The Devil's Kitchen

Acting

2012-05-25T00:03:00.000+01:00

I have been avidly catching up on some of the In The Actor's Studio stuff recently. I find it odd that so many of the really great actors come across as very diffident (at best) or "humble".

Jim Carrey is funny (though his early life was quite tragic), whilst Johnny Depp is deeply laconic; most extraordinary is seeing cocky action hero Harrison Ford looking utterly hunted.

As someone who does occasional amateur dramatics, I find their approach interesting—and think that I understand why I have never wanted to be (despite urgings) a professional actor. The reason (other than "I enjoy my luxuries") is very simple, as it happens—and it is this...

Most of these actors talk about how they subsume themselves to the character, or the story, or whatever.

When I act, I draw on some of the emotions that I have experienced, sure. But I have always half-joked that every play in which I act is simply another chance to see DK playing DK on stage.

In other words, whilst these professional actors try to be their characters, I have always looked at my characters, found something that I identify with, and then leverage that to make the character me. I don't subsume myself to the character, I wrestle the character into the shape of me*.

And that's the difference between these professional actors and my poor attempts to entertain...

* Apart from when I played Withnail—in a stage production of Withnail and I—for which there was no effort really expended (apart from being drunk almost all the time). The only difference is that I don't share Withnail's fatalism.

When the legislators decide what can be bought and sold...

2012-05-13T11:34:00.001+01:00

... the first thing to be bought and sold will be the legislators.

A barn-storming post from Timmy on the subject of governments' (note the position of the apostrophe there*) closeness to media empires—and vice versa, of course.

What I am suggesting though is that those screaming about how awful it is that a private sector company should try to suck up to those with political power is, well, what the fuck did you expect?

Your permission to run a newspaper business is dependent upon those politicians. Your spectrum allocation is dependent upon those politicians. How much domestic shite you’ve got to pump out over that spectrum is dependent upon those politicians. Which sporting events you’re even allowed to bid for is determined by those politicians. Whether you’re allowed to buy out the other shareholders in a company you already have management control of is determined by those politicians. Can you give TV viewers a free newspaper? Politicians.

When the politicians have this sort of control over an industry then the people in that industry will inevitably suck up to the politicians. And it’s no good arguing that it just needs my tribe of good politicians in charge and all will be fine for inevitably the Coke party is going to be replaced at some point by the evil bastards of the Pepsi party.

If politicians have these powers then of fucking course those affected by the exercise of those powers will spend their time kissing the hairy arses of those with the powers. If government ran the lettuce industry then we’d have to lick Osborne’s ringhole to have iceberg instead of romaine for tea.

Why can’t people understand that the politicisation of the media industry is because it’s politicised?

Quite.

* If you were educated through the state school system anytime in the last thirty years or so, ask someone who wasn't shafted by a bunch of Lefty ideologues to explain it to you.

Quote of the Day...

2012-05-10T20:09:00.001+01:00

... comes from H L Menken, courtesy of Cafe Hayek.

“Everybody has been thought of by the young pedagogues save the poor fellow who, in the long run, will have to pay the bills. Every sort of misfit and lazybones has been taken care of, but not the man who takes care of himself.”

That was true even in 1936, when Menken first wrote it—today the situation is far worse.

Goodbye NHS, it was nice knowing you

2012-04-30T01:00:00.000+01:00

[NB: I am not the Devil]

I've teasingly had a little play with this at my own pad, but since Sunday's Observer article betrays an astounding lack of collective political antenna on the part of the health establishment, further comment is merited.

A majority of doctors support measures to deny treatment to smokers and the obese, according to a survey that has sparked a row over the NHS's growing use of "lifestyle rationing".

Some 54% of doctors who took part said the NHS should have the right to withhold non-emergency treatment from patients who do not lose weight or stop smoking. Some medics believe unhealthy behaviour can make procedures less likely to work, and that the service is not obliged to devote scarce resources to them.

We all have differing opinions, of course, but one has to wonder what the blithering fuck a majority of these surveyed doctors could possibly have been thinking if—as we are led to believe—they are faithfully wedded to the NHS and its all-inclusive, free at the point of delivery ethos.

There has been an unending stream of 'progressive' commentators in the health service telling us how the NHS Reform Bill is "privatisation by stealth". A perfect example, again at the Guardian domain, being this.

