NeueArbeit Macht Frei

The Spell is Broken: Dealing Healing and Repealing

2011-08-10T11:35:00.004+01:00

WARNING: In this post I will use the d-word – deprivation.

Two kinds of true deprivation stand out in the dimension of recent disturbances, IMHO, one is to deprive people of their livelihoods, property and safety and the other is to deprive a child of the upbringing they need to become a well-adjusted human being[0].

What jumped out for me was the behaviour of Turkish, Bengali and other groups of shopkeepers and residents in defending their businesses, property and homes - a very British thing to do[1] - and some very interesting articles which repeat long said truths, but which should now be a mighty slap in the face to some people.

Dealing

The immediate issue is defence, of lives, livelihoods and property. A strong, visible defence is the best deterrent. I am not talking about locks and shutters, but a pro-active defence whereby those who try it on will be met with a real, immediate, physical response and a real and highly probable legal consequence. If certain groups look around the street and see ordinary people all around them, but know that those ordinary people can suddenly mutate and coalesce into an organized defence force, then even the less controlled individuals will exercise self-restraint.

The problem is we have had decades of emasculation and disempowerment of ordinary citizens, brainwashed and brow-beaten to abdicate their own personal safety and defence to the Police. This drive for abdication is nearly all-pervasive, infesting education, health, welfare as well as personal defence. It becomes a meme, a Pavlovian, passive, sheep-like response. Add wolves and the result we have seen for ourselves.

The spell of Police “protection” was broken, creating chaos. However, that broken spell is part of the wider necromancy mentioned above, which is now in the process of breaking, too, for ordinary people. It is no coincidence, in my view, that some of the communities that have the least exposure to the Fabian witchcraft [5] reacted first and foremost. We saw the Turks of Dalson, for example, take to the streets to defend their community.

Healing

Children do not chose to be born into dysfunction. They rely on their parents and family to instill proper codes of conduct, to distinguish right from wrong, to engender a sense of restraint, deferred gratification, of consequence. Should a child be denied that – deprived of it – that child is not to blame for the lack. However, essential in the rehabilitation of such people is the need to learn right from wrong and too soft an approach risks entrenching the problem, not curing the malaise. Throwing someone in jail with no rehabilitation is equally short sighted.

I have read posts such as that by Camila Batmanghelidjh and Katherine Birbalsingh [2] . Although they approach the situation from different angles, I agree with both of them. Neither set out to excuse, but to understand and try to explain why such things have been a tinderbox and offer their solution or advice. The problem we have, some say, is that there is only one Camila and only one Katherine.

What we should NOT do is try and Xerox Camila or Katherine, systematizing their approach to be implemented by rote-learned practitioners following a protocol. There are others who, though they might use a different methodology, use ways that are effective, that can reach out and heal. If you try to impose wisdom, it ceases to be wisdom. We must try not to get hung up on one way, not to create a monoculture as that will ossify any system and reduce the speed in which innovation and, yes, experimentation can occur in tackling damaged individuals[3] . I am sure Camila and Katherine are not so arrogant as to think they have nothing to learn from others.

The State is pretty hopeless at doing anything other than form monopolies or monocultures. I am not convinced that the State is the right way to implement or drive the spread of good practice in a pluralistic and consensual way.

Repealing

I do think, however, that we still need to go deeper. Healing those damaged and quickly is one thing, but the rate in which such people are being damaged or left to get damaged is way too high, diluting efforts and resources, however superb and heroic, to near homeopathic levels.

I am not talking about the State performing some kind of “pre natal intervention”, which is a stock-in-trade for the Socialist mind of perfecting the clay that we call people. No, we need, first and foremost, for the State to STOP funding and doing things that creates the problems or creates the environment for such problems to occur or multiply.

An example is benefits and housing that should not be focused on those who bear others into poverty. Funding those who cannot afford to have children to have children is madness. Women who know that there is no source of support and accommodation "by right" will be far more discerning as to whom she interacts with, when and how. Of course such things are never perfect, but we are not talking about perfection – I leave that delusion to the Fabians – but about the basic truth that if you subsidize something you tend to get more of it. Such an approach will not eradicate, nor is it the business of the State or politicians to eradicate, the existence of single motherhood. However, it is not the business of the State to make certain choices viable “by right” when they otherwise would not be. The issue here is not support for single mums or those unable to support their children per se, but the automatic right in law for taxpayer support regardless of circumstances.

The failure of education is linked to this in part, for while you have the ability to exist regardless, then the basic, visceral incentive to survive is defused, rendering the absolute necessity to get an education redundant.

We have seen that gangs of ordinary citizens can assemble with weapons and no robbing occurs, no looting and no unprovoked violence. Law abiding people with weapons are not the problem here, but law abiding people WITHOUT a means of self-defence is. We need to repeal laws that limit law-abiding people while exposing them to the lawless who care not for such laws.

The spell restraining the thuggery has been broken somewhat, but that this has also broken the wider spell over the population as to the all-pervasive power of the State.

We need to deal with those who do wrong, heal those who are on a path to or involved in wrongdoing and to repeal the entitlements that contribute in part but certainly not exclusively to the creation of those who grow up without essential foundations for civilized living.

[0] Some of you may know I reject the use of the word “deprived” when it is used to mean “poverty” or “bad housing” or “lack of jobs”, which is to trivialize it and demean the real issues that exist for those who are truly deprived. It is an all too familiar behaviour of the Left to hijack such words for their own agenda.

[1] I now hear that, sadly, three men, and I repeat the word, Men, have been killed, run down by a car, in what appears to be a defence of their community from looters. My condolences to their family and friends.

[2] I have also read some utter tripe from the usual peddlers of such guff, for example Yasmin Alibia Brown, who might on the surface sound reasonable but is in fact a denial of the environment they have pushed for.

[3] I say, damaged, for I feel so very few, an infinitesimally small number of babies are born bad. Almost all are made bad. Many could be maladjusted, but with the right upbringing, guidance and boundaries they could be imperfect – and who is not? - but still decent and productive human beings.

[4] This is not to say that a single person cannot deliver both aspects, but that task is

[5] Those who have engineered it in the law-abiding majority while not managing to deal with the minority are, I am certain, still in denial.

The Census, Part 2.

2011-04-27T12:56:00.002+01:00

A letter has arrived at Fort Thornhill.

It is addressed to "The Occupier", but begins with "Dear Householder".

These two people are not the same. My hamster is an Occupier, but is not yet the Householder.

If I gave the letter to him, I think he would make very good use of it - probably better use of it than most of these letters sent out. Very good advice too - he'll sleep on it*.

What is interesting is the language used.

They "ask" for the Census to be completed, yet threaten one with a fine for non-completion. Why don't they just admit their aggression? No, that would not be the Fabian way. It would be more honest to just send a letter with "WHERE IS IT!!!?" in big bold letters. That would match their intent. "HAND IT OVER OR WE TAKE YOUR STUFF".

The letter then outlines various statutes that give this activity the veneer of legitimacy. Any despotic regime can get laws passed to suit its purpose.

Next is a variation on the disingenuous Fabian mumble-swerve that The Ministry is pumping out at our expense -

"Census information is important and is used to help plan and fund the services that you, your family and your community will need in the years ahead"

Now, first off, "important and...". Note it is "important" AND it is used to "help plan...". It is not important TO plan, no. It is "important", full stop. Of course it is "important" to G Watson, 2011 Census Director, for it is his/her rice-bowl. He/she has a vested interest in making this exercise appear as "important" as possible. It might be "important" to those who want to sell on the data. It might be "important" to those prod-noses who have the utter conceit to think they, and they alone, can steer, mould, direct the lives of others. Yes, The Lives of Others. The wise and renowned Sir John James Cowperthwaite KBE CMG, Financial Secretary to Hong Kong, 1961-71, made a point of NOT collecting statistics, because he knew, once collected, the Administration would then begin to INTERFERE. This Census is a massive Bureaucratic, Fabian Masturbation. It is stat-Pr0n of priapic proportions. It will be used to justify an endless stream of social engineering projects. That in itself is reason enough not to comply.

The information, we are told, will "help plan". If it will "help", is it therefore necessary to threaten me for that "help"? What does it "help plan", then?

"Services like schools, public transport and hospitals".

Schools are currently part of a de facto State monopoly, but that should not be the case. It has no business being a monopoly. When it is not, then the reasons for State planning goes away. The State can barely respond as it is. Hospitals are they key to the information about schools, as they record most births. There is no need to know WHO a 4 year old is to provide them with a school place. There is no guarantee that that child will be in the same Borough in four years time. All the children who will be handled by a school, the school will know when they get applications. Before then it is vague guesswork. Do you think the modelling will be improved by the Census over collecting anonymous births+postcode? I very much doubt it. Hospital records update every day, whereas the Census is once every decade. It is almost USELESS for the purpose of school management. FAIL.

Hospitals might benefit from knowing demographics, but all that information should be easily collected and bang up to date via the local GPs. Again, this can be anonymous when used for planning and can be enforced by the GP-Patient bond of trust. FAIL.

Public transport takes decades to install. Voter records, vehicle registrations at the DVLA and other sources of information can be used to "help plan". A once in 10 years snapshot is not going to cut it, now, is it? Not unless you start asking damn fool intrusive questions, it will not! FAIL.

So, the three examples of why this will "help plan" - note that even their own letter does not say it is actually "important" for this process, just that it will "help plan" - shows that the Census is, at best, not much use, will immediately be out of date and is hardly justified to threaten people over. In fact, it is probably worse than useless. It will be misleading. It will give false value to crock.

Next up

"Your personal information is protected by law and is kept confidential for 100 years"

Seeing as HMG have contracted the processing of the data to an entity that is legally bound in its own country to hand over any or all information without delay or right of appeal to the US Government, the concept of "confidential" used here is very much different from mine. HMG must be aware of the status of that entity, so cannot complain to it when it has to fulfil its obligations. HMG would therefore be party to any disclosure and responsible for it. Further, the statutes enable HMG to hand over the information to various, unnamed, and as yet determined, third parties who will promise never never ever, cross their heart and hope to die, to blab it to others or to enable people, in exchange for a padded brown envelope, gain access to the data. It is a joke. Probably "confidential" means that the USE of it will be kept confidential...from us, for they do not aim to tell me when or who, let alone ASK me if I want the information divulged.

The Census is being operated without my consent. It is unnecessary for the pathetic reasons they think we will believe that it is essential. It is being operated with covert threats and coercion. It will almost certainly increase State interference in our lives and entrench monopolies that are funded by coercion and threats.

When one is threatened to act, that action is not "help", but at best servitude, but more serfdom approaching if not reaching slavery.

I am not livestock to be tagged. As I said in my previous post on this topic, we should have an audit of THEM. They are ours, not the other way around.

* do not worry, Hamster fans, I fear for the inks in the paper, so would not risk the health of said occupier.

Rule of Law

2011-04-14T19:44:00.004+01:00

It is at times like this we see who really believes in Rule of Law or not. Who gives it lip service or who actually wants to see it upheld and, for even those who appear as the enemy, that due process take place.

Rule of Law cuts both ways and must apply to all, big or small, without fear or favour.

My Libertarianism is centred around Rule of Law, which should come as no surprise to anyone who follows my witterings and twitterings.

The Census

2011-02-26T13:57:00.002Z

The coming census, one that is to be collated by a US arms manufacturer who is compelled by US "law" to hand over ANY information they hold to the US government.

This is a textbook example of an attempt to conduct treason in plain sight.

I am not cattle. I am not a piece of inventory.

WE pay their salaries, so why is it THEY have the audacity to force US to tell THEM against OUR will?

We should be the ones doing a census on the STATE - where they live, how much they earn, how many kids. The car they drive. The sort of house they live in. Their religion. Number of holidays. Ethnicity. TV sets. PS3s. So WE who pay, WE who suffer them can see if bias, fraud, bloat or any other malpractice occurs.

Ha! I say "if".

We should begin with the House of Commons - go in and conduct a census to ask them the questions and "promise not to disclose to anyone except people who have or will pay us for the data but we shan't tell you whom nor ask for your consent when we do".

Why MPs first? Well, these people are the ones who are supposed to represent US, not their parties, not the State nor the Executive, but US, the voters. They are supposed to be our voice in Parliament, not a bunch of Farmers with his livestock going to market to get the best bids or to trade the milk he extracts.

They will refuse, so why should we accept it from them?

They need to remember who works for whom. No, I correct myself, they need to be TOLD whom works for whom, because I see no evidence of any stand in Parliament to stop this cattle drive.

An Invitation to Jeremy Hunt, MP: Boil Your Own Head

2010-07-26T09:53:00.003+01:00

Via The Telegraph, I read these words by Jeremy Hunt, MP in regard to an "idea" to apply the license fee to those watching the BBC via their PC:

"What we have said very clearly is that we accept the principle of the licence fee which is the idea, if you like, of a household tax to fund public service broadcasting that is ring-fenced."

No, Mr Hunt, you are trying to establish a "household tax" and for that reason, I must request you go boil your own head.

If you want to remove limits preventing the BBC from establishing a charging mechanism linking a purchased TV license to the consumption of those programmes via devices other than a TV, then fine, but to use it to bootstrap in the concept of a "Household Tax"? No. No. No.

I would also say that in the interests of not appearing like a covert control freak Authoritarian, if such a license exists, it needs to not be used to identify the PC in terms of other surfing or activities. Otherwise the BBC database would be far to tempting a resource by those wishing to find out officially or unofficially who is doing what when those wishing to find out have no authority, right or warrant to do so.

An invitation to US Senator Robert Menendez; Boil Your Own Head

2010-07-26T08:37:00.003+01:00

Extraterritorialist

Dear US Senator Robert Menendez,

In light of your request that Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, Jack Straw, MP, former Justice Secretary, and Scottish Justice Secretary MacAskill, attend a US Senate hearing, I request and demand that you go boil your own head with immediate effect*.

The UK and Scotland are not answerable to your office, position, president, judiciary or nation. Should you wish to speak to our politicians on matters concerning the UK or Scotland, it is normally performed via Diplomatic Channels or, failing that, a request to visit the UK and speak directly with the offices concerned.

Your behaviour exhibits gross arrogance, unwarranted entitlement, extraterritorality and Authoritarianism. You are in the Democrat Party, so one should not be at all surprised.

* Should you not possess a pot of sufficient girth in which to boil your head, leave a comment and we can see if something might be fabricated should Harland and Wolff be willing and have a spare month or so.

Drug Decriminalisation shock response - more heads recommended for self-boiling

2010-07-20T08:40:00.004+01:00

Nicholas Green QC, the chairman of the Bar Council for England and Wales, said it was “rational” to consider “decriminalising personal drug use”.

Quite right. Locking up an addict is going to solve what exactly? Rehab? Yes. Incarceration in an establishment with EVEN GREATER access to drugs? FAIL.

But wait!

Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Commons' Home Affairs Committee, said: “I am shocked by the suggestion that drugs should be decriminalised for personal use.

"The legalisation of drugs would simply create the mistaken impression that these substances are not harmful, when in fact this is far from the truth.”

“The answer to the issue of drug abuse is not to merely decriminalise it. This is not the best solution for the wider public or the police.”

Shocked, I tell you! Vaz decides the public are (as) stupid (as him?) and decides to support the criminalisation of people on that basis. But never passing up the chance to keep one buttock on each side of the fence, he ends it with an arse-covering soundbite so he can later jump back on the bandwagon.

James Clappison MP, a former member of the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee, said the remarks were “not entirely a helpful contribution to the debate”.
He said: “There seems to be a very strong link between recreational drug use, leading to drug addiction leading to crime fuelled by drug addiction. I would have thought the chairman of the Bar Council would have seen that for himself.”

I suspect James Clappison, MP, thinks only words in agreement with the consensus are "helpful to the debate". Clappison forgets the far higher street cost of drugs while they are illegal, which often requires criminal activity to fund. Clappison should have seen that for himself.

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, added: “It is a ludicrous argument to say let’s legalise drugs to take pressure off the police and the courts. That is an argument to legalise everything.”

FAIL. Philip Davies, MP is expected to legislate and revise laws on our behalf and yet he displays the critical reasoning of a wasp.

Debra Bell, a mother whose son developed severe personality changes after smoking cannabis from the age of 14 with his friends, said: “What is talking about? This will send out the wrong message to youngsters.

“There are children as young as 10 getting involved in drug use. Recreational drugs are addictive – that is why there are controlled"

Ms Bell, who now runs the “Talking About Cannabis” advice website, added: “For some adults it might not be a problem, but that is not the case for children and adolescents. It divides families.”

So alcohol being legal is "the wrong message to youngsters"? Decriminalising does not mean "please take it". In fact, while it is illegal and highly lucrative, there is a vast army of scumbags out there doing just that - pushing it onto kids. Making it legal DOES mean making it controlled. Right now, drugs are out of control the very reason being they are outlawed.

Yet again a dismal display from our elected representatives. And we allow them to VOTE on our behalf?

Burqa Ban

2010-07-20T08:18:00.002+01:00

Simply put, a law introduced to control what women wear so as to stop others controlling what women wear is absurd and irrational.

If there is a problem with coercion, deal with it. Yet again we see the punishment of all to try and deal with the few for administrative convenience and forced collectivism. It is plainly wrongheaded, vindictive and a reaction of fear that will be counter-productive.

That said, a person is free to wear what they want, but must accept that others are free to respond (non-violently) to that wearing. If you set up a barrier, display overt separateness, then others might decide do the same in response, such as refuse to serve or refuse to interact. That is as much a free choice as is wearing a niqab or burqa. Should an employee of a company take unilateral action against the wishes of the proprietor, e.g. a barman not serving* when the Landlord has no issue, then that is a matter of contract law, not criminal law.

The only exception would be in situations where the State enforces a monopoly service under law and in such situations commonsensical arrangements should be put in place to enable access thereof.

* I know, I know.

Will the Eric Pickles Local Liberation be a Soviet One?

2010-07-08T08:29:00.003+01:00

And by that I mean liberation from one form of dictatorship to be replaced by another.

There are some interesting words spoken by Eric Pickles in regards the change in culture in regards to Local Councils*, though his imagery of his substantial bulk coming to the rescue of people "chained to the radiator by red tape" is a bit creepy. Nightmares and cold sweats for a few, I suspect*.

The problem is it all gets rather Communitarian. Devolving power from an elected centre is good if and only if it goes to the individual or, if truly unworkable, to some form of elected local body.

"By taking powers away from bureaucrats and quangos and from me. And restoring powers to communities and elected officials." - Eric Pickles

Who are these "communities"? Who gives them authority? Who vets them? Are they elected? Who can throw them out? Is there plurality?

If you restore powers, you restore them to Individuals, who are, in truth, the "community". In fact there is no "community" unless you think of individuals. Power to the community should mean power to individuals who then decide how they, each and for their own reasons, organise by consent.

You might get two groups in a community. "Would that not cause chaos?", say some. Well, what is the alternative? A form of monopoly? That is what the State is comfortable with. Plurality seems to scare the bejeebus out of it. So is it going to be the Local Authority handing over power to its pet Community Group? One might think Central Govt would not want to be making such decisions, but this would not surprise me, for they are doing the vetting for Schools centrally, aren't they?

But wait...

