Russel Norman shows the mindlessness of the far-left (UPDATED)

I'm not a fan of Russel Norman.  He's a prick.

He might be a co-leader of the Green Party, but he quickly resorts to personal abuse and name calling when debating.  He plays the man, not the ball.  I've engaged with a few Green MPs and most are more dignified than he is.

See we have a history...

I questioned his view on cellphone towers, based on some knowledge about EMR issues, and he aligned me with ACT and called me CaptivityScott and DungeonScott.

Then he says I am "far right" for saying it was offensive on the day that dead bodies were being found in Brisbane after severe floods to say that Queensland is a major contributor to climate change, as if they were reaping what they sowed.   Because you see, Norman can't actually believe people who want less government aren't somehow Nazis.

His latest effort is to copy Ken Livingstone (not copied by UK Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband) in saying on Twitter:

London riots show costs of inequality and poverty can present with more immediacy than slowly increasing public health bills

Bullshit.  Especially vile since you wont see Russel Norman coming to London to talk to those who wrecked havoc and stole, you especially wont see him talking to the owners of businesses whose lives and families are ruined.  One couple came from Sri Lanka with nothing, and now have their livelihood destroyed.  What's poverty Russel? How can hundreds of thousands of migrants from far poorer backgrounds who come with nothing create livings for themselves, whereas thousands of kids who have been handed education and homes on a plate, who in some cases are given a basic living for doing nothing, be seen as underprivileged?

The gangs who roamed around London used Blackberries, that great symbol of poverty, to organise.  Many had cars to drive around in, which given nearly half of Londoners don't have cars (given the density of public transport) means they are hardly in poverty.  Most weren't seeking food, they went for designer clothes, widescreen TVs, or in many cases just wanted to vandalise.  How else does it explain the breaking in to a baby clothing shop (in Ealing), and just strewing the contents of the shop around?  These aren't mothers desperately needing stuff for their kids, they are thugs who just want to destroy.

However, Russel Norman can't understand that.  He is as out of touch with the underclasses as he is with the laws of physics and economics (think he lives in a housing estate?).  He can't believe people can be evil and destructive for no reason.  He can't believe that people can be given the full blame for their actions, because his "world view" is coloured by Marxist structuralist identity politics that automatically labels people as either empowered or oppressed according to race or class background.  The Sri Lankan couple with a shop are petty bourgeois, the black youth gang are "disadvantaged", the young (Malaysian student) boy robbed while he was injured might have more "power" because of his background. 

It is collectivist groupthink - it categorises people as winners or losers by stereotypes.  It is racism of the left, which is more sophisticated if not less insidious and destructive than racism of the right.

A more sophisticated view has come from the Editor of the Independent, not my favourite newspaper as it tends to be the mouthpiece of the Liberal Democrat left, but still take this:

We know enough about these riots and those perpetrating them to know what they are not. This is not a political protest. The rioters have no agenda. It is not centrally directed. The goal is acquisitive looting or brainless destruction. The original riot in Tottenham on Saturday seems to have been sparked by a community's sense of grievance against the police. But what happened in Woolwich, Toxteth and Bristol on Monday night is clearly not an anti-police protest. Much of it is copycat rioting. Criminal gangs and antisocial youths have seized on an opportunity to run amok, knowing that the police cannot be everywhere at once.

Nor is this a response to public-sector austerity. Reports of the Government's cuts might have added to the air of desperation in many poor communities. But the fact is that most cuts have not been implemented yet. This is not a riot driven by new media either. BlackBerrys and Twitter – neither of which existed during the inner-city civil disturbances of the 1980s – have doubtless played a role in fanning the flames. But new media is hardly a sufficient explanation for this antisocial spasm. This is also not a race riot, in the manner of Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth or Broadwater Farm in the 1980s, either. The rioters of 2011 are racially mixed. And there is no overwhelming collective grievance against the police for racial harassment as there was three decades ago.

So the mindless claims, parroted by other leftwing bloggers like Tumeke and Kiwipolitico, are just that:

-  It isn't politically driven;

-  It isn't anti-Police per se;

-  It isn't a response to spending cuts;

-  It can't be blamed on social media;

-  It isn't racially driven.