Opponents of privatisation of the NHS would, however, be unwise to focus solely on the issue of hospital management, because the slipperiness of the NHS bill is that it stealthily advances the privatisation of healthcare on several fronts. It does this in primary care, in community health services, and in commissioning – all of it concealed behind the publically trusted NHS logo.

They might want to cast a glance, instead, at the quite idiotic—and dangerously irresponsible—bigots amongst the 54% mentioned above. Again, represented by the NHS logo.

They worry about privatisation by the back door? How about excluding a not inconsiderable section of the population from routine surgery on the premise that—for currently fashionable reasons—they should be denied benefit from their taxes that doctors have been spending for decades on the fucking golf course?

What is expected of a fat bloke who needs a new hip, or a smoker who is denied IVF? They will, of course, go private if they are remotely of substance. The less well-off won't be able to even consider it. Err, that is what one would term a two-tier health service based on ability to pay, and highly anti-progressive at that. Precisely what all the agonising and protests over the NHS Reform Bill have claimed to want to avoid, yet here we have supposedly educated people calling for an advance towards the kind of system they constantly tell us won't work.

The bandwagon is gaining pace on this hilarious destruction of the NHS from within, without any help required from those of us who are quite aware that the whole edifice is constructed on 1940s straw and no longer fit for purpose.

As such, it's astronomically fucking superb that we can sit back and watch as crashingly stupid doctors—the ones who have been lecturing us from their ivory towers for the past decade, remember, about how irrational and misguided we are in choosing our own lifestyles—throw their weight behind the very cloaked privatisation they supposedly fear.

[Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners] said: "It's the deserving and undeserving sick idea. The NHS should deliver care according to need. There was no medical justification for such restrictions on smokers, as giving up nicotine would not necessarily enhance an operation's chances of success. Clearly, giving up smoking is a good thing. But blackmailing people by telling them that they have to give up isn't what doctors should be doing."

Nice try, Clare, but your entire profession has been insulting the public and promoting unjustifiable lobbying against behaviours which you don't particularly like for a long time now. Is it any wonder the daft fucktards who you've been brainwashing now stray off-message and get all radical on yo' ass?

Some in the health profession have even gone on record as advocating those who are unable to pay being allowed to die.

It's the kind of hideous inhuman thinking libertarians are ignorantly accused of, yet I've never met a libertarian or classical liberal in my life who ever agreed that should be a possibility under a private system with government-funded vouchers as a safety net for those not able to pay. Only in the ranks of self-described progressive health professionals will you see death and withdrawal of healthcare being touted as a valid policy.

Long live the debate amongst the health profession, in my opinion. In fact, I hope they push the envelope and grip the public's shit big time by moving from obesity and smoking into alcohol use and dangerous sports as a reason to deny healthcare. It won't then be long until someone asks the valid question as to why they have been faithfully paying the state for the NHS via NI contributions if it isn't the presumption of health care which was promised to them from the first time they received a payslip. Just one successful test case and the NHS will be landed with a bill which will make the PPI losses to banks look like chicken feed.

In the appended comments, one Guardian contributor questions whether the 54% are actually insurance salesmen in disguise. Well, why not? They are making a superb case for privatising the NHS and/or potentially moving us into a situation where the NHS will cease to exist due to a financial inability to cover litigious claims.

Oh yeah, and the next time you see your doctor—according to this survey—rather than respect them, you should consider that there is a more than 50% chance that he/she is a myopic, self-absorbed, righteous bell end.

Wind farms cause climate change...

2012-04-29T19:06:00.000+01:00

Today's hilarious headline was found via Danny Weston on Facebook—apparently wind farms cause climate change...

Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.

Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.
But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world's largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost a centigrade as more turbines are built.

This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.

It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.

Aaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha! Aaaahahahahaha! Aaahaha! Ah ha! Ha.

Oh, oh, wait. Uh... Here it comes... AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Aaaahahaha! Ahahaha! Ah ha! Ha! Ha.

Am I done yet? Oh, no, doesn't look like it...

Aaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

*wipes away tears of hilarity*

So, let's summarise: wind farms cost billions in subsidies, transfer money from the poor to the rich, slice up rare wild birds, dice up bats by the hundred, emit more CO2 in their construction than they save over a lifetime, don't generate any worthwhile or consistent electrical power.

And now they cause climate change...?