"And new local housing trusts, with backing from the community, will be able to develop new homes, shops, and businesses themselves.

Really? Backing from the community? How will that happen? What if there is less than unanimous support? What if there are competing projects? I do believe we will have some form of arbiter and who is that going to be? If it is the Local Council, then nothing changes, frankly. Same old mates, "regeneration" and diversion of public money into private projects.

But I will move on an upbeat note. Eric did go on to talk about reduction in red tape and needless regulations. We do, however, need to ensure that PEPOLE are the ones who's interest is to be served by ending regulations. The last thing we want is for local councils to suggest rules and regulations that protect the community from their machinations, but in general it is a sensible and long overdue initiative. I am far more confident about that than the earlier Communitarian guff which I find, frankly, quite dangerous.

One final point I noticed:

"Putting jobs on the web - in a format anyone can re-use or re-publish - not only shows local people where their money is going.

The key here is "in a format anyone can re-use". This means there is absolutely NO REASON to build some over-priced, under-performing, wheezing website, but just a repository and an existing industry-standard API for retrieving the data. No, we do not want a new standard. No, we do not want a new protocol. Just publish as others do so aggregators can put those jobs out to the wider world.

We will then see the Guardian exposed to the realities of life, not sucking on the teat of the State via its monopoly on state sector job advertising.

Of course, we know that the Guardian believes in this sector, so it is quite at liberty to continue to publish the jobs online or in print if it wishes. Maybe it should become a true recruitment site so those who apply via the Guardian gain that publication a finders fee. I have no problems with that as long as the fee is the same for all republishers.

P.S. One final bit of disingenuous Sovereignty gap-covering from Eric:

"The HIPs which tied up the housing market.

And what about the Energy Certificate, dictated by the EU, Eric? We still need to wait for a clipboarder to perform that farcical blessing ceremony to the Great Green God. What do they think it is, Feng Shui?

* and one or two hot sweats in there for good measure, I'd wager. Each to his/her own.

R4isms: NHS and Homo Fabian Neanderthalensis

2010-06-18T10:53:00.004+01:00

Listening to Radio 4, as I do on my wind-up Baygen radio, there was an interesting programme on Neanderthals last night. No, not Westminster Hour, but the ancient hairy kind. No, not The World Cup, actual Neanderthals, Homo Neanderthalensis.

Some interesting factoids came up to tuck away in my Trivial Pursuit cheek-pouches, such as the evidence suggesting that they were top tier predators, eating a diet similar to that of lions and tigers and likely had to use their organisational skills as much for defending the kill from other predators as much as making the kill in the first place.

What jumped out was a statement, and forgive me if this is not verbatim, discussing the life-span and robustness of these early people in that there is evidence that injured people were rested and laid up, supported by others, so that their injuries could heal rapidly. It was:

"Well, there was no NHS back then"

This is spoken by what we might describe as intelligent, learned people.

I could understand it if they said there was no penicillin or antibiotics, though I would question that even. No wheels for sure, but "No NHS"? There was no NHS in WWII, for goodness sake!

The mindset that pre-NHS was some barbaric dark age where we hunted mammoth, where we existed with flint knives and bearskins, so far away as to be forgotten, as if the NHS was some absolute fixture.

Of course, to many it is. To many, not having the NHS in all its forms is like being thrown back to an antediluvian nightmare, with, I suppose, those cruel Libertarians cast as the Cro Magnons threatening their existence with a steely eye and modern weaponry, as in William Golding's The Inheritors*, or the ruthless Fins in Pathfinder.

The NHS in its entirety is a sacred cow, or should I say some kind of cave-painting, fixed on stone, to be observed and worshipped. Extended, but never altered or replaced. To criticise is to blaspheme.

It has always been.

It must always be.

Wrong.

The NHS is more than it was originally supposed to be. It was only meant to be a universal State run health insurance programme**. It is now a de-facto monopoly and one that is being portrayed as eternal - "from everlasting to everlasting"! So it is written, so it has become.

To consider something that is systemically dysfunctional by nature of its monopoly and the third party payer problem, as eternal and unassailable is reckless folly.

The NHS needs to evolve. It needs to end the monopoly. It needs to look at what it was aimed to do, not what it as become. Healthcare provision does not demand a state monopoly. Healthcare provision does not demand NICE. It does not demand micromanagement, Soviet style, of our healthcare needs, with individuals manacled to some geographic fiefdom in the shape of your PCT and SHA that you can only escape by moving house. The PCTs and SHAs are not held to account in the true sense. They do not face extinction.

For the likes of Frank Field to think the unthinkable, he needs to encompass our attitudes to Healthcare, Housing and Schools, as well as what is known as Welfare, for all these things are part of what is currently provided as entitlement and makes up for a massive redistribution of wealth through coercion with all the unintended consequences, the negative incentives and distortions.

To ring fence or worship any of these is to condemn the UK to be Homo Neanderthalensis, cowering in a cave while modern man outside, coming from India and China, flexibly adopt, adapt and thrive. We will be sitting there, huddled around the embers of a fire we have forgotten how to make, looking out on a landscape full of animals we know not how to hunt.

* a course book in my school days.

**Even that has unintended consequences of forcing out independent Friendly Societies, because a State insurance provider has subsidies and by nature of the State being a monopoly, would steadily be given monopoly power and advantage. This was seen in the need to extend the monopoly power to provision even before the scheme was launched.

Telegraph Fights Global IQ with Reason-Negative Whale Faeces

2010-06-16T09:45:00.005+01:00

I mean, is someone actually PAID to write this? The article might actually refer to some sensible research, but the author of this article is so clueless or hurried that they cannot see that they have left out important facts that make the selected assertions illogical.

Bear with me as I grind through the article and at the end see how the article comes across like horse (or Whale) manure, yet the research may, in fact, not be.

Sperm whales fight global warming with carbon-neutral faeces

Southern Ocean sperm whales have emerged as an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 cars each year thanks to their faeces, a study has found.

Oh, has it. Well, lets see, shall we, children?...

The cetaceans have been previously fingered as climate culprits because they breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common greenhouse gas.
But this is only a part of the picture, according to the paper, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"climate culprits"? Whales? Has it occurred to anyone that all animals breathe out CO2? Even AGW/CACC supporters? (Well, they are worse because of the vast quantities of CH4, but I digress...). The fact that people are so twisted to assert that any life form is a "climate culprit" just because they breathe really should tell you the mentality of some people.

Australian biologists estimated that the estimated 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean each defecate around 50 tonnes of iron into the sea every year after digesting the fish and squid they hunt.

That is iron from the fish and squid that swim around them, no? Yes? Ok.

The iron is then eaten by phytoplankton - marine plants that live near the ocean surface and suck up CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

Yum. Ok, keep going...

As a result of the fertilisation, the whales remove 400,000 tonnes of carbon each year, twice as much as the 200,000 tonnes of CO2 that they contribute through respiration.

That is like saying the paper industry "removes" x tonnes of CO2. Still, I am sure this is going to make sense later.

The whales' faeces are so effective because they are emitted in liquid form and close to the surface, before the mammals dive, said the paper.

Sperm Whales take a dump before going to work. I like them already.

Industrialised whaling not only gravely threatened Southern Ocean sperm whales, it also damaged a major carbon "sink," the scientific term for something that removes more greenhouse gases than it produces, it added.
Before industrial whaling, the population of this species was about 10 times larger, which meant around two million tonnes of CO2 were removed annually, said the paper.

DING! Presumption. Just because there were 10x as many Sperm Whales does not mean that 10x as many phytoplankton shall bloom [1]. Still, let us carry on, even if the idea of a "sink" has not yet been properly explored.

The scientists suspect that because sperm whales cluster in specific areas of the Southern Ocean there is a clear link between food availability and cetacean faeces.

How can you "suspect a clear link"? Well, that "CO2 of 40,000 cars" is now only suspected. Onward.

This could explain the "krill paradox," they believe. Researchers have previously found that when balleen whales are killed, the amount of krill in that sea area declines, which thus affects the entire food chain.

Which is all very well but Sperm Whales are not baleen whales, they are toothed, like dolphins and orca. Have they measured the iron in baleen whale poo? This is not mentioned, but it should be.

The study is lead-authored by Trish Lavery of the School of Biological Sciences at Flinders University in Adelaide.

If I were Trish, I'd be crying into my salad after seeing how all her work has been butchered by this woeful rendition.

The article is disjointed, non-sequitur and flimsy in the extreme. It tells us very little and what it does doesn't make much sense unless you are happy just to absorb baseless soundbites for later regurgitation. Near the surface. With plenty of iron.

What is being said here is that Sperm Whales eat fish and squid in the southern ocean, and out comes iron. What it seems to hint is that Sperm Whales are natural born alchemists or have a supernova in their guts, able to create an element, iron - Fe, the most stable element in the universe - from base things like fish and squid. It speaks as if the iron was not there before. Of course the iron was in the fish and squid. What it also does not mention is why Sperm Whales eating them is any different from other animals eating them or of the fish dying from natural causes and, most importantly, where did the iron in those fish and squid come from?

What is also overlooked is the fate of all that phytoplankton. What does it do, live forever? No, it gets either eaten by krill fish and squid or...drum roll...sinks to the bottom, also like some dead fish and squid.

The article here really should be mentioning the whole lifecycle. Phytoplankton take in CO2. Many are eaten. Animals that eat them then give off the CO2. No "sink". Some phytoplankton and some of the animals further up the food chain fall to the bottom of the ocean and this is the CO2 "sink". Phytoplankton in themselves are NOT a CO2 "sink" in themselves, for if they are eaten then the majority of CO2 they originally took in is almost certainly exhaled by those animals.

To say that phytoplankton take in 400,000 tonnes of CO2 and thus it is a 400,000 tonne CO2 "sink" is complete and utter codswallop, I am afraid.

What COULD be happening is due to the fact that Sperm Whales contribute to keeping iron in the upper waters, phytoplankton can breed in greater numbers than would otherwise occur and by some sinking to the bottom and the sinking of some of the animals that feed on them, some CO2 is "sunk".

Small flaw in this too. The iron is in the phytoplankton and resultant food chain, so as quickly as it is CO2 sinking, so Fe is sinking too. The only way this works is if Sperm Whales or the food it feeds on is IMPORTING iron to the Southern Oceans from elsewhere to keep the levels up.

Maybe this is in the paper by Trish Lavery. I hope it is.

What we do not need is articles like the one I have linked to. It not only provides incomplete "science" by garbling a research paper into a string of meaningless non-sequitur statements, it also risks conditioning people to accepting such incompleteness and non-sequiturs as a norm and a quite acceptable way of "communication". The Fabians must love it. A "result" for them.

To me it just grates. I want to know WHY, to UNDERSTAND, to not just accept blindly. To LEARN, rather than just be TAUGHT.

Is that too much to ask?

[1] I would also bet that if that nasty Mankind discharged iron into the Southern Oceans at 10x the rate of Sperm Whales, the environmentalists would be up in arms talking about a phytoplankton bloom that would destabilise the delicate ecosphere.

CiF Watch - Spending Cuts

2010-06-10T11:36:00.004+01:00

Seen below "Spending Cuts Will Push Jobless over 3M"

dell12
10 Jun 2010, 1:14AM
Once again the public sector is forced to pick up the failings of the private sector...

Recommended 115 times.

MaggieHTee
10 Jun 2010, 2:14AM
dirkbruere
"The price of Labour government."
Don't make me laugh ... we didn't even have a real deficit until the greedy fuckers in the finance "industry" crashed the global economy in 2007.
Don't let the ConDems and the Tory press invent the myth that New Labour caused all our current pain. It's patently not true.
Presse Ne Pas Avaler

This post was recommended 66 times.

Fact is, though, in some ways you cannot blame them, for the article itself is not far off the irrational non-sequitur, self-serving cant of these denizens.

More thinking re Electric Cars

2010-05-25T17:01:00.005+01:00

An interesting article has come out referring to comments by Professor Roger Kemp of the Electric Vehicles Working Group of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

In summary, he says that there is little to be gained by the adoption of electric vehicles over those powered by the latest efficient internal combustion engines. I suspect this is down to mainly transmission losses and maybe some generation losses.

Yet again we see comments such as the need for vast improvements in battery technology (in terms of cost, weight and bulk), a distribution network to charge them.

What is being missed here yet again is the very commonsensical "next step" to series hybrid. Series hybrids are different to vehicles like the Toyota Prius.

A Prius is a parallel hybrid. It has a traditional engine connected to a sophisticated transmission that can juggle this and an electric motor/generator, so that the engine can power the car, the engine can power and charge (the electric motor operating as a generator), have the electric motor operating on its own in all electric mode, have the electric motor assist the engine and have the electric motor in regeneration mode during braking. And for what? The Prius has lousy efficiency, is very complex, not very fast and has a derisory all-electric performance and range. Lets face it, the Prius is a vanity purchase.

So what with the Series Hybrid?

The Series hybrid uses purely electric traction, has batteries and capacitors for storing electrical energy and a generator, typically a small petrol or diesel engine of around 40hp/kWh, so around 1litre in capacity. Due to the steady speeds ideal for a generator, two stroke designs might even make an appearance, being smaller and more mechanically simple. A sensible series hybrid will have a very powerful electric drive or even one motor on each wheel, enabling significant amounts of regeneration to occur in braking. A Prius cannot regenerate much because the motor is not that powerful. A Series hybrid with 600hp of in-wheel traction can also absorb that amount, potentially doing away with friction brakes altogether.

In contrast to the parallel hybrid efforts, a series hybrid can be very fast indeed, very efficient at around 100mpg equivalent when relying on the generator, operate without recharging for 500, 800 or even 1000 miles if need be. All that last number would need is a 10 gallon tank. It can also operate in all electric mode using batteries. As it regenerates so well, the penalty for heavy batteries is significantly minimised as the inertia is re-converted to electricity during braking. This means it is not so tempting to skimp the battery packs, so facilitating electric only range to grow. With a very powerful electric motor set-up, performance will not be too adversely affected by this.

Series hybrids are more efficient, faster, have a longer range and a far simpler than Parallel hybrids.

Series hybrids are more efficient, faster, have a longer range than electric only cars and do not rely on a charging network and can be refuelled for instant use just like a normal vehicle.

The beauty of Series hybrids is as the electric charging stations grow, one can use electricity more and more, relying on petroleum less and less and eventually only for long trips.

If the good professor is right, that electric cars are little better than the current efficient internal combustion engined vehicles, then, by that measure, series hybrids are more efficient still.

I suppose, though, series hybrids are pesky things to vested interests. They do not need complex and finely balanced engines, exhausts and carburation able to deliver smooth power over wide speed ranges. They do not require cleverly chosen gear ratios or forgiving clutches. Most of all, from a political perspective, they do not require vast infrastructure changes that only a State deems itself capable of doing. Therefore politicians might not be bothered with series hybrids, preferring to focus on electric vehicles, where their decision has more, how can I say it, value.

Labour and "me me me"

2010-05-15T11:31:00.004+01:00

Various people "of the left" routinely criticise Libertarians as being selfish and "me me me", yet I have again heard a Labour MP on Radio 4 today talk about their future and the impact of the coalition in terms of frightening people about what would happen to "their" job - in one example being perplexed why Policemen and women were not voting Labour - and in terms of welfare/pension/services and such. It is all about direct benefits to that person, making that person think in terms of "me me me".

Libertarians are concerned about what property the State might TAKE from individuals, whereas we can see that Labour are preoccupied with scaring people or tempting them with what might no longer be handed over.

"those of the left" again engaging in psychological projection and logical inversion.

They relate to the electorate in terms of "me me me", corrupting them, encouraging dependence and a sense of entitlement that only a Welfarist setup would dare promise, knowing or not knowing the bankruptcy that is almost certain to follow.

They are still thinking in this way, even as defeat is handed to them.

Still, in pure tactical terms it is not a crazy approach, just outrageously cynical and manipulative. Many people will find the consequences of the last 60 years of Welfarism, and the last 13 in particular, come crashing into them like an Atlantic storm. Labour will be there, mark my words, whispering lies into their ears, blaming others, offering false hope, fake rewards and other mischiefs. It will be a second bite at the "Thatcher's fault" nonsense that had supposedly had Mrs T personally responsible for shutting down factories incapable of making things people wanted or were prepared to pay the price for, which, had it not been for Her, would have continued to perform their SOLE function, naturally, of providing employment for the Union masses.

If Labour is concerned about certain provisions and believes "everyone" wants to see it provided, what is stopping them organising it? I would welcome this, for Labour in opposition must operate by consent, not coercion. People will soon let Labour know what they feel is important enough to deserve funding it via the Labour Party or other organisations.

This is precisely what could happen under a Libertarian administration - if people feel something needs to be provided, then go out and organise it. Collect voluntary contributions. I see no reason why Labour could not create an umbrella charity to be a point for people to donate to and Labour in their wisdom then decides where the money goes. This means putting down the "gun" of State compulsion, of the threat of imprisonment that comes with funding via taxation. It could mean setting up Friendly Societies and other mutual organisations.

Anyone with sincere intent, anyone who truly believes that their stance and causes are just and proper should not be afraid of this arrangement. If you think people do not know or understand, TALK TO THEM. Are you so lazy as to rather take by force instead of having the common courtesy to explain yourself and ask, understanding and accepting the fact you may be refused? Or is it you think people so dumb, stupid or selfish that they will never agree with your "higher moral stance" and so should not be given a choice?

I am unsure if those in Labour are ready or able for such introspection, truth and accountability.

Huhne, Energy and daft electric vehicles

2010-05-15T10:08:00.005+01:00

I read (also via Tim Worstall) that Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and "Climate Change"* wants to ensure there are no subsidies for Nuclear Power.

One could say this was noble, but considering we have not heard anything on ending the subsidies for wind, solar and water, that is worrying. Subsidy for one can mean a disincentive for another. For Huhne to say this is "not ideological" is being, I believe, a little disingenuous, as subsidies for other forms ARE.

Unless you end subsidies for all, you distort the decision-making process. What will a power generator build? Nuclear Power with no subsidies or wind with a subsidy? Of course, it depends on the levels of such subsidies. However, to have wind one needs a baseline capacity to support it when it does not produce enough power, which, even supporters now admit, is most of the time.

So if you to all intents and purposes demand wind and then subsidise it, it could be said you are indirectly subsidising the baseline capacity that is needed to make that wind viable.

Further, to expect Government subsidies to enable the most efficient and responsive allocation of resources is to be naive in the extreme. Subsidising wind has the capacity to divert research and resources away from other forms of generation that might be better or even away from focusing the minds of wind technologists from improving efficiency or embedding incumbents who make technology that is currently "good enough", so making it harder for new entrants to establish. All classic stuff.

So if Huhne is to be honest, he has to say his stance IS ideological and he aims to remove any subsidies for nuclear whist keeping subsidies for wind.

To me wind does have a use - synthesizing hydrocarbons. One can do this by drawing in CO2 from the air, adding water and energy and producing hydrocarbons and oxygen. This is an energy store, not an energy source, as all you are doing is pushing energy into a system (CO2+H2O) and then releasing it later when it reverts back to those constituents. Synthesizing hydrocarbons has advantages. The product is familiar, with a distribution network in place and can be burned in traditional engines with minor adjustments. It has most of the advantages of hydrogen, without the handling and storage downsides. If created using wind power it could be almost carbon neutral, as burning it will absorb the oxygen produced and expel the CO2 consumed in manufacture.

