of spending related to the banks is close to 2%. Labour is claiming it is ideologically led, as if overspending and growing the state by Labour wasn't.

The deficit is a legacy of Labour bribing voters with their kids' stolen future earnings, it was immoral then and is now. It is only moral for this government to end this as swiftly as it can, and start to confront the debt.

Note the difference with a certain government on the opposite side of the world.