I think that I've split my sides from laughing.

Well done, Greenies—oh, very well done!

Farage and UKIP...

2012-04-22T22:40:00.000+01:00

Looking and sounding credible. And Nigel is right: as I have said for many years, all of the things that people are concerned about involve the EU in one way or another. Whilst "the EU" per se might be low on the electoral agenda, the EU touches just about everything on that agenda.

If you want to change the way in which our country is governed, then you need to vote for people who want us to govern our own country.

Which means not only leaving the EU, but also sacking at least the top three grades of civil servant.

Whilst I have little time for politicians, I have even less time for the technocrats of Whitehall and Brussels—they are scum and they need to be removed before any kind of change is possible.

When the people rise up, the politicians will hang from the lamp-posts as a symbol: the hanging of the civil servants, technocrats and advisors will herald real change.

Quote of the day...

2012-04-18T00:20:00.003+01:00

... comes from David Hockney's splendid pro-smoking rant against the joyless cretins running our once green and pleasant land...

Mr Lansley, Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband, Mr Clegg: Keep out of my life. I don’t want your dreary view of life infecting me. It’s not good for my health, or others around me.

Or, to put it another way, why don't you loathsome, miserable, puritan sacks of shit just fuck off...

Yes. But no...

2012-04-17T23:00:00.006+01:00

Young Master Hannan is complaining that UKIP split the "eurosceptic" vote, through a comparison with Canada's recent political history...

In 1993, Canada’s Conservatives were wiped out. The governing party lost all but two of its 156 MPs, and began a 23-year period in opposition. Defeat on such a scale doesn’t happen for just one reason, of course, but the Tories’ single biggest disadvantage is easily identified: the Right-wing vote was split.

The Progressive Conservatives, the established party of Diefenbaker and Mulroney, had been challenged by a younger movement, the Reform Party. Led by Preston Manning, one of the greatest conservative leaders of our age, Reform spilled out from the western prairies, demanding radical decentralisation, tax cuts, a crackdown on crime and an end to multiculturalism.

Dan then argues that when the two parties merged, they made a stronger electoral proposition, and the Conservatives have consequently gone from strength to strength.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this argument.

Yup.

The latest YouGov poll has my party on 32 per cent, and UKIP on 9 per cent. Together, that’s a Conservative government; separately, it’s a Labour government.

Which would scare us all, Danny, if the recent actions of your party—in sharp contrast to the rhetoric of both members of the Coalition—hadn't more than adequately revealed that there is (as Nigel Farage would say) not a cigarette paper between your lot and NuLabour. Apart, possibly, from a basic honesty on the part of NuLabour about their authoritarian agenda.

It’s true, of course, that not every UKIP voter is a former Tory. Then again, the relevant question is not ‘how did they vote before?’ but ‘if UKIP didn’t exist, how would they vote today?’ It seems not unreasonable to assume that the majority would support the most convincingly Eurosceptic party on offer.

Sorry, Dan, but remind me which one that is again...?

So let’s ask the question. Are there any circumstances in which UKIP and the Conservatives might combine? UKIP leaders keep saying that they’d gladly fold themselves into the Conservative Party if it became our policy to leave the EU, but such an eventuality seems unlikely, at least in the short term. It’s true that most Conservative voters would withdraw from the EU tomorrow. So would most party members. And so, I suspect, would most Tory MPs in a secret ballot. That, though, is not party policy.

Which is a round-about way of saying that the Conservative leadership does not represent the views of Tory MPs, Tory Party members or the rest of the country.

[Cameron] made two commitments to Eurosceptics before he became leader: first, that he would allow individual Conservatives, provided they were not frontbenchers, to campaign against EU membership...

Or, rather, that anyone who joined Better Off Out would not get any kind of Cabinet job. It's all a matter of perspective, eh?

... second, that he would withdraw his MEPs from the federalist EPP.

But not, of course, before ensuring that he could get enough MEPs to ensure that the new group would be big enough to get the EU funding accorded to those of a certain size.

Could there, then, be a Conservative-UKIP alliance while the Tories remain in favour of EU membership? Yes.

It's actually vanishingly unlikely.

Full independence is unlikely to be in the next manifesto; but an In/Out referendum might well be. And such a referendum ought to be enough.

Why? We all know that referendums have a tendency to be thoroughly ignored—or re-held until the "right" answer is given.