Why is this important? Well, there is still a frustrating need for car makers to either produce parallel hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, or all electric vehicles like the Honda Leaf (seen in various absurd videos that never just let you just hear the vehicle).

The Prius is inefficient. It cannot regenerate all the brake energy, has a complex drivetrain and mediocre performance and fuel efficiency. The Leaf is all electric and has an unusable range of 100 miles and a frustratingly long recharge cycle of 8 hours. Little better than a horse!

Neither of these two producers seem willing to come up with a series hybrid vehicle, which is basically an electric vehicle with a small on-board generator that can produce energy when the batteries are run down. These combine the range and flexibility of traditional vehicles, exceeding their fuel efficiency yet can provide electric only operation for most uses if desired. People generally only drive under 100 miles a day but they want their vehicle on hand in an emergency and capable of long journeys.

A well engineered series hybrid can get 100mpg+, so range is never an issue. Even if you just run it on fuel and cannot charge it on the mains - many live without off-street parking forcing them to park some distance from their home - it will be far more efficient and quiet.

* Is he a god?

Gordon's Hung Parliament Downfall

2010-05-08T18:41:00.001+01:00

Sorry, I just had to...

**!$ Parliament Downfall @ Yahoo! Video

Gordon Brown: Always A Marxist to Me

2010-05-05T08:47:00.002+01:00

He will chill with a smile
He will wound with his eye
He will ruin your wealth with is casual lies
And he only reveals what he wants you to see
He hides like a child,
So he's always a Marxist to me

He will lead you to hell
He will take you or leave you
He will bug for the truth
But he'll never believe you
And he'll take what he wants, even if it's not free
Yeah, he steals like a thief
So he's always a Marxist to me

CHORUS:
Oh--he takes care of himself
He will wait if he wants
He's a throwback in time
Oh--and he never gives out
And he never gives in
He just changes his mind

And he'll promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then he'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But he'll sell off our best
And leave the worst for you and me
Blame it all on yourself
Cause he's always a Marxist to me
--Mhmm--

Bridge

CHORUS:
Oh--he takes care of himself
He will wait if he wants
He's a throwback in time
Oh--and he never gives out
And he never gives in
He just changes his mind

He is almost half blind
And he's constantly cruel
He can do as he pleases
He's bloody great tool
And he can't be convicted
He's earned immunity
And the best he will do
Is throw shadows at you
So he's always a Marxist to me

On the De Facto Monopoly of State education

2010-05-03T11:54:00.001+01:00

and the thought by some that the market has no place there because it creates winners and loses.

Markets create winners and losers, for sure, but it is almost always the customer that is the winner and the poorly performing provider that is the loser. If the poor performer learns their lesson, they can become a winner again.

Education is not there to provide employment for teachers.

I will say that again. Education is not there to provide employment for teachers.

If you have just enough places for pupils, you must rely on proactive intervention to fix a bad school and bad teachers. There is no hard, unavoidable incentive otherwise for bad schools to fix themselves, i.e. teachers standing in front of empty classrooms.

Just think of coming into a town where there are just enough restaurant settings for all the people who wish to eat. How good will those restaurants be? What value would you get? What service?

Some will be natural restauranteurs, dedicated and provide a great service. The queue will be round the block.

The others will still have no HARD need to change, for they will get customers through the door. No, not just customers, they will have a full house! Every night! A full house of customers with no choice remaining, no option but have their money taken in return for what? Slops. If a fight kicks off in the restaurant and you struggle to eat, if at all, then hard cheese.

As long as there is one substandard State school in this de facto monopoly, the State is failing children and guilty of all manner of injustices. One could almost include false imprisonment.

Now, back to a proper world:

A surplus of restaurants and tables will still result in the best places having a queue round the block, but the “unlucky” will still be infinitely more lucky in their second, third or even fourth choices than in the previous scenario, for a bad restaurant will be almost always empty and people will not come back the moment they learn of something better.

Anyone who tries to assert that “education is not like a restaurant” is, I am afraid, howling at the moon and trying to maintain their own delusions by trying to convince others of the same folly they believe in.

Education is not there to employ teachers. Bad teachers should be unemployed teachers. With surplus spaces, bad teachers will be confronted with the choice of “improve or die”. I am quite certain the overwhelming number will improve and most will rapidly become good teachers. Those who cannot improve? What are those who object to surplus places now saying? That you WANT to keep those unreformable teachers in front of my kids? To hell with you!

The conceit is of those who think they can reform a monopoly. No they cannot. They think they are or could be so in control, or know of someone else so in control and so talented, more talented than the combined energies of all the minds of all the parents? Show me these Übermensch! Bring them forth!

Prepare for Fiscalnacht

2010-05-02T18:04:00.005+01:00

Over at The Devil's Knife, DK has posted a very good series of posts recently about the scale of the problem, referring to others who are doing the same, and a solution that has long been available to us.

Many of us have been banging on about the need for 20-25% cuts in spending to balance the books, and this is Libertarian Party policy. The recent quibbling about the £6bln NI tax has taken the biscuit. The so-called "leadership debate" just showed me that they are not leaders. If they were true leaders, they would be able to deliver bad news and they failed us and the nation.

The big three have been fiddling while our money burns. And why? Probably because no government does well in an election promising austerity. Ah, yes, getting into power is more important than being straight with the population.

This, however, is not about austerity, it is about SURVIVAL.

To survive we need those 20-25% cuts on average. We need to eliminate £170bln of spending even to have a chance of treading water.

Our debt is reaching £900bln in comparison to £600bln (if we are LUCKY) in revenue and £750bln or so in spending.

Interest on those debts is or will be around 4.5% for sections of that debt.

Growth? 0.2% so far.

Can anyone else see the other problem here?

Our debt interest will be higher than the rate in which revenues will grow. Growth will fail to cover the costs of servicing our debt even if we achieve zero deficit.

So we need to more than balance the budget, we need to shrink the DEBT and to do that we need to cut spending well below revenues to both service the debt and reduce it. After we cut £170bln out of spending to end the deficit we need to cut still further to attack the debt.

It is wishful thinking to presume that growth will grow fast enough to enable even a balanced budget to keep pace with the debt servicing costs on £900bln for some considerable time. To trust to that kind of luck with the Eurozone ills, international situations and the potential for all manner of external factors is a gamble too far, or should I say yet another gamble too far, for Gordon has already gambled too far and lost - where we are now is the result.

Forget "the bankers". We were bust. Period. Regardless of the Banking crisis.

Unless Cameron comes clean before May 6th he cannot say he has the mandate to face down the vast vested interests that will line up to prevent their gilt edged rice bowls being taken away from them. People may say he betrayed them. He needs as many people behind him as possible, or at least not attacking him and siding with those in the public sector who will want to remain in never-never land.

And no, the excuse of "not being able to see the books" does not count. We know this already. he knows this already - or damn well should do. It is no surprise.

I doubt he will.

The Libertarian Party has always been clear about our need for drastic cuts in State spending from both a practical, philosophical and common sense perspective.

Living within our means.

We are about to find out that the Social Democratic, Welfarist, Statist experiment was not, is not, will not, cannot, could not and, dare I say it, should not be afforded.

Prepare for Fiscalnacht.

Quote of the Day

2009-07-31T14:08:00.003+01:00

"Fabianism, MacDonaldism and pacifism today play the same role in relation to the historical movement of the proletariat. They are the main prop of British imperialism and of the European, if not the world bourgeoisie. Workers must at all costs be shown these self-satisfied pedants, drivelling eclectics, sentimental careerists and liveried footmen of the bourgeoisie in their true colours. To show them up for what they are means to discredit them beyond repair. To discredit them means rendering a supreme service to historical progress. The day that the British proletariat cleanses itself of the spiritual abomination of Fabianism, mankind, especially in Europe, will increase its stature by a head."

Leon Trotsky, Where is Britain Going? ch.4 The Fabian Theory of Socialism

I will not go so far as to say "the enemy of my enemy...", but he does a fine skewering.

Norwich North: No such thing as a "bad" result for the LPUK

2009-07-24T14:09:00.003+01:00

The LPUK's candidate, Thomas Burridge, gained 36 votes.

This was the LPUK"s first outing in a National election. To say we had a "bad" result is really not getting the point. Yes, retaining our deposit is a very good result, but the only truly "bad" result would be if the LPUK does not learn lessons from this campaign and this will only be known over time. I have confidence that the lessons will be leant.

I do hope Thomas sticks with it and in 5 years when the Tories are exposed as the mendacious, Authoritarian Centrist Statists that they have become under Cameron, Thomas will gain more votes.

Thomas had wisdom beyond his years before this election. It is safe to say that many more years of wisdom have been added to those shoulders since the by-election was called.

Last Chance for Liberty: Norwich North

2009-07-23T10:04:00.002+01:00

Today, the good folk of Norwich North go to the polls in their by-election.

Standing is one Thomas Burridge for the Libertarian Party UK. He is young, but has a wise head on his shoulders, as can be heard here.

From nothing the LPUK is now standing in National Elections and is a great achievement for all those concerned.

I wish Thomas every success and hope that the result will make people sit up and take notice.

Pragmatically I hope we just retain our deposit. If we gain the same percentage as in our last outing (in Council elections) of just under 8% it will be a triumph for a party with almost no media exposure and prevented from participating in the hustings (due to the cuckoos, natch).

All the best.

Cameron in danger of opening the gates (and wedging them open).

2009-05-26T16:11:00.004+01:00

Cameron's proposals will enlarge government, not shrink it, I suspect.

It is one thing being lorded over by 646* professional morons , but even worse is being lorded over by 64,600 amateur morons...on your doorstep.

I do suspect that Cameron will be an unwitting stooge (if he is benign) or an out and out traitor (if willing) in handing over more authority to the Regions. Wait for it, for his army of dim-bulb no-nothing "useful idiots" will be persuaded by some Federast to move power to the Regions and let them sort it out.

He will NOT, I repeat NOT be able to relocate ANY powers WHATSOEVER from the EU machine back to the UK UNLESS he leaves the EU. He will not, so any talk is pointless.

So, Cameron is going to move power from Westminster to the Regions (I suspect), who are EU lickspittles and beholden to the Brussels coin while not moving ANY powers back to Westminster.

It will be hollowed out.

Once the process begins, the call for each region to match the Scottish, NI and Welsh Regoinal Assemblies will become incessant - all funded, look you, with OUR money! OUR money used to fund the theft of OUR sovereignty and more of OUR money.

School For Scoundrels, in fact.

What should happen first and foremost is a mass repeal of needless and/or illiberal legislation. This would include the European Communities Act, so bringing back full sovereignty to the UK. Cameron does not promise this.

In parallel, the Regional Development Agencies - Regional Government In Waiting - must be dismantled. Nobody asked for them, nobody voted them in, but local politicians love them because they provide great "career" prospects, sinecures, comfy buggins-turn posts and more committees, biscuits, junkets and unaccountable power - a metaphorical ball-pit the size of Wembley Stadium for them to play in. They will not be able to throw their toys out of the pram because we would have taken all their toys and sent the pram back to the shop. Cameron does not promise this.

Any "devolving of power" should, in the first instance, be delivered to the Individual, NOT to local councils. Cameron does not promise this.

Remember we will be removing Education and much of healthcare from their remit. Their role is mostly parks, pavements and the lighting thereof. Libraries, that sort of caper. Oh, and something very very important - care of those who are not in a position to fully exercise informed consent - the Elderly and Mentally Ill. Kids, in general, have their guardians to do that for them, btw, and that will be restored too.

Cameron has not really promised power to the people, he has just made it more likely that more people - local politicians - will have more power and so people will experience this power and at closer quarters. I am in no doubt that the vast majority of people will not like it one bit.

For all his talk of reforming Parliament, until he gets us out of the EU, that is like talking about reforming a Steam Train factory during a nationwide electrification programme outside his control.

Put the kettle on, Dave, there is a good chap.

If you want to see the restoration of Sovereignty, the re-assertion of the Rule of Law with the reduction in coercion and the increase in consent that this brings, there is only one choice - The Libertarian Party, UK.

* give or take one or two genuine sharp tools.

Sadiq Khan: A fool or a traitor?

2009-05-19T09:09:00.005+01:00

Sadiq Khan, Minister for Community Cohesion travels to a city where only one religious group are "permitted" to enter - Mecca.

Before I go further, how Saudi Arabia is run internally is really, ultimately, the business of the Saudi people as long as it does not affect the UK or its citizens. If it wants to bar everyone but Muslims from Mecca, then that is their decision and they have responsibility for that. If the authorities want to oppress women, then they must be answerable to the eventual outcome of that oppression for, mark my words, it will not endure. If they wish to follow and promote their brand of Sunni Islam that is almost certainly intolerant of other branches, again, they must ultimately be responsible. They must also take the consequences of their actions in terms of how people regard them and speak about them.

As a Libertarian, though I reject religious control in government, social and business affairs, have contempt for the ban on everyone but Muslims going to Mecca, contempt for their treatment of Women which has turned practical advice in a dangerous environment into absolutism backed by swift and harsh enforcement, I am not a Saudi National and so I have no "rights" to control or alter that Nation, its culture, its religious practices just as Saudis and other foreign nationals have no say, no rights to control or alter my country or my behaviour. They have no rights to demand anyone support or respect their ways, either.

Sadiq Khan - cohesion, remember - is going to one of the most divisive places on Earth. Gender, religion, race, lineage. It is all there in Saudi Arabia. Writ large. He should be going to see how NOT to do things, but he is going to learn and it appears he is going there to IMPORT some of their techniques:

Speaking following the meeting, he said: "The work the (Saudi) ministry of Islamic affairs has done with mosques and imams in Saudi Arabia was revealing.
"It is interesting how the ministry team is devolving responsibility for regulation and supervision for over 70,000 mosques and ensuring that imams have a high standard of training and practice.
"We discussed how the ministry and its scholars can work with British scholars in potentially exciting ways."

Well, the US redeveloped downtown Hiroshima in "exiting ways" but I am not sure I want to have anything to do with that.

The Saudi brand of Islam has many problems for a Libertarian, not least its intent to dominate, coerce and to oppress. It is not pluralistic in the slightest. Our "Minister for Cohesion" wants to learn from THAT? Do you really think that only issues of administration or logistics will be learnt or have an influence? Is anyone THAT naive?

Sadiq Khan is opening the gates.

Man is either a traitor or a fool. Those who sent him or permitted is travelling are bigger fools and bigger traitors.

MP's Expenses: All. Bets. Are. Off.

2009-05-15T08:27:00.005+01:00

Just a gratuitous excuse to show one of my favourite clips.

"...it's a fa'k't."

It appears now that numerous MPs have no idea about right and wrong, even when the rules are clear. They are happy to blag and bluff for personal advantage.

These MPs are meant to be our representatives, meant to create, amend or repeal our laws. To do that they need to KNOW what is right in the absence of laws or rules so that the right laws and rules can then be created. Justice and the Rule of Law should be in the very fibre of their being, written through them top to tail like Brighton Rock.

And we have reports of Shahid Malik, Justice Minister*, claiming the absolute maximum second home allowance on his constituency home. For. Three. Years. Running. Are we meant to believe that all these purchases are essential for him to perform his duties? He even used his expenses to pay his fine. Justice? It is an alien concept to him.

This man is supposed to understand what is right and what is wrong. He has proven himself to be incompetent - and that is a very polite term in this case. If he survives the day in office, it is further proof of Labour's utter contempt. Not surprised, really, considering they are chock full of Trots, Marxists and Fabians.

BTW, we now know the cost of filling a trough with food: £400pcm per snout.

* "you couldn't make it up" (sm) N. Farage.

What if Labour voters vote Green in the EU Elections?

2009-05-12T14:17:00.002+01:00

Just imagine if the EU suddenly had many more "Green" - a.k.a. enforced collectivist, anti-tech, anti-industry, anti-progress, anti-logic - MEPs because of the feelings of Labour supporters.

I hope the numbers are balanced by Tories voting UKIP.

If this happens, please, Nigel Farage, do not get seduced by "the dark side" you have been fighting all these years. Keep away from the teat.

"Smart" Meters: The monopolistic and Authoritarian mind of the State writ large

2009-05-11T07:45:00.008+01:00

It is coming - the "smart" meter.

They will cost £7-10 billion and save the consumer £1bln they say. Already the argument gets dragged into if the consumer should pay or not, just as the ID card argument does*, so let us be frank here - if there is a net cost, the consumer WILL pay one way or another. They will pay by higher charges or charges that rise sooner or fall later.**

It is a sensible thing to have meters that automatically report usage to the supplier. It is about time too. Singapore was doing this when I left in 1999, a decade ago. The fact that we have devices needing to be read manually is a bit quaint. It is a bit like having a man come out to your house for your Road Tax, writing down the registration on the disc.

That aspect is not in question here. What I wish to highlight is the implementation of the additional pieces of kit and how is shows the monopolistic mindset at work, aided and abetted by a Government that only understands monopoly, coercion and Corporatism.

The intended, monopolistic path:

The energy suppliers upgrade the meters as is their want to make their operations more cost effective. Their meters have the ability to communicate with an external monitoring device using an interface that could well be proprietary. Every house will be supplied with an energy monitoring unit, regardless of if the household will pay any attention to it or not. Everyone will have to pay for it. Private companies will have responded to the tender and it is highly likely the energy companies will have signed a contract to a single supplier, or at best a very small subset of providers. The people ultimately paying for it (taxpaying energy consumers) will have no opt-out or freedom to use any alternative device or mechanism instead. At best they will have to pay twice, first for the compulsory unit and then for the unit they will actually use. If you are old enough to remember, think "GPO telephones".

What should happen in a more Libertarian world:

The energy suppliers upgrade the meters as is their want to make their operations more cost effective. Their meters have the ability to communicate with an external monitoring device using an open, fully documented interface. Private companies create dedicated monitoring units, interfaces to PCs (e.g. USB or bluetooth connections) or whatever they wish. New innovations can reach the market as soon as someone can produce it without having to convince the Energy suppliers to alter their purchasing arrangements. All these companies sell their monitoring units via the normal retail outlets creating competition between units and retailers. Cost is kept down. New innovations can appear rapidly. Each individual makes a choice on how much information they wish to see and in the form they wish to consume it. An example of how it can work is the "chip and pin" market. We have many providers all competing on price and functionality for in-store card readers. Imagine if all the banks made it a closed system and you had to take the unit made by the company that "won" the contract...

Make no mistake - most of the "brains" needed will be in the monitoring unit, not the meter itself, which only needs to have the ability to store a timeline of consumption and transmit it when requested. Such an ability will cost pennies.

The pubic is not served with the "business" model we are being presented with, just as we will not be served by up and coming ID card infrastructure, "road pricing" or other such "initiatives" that present a closed system procured centrally.

Yes, ensure standards are in place to prevent captive markets being formed and to promote transparency, but little else is needed. So with Smart Metering, so with ID cards, road pricing gizmos, education, healthcare. The list is endless but the model is roughly the same. Dismantle unnecessary monopolies. Ensure transparency and openness. Remove barriers for a plurality of providers to enter the market and compete for our custom and cash.