It is "acquisitive looting and brainless destruction", it isn't desperation from poverty, it isn't a desire to "express themselves" (has it ever been less difficult to publish, record or broadcast?).

It is more disturbing:

many of these jobless and under-educated youths simply do not feel that they belong to a community. They have formed parallel groupings instead, defined by a shocking lack of morality and an immunity from shame. It is this criminal, marginalised and sometimes mentally disturbed underclass that Britain has seen in action in recent days.

They are, in part, a result of absent parents, especially fathers, who have been allowed for decades to breed and flee, with little financial consequences, leaving hoards of boys being raised without male role models, until they find the next best thing. The get recruited by tough gangsters who demand obedience, who deal in violence, theft and the black economy, but in the lawless environment of housing estates offer some security, the easy spoils of thieving, status and as a result access to the girls who cling on for their father figures, trading the one currency girls always have in.

It has been the damning failure of a massive social experiment, a belief that only with more money, more "youf centas", council workers, housing benefits, dumbed-down education that treats them as incapable of achieving, a softly softly approach to law and order for those who don't bother and infest these communities with their poisonous embrace of violence, but most of all the constant excuses from the illiberal left that "it isn't your fault" that you did things you shouldn't, that somehow these lost people can be saved.  It would be quasi-Christian, except Christians believe in punishment.  This philosophy, interwoven with the envy-ridden simplicity of Marxist belief that claim people succeed only through "luck" or by inheriting from people who are considered to have "stolen" from society, is now both philosophically and empirically bankrupt.

It is time to break up the housing estates that condemn kids from poor families to live in high density housing (good for public transport and the environment!) surrounded by gang culture.  It is time to cease paying people to breed.  It is time to cease handing out welfare to convicted violent criminals.  It is time to set education free of the state mass production system that claims one size fits all and which condemns kids of poor families to no choice.  It is time to promote a culture of celebrating entrepreneurship, hard work and trading, whilst not state subsidising a culture of violence, attitude laden demands for "respect" and unalloyed misogyny. 

Meanwhile, Russel Norman thinks he is qualified to point finger at a foreign country, score political points that are at the expense of hundreds of victims, and proclaim effectively that if only taxes took more money for these rioters, they wouldn't riot. He ignores the small business owners whose livelihoods are ruined, and those of the people they employed.  People who despite poverty, make a go of their lives, even with the taxes and regulation Russel thinks makes what they do "good for society", for let's not forget that if any such businesses do very well, he will want to smash them down to size or pillage more for the people who would destroy them.  Always second, third, fourth chances to those who demand it all for nothing, always more and more taxes and demands for those who ask for nothing, but build for themselves.

He isn't interested in poverty, he is interested in point scoring, in state control and intervention and in using state power to take from some to give to others.   For if he cared about poverty, he'd worry about the businesses that keep these communities alive, that provide goods and services, and hire people and create wealth for them.  No, he cares about those who if left to their own devices, would turn everyone to dust, and after taking all they could, would starve to death because nobody productive would be left.

In fact, his philosophy of not letting the perpetrator take responsibility for his or her actions and ignoring the victim of their crimes has been a resounding failure.  It is not a time to bribe the uncivilised and destructive with money taken from the civilised and creating.

UPDATE: You'll do worse than read Allister Heath's editorial today..read it all but for part of what he says:

The cause of the riots is the looters; opportunistic, greedy, arrogant and amoral young criminals who believe that they have the right to steal, burn and destroy other people’s property. There were no extenuating circumstances, no excuses. The context was two-fold: first, decades of failed social, educational, family and microeconomic policies, which means that a large chunk of the UK has become alienated from mainstream society, culturally impoverished, bereft of role models, permanently workless and trapped and dependent on welfare or the shadow economy. For this the establishment and the dominant politically correct ideology are to blame: they deemed it acceptable to permanently chuck welfare money at sink estates, claiming victory over material poverty, regardless of the wider consequences, in return for acquiring a clean conscience. The second was a failure of policing and criminal justice, exacerbated by an ultra-soft reaction to riots over the past year involving attacks on banks, shops, the Tory party HQ and so on, as well as an official policy to shut prisons and reduce sentences. Criminals need to fear the possibility and consequence of arrest; if they do not, they suddenly realise that the emperor has no clothes.

