UK elections - Liberal but Democrats, so what are they this time?

I had the great fortune of missing the debate between the two men who will be Prime Minister and Nick Clegg on British TV - largely because I was on one of the last planes out of Heathrow before the volcanic ash cloud plummeted the country into environmentalist heaven.

The Liberal Democrats are deserving of attention for three reasons.

Firstly, the original "Liberal Party" once governed the UK and once proudly embraced free market capitalism and social liberalism. When it waivered from this, it moved to the centre, embraced Keynesianism and the Labour Party supplanted it as a major party, from which it has never recovered. Until the merger with the Social Democrats (a breakaway from Labour when it was avowedly Marxist).

Secondly, as the third biggest party, with 66 seats, it has the potential to be a kingmaker if neither major party wins an outright majority. This has happened last time in 1974, on that occasion the Conservatives came second, but Ted Heath tried to remain in power through support from Ulster Unionists. They had demands Heath was unwilling to agree to, so Harold Wilson from Labour formed a government with support from the Liberals, but the majority was so slim he called another election that same year. Labour won an small majority, which itself disappeared over the next few years as Labour lost by-elections and formed a pact with the Liberals. The possibility is real that this situation could be replicated.

Thirdly, with Nick Clegg allegedly the "winner" from the first leader debate, the poll ratings of the Liberal Democrats have soared. With both the Conservatives and Labour losing support to the Lib Dems, making it more of a three way race.

So should lovers of freedom embrace the presence of the Liberal Democrats, given their consistent support for civil liberties and suspicion of state interference in the rights of citizens? Or is it simply a wolf in sheep's clothing?

Conservative manifesto - less worse than Labour but where is the freedom?

Given the electoral system in the UK, the big choice for most voters is whether to support the incumbent Labour Party, and its "we'll look after you, give us your money and promise us your kids' money too" approach or the Conservatives.

Labour, naturally, wants to portray the Conservatives as the "nasty party" proclaiming that it would make "brutal" cuts like Margaret Thatcher did, and claim that the radicalism of that government is where the Tories REALLY have their hearts and minds.

A little odd given the Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted on the BBC that LABOUR would have to make cuts worse better than Thatcher.

Nevertheless, on the face of it, given how the Tories have abandoned the closeted xenophobia, anti-homosexual, social intolerance of the past, is there really hope that the Tories are now socially liberal AND the great inheritors of Thatcher's culling of the state?

After all, I would LOVE to be able to give the Conservatives my moral authority to earn my vote. Britain needs to consign the pseudo-Keynesian spendthrift promise breaker Gordon Brown and his tribe of envy peddling control freaks to history. So is there something to hope for in the Opposition? A belief in capitalism, individual freedom, commitment to addressing real crimes and to a state that weans the public from dependency on it for pensions, healthcare and their kids' education?

Not if you read the Conservative Manifesto. No. In fact, the Conservative Party continues to be suspicious of capitalism, embraces wholeheartedly the religion of unquestioned environmentalism. Moreover, you'll be spending a lot of time searching for the freedom in it, because it largely isn't there.

Its first policy is called "Big Society". Remember when Margaret Thatcher correctly said (and was subsequently quoted only in part) that there is "no such thing as society"? She meant that when people say "society" thinks this, or is to "blame" for that, that it is a nonsense as there is no collective brain. Society is simply a group of individuals who interact with their own consciousness, own opinions and diverse views, lives and attitudes.

The "Big Society" policy says "We have set out an ambitious agenda to build a Big Society based around social responsibility and community action." In capital letters? Quite simply, fuck that.

Allister Heath in City AM put it so very well:

their “big society” agenda, which looks suspiciously like a rebranded big state. “Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group.” Really? What about those so busy trying to make ends meet that they have taken on two jobs, or who are too ill or too old or who have to care for young children or elderly relatives? And what about the barmy proposal for vast numbers of state-funded community organisers? It’s nonsense – slightly sinister nonsense, even, with authoritarian undertones and entirely unaffordable in an age of drastic austerity. One can’t chide the state for its bossiness and all-controlling bureaucratic officialdom – and simultaneously try and make volunteering compulsory. There is such a thing as freedom and being allowed to do whatever one wants with one’s life, rather than being bossed about by do-gooders. It is worrying how, for all their empowering rhetoric (and in some cases proposed actions, such as on civil liberties) the Tories have forgotten about this.

He's right you know. It is the classic conservative agenda, not of letting free individuals live as they want as long as they don't hurt others, but putting obligations on your life to "participate" in ways the government approves of. Most people much of the time help and contribute to the lives of others, like parents, family, friends, colleagues. They don't need Uncle David Cameron telling them to volunteer on top of that.

The Tories have made a big deal of not increasing national insurance tax like Labour will, but they will STILL increase it for those earning over £35,000.

Frankly the most positive policy is on education, by allowing anyone to set up a school in competition with the state and have state funding follow students to that school. A form of semi-deregulation of the compulsory education sector.

Beyond that there are some positives:
- Reducing corporation tax and an agenda to reduce regulation on business;
- Resolving the West Lothian question, by requiring issues that only involve England or England and Wales need to be passed by a majority of MPs from those constituent countries;
- Allowing council tax payers to veto increases in council tax by petition;
- Retain and replace Britain's nuclear deterrent;
- Ensure that UK has final sovereignty over its laws (which wont happen as it means leaving the EU in effect);
- Reduce (but not eliminate) powers to enter homes by councils;
- Scrap compulsory ID cards;
- Allow DNA from innocent people to removed from databases;
- Remove consensual gay sex convictions from criminal records;
- Freeze council tax for two years.

Then some negatives:
- Giving other people's money to households to pay for energy efficiency measures;
- Stop the privately owned and funded third runway at Heathrow on spurious environmental grounds, and no more runways at Gatwick or Stansted either;
- Interfering in energy markets because of climate change;
- Introduce voluntary "National Service";
- Create a new bureaucracy to look to prop up food prices for farmers;
- Destroy remaining property rights of BT and other telcos by forcing them to sell broadband capacity to others;
- Force everyone to pay for universal broadband access below cost in rural areas;
- Increase state health spending and foreign aid spending in real terms whilst the country is in fiscal crisis;
- Refusing to abolish the 50p top tax rate while public sector pay is frozen;
- Put a FLOOR under landfill tax;
- Retaining the ridiculous and distortionary "free at point of use" policy of the NHS;
- Encourage councils to build more council housing;
- Limit non-EU immigration;
- Maintain most of Labour's expanded welfare state.

No, it doesn't inspire. It doesn't promise to not increase other taxes, like fuel duty and VAT. Welfare dependency remains, as do victimless crimes and the nanny statism over children that Labour introduced. It is at best devoid of ambition, with the only positive sign the education policy (even that is the ACT policy of 2008). The rest is denial of the need to confront socialised medicine, a complete disregard for private property rights and being hijacked by the inane environmentalist lobby to strangle growth in aviation.

Gordon Brown it is not, New Labour it is not, but does this deserve moral endorsement from me as a libertarian?

Sadly, no. I can't endorse the environmentalism, the confiscation of property rights, the weasel words around the deficit and tax, and the embracing of the NHS.

The question is whether the Tories are that bad that it wouldn't matter if Labour won or the Conservatives won. The problem I have is that if I vote Conservative I hardly have a right to object if they do what they say, since I would have had a hand in saying YES GOVERN ME.

I don't think I want to do that.

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?