While we continue to have the existing LibLabCon "consensus", we will continue to be presented with a conveyor belt of monopolistic fait accompli. Money taken up front. Choice ignored and abuse of a captive market. We need to end this coercion and bring back consent. The only party that is committed to reducing coercion and promoting consent is The Libertarian Party, UK.

* personally I think Labour intends for the ID card to be funded out of general taxation. It "may as well", because the Govt. will end up letting off all those on welfare - and taxpayers have to pay those on welfare the cash to pay for the card in the first place. Why do they have the charge now? Well, one reason could be deeply psychological - making the condemned pay the executioner, a means to ram home the obedience and submission. It is also a convenient way to focus and crystallise dissent on something that will be conceded anyway. Get everyone worked up about the ID card including the charge, let the anger blow and puff, then retreat on something that is not even a true concession (see above how it will make no real difference) and take the wind out of the opposition's sails, so undermining and weakening the campaign. If you had 5million people against ID cards and 2.5m leave the campaign once charges are "dropped"***, that does an enormous amount of damage to the morale vs. a campaign that had and retained 1m supporters because the issue was never about the charge.

** This, I suspect, is not really about "climate change", though some might say it is the main visible pestering force behind it. I actually think that underneath all the posturing about "the environment" the real worry is domestic generating capacity and the ability to keep the lights on. I think energy efficiency is a good thing as it saves money and helps keep wealth inside our domestic economy, as long as it is done with individual choice and consent and does not mutate into a form of bullying by the government, e.g. letters to warn you of changes in or "excessive" usage, nagging alerts from the device itself or other such. Smart metering just opens up a whole new way for people to be pestered, monitored, tracked and controlled. Unless we have a mindset of Minarchism - achieving a small state with the view that the State is either an unnecessary evil unless each aspect can be proven to be a necessary evil - make no mistake, the State will be poised to exploit any new avenue for control and expansion that presents itself.

*** As we know but most people are constantly told not so, even by the very broadcaster who is there for OUR benefit, Joe Public, i.e. you and I, ALWAYS has to pay in the end.

Expenses: The difference between "Should" and "Could"

2009-05-08T09:50:00.000+01:00

As we see more revelations about expenses, the world's smallest violin is hired by MPs to plead their case, how it was "within the rules" or other such excuses. Some genuine mistakes will have happened, there is no doubt about that, but the issue here is not about those genuine mistakes if they were corrected before the universal publication process began. It is about the mindset of those who claimed.

A government can do many things - it can declare war, it can decide to detain for 42 days, it can take money discovered in a search without just cause, it can arrest people using badly drafted legislation intended - if one is charitable - for entirely different purposes.

That is not the point of Government. A Government is not about what it can or could do, but what it should do.

MPs claiming their expenses are expected to only claim what they should, not what they could. Being "within the rules" does not cut it just as a Government saying that such an arrest or fine is "within the rules". We are talking beyond statutes and mere legislation, back to what is lawful, what is just. Claiming expenses for fixtures to improve the value of private property is, lets face it, theft - for right now second homes are often the MP's private property. Juggling nominal residency to enable significant claims to be made to private property is something that could be done (and was), but it should NOT have been done. It is especially damning when the status of that property is not reflected in other declarations that would otherwise have a negative impact in terms of taxation.

We have a Cabinet and a House full of MPs who cannot tell the difference between what they could do and what they should do. And they think they are worthy and capable of representing us?

We need a Government that focuses on what it should be doing - upholding Rule of Law and defending our borders. It could take from the poor so it can hand it back to the poor, but what it should be doing is not taxing the poor in the first place. A Government could aim to monitor all our communications and movements, but what it should be doing is focusing on probable cause and using warrants gained by explaining their reasons to a judge, an historic limitation upon the power of the State. A Government could seize control of almost every Hospital and School in the land and force people to pay for their upkeep under threat of imprisonment, but then it should release them to be run themselves so people can choose and experts can advise those who wish to use them.

We need a Government that knows the difference between should and could. We need a Government that knows the difference between consent and coercion. That Government is a Libertarian Party Government, the Government of Consent.

Papieren! The ID Card system draws nearer.

2009-05-07T15:28:00.006+01:00

The trial begins in Manchester. Thankfully, a few useful idiots aside, most people do not like the idea.

Some moan about the cost and I suspect the price will be waived later to give the impression that the public are being listened to and to buy off the dim-witted.

There is a good site explaining how we have been salami-sliced and frog-boiled into this situation. Old Holborn recommends we apply for multiple ID cards and pollute the database with false information.

In a way I would rather we, as in an NGO, set up a private ID card system to maintain our identity. The database shall not be accessible without a warrant, so all those prod-nosed Council bods who are bunged a wad of tenners by some scumbag will not have access. Break the Government monopoly, that is what we should do.

I'd rather trust a company openly competing in the market for IDs, where I "lend" my data for safe keeping so it is NOT owned and cannot be a) retained if I leave the service, b) be passed on or used without my permission. The Government is convinced that we are its chattel, its property, either as a dependent voter farm or as revenue milk cows to feed the voter farms.

By setting up a parallel service, we expose the bloated cost of the State alternative and the Government agenda while not being "against" all the "uses" they openly talk about. Of course it is not the open uses, but the hidden ones that they are after. By providing a system outside their control, not procured by them, funded by revenue that does not pass through their sticky fingers and holding information not immediately available to their bureaucrats, yet still providing all the benefits to the population of an easy to carry verifiable identification card, we can out-flank them. All that will be left will be the Autocracy and surveillance.

I am quite certain that it will be almost impossible to clone or steal the ID on our system. I bet the biggest theft will be by the State!

Remember - Making OUR lives more convenient is not their game - making THEIR lives more convenient most certainly is.

All Your Identity Are Belong To Us

Jacqui Smith: Hypocrisy and Conflation

2009-05-07T11:02:00.004+01:00

Jacqui Smith is a hypocrite. Further to her blatant display of parasitism, she now goes on to say:

"Coming to the UK is a privilege and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life. Therefore, I will not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views as I want them to know that they are not welcome here.

Well, Jacqui, your fiddling and disingenuous and mealy-mouthed self-justification via the letter and not spirit of the regulations is abusing our standards and values, and undermines our way of life. Coming from a Home Secretary is obscene to start with. This is why when you pontificate as above, you just make yourself out to be a ridiculous hypocrite. Life is about what you SHOULD do, Jacqui, not what you CAN.

Jacqui then goes on to conflate "extremism", which is rather a nebulous opinion, with presumption of guilt and throws in erosion of the freedom of speech, to boot:

"The Government opposes extremism in all its forms and I am determined to stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country. This is the driving force behind tighter rules on exclusions for unacceptable behaviour".

I consider New Labour's Authoritarianism as "extreme" and unacceptable behaviour, so by that definition, it needs to be excluded, no? Only when it impinges on my life must it be curbed in my view, and right now it needs to be curbed, but not "excluded" from the country. No, let them rave on, so that others may know them mad.

If these people actually commit crimes of incitement, then they need to come here first, surely? If these were murderers or rapists or actually proven guilty of conspiracy to commit outrages then I might understand their being excluded, but "potential thought crimes" are another matter.

Bigots and rabble-rousers need to be exposed, ridiculed and confronted with rational argument.

One day Jacqui or her successor may refuse the return of a UK citizen because they are an Anti-Statist "extremist", or an anti-EU "extremist". If and only if we do not bring in a Libertarian Party government, I suspect this will happen at some stage.

Alan Milburn: A keystone in Gordon's Downfall

2009-05-07T09:52:00.004+01:00

The Spectator Coffeehouse raises the spectre of Alan Milburn.

I have long thought that Alan Milburn will be a major figure in a leadership challenge (see my comments at Iain Dale's, passim). My timing was off, as I thought he would appear when Blair stepped down, but then again it appears nobody could stomach the prospect of having a brooding Brown sitting dog-in-the-manger at the Treasury and on reflection they were probably right.

No, the Brown boil had to be lanced and the only way was to allow that big bag of pus to come to the surface. Leave it festering below the skin at the Treasury and it would just build up pressure, spread, cause untold pain and end up poisoning the blood, risking death for Labour.

Brown is now exposed and the pus is being drawn systematically to the surface. Everyone can see the huge glistening boil that is the mind of the Son of the Manse. It begs to be lanced. It NEEDS to be lanced. Gordon WANTS it to be lanced.

Brown is like Colonel Kurtz. Mad. Executing Socialism and its Authoritarian and spendthrift ways without any common decency or restraint, but begging to be put out of his misery. We need a young Captain to float up the Thames and act to terminate Gordon's command with extreme prejudice.

Clarke may be the one to get clearance for the mission, but will Milburn be the one to carry it out?

I think I will go look for a German dubbed clip of Apocalypse Now.

Guido Outlines a rescue plan for The Independent

2009-05-06T11:11:00.003+01:00

An interesting piece over at Order Order.

Though aimed at showing what the Independent could do to keep afloat, the article contains many valid points about the state of play re national newspapers.

The newspaper industry is a dead industry walking. It is not a twenty-first century business model: slaughter half a forest of trees, pay NUJ rates for news gathering, sub-editing, laying out, employing friend’s children, transferring ink onto aforesaid trees, then pay people to work all night sending the slices of dead trees around the country in the dark on lorries. Finally when you get to the point of collecting some money, split the sales revenue with the people who take the money.

Indeed.

The problem with newspapers, as in the once-a-day snapshot vehicle is they blend news and opinion, they are a heavy pre-filter. Not true intermediary, but masticator and PARTIAL regurgitator.

Reuters, Hansard, Court Circular and various news release aggregators now provide the source material which is available pretty much to anyone with little up-front investment.

Blogs will provide plenty of the masticator-regurgitator-opinion function and tools are out there to collect your own "Opinion" section. You may decide who will be the very short list to offer an Editorial.

What we will see is a re-intermediation of news. The newspapers are ending as the intermediary of choice IMHO. Organisations, parties and others already form their own content aggregation websites to put forward what they see as their take, so even news ".com" sites lose their edge to some extent. I can see a scrap over copyright for a while, but it might just end up that people will begin to value the commentary, pure and simple.

One thing I do like about sites like The Devil's Kitchen and I sometimes try to do here, is the inclusion of the original piece and opinion is then expressed about it. The clear distinction between source and commentary. Newspapers currently do not make it clear where the divide is. I think it would be very nice to see raw briefing content given and an opinion expressed about it. The Web really does allow for that to be done, whereas on newsprint it would get bulky. Transparency is a good thing. Sunlight is nature's disinfectant. The more we see the raw content and the opinion, the more people can value good interpretation and see fisking of the disingenuous spin.

p.s. On a delivery note - once pixel-based e-ink sheets are available, we could well have our own A3 sized "newspapers" to read in a similar way without the small screens and other encumbrances of laptops, Kindles, eBooks etc.

Education: Anything but the obvious

2009-05-05T09:17:00.003+01:00

Our Dear Leader is about to pronounce on education.

"Where there is significant parental dissatisfaction with the pattern of local secondary school provision and where standards across an area are too low, the local authority will be required to act. Action could mean either federation of underperforming schools with excellent schools, expansion of good schools and in some cases entirely new schools."

One would have thought that Local Authorities were always "required to act", in fact they should not even need parents to tell them, but to KNOW that their schools are patchy and many mediocre. One suspects that LEAs have had a tin ear for a very long time. Labour solution - more law, targets, monitoring instead of the simple, highly effective, self-regulating mechanism of the market, i.e stop preventing schools from being established.

By removing the barriers, new schools can be formed in areas where people feel there is a need for good schools, so bringing competition and surplus places. Surplus places will allow a bad school to be abandoned. In reality, if evidence from Sweden is to be used, bad schools shape up rather than ship out. The constant surplus of places - a concept that the State systemically cannot cope with - keeps everyone on their toes, for each knows that if they slide, they will end up with empty classrooms, no income from vouchers and a search for a new job. It also allows people to move house without the constant panic of where their kids will be go. If we have generally good or outstanding schools with surplus capacity, that concern will be significantly reduced. Right now it is a nightmare.

The Tories give the impression they want to go down this route, but they still wish to have central control. Instead of the LPUK mechanism of removing barriers, the Tories stick to their Authoritarian roots and wish for LEAs to "ask" if they can be "permitted" to open new schools and that the Tories wish to "bring in big business". The former will not work if you a) are unlucky enough to have an LEA Trotskyite Soviet and/or an LEA that realises they will lose power, control and an excuse for their massive bureaucracy or b) if the Tories decide your case is not good enough. This and the latter are both ripe for corruption and influence peddling. Damnable stuff and should be avoided like the plague.

Gordon is having none of the freedoms the LPUK wish to bring (back) in.

But Mr Brown will say that while there is a role for parents running schools where they wish to, the vast majority of parents do not want the burden of running their own school. They want world class teachers and school providers to do it for them, he will say.

OK, so because some don't want to run schools, NOBODY except the LEA is going to be permitted to do so. Where is the logic in that? It is totally non-sequitur, a three card trick. Don't waste your time trying to apply logic and reason to Gordon's stance - it is pure, unadulterated, steaming dogma. I also do not believe for one moment that "parents running schools where they wish to" will ever be permitted under Labour. I think the Daily Telegraph has misunderstood or been very kind. Lets see what the speech actually says later today.

The Prime Minister will say parent power does need strengthening in other ways. Where there is significant parental dissatisfaction with the pattern of local secondary school provision and where standards across an area are too low, the local authority will be required to act, he will tell teachers.

All this management would not be needed if you just left schools alone. Good, oversubscribed, schools would tend to push to expand themselves naturally. Under-performing schools would federate or link up to learn how to improve or, possibly, be taken over by neighbouring schools. Stop preventing new schools from being founded and they will be founded. It does NOT need the LEA or "some pronouncement by Him" to "make it so". Control, insecurity, vanity. It is all there.

This fumbling, unresponsive, decades late realisation of what to do about our schools is a classic example of why the State should not be in the job of education provision. This move seems to have the sole purpose of trying to lance the boil of dissatisfaction without dealing with the underlying causes. No delivery except to reduce the attractiveness of voting Tory - or is that "not voting Labour". The latter, methinks. It is pure politics, cynical.

The Tories and Labour do not have the right answers. They are both too Authoritarian and appear incapable of trusting the professionals in the Teaching profession - mainly Heads - or the common sense and "bush telegraph" of parents to sniff out the good and the bad.

The LPUK alone in understands that Heads and parents are the best agents in forming a world-class educational system. It is irrational to think one can form a perfect system with no errors or gaps by central control, tendering out or a GOSPLAN. Such a system will be slow to respond, subject to political dogma, open to corruption and highly likely to be wrong on far too many occasions, with no easy way out for parents. In contrast, the LPUK proposals will enable parents to have a good opportunity to bypass any localised flaws, for there is no compulsion, no monopoly and no central point of failure.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST: I am a parent. I am looking for a good school. Good schools are like hen's teeth. I have considered Surrey over the last few weeks and so I did a survey of all the primary schools in Surrey and went through all the OFSTED reports. Some excellent schools but, depressingly, far too many "satisfactory" schools, where you can see the only reason they are so is that nothing was seen to warrant unsatisfactory. That, to me, is not good enough. Not even CLOSE.

In pretty much every case of an outstanding school, the Head was the bedrock, the well from which the culture was drawn. This to me this is clear evidence that the LEA is not really critical in the quality of the school. If Surrey has a bad LEA, why as many outstanding schools? If Surrey has a good LEA, why so many mediocre schools? No, the LEA is not the deciding factor, so why should it have the A, as in "Authority" in its name?

LEAs might consider becoming LEDs - Local Education Departments - to advise schools should the schools wish to make use of their services. The LED should be entirely funded by those schools who wish to use its services while other companies or voluntary school collectives/mutuals should not be prevented from setting up and providing central administration or other functions if they wish. If the LED is doing a good job and providing value, then great. If it is not, then either shape up or ship out. If the LEA better consider it long and hard under the LPUK, for the alternative is oblivion.

Karen Matthews: I only miss shopping and sex

2009-05-05T09:11:00.003+01:00

Roger suspects that SM has access to Sky. 24/7.

Is Mayor Boris re-arranging deckchairs and not clearing the way?

2009-04-30T15:38:00.004+01:00

WARNING: Parochial London-centric blogpost. However, this post has some relevance in the general issue of devolving power, boundaries etc.

Is Mayor Boris re-arranging deckchairs and not clearing the way?

Boris is backing a new City Charter, but I am concerned that some of the ideas will not move us forward. Just because the current arrangements are not ideal, does not mean that change will automatically mean improvement.

Lets take a look at some of the proposals.

* Appoint borough commanders instead of the Met chief doing so.

This might have legs, but I'd rather the people voted, not the Boroughs.

* Spend NHS money currently under the control of primary care trusts.

This is replacing one monopoly with another, with no plurality. Problem here is coordination and the fact that PCTs are not limited to one borough. My son was born in Hammersmith. If you get per-Borough control of monies, my mind sees into the future people will be limited to using their local borough's health services. Bad. bad. bad.

* Decide on GPs' opening hours.

Like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Who knows, this could be a wheeze to push through the dreaded Polyclinics, which will end up forcing out GPs and resulting in people having a de facto monopoly for General Practice provided by some faceless company who won a "tender" by the PCT. I smell corruption behind all this, as I always do when I see a Private Monopoly Operating Under State Mandate. I suspect we will end up with poorer services, higher costs and certainly far less choice and a further distance to see one's doctor than now. For those who do not know, Polyclinics are facilities offering some limited outpatient care, minor operations and sometimes a "Nurse Practitioner" environment instead of Doctor-led. They are larger than GP surgeries and serve a larger area, thus becoming a monopoly presence for many. The setting up of a Polyclinic often requires resources beyond that of the traditional GP partnerships, so only private corporations can bid. The link between you and your doctor can be shaky as it is, with a Polyclinic it is likely to break entirely.

* Change bus routes and timetables, taking control of local services from Transport for London.

Bus routes do not operate within a borough. Queue cat-fights as boroughs argue the toss as buses cross boundaries. One borough might not want a useful route diverted to a busy high street, screwing up the services. Whatever, we will see the spawning of 32 tin-pot TfLs around London. Yes to more local input into services, but I do not consider if my bus crosses into Hounslow or Acton when I get on it, so why should Ealing Borough care?

* Take charge of the trunk roads run by TfL.

Not sure why this is needed. Trunk routes by defintion are pan-borough, so it makes sense that the supra-borough entity runs them.

Still, if it means more INVOLVEMENT then fine, but I get the feeling it will just create a whole series of new layers reproduced in 32 boroughs with lower quality staff.

Someone Please Explain why Mr Noumbiwa needs to be outside Cameroon, let alone in the UK?

2009-04-30T13:35:00.004+01:00

Got tipped off about a plea to stop the deportation of an Illegal Immigrant/Asylum Seeker. I must say I smell an opportunistic rat.