he disposes of the arguments around it being political

the state will spend 50.1 per cent of GDP this year; state spending has still been rising by 2 per cent year on year in cash terms. It has never been as high as it is today – in fact, it is squeezing out private sector growth and hence reducing opportunities and jobs. Many of the vandals were school children not yet in the labour market; unemployment is a tragedy that must be fought but 9, 10 or 14 year olds can’t be pillaging because of it. Equally tragically, most of the older rioters would never have any hope of going to university, regardless of cost, such is their educational poverty.

London's Day of Reckoning, or who is in charge?

After three nights of looting, arson, vandalism, home invasions and assaults, one must start to wonder as the "thin blue line" between law and order, and anarchical violence and destruction, has been broken.

If I hadn’t been watching TV or being online, I would have noticed no difference in London, except that the two men who hand out the free papers at the entrance to my local underground station were absent – the papers still in plastic wrapped piles unopened. A sign that perhaps they had something more important to do, like protect their families. I can afford to live in a part of London where the local population has few who are feral, but even then middle class areas like Ealing have been ransacked. Indeed, there are now dozens upon dozens of people who are now homeless and jobless, because of those who celebrated destruction. Those that if they were let loose would send us all back into the stone age, for they take and destroy, but produce and create absolutely nothing.

Only the wilfully blind, or geographically remote, will think these riots have anything to do with the death of a man in the weekend. They have nothing to do with so-called “spending cuts” or being “disenfranchised”.

The enormous live TV coverage seen here in the UK has shown pretty much what has been going on:

- Criminal gangs have been organising themselves to steal electrical goods, clothes, shoes, watches and the like. They have been using the net and mobile phones to identify where there are no police and going around in groups by car, to ransack;

- Teenagers (and younger) are roaming their local streets, and some are deciding to copycat the criminal gangs. Either to throw items at Police, break windows, start fires, steal or generally cause mayhem. It’s the school holidays, so many see it as a lot fun;

- A significant number (if not proportion) of the young people involved in this are largely amoral about the property of others, so much coverage has shown boys and girls laughing, giggling, saying “let’s get us some watches man” or the like. Shamelessly taking off with the property of others;

- The extensive and ubiquitous nature of modern communications means that it is easy for groups to identify where they can go and get away with it all. The TV coverage of looting, rioting and arson, without any police in sight tells many that they can get away with whatever they like.

In short, law and order is not being kept on the streets of London. The London Metropolitan (and City of London) Police forces are more than overstretched, having called upon forces from outside London to try to control, but they have largely failed.

The core function of the state is to protect citizens from the violence of criminals, but this Conservative led coalition government has preferred to increase its foreign aid budget and keep Labour’s NHS profligacy intact, to keep giving free bus passes and cheap energy to wealthy pensioners, and then cut police spending. It wont be a surprise that morale in the police is not high.

So if the state can’t protect citizens and their businesses, the responses from citizens are going to be mixed, such as Turkish and Kurdish shop owners and their formidable sons wielding baseball bats to chase feral youths away. Far too many online forums are now full of nasty racist remarks about the fact that many of the youths seen as black. These events are perfect recruiting occasions for the BNP and National Front. Muslim business owners in the East End are being protected by their own families wielding weapons. In short, it becomes vigilante justice.

However, why should anyone be surprised? If law abiding citizens had the right to bear arms it might make for a very different scene, because property owners could fight back. Of course there would be the risk that more of the thugs would also have weapons, given that firearms have only been implicated in one incident the last few nights.