Anselme Noumbiwa fled Cameroon in 2006 because he was at risk of punishment for not adhering to the tribal traditions of the *Bamileke people. As the son and heir to the tribal Chief, Anselme was expected to assume his father's role, which included 'marrying' his many wives. When his father died in May 2006, Anselme refused to become the new Chief because polygamy contravened his Christian beliefs. In an attempt to force Anselme to comply with tradition, the village elders subjected him to the most degrading and terrifying torture.

Now, the Bamileke people are one tribal group in Cameroon concentrated in the western provinces and not part of the National Government AFAICT.

There is no central Chief, but many many small tribal fiefdoms, often at the village level, though their villages are said to be large and compact, so let us call it a town. Even so, I suspect we are not talking about an event involving all 2m Bamileke!

Cameroon is previously a French colony. Ergo, Mr Noumbiwa would surely be aiming for France. No?

Fact is there are countless people who wish to move to the UK. Many are following the legal channels, often paying large sums in Visas and waiting their turn under due process.

To keep pandering to stunts and, on the face of it, rather dubious, non-sequitur claims by Asylum Seekers rather insults the very term. It costs a fortune. It delays valid claims. It brings disrepute to valid Asylum Seekers fleeing genuine State or organised terror that would affect one across that nation. You know, like opposition leaders or activists, suffragettes, human rights activists or Gay Iranians.

I suspect that Mr Noumbiwa could quite happily live his life no worse off than his fellow Cameroons if he just lived away from his tribal homeland. You know, like in the nearest City. So, the Cameroon Government is a shit, bleats the supporters' website. Well, by that logic all the population of Cameroon should be permitted to stay in the UK. The best way for Cameroon to be fixed is for the Cameroons to stay and fix it themselves. Nobody else is going to do it.

This case appears to me to be like my pleading Asylum to live in Switzerland because da Slough Massive beat me up.

Fact is, while we have various people supporting what appears to me to be a rather tenuous claim for Asylum, we had countless Gurkhas being denied entry or being deported. I know where my focus has been.

Joanna Lumley committing an act of knife crime.

There is a queue. A very long queue. British people like queues for the very reason that they are fair. Fill out your form. Get in the right queue. Stay in line. Wait your turn. No criminal record, honest intent and skills to offer? Right this way, if you please!

Coffeehouse calls for "A proper debate on the 50p tax". Why?

2009-04-30T10:22:00.004+01:00

Why have a "proper debate" about what is basically a cheap piece of envy politics? The tax rate is nuts. The theft of the personal allowance over £100k is nuts. It is almost certainly going to lose revenue. It is almost certainly going to result in talent leaving and less talent arriving.

The 50% tax band should be junked and the horse it rod in on boiled down for glue.

The UK should become a Tax Haven, period. We should do this so talent, wealth and wealth-creating people and companies want to domicile here.

This will have greater power if we have Free Banking, meaning that the currencies used can be totally independent of the Central Government if people so wish, further increasing confidence that wealth will not be appropriated.

Democracy. Rule of Law

2009-04-30T09:56:00.002+01:00

Hat tip, Samizdata.

"Democracy is nowadays a greatly over-hyped blessing, particularly by Americans, who have no pre-democratic history to provide a perspective. It is clearly less important than freedom, the rule of law and constitutional government, which ideally it should entrench, but may well not do so." - Nigel Lawson, former UK finance minister, journalist and more recently, a fine debunker of global warming alarmism.

Nigel points out key beliefs of the LPUK. Rule of Law is more important than Democracy. Democracy's main role is to remove bad governments. It is not very good at providing the good. It is also the least damaging system so far devised to existing Rule of Law, but no guarantor of it.

The threats to Rule of Law will change slightly under the Tories, but it is by no means safe.

Unimog: A personal favourite now in Dorset

2009-04-29T11:22:00.005+01:00

I see that Dorset Fire Brigade have taken delivery of their new Mercedes-Benz Unimog Fire appliance. What is a bit sad about the vid is that it is not "they" who call it a Unimog - it is a decades old brand. Get a grip, boy.

I have always had a soft spot for Unimogs, being as they are tough, flexible, robust and very capable vehicles. When things get too big for a Landy, get a Unimog. If ever I [bought my Bamboo plantation in Thailand|Move to Sutherland|Retired to a lake in Canada], I would have an old Unimog and probably convert it to series hybrid with a solar panel on the roof for good measure. Of course, no newer than a 406 - the later models were just plain UGLY.

Consume for Happiness

2009-04-29T09:59:00.001+01:00

Hat Tip, Patrick over at Towards Mutual Benefit.

60m Citizens Targeted by war room scams.

2009-04-28T09:29:00.012+01:00

60m Citizens targeted by war room scams

More than a third of people targeted by HM Treasury fraudsters during the past 12 years were pensioners, the City watchdog has said.

Last Updated: 9:20AM BST 27 Apr 2009

Around 35pc of people who were defrauded by HM Treasury con men who bought worthless bank shares were aged over 65, according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Just under a quarter of people in this age group thought they could become the victims of The State this year, but 49pc said they did not have enough information on how to protect themselves from the Government.

Four out of 10 people who did not realise that The State could use personal details to steal their identity were also aged over 65. The research was published as the FSA announced plans to work with charity Age Concern and Help the Aged to help protect older people from becoming victims of fraud.

The survey showed that around 24 million adult internet users in the UK will be covertly snooped on by the State wanting them to establish their bank details, email and browsing habits, take part in a pyramid scheme (National Insurance) or a money transfer scam (also called Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Stamp Duty and Inheritance Tax).

Chris Pond, FSA director of financial capability, said: “The State, like all criminals, tend to prey on the most vulnerable people and our research shows this is definitely the case with Governments who commit financial crimes. We are delighted that Age Concern and Help the Aged have agreed to work with us on tackling this problem.

“Our partnership will help ensure older people are better equipped with the tools they need to protect themselves from fraud and other financial scams so the fruits of their life’s labours do not fall into the wrong (i.e. Government) hands.”

Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age Concern and Help the Aged, said: “All too often older people are the target of HM Treasury scammers and this is why a strategy designed to protect older people is so important.

“Through our partnership with the FSA we hope to bring an end to unscrupulous Governments taking vulnerable older people for their entire life savings. Older people have worked a lifetime to save what money they have and to see that money stolen is simply unacceptable.”

ENDS

++++++++++++++++++

What is so shocking is that I had to change so very little of that to make it fit perfectly with the behaviour of our present Administration. The Tories will be little better, mark my words. No Grand Repeal, no hard promises on shrinking the State.

The only party with a solution to this nightmare is the Libertarian Party, UK, who have a manifesto for Sound Money, Rule of Law, reducing coercion and establishing consent as the way people live together.

My apologies to The Daily Telegraph

China and Copper Reserves.

2009-04-17T17:04:00.004+01:00

There is a curious story in The Telegraph about the idea that China is looking to copper, not as a means to wire its country, but as a reserve metal.

A number of interesting comments. One of those that stood out said this:

Healthy sceptic on April 17, 2009 at 05:46 AM
Excellent article. The media is obsessed with Jade Goody's private life, McBride's emails, the latest entry in Pop-stars, Beckham's shoes, etc..Concentrating on entirely the wrong issue.

The Chinese are proving far more ambitious than the Japanese. Brown is setting out to save the poor of the world - by taking money from the poor of Britain. And the Chinese are chasing real wealth. China wants to divert the proceeds of the world's mines into it's factories and workshops. Meanwhile the liberal-Marxists running the West are concentrating on ethnic representation, outsourcing, rescuing bankers, taxing real work, celebrating celebrity media culture, designer clothes and wall to wall sports coverage. The Chinese have realised that Marxism is a load of nonsense - but they need the West to keep trying Marxisim. The Chinese are using Communism the same way Singapore used conservatism - as a front for Confucian values. The West is bogged down in liberal Marxism and is going down the tubes. You will see the BBC agreeing with Ambrose in five years time - by which time Britain will be totally bankrupt, and Englishmen will be queuing up to work in mines in Australia for Chinese bosses. Brown will be writing his memoirs, and the Observer will be serialising them. And nobody will seem to notice. Gordon Brown will leave Britain a basket case. Britain needs a real leader to turn everything around - instead a dithering delusional idiot is in charge. The left in Britain continually lambasted George Bush. America will recover from George Bush. But Britain will never recover from Brown and his liberal new left nonsense.

Another poster talked about their gladness at the initiative. They were Australian. Now, although that sounds nice in some ways, just be careful that one of the points in the post quoted above does not come true - the mines in Australia owned by Chinese. Never say it will never happen.

A Few Good Bloggers

2009-04-17T09:16:00.004+01:00

Guido Fawlkes lays out the story in The Times today. It is a very fine piece of writing indeed.

As I am not Guido, I can put it another way. Guido is one of a "Few Good Bloggers". He stood a post and he handled the truth, while some in the Lobby criticised him for leaking the emails, forgetting all about those who created them, shared them and built the House that nurtured them. Guido ordered the Code Red.

YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT HE DID!

Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.
Col. Jessep: YOU WANT ANSWERS?
Kaffee: I want the TRUTH!
Col. Jessep: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
pauses
Col. Jessep: Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and curse the Marines; you have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use then as the backbone of a life trying to defend something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest that you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think you are entitled to.

The above speech destroys the faux-Liberal stance, even as many who read it think that the speech is what crucified Jessep.

We want Guido on that blog. We need Guido on that blog, along with countless other bloggers who are willing to stand a post in the name of truth. In this case, Guido did not take payment, so was not hauled off, and so the country was not weakened.

The Crossest Man in Scotland

2009-04-16T20:00:00.001+01:00

Well, maybe not after last weekend's revelations...

I particularly like part 4., as it shows how to deal with scum.

BBC Have Your Say Hatstandery.

2009-04-16T18:30:00.002+01:00

You could not make this up.

Added: Thursday, 16 April, 2009, 17:11 GMT 18:11 UK
Subsidise my car with £5000, of my own money???
From new Labour, Gordon, pull the other one.
Alex C, London

But it isn't your money is it? It's tax payer's money and you are but one out of millions of tax payers.

So the £5000 you are claiming is yours, it's actually more like 5000 divided by 26 million = less than 1 pence!

So you spend 1 penny and the £4999.99 is from all the other tax payers, not a bad deal is it?
Gillian T, Loddon Bridge, Reading
Recommended by 0 people

So that's all right, then!

Spotted: A helpful critical review of Draper's "Life Support"

2009-04-16T18:12:00.004+01:00

Spotted up on Amazon.co.uk...

The Devil is in the detail.

Gordon Brown Pretends to Apologise for the Smears

2009-04-16T17:04:00.004+01:00

Gordon Brown has performed an act that typifies this Government. He has attempted to give the impression something has happened or is being done, but actually doing it is not on the agenda.

He wants to give the impression of apologising for the smears.

Let us see what he said:

"I am sorry about what happened.
"I said all along that when I saw this first, I was horrified, I was shocked and I was very angry indeed.
"I take full responsibility for what happened - that is why the person that was responsible went immediately.
"I wrote to those people, I expressed my deep regret. Everything is being done to clean up politics in our country. I ensured that there were new rules, so that this won't happen again."

Gordon is sorry for what happened. He is sorry his attack dog was found out, sure. I am certain he is even sorrier that his initial attempt to downplay the story failed and then he had to send his pooch off to the pound. Is he sorry that people were to be and in some cases actually smeared? No sign of that. None whatsoever.

Of course, countless scoundrels caught out are horrified, shocked and angry. Those terms are meaningless in the context he has placed them.

So Gordon takes full responsibility for what happened? If so and we believe his next statement, Gordon should have resigned already. The person who "went" - McBride - did not go immediately, but only left after the damage limitation exercise failed. Two wrongs in that sentence don't make a right, Gordon.

Errors, in this case, matey, follow the log scale.

Then he states about everything being done to clean up politics. That is such an untruth, such a worthless platitude. It is disingenuous pap. If you want to clean up politics, you need to get the State out of so many areas to remove the temptation and point of corruption. Jacqui Smith is still in office, for a start. How can not punishing Senior Cabinet Ministers - No3 in the Government for crying out loud - be cleaning up anything except fat wedges of unearned cash?

There is no need for new rules here just as there is no need for new regulations on the banking industry, expenses or a host of other situations when all that is needed is for the existing rules to be applied properly, consistently and with vigour.

Gordon did not apologise for the lies that were created and then discussed by those he hired. That would mean he acknowledges the acts and thus the fatally flawed culture that operated in No10. This has been my point about this whole affair since it broke - the issue here has never been the lies or the emails, but the culture of No10.

This is not an apology. This is like a crook saying they were guilty of nothing more than being caught.

Tea Party Event Skim

2009-04-16T08:35:00.002+01:00

Just a rapid skim past the Tea Party demonstrations in America protesting about the Bailout/Fiscal Stimulus/Robbery going on.

Some interesting pictures over at Instapundit.

Just to point out some slogans that caught my eye:

"Keep the Change! Give me back my paycheck!"

"I need a bailout to pay my taxes!"

"Greed is spending our children's money" (always lost on the anticap Socialist carpet munchers)

"Bailout + Debt = Fiscal Child Abuse"

"American Citizens are Tea'd off" (took me a couple of goes to read that one, can't think why).

"Debt is the problem - how can it be the solution?"

"Don't spread my wealth, spread my work ethic"

"Save trees - stop printing money"

"Reward responsibility, not irresponsibility"

And a couple of LOLs

"Tax his teleprompter"

"In GOD we trust. Obama & Congress? eh...not so much"

The most important one:

"Tea Party today. Tar and Feathers Tomorrow".

Fusion Power: Polywell gets USD2m funding

2009-04-16T08:18:00.004+01:00

Via Samizdata, CountingCats and Power and Control.

It is a small amount of money, granted, but sometimes fantastic engineering can be done with small amounts of money. Keeps it under the radar, gives focus, keeps the bureaucrats away, who are more interested in the delivery of progress reports than progress itself. This was one reason the US Navy kept their funding low and thus low profile.

Background: The Polywell fusion project, initiated by the late Dr Bussard, has the potential to create working ship and shore fusion power generators. In the Deuterium fuel model, it will produce practically no neutron, gamma or beta radiation - the stuff that crashes into your cells and kills you. It can be switched off almost instantaneously, with no long cool down or prospect of a China Syndrome or Chernobyl-style accident. If it scales properly, we can see the end of the Oil economy...and the "renewables" economy, too, for that matter, so no more ugly wind farms, no more food production taken to grab biofuel subsidies and no need for dams across the Severn that will disrupt the habitat. Most of all no more patronising control-freaks who in truth want us all to regress to living in mud huts on the Danube.

UK Only, time limited. "West End Jungle"

2009-04-15T13:36:00.004+01:00

There is an absolute gem on BBC's iPlayer right now called "West End Jungle". Banned when it came out in 1961, it catalogues one viewpoint on the changing shape of vice in the West End of London though a series of vignettes, just before and then after the new legislation in 1959, which introduced larger penalties and imprisonment to prostitutes.

See empty streets (almost no parked cars), everyone wearing hats and suits except the very young men and the ubiquitousness of tobacco, from its advertisement, through sale to consumption. The soundtrack shifts from Big Band (I was almost expecting Edmundo Ross to appear) to hints of Beat/Jazz.

It is an amazing record of male-centric cultural mores of the time, especially the reality of "entertainment".

Smeargate: Nice to see two points people are finally realising.

2009-04-15T08:55:00.004+01:00

Nice to see that it is dawning on people that

1. Gordon Brown is in possession of a demagnetised moral compass. It has been so for years.

2. A fish rots from the head.

This story is fundamentally about that, as has a litany of stories about the damage Labour have been.

This is not just a New Labour problem - it is an Old Labour problem. Brown is a Marxist. He wanted Nationalised Banks*. He wants everyone beholden to the State. He wants everyone to feel the fetid breath of overseers down their necks via CCTV, ID Cards, Internet filtering, phone tapping, email snooping. He removes the 10p tax band and then expects people to go cap in hand to claim tax credits. The list is endless.

People call him "autistic" which really does not fit the bill. It might explain some of his social clumsiness, but not his other behaviours. No, for me the term is "Sociopath".

Gordon is setting himself up for his own Ceauşescu Moment. He is almost there. Kevin Maguire will know what that means by now...

* and so State control of who gets a loan and who does not - ergo complete control of the economy.

Fencepost No. 13: HIPs

2009-04-14T08:57:00.003+01:00

A stooge of the Fake Charity WWF-UK* talks about treating the owners of poorly insulated homes as "criminals". DK over at The Kitchen does a fine disembowelling.

And people wonder why the rent-seeking HIP was forced through against all common sense? It was a fencepost after all and we are being softened up for the panels to be slid in place.

The HIP was a cover for the introduction of compulsory EPA inspection. Cooper near as damn it lied about it being for surveys and "buyer information". If buyers want it, sellers will provide it. But, as I have posted recently and many times before, we are talking about Authoritarians here, and Socialist ones at that. They do not consider people to be rational actors, but clay. Clay for their hot, eager little hands to mould into shape. They are not content with clearning away obstructions so people will make a sensible choice for themselves -I would not have been fussed if they just proposed the standard format for an EPA should someone want to have it done. No, they want to compel. It is easier to then say "we were right", just as Kim Jong Il says he is popular when he gets 100% of the vote...

What will it be, I wonder? A higher stamp duty on houses with lower EPA ratings? Will they "refuse to issue a HIP" on poorly rated homes which means then the house, technically, cannot be sold. Who knows? What I suspect is that the home insulation Mafia are about to get payback. Rent-seekers, man your clipboards!

* surely they mean "WTF-UK"?

Turning Japanese: Brown regrets but does not apologise

2009-04-13T22:29:00.002+01:00

Much as the Japanese cannot bring themselves to apologise to the Chinese for the brutal treatment they dished out in the 1920's and 1930's (which makes any colonial behaviour by the Western Powers seem like the opening credits to Till Death us do Part in comparison), so Gordon Brown only expresses regret.

How right Dan Hannan was when he spoke about Gordon's pathological incapacity for doing so.

The letters appear to talk around the outcomes and the impact on the wider world of politics. It does not speak about the fact that someone was responsible for employing those people and what that implies about the culture in No10 - what was acceptable and what was an instant dismissal offence.

As I say, a fish rots from the head.

Slave Labour: PM Plans to Implement Slavery

2009-04-13T20:09:00.006+01:00

PM plans to Implement Slavery

Mr Brown first proposed the idea of a National Youth Service last year

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to ensure every young person has done 50 years of involuntary work by the time they are 69 years old.

Mr Brown said a promise to bring in slavery would be a part of his next election manifesto.

Under the scheme, the work may include paying taxes to fund fake charities and is likely to begin as part of the school curriculum.

The scheme would be woven into plans to make everyone stay in servitude or slavery until the age of 69 by 2011.

Mr Brown told the News of the World newspaper: "It is my ambition to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all people will undertake slave labour in service to their political elite, and where oppression will become a normal part of growing up in Britain.

'Clear exploitation'

"And, by doing so, the contributions of each of them will build a better society for all of us politicians and their hangers-on."

The prime minister added: "That would mean young people being expected to contribute at least 50 years of community slavery by the time they have reached the age of 69.

"This will build on the platform provided by citizenship classes as they develop in our schools. But because the greater part of what I envisage as community slavery takes place outside the school day, it will require the close involvement of local community overseers and lickspittles."

Mr Brown said the work would also be linked to a "clear system of exploitation" so that young people would be able rue the day they were born gained through slavery.

He added: "By building from compulsory slavery studies in the 14-16 curriculum, we can create an expectation of national youth community slavery."

Gordon Brown first proposed the idea of a National Youth Service to channel teenagers into involuntary work last year.

It is due to be formally launched in September, and would become compulsory if Labour were re-elected.

Apologies to The BBC.

This is slavery, pure and simple. If Labour thinks my son owes them 50 hours of work on a project they decide is "suitable", they have another thing coming. Think of which projects will be granted access to this slave labour. Think of the jostling for a piece of the pie, the lobbying, the corruption. Think of the temptation for insidious peer-pressure in pushing this vile concept.

Labour is Socialist and Socialists only understand how to get people to do what they want by compulsion. Compulsion is in their DNA. It is enforced collectivism, a core plank of the Socialist mindset. They hate the idea of people not agreeing with them and, worse still, succeeding outside their mental prison compound, for that exposes their ideology as the lie that it is.

Leave people alone and if the idea of volunteering is "good", then plenty of people will take it up. THEY DO SO ALREADY.

>I must say that it is very tempting to say that this plan is all part of the Fabian agenda. It is another plank in their scheme. It will make people think they are owned by and owe a debt to the State, instead of the State just being a group of people employed by the people and lent, temporarily and with limitations, the authority and sovereignty of those people.

My answer to Gordon Brown is simple.

Μολὼν λάβε

Obama has a spine (for once). The UK Premier must also.

2009-04-13T11:54:00.004+01:00

I am no fan of Obama. He uses brain-dead non-phrases - "Change!" - to mislead people into thinking he is going to do what they want. He has shown his willingness to engineer vast transfers of wealth from the many to the few without consent in bailout after bailout.

He has done at least two things right.

One was to extend the hand of friendship to the Iranian people.

The second was to give the nod to allow lethal force in the rescue of the Captain captured by Somalian pirates.

Three pirates were killed. This will give a moment of pause to all thinking of doing similar deeds. They will pick their targets more carefully. The chances of them letting a US ship pass them by has gone up dramatically and so the lives of US merchant sailors are safer now.

Begs the question. Would Brown do the same? I say no. He is vain, vacillating, cowardly. Would Blair? Unlikely, in my view. Thatcher? Does that need an answer? Mrs T has form. Her willingness to make a similar decision in the Iranian Embassy Siege enabled it to be resolved in a professional manner. The SAS knew - to use an American phrase - that Mrs T had "got their back", i.e. she would cover them, and it was her who gave the go-ahead not to have any "untidiness" at the end and she made it clear that she was the one from which the order came.

For all the anarchy, I suspect Somalian pirates are, on the whole, rational actors. Britain needs to ensure that we exploit that to the advantage of our shipping. I suspect that it will need another incident and another firefight to sort that out. Our PM needs to make that decision. Until we get a new PM, I suspect our sailors and shipping are still at risk.

p.s. We are told that the Somalians "respcet their village elders". Ok, so why don't these elders openly say that piracy is wrong and end this behviour? I leave you to come to the blatantly obvious conclusion.

Private School Pupils to coach Comprehensive Kids?

2009-04-13T11:49:00.002+01:00

Private School pupils to be asked to coach children in Comprehensives.

Sorry, I had to just delete a load of random characters from this post as my jaw dropped onto the keyboard. I mean how can anyone put this forward without deafening dissonance over State "education"? The fundamental problems exist in the State sector. Their answer:- paper over the cracks, dab on some Savlon.

How about cutting down the razorwire that slices the future of our children into a bloody mess?

The solution is for the government to get OUT of Education provision. No more national curriculum. No more enforced exam boards. No more LEA stranglehold. Heads, teachers and parents know best. Leave them alone to get on with it.

Brown's Moral Compass

2009-04-13T11:04:00.002+01:00

Telegraph says Brown has "lost sight of moral compass".

If so, he has been using the Hubble Space telescope for the last 12 years.

Gordon's McBride Downfall

2009-04-12T14:06:00.000+01:00

Guido in the Process of Delivering Some Ownage.

2009-04-11T15:35:00.009+01:00

The insidious and State-funded dirt-diggers Damien McBride and his pet fringe Derek Draper are about to get pwned by Guido and it looks like it will be a good one...

McBride! Look up!!!!...here it comes!

That'll teach you for dirtying the hood.

A 1934 Cartoon sheds light on our dark road ahead.

2009-04-11T09:09:00.003+01:00

This very interesting cartoon dates back to 1934 in the US. (via IanPJ, Bob Murphy and Jim Myners). Little changes.

The US recovery only really got going in 1939. Funny that, for that is when the UK began to buy shiploads of goods from the US paid in gold, bonds, mining rights and concessions so as to be able to afford to fight Fascism. Correlation or causation?

There is almost no money left to re-paper over the cracks.

2009-04-10T12:08:00.008+01:00

Our educational system is crumbling. We have the LSC dithering about because it has run out of money (but not their own salaries, natch). We have Ed Balls passing the buck and basically being incompetent as the State runs out of money again and pulls the rug from under establishments. We have the dumbing down, the abdication of responsibility and the general rot at the core.

I am going to go into the quality of examinations which are the tip of the iceberg which indicates the quality of that hidden beneath the waves.

Before I do that, there is an excellent post by Leg Iron which rails against the bitter fruits being harvested in our Educational system and the thrust I solidly agree with.

Children have been "empowered" and adults have been intimidated and eviscerated as part of the cult of youth. Of course the Fabians and Righteous love the youth - they don't know enough to see through their lies. They are like Mao mischievously whipping up his Red Guards.

What I wanted to add to the piece was the following:

Many children are in the second generation of this madness. Their parents were brought up in the "no winners, all winners" mentality. Indulged. Appeased. Squeezed through a comprehensive, unstreamed sausage machine to end up like end-of-term Plasticine. Their studies steadily stripped of useful content, critical reasoning, facts and structure to be replaced with "understanding", "projects" and other mechanisms to inveigle opinion and propaganda and undermine the capacity for students to grasp the fundamentals that would enable them to expose the lies.

You can see the difference by comparing the IGCSE and the GCSE for domestic consumption. The IGCSE asks for facts and for the individual to show how they understand the topic. The GCSE just presents question after question of "Match the four answers to the four questions" or, at best, multiple choice. It does not even test knowledge much of the time for once one obvious question is matched, the chance of getting the others wrong reduces dramatically, especially if one or two combinations can be discarded - it is hardly a test at all!

Examples:

From the IGCSE Question 1.

1 Four of the classes of vertebrates and five possible descriptions of these classes are shown

below.

Draw a straight line to match each class of vertebrate to its description.

Vertebrate:

bird
fish

mammal
reptile

class of vertebrate description

body with naked skin, two

pairs of limbs

body with hair, two pairs

of limbs

body with feathers, one

pair of wings

body with scales, with fins

body with scaly skin, two

pairs of limbs or no limbs

Note that there are 5 descriptions and 4 classes.

On the GCSE, we have a picture of a head with numbers 1 to 4 pointing to the ear, eye mouth and nose.

Match words, A, B, C and D, with the numbers 1ñ 4 on the drawing.

A contains light receptors

B contains receptors sensitive to some liquid chemicals

C contains sound receptors

D contains receptors sensitive to some gaseous chemicals

Once you know what the term "receptor" means, 2 answers are in the bag. There remains the last two and even if you do not know what "gaseous" means (apart from describing the contents of the exam setter's skull), it is pretty certain that liquid has to refer to the mouth. There is no trick answer. Oh no, can't have the darlings presented with a falsehood, for that might make them question if what they read is right or not!

The second question will start to show you where the high road and low road pull away from each other.

First the IGCSE, giving a question more in keeping with our memories of exams...

2 (a) Many communities treat their sewage and release non-polluting water into a local river.

What is meant by the term sewage?

[2 marks]

(b) Sometimes the sewage treatment works cannot deal with all of the sewage and

untreated material is released into the river.

Suggest the likely effects of releasing untreated sewage into a river.

[4 marks]

Oh my gor-dedede - kids asked to think and reason? Possibility of their being wrong? Good.

Lets see how the GCSE exercises the mind of our future wealth creators...

Match substances, A, B, C and D, with the numbers 1-4 in the table.

A cannabis

B painkiller

C antibiotic

D statin

Information

1 kills bacteria in the body

2 may lead to addiction to hard drugs

3 lowers the level of cholesterol in the blood

4 relieves some of the symptoms of the disease

Oh, another 4 questions and 4 answers. No attempt to see if incorrect information can be filtered out. Easy to use some form of elimination to get points even when some facts are not known. However one of the options (option 4) is actually pretty poorly put. Painkillers relieve PAIN. I suspect the author is confusing drugs like Paracetomol which can both reduce pain and lower temperature with the baseline concept of a painkiller. Doh!

Note also the subtle propaganda in Option 2.

Let us not jump to conclusions. Let us soldier on...

Question 3 in the IGCSE...

(a) (i) Name an organism from this food web that is a

primary consumer [1]

tertiary (third level) consumer [1]

producer [1]

(ii) Using information only from Fig. 3.1, complete the food chain.

→ → → → leopard [1]

(b) Fig. 3.2 shows a pyramid of numbers for a food chain from this food web.

Which organism in the food web would occupy the 3rd trophic level in this pyramid of numbers? [1]

Predict and explain what could happen to the population of baboons when this occurs. [4]

Currently we have a plague of Educationalist morons and the baboons are breeding like crazy, because the following is what the GCSE has to offer as its Q3...

Q3. This question is about IVF (in-vitro fertilisation).

Match structures, A, B, C and D, with the numbers 1ñ4 on the diagram.

A egg

B embryo

C fertilised egg

D sperm

Well, that really stretched me. Apart from the fact that the terms for IVF were not capitalised, the question is lame and certainly omits major key facts like how to claim for it off the NHS...(joke)

I shall not go on, for the GCSE is just a litany of matching equal numbers of statements together, or at best, multiple choice.

Question 4 in the GCSE is a ludicrous picture with a brain, spinal column, muscle and a dotted line from the finger to the spinal column. 4 arrows, 4 labels to match.

The IGCSE, on the other hand, has a cross-section of a flower and you have to label 3 parts. Now, this is infinitely harder as you need to know the parts. It is not "assign the labels to the arrows" but you have to find all three parts and draw on the arrow and correctly label it.

Where the GCSE has graphs where you have to match answers to questions, the IGCSE presents a table of data which you have to plot ONTO a piece of graph paper and then are asked your view on the data - "state, with a reason, the type of variation shown...".

I mean, I could go on but it is just so very sad to see that this is the level that 16 year olds are expected to aim for GCSE and that it permits all manner of subtle propaganda to be used. Is this simplicity needed because of the constant disruption? I mean, you hardly need a teacher to teach you the GCSE if that is what is called "testing".

The disease of "prizes for all" and covering up failure is still being forced upon the system. One teaching union and Ken Livingstone wants to end any form of parent choice at all, forcing kids to go to the nearest school, like-it-or-lump-it. How dare parents express an opinion?!!!! How DARE bad schools be exposed for what they are through lower rolls! How DARE schools want to decide what exam board or system they use!!!! Irony off.

It is a crying shame. I intend to see that schools are able to free themselves from the dead hand of the State so they will live or die on thier fitness for purpose, knowing that most schools will shape up when faced with that little understood (by Socialists) concept of competition. We need a surplus of places in any area so that if a school begins to fail, it can be abandoned as pupils find a better learning environment in other establishments.

It has to be done and, despite the plans of the Conservatives, which are not far enough and keep s the State's grip, the Libertarian Party is the only Party to really let schools, Heads, Teachers, parents and pupils shine.

Legislatum Ridicularis!

2009-04-08T22:28:00.002+01:00

Today we hear of a "raid" on Harry Potter actor Jamie Waylett's bedroom to seize £2000 worth of cannabis plants. The story calls them a "farm". As in "ant", I presume.

The plants were stashed by his playstation and DJ decks and lit by hydroponic lamps.

The chap was lifted as he was found to be driving erratically. Driving while not in proper control of your vehicle is not something I will defend. The police saw the behaviour and pulled him. I am fine with that. Had this been a random stop, then that would be another thing entirely.

They did find 8 bags of cannabis in the car. Now, I am not sure of these are "baggies" or "Lock Stock" bin-bags. I suspect baggies, given the apparent scale of the "farm".

Thing is, outside of the driving, which could apply to someone on flu medicine or Bacardi Breezers, what harm is being done by the baggies or even the 'erb cultivation? Surely the chap is able to avoid contact with criminal elements created by the very fact that cannabis is prohibited? Is that not a good thing?

Someone tell me what harm has been caused by possession and cultivation? No fraud, no theft and no violence.

We need to end prohibition and stop wasting Police time. Nab him for the driving offence and that should be the end of it.

Seemingly Disgraceful Police Behaviour: But the Left have no right to claim the highground

2009-04-08T10:09:00.003+01:00

via Old Holborn, a video in The Guardian does seem to reveal key evidence in the fate of a middle aged chap in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Problem is, some are saying "The Left" have seized on this and appear to be trying to grab the moral high ground, as if they "own" victimhood from Police brutality. I have seen a comment in another place saying they are "with the Left on this one".

Oh for crying out loud. WHY does anyone think this a "LEFT" thing? Our Government and Home Sec are from the Rancid Left and so the Met takes their queue form them. Lefties are at LEAST as Authoritarian as the Right and certainly partisan.

This issue is about Rule of Law, NOT Left-Right. There was absolutely no reason to trip up/push over the chap AFAICT. Tripping someone up in a situation like that - paved floor - is a risk. Not a big one, but a risk nonetheless, especially if the person is not a youth who is likely to be more resilient and have faster reactions (no, that does not mean that young swampies can be thrown to the ground roughly with abandon, even if they have sad-act metal in their faces).

Of course we need to get all the facts, but right now, with what I have seen, the following terms come to my mind:

Cowardly. Unnecessary. Ugly. Disgraceful. Obscene.

On the question of the Police not knowing about any imminent heart condition before throwing someone to the ground unneccessarliy. Sorry, tough titties, Copper. If you were dealing with a CIP (crime in progress) and the perp had a heart attack, then no case to answer if reasonable force is being applied. Here, this is not a case of reasonable force. If this were a yob on the street tripping up a chap, I would want at least manslaughter charges and unless we get more evidence to the contrary, I want to see this happen here to.

I am fed up with the excuse "I diddern meeeeenn iiiiit/know" when people do things that clearly endanger others. Anyone who kicks a person when down - Attempted murder. Anyone who stabs someone except in say, the hand or buttocks - Attempted Murder. Violent attack on a pensioner - Attempted Murder.

The sooner people realise there are consequences for their unprovoked violent or aggressive acts the better. What you see in that Policeman is CREATED by the Left, by the Fabian undermining of social order and common decency. So please, don't give me no "with the Left" on this one...

All Your Posters are Belong To Us

2009-04-08T01:01:00.007+01:00

Some fun can be had here. Hat tip Old Holborn.

MPs in expenses "carousel fraud"

2009-04-07T11:58:00.002+01:00

Guido is on a mother lode in his digging up of MP troughing.

He appears to be discovering that MPs have been aquiring buy-to-let properties and renting them out to their staff who they then pay salaries claimed from expenses paid by the taxpayer.

This is almost (but not quite) a form of "carousel" fraud. Ok, not a carousel, lets just call it a plain old gravy train, eh?

I always thought Socialists and Statists lusted to be The National Mill Owner, but this takes it one fraudulent, money-grubbing step further.

Along with the NMO point, I have also been convinced that Socialists hated the "elite" not because they wanted to remove the concept of the "elite" - even though they told that to their "useful idiots" - but because the Socialists themselves wanted to become the elite. They coveted the position and once they get there, they become compulsive ladder-kickers who want a vast lumpen illiteriat kept down and dumb to be patronised at their leisure.

I would not be surprised, as one or two commenters to Guido's post suggest, that the Left are as bad if not worse in this regard. Even if the Tories were equally as bad, the Lefties are more repugnant for all their hypocritical posturing.

If this goes on the main parties will be running out of "clean sheets" to change the constituency beds and so an opportunity for untainted parties to come forward, like the LPUK.

Resisting Resistance is Futile! IPJ's "Window".

2009-04-06T12:42:00.004+01:00

Re the previous post about the Database State trying to snoop on all our traffic, presuming guilt before innocence.

Ian Parker-Jospeh, Leader of the Libertarian Party has put forward a simple, neat, novel campaign to swamp the monitoring systems in regard to email. The basic idea is to attach a boiler-plate footer to each and every email containing various hot keywords. This will mean all traffic needs to be read and inspected, something that will be increasingly impossible to do as more and more people attach the footer, rendering the attempt at surveillance for naught. It is the internet equivalent of "Window".

NOTE: THIS WILL ONLY WORK IF PEOPLE INVENT THEIR OWN FOOTERS!!!! - copy Ian's and it will be simple to filter your attempts out, as it will be one note and not noise!

The Government wants to live by the Database, so it will DIE by the Database!

As a parallel, I propose the introduction of an off-shore proxy server that you connect to via a 256-bit AES IP Tunnel, rendering snooping an expensive hobby in terms of CPU resources, which is now under serious consideration.

Just admit it, you bunch of prod-nosed bureaucrats - resisting our resistance is futile!

Presumed Guilty: Personal Web Data to be Stored for a Year

2009-04-05T14:26:00.006+01:00

Now the noose tightens.

We have had attempts by the EU to build a "Great Firewall of Europe" to somehow control what we see.

Now we see a more "effective" and altogether insidious move which has been on the cards for some time - the storage of our web movements and email relationships for a year. Mark my words, one year will soon become longer then become eternal. Content, not movement or relationships will soon be stored. Motive will be determined by the State observer and not the observed. Think of the absurd concept from the Macpherson Report (1999) on the death of Stephen Lawrence, stating that:

A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.

This is utter hogwash, but that has not prevented it from being widely adopted by ricebowlers, self-loathers, sufferers of victimhood, Fabians and others. A terrorist incident, I suspect will be one determined by the "any other person". The motive and thoughts of the accused will be of no concern.

So, storing such information is an outrage that is unconstitutional for the following reasons IMHO:

1. It is an invasion of privacy.

2. No individual warrant has been issued for the collection of individuals' data

3. It presumes the guilt of all and not innocence

4. In relation to the above, it puts the burden of proof upon the individual to "explain" actions without due process or probable cause being presented by the authorities.

5. It has the potential to suppress the freedoms of all by making people think twice about otherwise perfectly legal activity in case it should be highlighted.

6. The pool of data is not, will not and could never be made adequately secure, allowing for individuals to be subject to blackmail, slander, innuendo, further contributing to the effect of 5., above.

7. The State is almost certain to begin "fishing" expeditions. Data mining is almost an addiction to some. Human curiosity and the need by many to systematise, pigeonhole and find out is unlimited and this database will feed and expand on that craving.

This project, I hear, is part of EU directives. I suspect our Authoritarian Gaulieters have been gold-plating it.

The argument that it is to fight "terrorism" or is "for the chiiiiiildren" is absurd. Anyone involved in such areas will make other arrangements immediately. No, I withdraw that - it is likely that such people and groups are ALREADY making arrangements. They would be pretty stupid not to have by now and with this news they will most certainly do so.