Today both the PM and Mayor of London have returned from their summer vacations, to rescue their respective political careers. If a Conservative PM and a Conservative Mayor cannot be tough on law and order, then they are finished. The PM must ensure the Police have all the necessary resources to lock down the looted areas tonight, and the option of a curfew must be considered. For if London is NOT brought under some order tonight, it will get much much worse. If this is blamed on spending cuts in the Police (which is unfair as there has been virtually no impact from that as of yet), then the government will have handed Labour an issue on a plate. Ed Milliband will be chasing the ambulances with glee at this news, even though his political philosophy has contributed to this problem.

There must be an organised effort to establish order on the streets by the Police. A curfew for young people between certain hours should be considered, with the simple point that anyone on the streets at those times under a certain age face being arrested and spending a night in a cell. Shopkeepers and others who are protecting themselves should be supported by the Police, not treated like criminals.

Yet what we have witnessed overnight, the past three nights, has been the result of what happens when solipsistic whim worshippers discover there is anarchy and they can get away with taking what they like and destroying, like the culture they embrace celebrates. That is the vacuum that has been created by cultural relativism, the empty void of amorality presented by so-called liberals who threw away the religious based morality of past generations, and instead of replacing it with a humanist secular commitment to individual rights and property rights, embraced “group rights”, “victimology” and structural theories of power and rights.

The young people who have rioted have been told that if they don’t have what they want, it isn’t “their fault”. That if they haven’t got a job they want and like, then it is someone else’s responsibility to fix that. That if someone has something they want, then they have a “right” to that as well. That the reason their parent or family do not have the wealth of others is because of racism, or because they aren’t part of some special inner circle, not because they didn’t pay attention at school, didn’t read books and preferred the parasitical culture of gangsters and crime.

The failed social engineers, like chardonnay socialist Polly Toynbee of the Guardian are still claiming the riots are because of “benefit cuts” (see removing child benefit from people earning over £38,000 a year will do that). However, their time is past. They have celebrated pouring money into ghettoised state housing schemes that have hothoused criminal gangs and the poverty of aspiration that does promote this. Most of all, they have embraced the philosophy of cultural and moral relativism that says “anything is ok as long as you express yourself”, the idea that “everyone is the same” regardless of whether you actually work hard, achieve and become a success, or if you laze about, barely articulate yourself and resist any advice or attempts to help you change. They will call for more money to be taken from the law abiding and productive, to bribe the feckless, breeding, whim worshipping thugs into being submissive. They will say they aren’t excusing it “but”, which of course means they are explaining the crimes as not the actions of people wishing to do evil, but as reactions to government policies.  They would be the first to complain about business owners taking justice into their own hands, after paying their taxes and finding it subsidises those who steal from them.

Today the state has to focus on the single thing it must do and do well – re-establish law and order in London. If it fails, then David Cameron’s much touted promotion of volunteering, called (appallingly) the “Big Society” will come to pass, in the form of vigilantes and localised justice. People will enforce the law as they see fit, because if the state wont protect them, what else can they do?

Tonight either London is secured, or it is anarchy – in either case, most Londoners will be at home, concerned, some frightened. My concern is that I’ve seen little evidence that this government has any real idea of how important this really is. 

Want some free stuff?

That's what's driving the hoards of youths rioting in various parts of London the last few nights (and today as I write).  

It is not because of the protest of the shooting of Mark Duggan, in a case that is now under investigation.   One can't remotely claim that those rioting in Tottenham, Hackney, Wood Green, Enfield and now Lewisham are some response to the Police.  Petrol bombing shops, flats and buses, is not about some sort of protest.  There was a peaceful protest on Saturday about it, and Duggan's family long called for an end to any violence.

Even less credible is the opportunistic claim by Marxist dictatorship-felching ex. Mayor (and Labour candidate for Mayor) Ken Livingstone that it is a response to the coalition government's spending cuts (which despite the Labour propaganda, have seen a net increase in state spending).  It is a stark contrast from local Labour MP, David Lammy who said:

This is an attack on Tottenham, on people, ordinary people, shopkeepers, women, children who are now standing on the streets homeless as a consequence..