Therefore almost NO terrorists and almost NO kiddie fiddlers that might be caught will be caught by this. However, EVERYONE will feel the Panopticon breathing down their necks, the constant surveil of Big Brother behind the Telescreen.

Anyone pretending to suggest this measure will achieve the stated goals is either

a) Lying

b) A useful idiot parroting inanities

c) An imbecile

d) All the above.

As is so often with this New Labour Authoritarian administration, bureaucratic convenience trumps our freedoms in their eyes.

Again we see the mentality to "protect". This is to suggest that one proactively remove all possible threats and does not take into account freedom of the individual, personal responsibility and assessment of risk depending on circumstances by an adult or others under the supervision of adults.

We need "defence". We need a ready, willing and capable response to when something or someone transgresses. You know, like THE LAW does? Well, the Common Law, at least. And that is part of our problem.

I think it is the duty of all people in the UK to perform civil disobedience or forms of obfuscation to render their plans for naught. Maybe it will be the inclusion of tags and keywords to make ALL communications require manual checking, so bogging down their systems, or to implement highly encrypted channels and tunnels out of EU jurisdiction so as to prevent intercept or raise the cost of intercept to an unacceptable level.

On the other hand I might just learn gibberish.

Machine-wrapped with butter!

They are Town Clerks, not CEOs, OK?

2009-04-04T18:17:00.003+01:00

I just saw this over at the Kitchen:

Annual wages:

Chief Executive Merthyr Council (2009-2010 Budget £104 million):

£131,500

Chief Executive Ofcom (2009-2010 Budget £136.8 million):

£417,500

Chief Executive NASA (2009-2010 Budget $19.7 billion / £13.3 billion):

$177,000 / £119,000

Just sayin'

Can we just stop this nonsense of Councils calling their head "CEO"? They don't sell to anyone, they have a captive market, they are rent-seekers, protection racketeers, ponces. A State-commissioned monopoly. A CEO could lose their market and the organisation taken over - these people are just bureaucrats. The job was, is and should be called "Town Clerk". Once they are called what they really are - Town Clerks - the stupid salaries will be far harder to justify.

And who said that Capitalism and Bankers were "greedy"?

Spiral: Worth Checking Out

2009-04-02T13:54:00.002+01:00

Some time ago I watched a French TV series called Spiral. It was a gritty, edgy, urban cop show set in the less glamourous districts dealing with the rougher parts of life. I found it very well done, unsentimental. It was far tighter and less airbrushed than the Belasarius franchise (CSI:[ ], Law and Order etc) yet not thin and rather amateur in the Law and Order UK frame, which was a dropped ball if you ask me, not enough gravitas as yet. Maybe they will grow into it.

It is now being replayed on BBC FOUR and you can catch the episodes on iPlayer here.

Old Holborn Inspects The Stormtroopers

2009-04-01T17:33:00.002+01:00

Superb picture of OH at the G20 protests outside the Bank of England.

Deliciously, via The Guardian.

H/T The Penguin via OH's enclosed commons.

The US Taxpayer being shafted: What about the UK?

2009-04-01T17:01:00.003+01:00

I was notified of this story over at Zero Hedge by a mate of mine on the Asia Desk of a well-respected Newswire.

It involves AIG and shows, basically, that the Banks were gifted fat margins at the expense of the US Taxpayer when AIG offloaded positions to the effect that each bank made something like USD1bln-2bln each. EACH:

AIG, knowing it would need to ask for much more capital from the Treasury imminently, decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money losing to the U.S. taxpayers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this, for lack of a better word, fraudulent scam.

And it got worse, as the ISDA ammeded the rules so that the trades could occur (as in not be seen as failing best execution) as long as a rather weak criteria was met:

So - in simple terms, ISDA, which is the only effective supervisor of the Over The Counter CDS market, is giving its blessing for trades to occur (cross) below where there is a realistic market bid, or higher than the offer. In traditional equity markets this is a highly illegal practice. ISDA is allowing retrospective arbitrary trades to have occurred at whatever price any two parties agree on, so long as the very vague necessary and sufficient condition of "market quotations may be difficult to obtain" is met. As anyone who follows CDS trading knows, this can be extrapolated to virtually any specific single-name, index or structured product easily. In essence ISDA gave its blessing for below the radar fund transfers of questionable legality. The curious timing of this decision and the alleged abuse of CDS transaction marks by and among AIG and the big banks, is striking to say the least.

As Zero Hedge rightly points out:

This wholesale manipulation of markets, investors and taxpayers has gone on long enough.

But I doubt it will end there. Prepare for an even greater shift of wealth from the many to the few without consent and under the counter. Prepare, too, for such "deals" to occur in the UK, ripping off the Taxpayer, rewarding failure and distorting the markets.

Ayn Rand was so right when she said:

"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."—Ayn Rand, 1975

And Statists we have. I just wonder how and when we will be AIG'd.

My Favourite Picture of the Day:

2009-04-01T13:53:00.003+01:00

As the U.S.Less "End Enterprise" tries to warp out from Planet Reality...

Lt. Sarko : She is, err, not, ow you say, respondez-l'ordinateur, M. Snott.

Parking the Beast. Subsonic Pr0n.

2009-04-01T10:15:00.004+01:00

The BBC kindly shows us the difficulties of turning around Obama's limo - nicknamed "the Beast"* - in Downing Street.

Now, I suspect this is a little schaudenfreude by the econazis, sandalistas, self-loathers, lentilists and lycranazis in the BBC of whom some secretly covet the opportunity to waft down private lanes like all good Stalinists should.

Still, I am not really complaining as you can just detect the near sub-sonic rumble of the powerplant driving the Beast as it negotiates the 7 point turn. While I do look forward to the introduction of electric vehicles, like steam engines, ICEs do have a sensual dimension. They do say that the low notes and subsonic tones of Church organs inspire feelings of the divine in people, a spiritual sensation, and I think this has something to do with the attractiveness of large engines. Not for me the wail of a Ferrari - I much prefer the lower bass rumbles, effortless torque rather than high-revving power. The nearest I have in my own 'fleet' was a V4 Saab (which sounded like a V8), a Triumph Vitesse (the old Herald version with the 2ltr 6) and my two 2.8ltr straight 6 Mercs. These last few weeks of warmth have allowed me to enjoy the sounds reflected off the hedgerows of Hampshire and Oxfordshire.

* Shrek might have been more appropriate. Boy, is it UGLY.

Sound Money vs. the Economist's New Old New Clothes

2009-04-01T09:25:00.004+01:00

I attended the Policy Exchange event Beyond Inflation last night to hear James Tyler, influential and significant LIFFE trader and owner of Tyler Capital speak alongside Bernard Connolly ( Managing Director, Connolly Global Macro), Dr. Rebecca Driver (Ex Bank of England Advisor, Director of Research and Chief Economist, ABI), Michael Saunders (Chief Economist, Citi) and Dr. Andrew Lilico (Managing Director, Europe Economics). Guido was also in attendance.

I have met James before and knew he had many sympathies and agreement with the Libertarian Party monetary policy, specifically Free Banking.

James kicked the event off by providing the setting and then the case for Free Banking because Central Banks have not and will not be capable of properly forecasting and responding to the market, but only distorts it, even putting aside political expediency. UPDATE: Text here.

Next up was Dr Rebecca Driver. Her stance was "keep doing what we do, but get better at it". A sticky wicket and one must respect her for coming to such a place at a time as this and stand up and put that view.

Following Rebecca was Dr Andrew Lilico who railed (@19/12) against the flaws in the system that Rebecca had just defended, arguing that price trends across years need to be factored in. I did speak to him at the drinks afterwards to the effect that measuring prices is a moving target and not an exact science. We did agree that a key is the promise - the Pound - the BoE role surely is to honour that contract, i.e. manage the value of that pound. I understood that Andrew believes that this can be done via better monitoring of short, medium and long term price trends and thinks Free Banking will mean the BoE has little or no control over that aspect of contracts.

Michael Saunders was up next and to be frank, maybe because I am no Economist, I did not really grasp the core of his point. Nor did I get the gist of what Bernard Connolly was putting forward, though he did come up with a term new to my ears in regards to the damage caused by distorting the markets - "Inter-Temporal Misallocation".

What was worrying was that, James aside, the status quo got pretty much an endorsement or a by, though to be fair I think that Bernard Connolly was not happy with the status quo but did not appear to my cloth ears to present a concrete alternative.

Free banking does present me with a problem. If organisations decide to print their own money, you just end up with more money in the system, for even if they buy assets to back the new money, the Sterling is still "out there". Vaulting it is just doing what happens in Hong Kong, where Standard Chartered, HSBC and Bank of China have massive vaults of USD to back up all the HKD issued or on balance.

Good money, they say, will drive out bad. The problem I see is how to "retire" Sterling so it maintains value? Maybe I am being over-cautious and this will happen naturally as people offer new loans in the new currencies instead of loans in Sterling, thereby, one would surmise, reducing the Sterling balances in circulation as Sterling loans are paid off faster than they are issued (always remembering that the principal of a loan is "destroyed" until a new loan is issued).

I am currently exercised by this conundrum - how will the economy react and what will happen to Sterling if we had free banking? The State would still keep Sterling as the currency issued by the BoE, require its contracts and taxes settled in it and the last thing we would want is a run/panic from Sterling while the system was settling in, for that would hurt the less informed, the little people, more than the informed and powerful. Free Banking would be a self-regulating watchdog on the behaviour of the State and banks in general. It will, however, highlight the woeful state of education in this country, namely the diseducation of our people and a culture fostered by some to breed sheeple who abdicated responsibility for their own lives and, via Tyranny of the Majority, have put many of the resultant chains on us all.

Gang of politicians not convicted for running Britain's biggest counterfeiting operation

2009-03-27T21:30:00.003Z

A gang of politicians are not facing jail for running one of Britain's biggest counterfeit bank notes scams from the suburban home of an 60-year-old man.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent at The Telegraph and BBC reports.
Last Updated: 9:41AM GMT 03 Mar 2009

The forgers printed more than £75 billion worth of almost faultless fake £20 notes from the front room of Mervyn King's house in Chiswick, south west London.

They were sold to criminal gangs and banks and the forgeries made their way into circulation throughout Europe, at one stage causing a nationwide alert on Bank of England and Bank of Scotland £20 notes which was quickly suppressed by dissinformation and simplistic explanations by the BBC.

Detectives from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency said that the gang, with an average age of around 60, ran the counterfeit operation like a professional business, with senior managers and a computer expert running a number of production sites in both London and Kirkcaldy. At its peak, it could produce a fully finished batch of £80000 worth of notes in half an hour – more than one £20-a-second.
The notes were first printed on an industrial lithograph machine, the size of an office, and then cut and sent to KIng's home to be "foiled" and finished using a £12,500 toner fuser machine.

Soca director general Bill Hughes said: "This was a top tier gang, producing high quality fakes, and operating like a business... they were set to make a substantial profit and cause significant harm."
CPS spokeswoman Jenny Hopkins said: "It was a challenging case because of the size of the conspiracy and the volume of material."

A Bank of England spokesman said it had not been a victimless crime, with real people and business affected, and urged people worried about fake notes to not bother as their wealth had been irrevocably diluted.

It is still unclear exactly how many bogus notes got into circulation. A Bank of England forgery expert said the only differences between the gangs notes and real ones was the type of justification used and the lack of backing assets. Genuine notes are also printed on cotton based paper to which only the Bank of England has access.

The gang held one "committee meeting" at the Treasury in London, but planned much of the plot from the cover of a non-working man's club in Westminster, Central London.

Officers watched their activities for months before swooping on the gang in October 2007. They recovered more than £500,000 worth of bogus £20 notes. They believe that almost every other note has now escaped into circulation.

The counterfeiting scam first started in Edinburgh, where Fred Goodwin – nicknamed "Fred the Shred" – used his banking firm as a front. He was paid off and told to live a luxurious life for forty six years and four months after an investigation by police in Scotland. He had previously stood before the Treasury Select Committee in 2008 accused of being the main player in a plan to swamp the market with toxic debt. The conviction collapsed due to a typing error on search warrants.

Eight men pleaded whatever to counterfeiting charges and are facing Honours. They are: King, 60, Gordon Brown, 58, Alistair "The" Darling, 55, John McFall, 64, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper. Prudence was summarily executed in 1997.

The case can be reported after three other men were cleared yesterday of the same charges. Among those acquitted after a six week trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court were one of the gang's alleged "directors", Harriet Harman.

Apologies to The Daily Telegraph and The BBC.

Scientists Film Common Purpose spreading for the First Time

2009-03-27T13:06:00.002Z

Scientists film Common Purpose spreading for first time

Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how Common Purpose spreads through organisations and government after filming the process for the first time ever.

By Ben D'Sierre
Last Updated: 8:46AM GMT 27 Mar 2009

Researchers found that the mindset is transferred from infected people to healthy ones in a previously unknown way.

It is hoped that the discovery will help researchers create a vaccine to combat the mindset, which has led to the loss of integrity and moral deaths of more than 25 million people.

The study was made possible after experts created a monocular clone of infectious Common Purpose and inserted a protein into its genetic code which glows green when exposed to blue light.

This allowed scientists to see the people on security cameras, and capture the way Common Purpose-infected people interact with uninfected ones.

They noted that when an infected person came into contact with a healthy one, a bridge was created between them, called an illogical synapse.

Researchers were then able to observe the fluorescent green Common Purpose memes moving towards the synapse and into the healthy person.

The US study has broken new ground by revealing that it is the synapse through which the memes are gathered and moved into uninfected persons.

The team, comprising scientists from UC Davis university in California, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, believe that this knowledge could help create new treatments for Common Purpose and even Fabianism.

Study author Dr Thomas Huser, chief scientist at the UC Davis Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology, said: "Our findings may explain why attempts to develop a Common Purpose vaccine have so far been unsuccessful.

"The more we know about this mode of transfer, the better chance we have of figuring out how to block it and the spread of Common Purpose and Fabianism."

For decades it was believed that Common Purpose was mostly spread around society through freely circulating advertising, which attach themselves to a person, take over its intellectual machinery and make multiple copies of themselves.

In 2004, scientists discovered that person-to-person transfer of Common Purpose also occurred via illogical synapses, but it was not understood why the process was so effective in spreading the memes.

Due to this, previous efforts to create a Common Purpose vaccine have focused on priming the critical reasoning and moral compass system to recognise and attack memes of free-circulating Fabians.

The new video footage indicates that Common Purpose avoids recognition by being directly transferred between jobs.

Dr Huser said: "We should be developing vaccines that help the recruitment system recognise memes involved in illogical synapse formation and education that targets the factors required for synapse formation."

Co-author Benjamin Chen, assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, added: "Direct person-to-person transfer through a illogical synapse is a highly efficient avenue of Common Purpose infection, and it could be the predominant mode of dissemination."

Further research intends to discover what happens to infected people once they are transferred into a newly infected organisation.

The study's finding are published in the journal Science.

Appologies to The Daily Telegraph

C4 Finally catches up with Dan, credits the US then brings in Labour "attack sprog" Draper

2009-03-26T19:52:00.004Z

Well, what could we expect?

C4 finally catches up at last with the Dan Hannan speech. But, in true Fabian style they distort the truth and use half truths, disingenuous piffle and mumble-swerve to try and pull the wool. They even tried to make out that it was the US that alerted them, as if nobody in the UK was capable of seeing it. Nonsense.

C4 brought in Katawaler from the Fabian Fifth Column to make weak rebuffs on minor details and then in the studio we had the Labour "attack sprog" Derek Draper to make snide remarks and continue with the countermeasures.

Still, the cat is out the bag and no matter how much they do this to put off the "party faithful" from realising the butt-nakedness of their bankrupt, dysfunctional ideology called Socialism, many more will have their curiosity pricked and find the speech and cheer to the rafters.

Global Currency, global enslavement

2009-03-25T21:32:00.004Z

A new global reserve currency is being mooted in the run-up to the G20, not least of all by Russia and China to unseat the USD.

It is as if the Pharaohs have returned. We will be forced to glean stubble in the fields.

A global reserve currency will demand all States hand over assets, gold, securites to back it (sort of). You can see that some would plan to burgle the US to right wrongs. Of course, the UK - chumps they are - will scamper up and hand over everything getting us the worse possible deal "to get things moving" while all the other countries will just haggle. I predict a variant on the parable of the three beggars* - delegate after delegate feigning to contribute and expecting the shortfall to be lost in the crowd.

Not only will we have the debt, we will have it in a collapsed currency. I suspect that the new reserve will not want our Sterling, but will demand gold, assets, rights, resources. It could be as bad or worse than the US demanded pre Lend Lease, when all our gold, bonds, concessions, bases etc were taken. We have enough self-loathers who will perversely delight at the obliteration of the UK. Not only delight, but shove it over the cliff aided by the ignorant, spiteful and vindictive.

We are at risk of a new dark age, a new enslavement. A Pandora's Box is being dragged out and dusted off. The useful idiots are dancing around eager to take a look and open it becuase? Well, it has not been opened and, well, it's time for a change, isn't it?

* The parable of the three beggars. Three beggars meet on the road as dusk is falling. Each complains of their lot and the little they have been able to collect. One has some vegetables, another has some meat and the third has some herbs, each on its own insufficient and unsatisfying. Then, one of the beggars has an idea - "What if we put our food together - the vegetables, the meat and the herbs and make ourselves some stew?". The second replied "That is a good idea. How about I find some wood for a fire?". The Third then says "I will seek out a pot to put it all in". The first then says "Excellent ideas! I will then find fresh water". So off they went. When they returned with pots, wood and water, it was already dark. Soon a fire was lit, the pot slung over it and the water heating up nicely. "So", said the first beggar "we can now put in our food". The first beggar was crafty, and thought to himself "it is now dark and I can pretend to drop in my vegetables. The meat and herbs will suffice and nobody will notice, I will have some stew and still have my vegetables for tomorrow". So, the first went up to the pot and made a great display of appearing to place the vegetables in. The second beggar then thought - "what a fool that beggar is, putting in his vegetables. I will not put in my meat. Why should I? The vegetables and herbs will make a good stew and tomorrow I will still have my meat". So, like the first, the second beggar went up to the pot and pretended to place his food into the bubbling water. The third, watching the other two, was very smug indeed - "They have put their food in and it will make a good stew. I shall hold on to my herbs and keep them for tomorrow. They will not notice". So the third strode up and with a flourish, pretended to drop his herbs in the steaming water, like the others using the cover of darkness and deep shadows caused by the fire. The three beggars were all happy and very cheerful, each thinking that they alone had out-smarted the other two. So they talked and talked together, happy to let the "stew" bubble away as long as possible, even though their stomachs ached, twisted and rumbled, for the longer it was left, the better their deceit was hidden. Finally they agreed to savour this magnificent meal. Each walked up to the pot and ladled out their share. Then all three sat down and began their "stew". In silence. Each sat and stared straight ahead as they supped hot water. Each now knew what the others had done, but each knew they were as guilty, but to save face none of them said a word. Instead of a hearty meal shared and a new formed friendship built on trust and cooperation, what they were left with was just water, isolation and mistrust.

Gordon's Answer: Relieving himself in the bathtub

2009-03-25T17:09:00.003Z

We are sitting in a tepid tub in a freezing bathroom.

We need to face facts, stand up, get out, take the chill, dry off and move on.

Gordon's answer is to relieve himself in the vain hope of warming the water.

What we need is Sound Money. We need to cut debt, cut taxes and demolish spending, just like any other household does, even one that has dependants. We need the UK to become a de facto tax haven (as per Libertarian Party policy).

Cutting Income Tax keeps the money - it does not even "put"! - keeps the money in the hands of those who earned it. They decide to do with it what they will and, in the round, they will tend make the RIGHT decision for themselves and so the nation. Far better than any Government minister.

Many will cut their card balances. Others will save it. Some will cut their mortgages. A growing number will begin, after a few months of housekeeping, to spend more. Their money. Their choice.

We are running a real risk of having 51% voting to take more and more from the productive 49%*. When that happens, we are sunk. The workers become the true slaves, labouring for crumbs under the iron heel of the National Mill Owner.

* percentages are symbolic

Dan Hannan Skewers Gordon Brown at the EUdenrat

2009-03-24T18:59:00.005Z

hat tip Guido.

Dan Hannan says it as he so often does in clear, logical, and precise terms and with surgical precision. His minutes at the microphone are beautifully crafted and constructed, building into a crescendo.

A bankrupt Prime Minister, pathologically incapable not just of admitting fault, but of running the country, has just been skewered. Farage gave Blair a wonderful bitch-slapping at the end of his 6-month presidency, and Dan has now exposed Gordon in assembly, stripping him of his fraudulently obtained colours in magnificent style.

Bravo, Dan. 10/10. In a word: Delicious.

p.s. Loved the gasps around the chamber as the rapier wit did its work. You can't say that! Will you step outside! Will you step outside!!!!

Putting the Collective First

2009-03-24T17:53:00.002Z

A crypto-grass-roots organisation has emerged to agitate and manipulate - "putting the ~~collective~~ people first".

Putting the obvious comments about the faux-edgy, with-it, urban, retina-busting website aside for a moment, lets just look at what they are saying on the surface, with Thornhill translation for the hard of spinning:

What are we ~~demanding with menaces~~ calling for?
The platform is united by three linked calls: Decent ~~subsidised~~ jobs and public services for ~~the many~~ all ~~paid for by the enemy~~, end poverty ~~by redefining it~~ and inequality ~~by pulling everyone down to the same level~~, build a green economy ~~based on subsidy~~. More specific demands on the UK government are to:
Create a ‘Green New Deal’ to create jobs in the environmental sector - Translation: Create a Econazi Charter to synthesize fake jobs and thus create costs in the rent-seeking, could-not-sell-otherwise sector.
Invest in essential services including social housing - Translation: spend other people's money in areas we want to that give us and our mates salaried unemployment and provide subsidised housing for those we decide are worthy while those who work to pay for it live in cramped conditions unable to afford anything larger.
Provide emergency funding to countries that need it to protect jobs and provide social protection - Translation: distort the economies of other countries to prolong the agony and delay the recovery.
Tackle tax havens - especially those linked to the UK - Translation: make the globe subject to the same onerous, wealth-destroying, innovation-suppressing parasitical tax regimes, with self-loathing guilt thrown in.
Insist on democratic reform of the World Bank and IMF - Translation: Force our form of Tyranny of the Majority on Supra-National organisations.
Make all financial institutions and multinational corporations transparent and accountable - Translation: De facto nationalisation of financial institutions and multinational corporations, making them tools for our ends, thereby riding roughshod over property rights.
Ensure that poorer states are allowed to take responsibility for managing their own economies rather than having liberalisation measures forced upon them - Translation: support protectionist, corrupt and totalitarian regimes around the world.
Introduce robust regulatory requirements and financial incentives at national level and push for them at international level to stop climate chaos - Translation: Install a global mechanism for rent-seeking in pursuit of an unproven dogma while denying Mankind the wealth and means to mitigate natural cycles in climate change.
Commit to substantial new resource transfer from North to South to support low carbon development - Translation: Commit to trying to salve guilt and self-loathing by making the rich poorer and the poor no richer.
Unfortunately, examination of proposed government solutions to date are either piecemeal, or advocate yet more ‘free’ trade policies, likely to only to make the crisis worse ~~for moonbat policies~~.

Go on, believe it, you know it ~~doesn't~~ makes sense.

Millions face a pay freeze while the 646 ask for 63% more.

2009-03-24T09:17:00.003Z

While people are facing the prospect of years of pay freezes - some have already have - MPs, when threatened with the removal of their "second home allowance", i.e. license to take money from us without justification, their response is to ask for a 63% pay rise from £64k to £100kp.a.

How about having a second home allowance that is properly enforced and fully justified, eh?

No, having to prove your expenses is something only the proles have to do - you know, those mugs who pay tax to fund the very life this current crop of troughing MPs enjoy.

So the idea of £100k is to put it in line with Head Teachers and Doctors. Well, I would be more open to that discussion IF and only IF the MPs actually were responsible - i.e. that we return sovereignty to the UK so all laws are passed in the house, not rubber stamped, remove Statutory Instruments and get MPs to focus on lawmaking and not Social Work, which is what Councillors should be doing. If the Central Government did less, then there would be far less need for such "channels". Oh, and merge the role of MSP/MA with MP while we are at it.

Northern Rock saved from winding down due to "Inadequate IT"

2009-03-24T07:57:00.003Z

Via Finextra (login required).

The UK government was forced to rule out letting failed bank Northern Rock wind down because poor IT systems would have left depositors waiting for their money, risking another major run.
The revelation comes in a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) on the government's handling of the failed bank, which was nationalised in February 2008.
The report says that in September 2007 the Treasury considered stopping Northern Rock from taking deposits and writing new mortgages and beginning a process of winding down the company.
However "inadequate IT systems at Northern Rock meant that depositors would have had to wait for their money".
The firm operated a manual account closure process and estimated that it would have taken up to 10 to 12 weeks to repay depositors, with a likely error rate of 25%.
This would have risked another major run and potential hardship for those reliant on access to their funds, says the report, forcing the government to rule out an immediate wind-down on "practical grounds".
The report says work on updating the technology was then begun to enable quicker repayment of depositors if needed at a later stage.

Does the term "not fit for purpose" spring to your mind as well as mine? Because they had inadequate systems that suggests to me that Northern Rock should almost certainly have been wound down and the Directors, or at least the CIO, wound up in gaol for gross negligence equal to fraud.

Other companies are not given a reprieve because their incompetent Directors had admin systems and procedures so bad nobody knew who was owed what, so why should this happen for a bank? Why should Taxpayers pay and continue to pay because those running Northern Rock were incompetent? It does not encourage good behaviour elsewhere.

Far from it.

This, on top of the news that we, the Taxpayer, had to pay £80m in Consultancy fees over the Northern Rock problems because of Treasury spinelessness/incompetence/irresponsibility, while the bank continued to churn out "Together" mortgages offering 125pc LTV.

Yes, "together" - Together, Northern Rock and the Taxpayer are drifting up Brown Creek without a moral compass.

Nuclear Power: Travelling Wave Reactor

2009-03-23T15:16:00.002Z

Via MIT Technology Review we have the Travelling Wave Reactor.

Basically, a nuclear reactor that begins with a thin slice of U235 - the fissile fuel used in "normal" reactors - and alot of U238, the non-fissile material from which U235 currently has to be extracted at great cost.

The small slice of U235 placed at one end of a cylinder of U238 is ignited in a nuclear sense, producing energy and also causing the U238 in proximity to it to become P239, Plutonium, which, being fissile itself, then continues the reaction, converting its U238 neighbours further along the cylinder still into P239, i.e. slowly burning its way through the cylindrical core like a cigarette. The beauty of this system is that it removes the need for bulk creation of U235 and uses what would otherwise be unused material (U238). Not only that, the core can run for 40 or even 60 years before needing to be removed and dealt with, which is quite different from the present systems that need to be refuelled every couple of years.

There is also a short video on the topic.

I am a Fusionhead, but still, I think this is interesting technology in the interim. It was also invented by a private research facility.

Gordon Brown: Bully and Coward

2009-03-23T14:20:00.002Z

Publish Post
Gordon Brown barges around trying to bluff everyone into his crackpot scheme for a Global Bargain. Of course the Chinese, the Americans and others tell him to get knotted, for they know what it means: a loss of Sovereignty.

With his bubble pricked, he then concedes the entire party - he gives away Sovereignty to the EU of all entities to manage our financial markets.

The Devil blasts him with a suitably vigourous torrent here.

This, in effect, will give the EU de facto control over UK monetary policy - by hook or by crook. Do not underestimate the determination, the creeping infestation. This will be the Euro via the back door. The Pound will be pegged soon enough and the Treason will be complete.

Alcohol: All Three Major Parties are a joke

2009-03-16T09:39:00.002Z

On the issue of minimum prices for Alcohol, it now appears that Gordon Brown has done the right thing by deciding to do nothing. Maybe he should learn the lesson and apply it towards the economic debacle we now face.

The Tories propose more meddling

Andrew Lansley, Shadow Health Secretary, said: “There is clearly a need for action. But it is very important to recognise that we need to deal with people’s attitudes and not just the supply and price of alcohol.”
He said that Conservative proposals, which include measures to tackle loss-leader promotions and higher taxes on high-alcohol drinks aimed at young people, would address this without penalising the majority of moderate drinkers. “This would seem to be a much better route to go down than distorting the whole drinks market, which in any case may not be legal.”

so they show their Authoritarian, micromanagement feathers. As such they can just clear off.

The Liberal Democrats are worse:

The Liberal Democrat culture, media and sport spokesman Don Foster backed Sir Liam’s call. “The Liberal Democrats have long argued that the ridiculously cheap below-cost price of alcohol in some of our supermarkets and off-licences is a key contributor to the problem of binge drinking,” he said. “There is clear research showing that putting an end to pocket money-priced alcohol will influence drinking behaviour. While more work needs to be done on the details, we welcome Sir Liam’s intervention and hope that the Government will act.”

proving the point recently repeated by DK, that the LDs are neither Liberal, nor "democratic", as in the commonly held understanding of the term to mean basically upholding Rule of Law.

Gordon has such a poor Political Compass, I wonder who advised him against it. Gordon's demagnetised political compass was bought at the same shop as those held by LibDems, but in their case it appears they believe in such twaddle root and branch.

Empty Housing to be seized by The People's Revolutionary Soviet

2009-03-11T09:51:00.004Z

Houses empty for six months could be seized by the People's Soviet state

Anyone who leaves their house empty for six months or more could have it seized by the People's Soviet state and rented out to council tenants, ministers have said.

By Christopher ~~Abandonall~~ Hope, Whitehall Editor
Last Updated: 8:44AM GMT 11 Mar 2009

If an owner has no ~~permit~~ legally-approved excuse for keeping a home empty, councils can ~~sequester~~ demand it be put on the market Photo: GETTY

The Governments wants town halls to ~~ignore property rights~~ pressure homeowners to sell up or rent out properties where no one is living.

Empty Home Dwelling Orders allow local ~~people's revolutionary committees~~ authorities to take over the management, but not ~~for now~~the ownership, of a property.

Since the orders were first introduced in 2006, they have been used just 20 times ~~because even the mendacious scumbags dare not to~~.

However Margaret Beckett, the Housing Minister ~~(A horse! A horse! Who will rid us of this turbulent horse!)~~, said she hoped that their use would increase as housing building has slowed in the recession.

She said: "I believe that with an increased focus and more consistent approach, we can ~~bully and steal~~ bring even more homes back into use.

"With house building slowing in the current challenging economic climate ~~caused by Gordon Brown's ineptitude~~, that is more important than ever."

The new guidance could affect recently bereaved families, who might be delaying what to do about a deceased relative's property, or families who are trying to sell a house during the recession ~~or just about anyone who was under the mistaken assumption that their property was in fact their property~~.

The Tories compared the crackdown with the fact that many "grace and favour" Government properties are not being used by Cabinet ministers ~~and so totally muddies the water with a pathetic diversion into political point scoring, n and skimming over the far more serious issue of fundamental property rights~~.

Grant Shapps, shadow Housing minister, said ~~some self-serving 'kwaffle~~: "It is the height of Labour hypocrisy to instruct town halls to use draconian powers to seize the homes of the recently deceased, while plush ministerial grace-and-favour homes lie empty in Whitehall."

Under the rules a home cannot be seized if the owner is in a care home, or away caring for someone. Nor can it be taken if the owner is a serviceman or woman away on duty, or if it is used as a holiday home ~~cos that will upset the elite~~.

But if an owner has no ~~Marxist~~ legally-approved excuse for keeping a home empty, councils can demand it be put on the market. Otherwise they can take control and let it out to council tenants.

The seizure must be approved by a ~~People's Revolutionary~~ Residential Property Tribunal ~~Collective~~ and the rent is passed to the owner after the council has taken a ~~massive~~share to cover its own ~~bloated~~costs ~~while no loss of value is compensated for~~.

There are currently nearly 300,000 privately-owned homes that have been empty for six months or more.

But there are also 80,000 empty local council and housing association dwellings.

Apologies to the Daily Telegraph

State Appropriation of Housing: Your Attitude is Noticed!

2009-03-11T09:17:00.005Z

Now we see a neat lawlet being raised in profile - the ability for the local Council to appropriate homes that have been empty for 6 months and rent it out to council tenants.

I wonder if the owner can then say they want to rent it out to their own tenants? I doubt it. I wonder if the owner will have any say over who will be put into that home? I doubt it, even if the new "guests" render the owner "enemy mine" to all their neighbours or damage or abuse the property. Will the owner have a say over how the property is "renovated"? I doubt it. Countless vandalism will occur to houses - and that is just in the renovations.

This is nothing short of Communism.

This reminds me of the scene from Dr Zhivago when he returns to find his family home taken over by some People's Collective.

If we complain?

"Your attitude has been noticed, Comrade Thornhill. Oh yes, its been noticed!"

QE2

2009-03-05T23:43:00.002Z

Further to my original post on QE.

We are all currently sitting in a freezing cold bathroom in a rapidly cooling bathtub of water. And what does the Government do? It pisses into the water in a vain attempt to warm things up.

NHS Records: The State still thinks it owns us body and soul

2009-03-03T08:43:00.003Z

As you know, the Trojan Horse Bill, otherwise known as The Coroners and Justice Bill, aims to hoover up all information about us so that it can be used on fishing expeditions, seeking out people who have to then prove their innocence for crimes nobody reported and to also sell off to the highest bidder for private gain.

Now, Doctors are right to complain that such disclosure is highly likely to make patients withhold vital information in consultation rooms for fear that it will eventually be used against them by people who have no context and no expertise to make any judgements whatsoever. Plenty of "authority", mind.

Imagine someone even TALKING to their GP about mental health, for example? That could render them unemployable. People will just clam up, with all manner of consequences. For the State this is but a mere bagatelle when compared to all the lovely information and that warm feeling they get knowing that the entire population realise that every word they say could come back to bite them in future at the whim of a bureaucrat.

However, what is a little irritating is that even if this information did NOT affect the consultations, the State still has absolutely NO GOD DAMN RIGHT to look at it. I am not their property. I am not chattel or some indentured servant. Doctors, by speaking about the impact of such information theft - for it is not "sharing" in the typical Socialist newspeak - they implicitly sanction the underlying right of that theft. It is like saying "don't steal the lead from the church roof because it will leak", focusing on the consequences of that particular action instead of the underlying illegality of any and all such actions.

It is an invitation to salami slice, an invitation to respond with an enormous bureaucracy and massive IT spend to "safeguard" the data. No, a flat rejection on the basis that the information does not belong to the State is the best way to deal with this. I am disappointed in the stance taken by the Medics on this occasion.

Now, the Statists, lickspittles and other useful idiots will blather on about "costs to the NHS" but remember, we have no choice but fund the NHS. It is a de facto monopoly. The great, the good and the ugly* (*politicians and quangocrats) can step outside the NHS and avoid all this, but most people cannot. This is why a State run system is wrong as not only does it tend towards a monopoly - and we all know what monopolies mean for the consumer of services - the State then begins to think it "pays for it" and so has the right to withdraw or worse, it is doing it out of the kindness of its heart and we all need to go cap-in-hand.

This is why two things must be done to reaffirm freedom and liberty.

a) Income Tax must be abolished - we are not cows to be milked and the State must not have first call on our earnings. While we have Income Tax, the State will continue to think we "owe" them or prove that we do not. Don't believe me? Witness the Passport systems being used to check "days out" in case we sneaky people are not living abroad enough. Checked into and out of the milking stalls like cattle.

b) The State monopolistic and Stalinist provision of Healthcare must end. Various options along the lines of a plurality of insurance providers, robust/firm/fair safety net and plurality of healthcare provision initially via independent not-for-profit Hospitals set free from the clutches of the PCTs may be a way forward. Smooth transition is as important, but not more important as the end goal.

Only the Libertarian Party proposes the above. All the other parties still want to own your arse.

NeueArbeit Macht Frei

The Spell is Broken: Dealing Healing and Repealing

The Census, Part 2.

Rule of Law

The Census

An Invitation to Jeremy Hunt, MP: Boil Your Own Head

An invitation to US Senator Robert Menendez; Boil Your Own Head

Drug Decriminalisation shock response - more heads recommended for self-boiling

Burqa Ban

Will the Eric Pickles Local Liberation be a Soviet One?

R4isms: NHS and Homo Fabian Neanderthalensis

Telegraph Fights Global IQ with Reason-Negative Whale Faeces

CiF Watch - Spending Cuts

More thinking re Electric Cars

Labour and "me me me"

Huhne, Energy and daft electric vehicles

Gordon's Hung Parliament Downfall

Gordon Brown: Always A Marxist to Me

On the De Facto Monopoly of State education

Prepare for Fiscalnacht

Quote of the Day

Norwich North: No such thing as a "bad" result for the LPUK

Last Chance for Liberty: Norwich North

Cameron in danger of opening the gates (and wedging them open).

Sadiq Khan: A fool or a traitor?

MP's Expenses: All. Bets. Are. Off.

What if Labour voters vote Green in the EU Elections?

"Smart" Meters: The monopolistic and Authoritarian mind of the State writ large

Expenses: The difference between "Should" and "Could"

Papieren! The ID Card system draws nearer.

Jacqui Smith: Hypocrisy and Conflation

Alan Milburn: A keystone in Gordon's Downfall

Guido Outlines a rescue plan for The Independent

Education: Anything but the obvious

Karen Matthews: I only miss shopping and sex

Is Mayor Boris re-arranging deckchairs and not clearing the way?

Someone Please Explain why Mr Noumbiwa needs to be outside Cameroon, let alone in the UK?

Coffeehouse calls for "A proper debate on the 50p tax". Why?

Democracy. Rule of Law

Unimog: A personal favourite now in Dorset

Consume for Happiness

60m Citizens Targeted by war room scams.

60m Citizens targeted by war room scams

More than a third of people targeted by HM Treasury fraudsters during the past 12 years were pensioners, the City watchdog has said.

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