These are looters, they are amoral, impulsive young men and women who have no conception of the rights of others, who have no respect for the property of others, who couldn't care less if people lose their livelihoods, businesses or homes.   They are the output of a culture of entitlement that says if you want something you should have it, you don't need to work or save for it, for either the state will pay for it, or someone will give it to you - or you just take it when you can.  A culture of hedonistic whim worshipping, that says if it feels good it's ok and it doesn't matter who or what you destroy or harm in the process - might is right.

They are, of course, engaging in socialism - without the middle man of the state.   The likes of Ken Livingstone,  residing in pleasantly middle class Cricklewood, would steal from the businesses and the residents and the employees, just with the gloved fist of the state doing it in a far more ordered and determined way, to give a living, homes, food, clothes, TVs, mobile phones, transport and healthcare to those who steal.  Indeed, the state has been doing that for decades, and the moral vacuousness is obvious.

Note that the Metropolitan Police cannot use tear gas to deal to these thugs, it cannot even contemplate rubber bullets, because you see to protect people with more force would be against the rights of the criminals.  Neither could those whose businesses and homes were attacked could ever have a firearm to respond.

However, just wait to see who politically around the word spreads the empty nonsense that the riots are about the death of Mark Duggan (who did not exactly appear to be unfamiliar with the gang culture that infests Tottenham), or about the cruel Tory government that has cut government spending to a heartless 51% of GDP, or that its about racism (given the majority of rioters have appeared to be Afro-Caribbean), and how the way to fix it is to borrow more money we don't have to spend money on more regeneration, state housing ghettos, welfare and pseudo "jobs" with local authorities.

Whilst, of course, the people whose businesses are wrecked, who are unemployed as a result of their employers' businesses being wrecked, who are now without homes, are ignored - for they are the "collateral damage" of "disenchantment", rather than a victim of decades of failed welfarism and state housing ghettoisation, producing hot houses of feckless dependency and criminal cultures of violence, misogyny, gangster worship and aspiration less traps for the children raised in that culture.

UPDATE:  Oh and remember more than a few of the parents and relatives of these thugs DO want better.  Read Katherine Birbalsingh's column about how SHE talked to an event about young black men in London, she's an inner city teacher, who has riled more than a few because she spoke at a Conservative Party conference.

End of cloud cuckoo land economics

So says City AM editor, Allister Heath.  In an extended editorial this morning he wrote an elegant piece that summarises where we all are at:

The post-Bretton Woods era is coming to an end. Asia and the emerging nations are on the rise – and the world’s increasingly vocal creditors. As economic power shifts, so will geopolitical and cultural influence. The US, which for decades enjoyed massive inflows of cheap financing, and huge benefits from owning the world’s reserve currency, needs to start to live within its means. The same is true of Europe, which faces two additional challenges: the Eurozone, which cannot survive in its present form and which has become the most urgent threat to global prosperity; and (even more than America) bloated welfare states and a generalised failure to grasp that weak education systems, high taxes and crippling regulations are a no-no in a globalised world.

He has no time for the endless budget deficits and the abuse of fiat currencies as ways to evade reason...

“stimulus” packages of the fiscal or monetary variety have become counter-productive, with every extra pound in economic output created coming at a much greater cost. Ultimately, one needs real, sustainable growth – and that must mean deferring consumption to allow the savings required to finance productive investment; a sound, non-manipulated currency; interest rates that reflect reality; and lots of hard work, creativity, skill and innovation, suitably incentivised. The pseudo-Keynesian micro-management that dominates policy-making is not only intellectually bankrupt but has been proved to fail in practice. Politics and wishful thinking has been defeated by economic reality. In a world of scarce resources, we need to produce before we can consume – all the borrowing and money-printing in the world cannot refute this simple truth. 

His big predictions are that the US can prevaricate for some time, and be in long term relative decline as it does, but the European Union has an immediate crisis, that now threatens to spread beyond the CPIIGS (Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) into Belgium and France.  

But while the US’s decline could run for decades, and will involve further downgrades, the Eurozone’s crisis is urgent. The only question is how much debt the authorities will want or be able to federalise – how many toxic government bonds will the European Central Bank and the European Financial Stability Facility buy, in exchange for creating money or issuing Eurobonds backed by all Eurozone countries. Prudent taxpayers in Germany and elsewhere will pick up the bill left by profligate nations; but given its huge, multi-trillion euro size, this could destroy yet more credit ratings. France could be next for a downgrade. Even more importantly, a sovereign bailout will destroy any remaining popular support for the euro project, especially in Germany, understandably so given that the population was lied to when it was told that countries would retain their fiscal independence despite giving up monetary sovereignty.

 

The implications of this for Europe, could be positive if it unshackled itself from the socialist part of the EU project, and helped set its economies free, but it is unlikely that will happen.

 

The more serious concern ought to be about the decline of the United States, what is means not so much for the global economy, but for the international order.  For decades many in the West have rallied against Pax Americana, more than a few will cheer a New World Order that does not resemble what George Bush (Sr.) declared at the end of the Cold War.   

However, bear in mind what it represents.  It means Asia being dominated militarily as well as economically by China, and India, both nuclear powers.  It means the Middle East being dominated by Saudi Arabia and Israel, it means Europe being dominated by NATO and Russia, and it means the United States doing what Obama has royally done, opting out of the world by withdrawing.

The so-called "peace movement" will proclaim the world is a safer place as a result, although if it is a place where the United States no longer carries a banner, and sword, for freedom, one wonders how true that will be (not that the "peace movement" ever believed in freedom).   Some US libertarians welcome this, not wanting the US to be "World Police" (not that it ever really was), but what it leaves is a philosophical vacuum - one that is increasingly filled with "make money wherever you can regardless of individual or property rights" as the Russia and Middle Eastern kleptocracies move forward and China seeks a 21st century imperialism over African natural resources to replicate the 19th century Western equivalent.   Islam may fill part of it, corporatist state capitalism will fill some more, as will knuckle-dragging nationalism based on ethnicity. 

However, consider this.  If you were in Poland, with a relatively chilly authoritarian neighbour to the east, and you saw the US withdraw its presence in Europe - given the past 70 years of history - would you be feeler safer as a result?

What spending cuts? (UPDATED)

Given some of the news coverage you might think the US houses of Congress have reached agreement to cut spending in the US Federal Government.

The Daily Telegraph says there are US$1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.

The Washington Post called them "severe cuts".

Spendaholic Paul Krugman in the New York Times says it is "slashing government spending" and even says it calls the whole system of government into question!

The New York Times editorial calls it "nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists"

You'd think I'd support it, but really it isn't what it seems.  Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute points this out in the following graph.   The US$917 billion "cut" over 10 years is not a cut in real or nominal terms, but a cut from a baseline of even faster increases.

So what does it actually mean? Well Edwards says:

"The federal government will still run a deficit of $1 trillion next year. This deal will “cut” the 2012 budget of $3.6 trillion by just $22 billion, or less than 1 percent."

That's what is provoking a hysterical reaction among the left in the Democrat Party.  Spending isn't being cut in real terms, spending is being cut by part of the amount they wanted it to grow.

As I've mentioned before, a relatively unambitious plan from the Cato Institute would cut spending by US$1 trillion annually through to 2021, it would balance the budget by that year.  It would cut government spending as a proportion of GDP from a projected 24% to 18% (the same it was in 2000).  It would look like the graph below.   You can figure out the current plan is closer to Obama's plan than to the Cato plan.

However, because it plays with so much pork (everything from agricultural subsidies to Amtrak to public broadcasting to the Department of Education (don't worry the states do most of that anyway) to Medicaid, it would be difficult for many Republicans (who are frankly half responsible for the current mess) and virtually all Democrats to accept.

Yet it should be the bare minimum to get the USA back on track to growth, by pulling back from the crowding out of the private sector, by keeping taxes at their current level and eliminating vast amounts of distorting and damaging subsidies and government programmes.

Oh, by the way, Obama once opposed raising the debt ceiling as well:


"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

That is Senator Obama, 20 March 2006.

Thanks to Allister Heath at City AM for tweeting this and National Review for publishing it.

Just another politician isn't he?