UKIP’s raison d’être is secession. Sure, it has other policies: tax cuts, selection in schools and so forth. But it exists, essentially, to restore British sovereignty. A referendum would take that issue off the agenda whichever way it went.

But UKIP's raison d'être is, as you say, not about a referendum, Dan: it's about leaving the EU.

And, let's face it, Dan, your claim that the Conservatives are "the most convincingly Eurosceptic party on offer" is on shaky ground. Should you doubt me, perhaps you can tell me who said this back in January?

So now we know: no repatriation, no renegotiation, business as usual. December's 'veto' turns out to be nothing of the kind; at best, it is a partial opt-out. Britain had asked for concessions in return for allowing the other member states to use EU institutions and structures for their fiscal compact. No such concessions were forthcoming, but we have given our permission anyway. The only difference is that, because the deal was done in a separate treaty structure, the PM doesn't have to put anything through the House of Commons. We had a generational opportunity to improve our relationship with the EU. That opportunity has passed.

Yes, Danny: it was you.

Some say that actions speak louder than words. Me? I believe that without actions your words are at best suspect and most certainly meaningless—all mouth and no trousers.

And the Buttered New Potato and his acolytes—who have a strangle-hold on your party and, alas, this country—have said many fine words (remember the Freedom Bill, the "veto", the promises to restore our freedoms?) but have, in fact, only cracked down even harder on our personal and civil liberties.

The other thing that you fail to appreciate, Dan, is encapsulated in these fragments of your own article...

... Reform spilled out from the western prairies, demanding radical decentralisation, tax cuts, a crackdown on crime and an end to multiculturalism...

... and...

Sure, [UKIP] has other policies: tax cuts, selection in schools and so forth.

UKIP has a highly active and enthusiastic youth wing—headed by highly intelligent libertarian businessman Harry Aldridge.

UKIP is not solely about withdrawal from the EU anymore: it was when I first joined back in 2006, but a number of us campaigned for—and contributed to—a fuller manifesto. And that manifesto is, with a few idiotic mistakes, largely libertarian in flavour. Just as Canada's Reform party wanted more than a desired outcome on a single issue, UKIP is now a party "demanding radical decentralisation, tax cuts, a crackdown on crime".

Further, UKIP is the party that understands that people want to have fun: Nigel Farage's well-known affiliation for a pint and a fag is a draw for those of us in this country who are sick and fucking tired of being lectured at by worthy, worthless, miserable fucking puritans.

So, whilst many UKIP members might be persuaded by your party's weasel-tongued promises on a referendum—will this be a "cast-iron" one again, Dan?—those who are developing UKIP's current and future direction are not interested: they are libertarians and lovers of freedom. They will not be conned by the Conservatives' lies and platitudes—because they are not conservatives.

There's a backlash coming, Dan: why do you think that the whole idea of state funding has reared its ugly head again...? The Big Three simply want to shut out the nimbler competitors—rather like the multi-nationals that your party's corporatist policies favour, in fact.

The Big Three parties are all morally bankrupt: this has become increasingly obvious and some of us have principles, Dan. The Conservatives will never have my backing ever again—and I think that most of the young UKIPpers feel the same way.

The previous generations have screwed up: it is time for you all to step aside and let the libertarian youth build a better, happier world.

UPDATE & DISCLAIMER: I rejoined UKIP in January. It just made sense—apart from their immigration policy.

The Day The Coalition Went Mad

2012-04-16T08:53:00.003+01:00

Please note: I am not the Devil

The day the coalition finally went mad and drifted into mindless, controlling authoritarianism was, perhaps appropriately enough, Friday 13th April, 2012. And the clearest indicator that the coalition has become drunk on power and the desire to control was the announcement on a period of consultation on the question of cigarette packaging.

Of course, the idea of plain packaging for cigarettes is hardly a new idea. And it is also fair to say that the drift towards the controlling coalition has been going on for a while – as the plans on internet snooping (dealt with by our humble host with considerable aplomb here) so clearly demonstrate. Finally, I will also concede that in terms of the myriad of different ways in which our incumbent government can shit on our civil liberties, this is a relatively minor one in its immediate practical implications. Nonetheless, this was clearly the day that coalition cracked, and revealed its desire to control as much of the life of this country as possible. The clue is in the language used by the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley. The BBC quotes the man who, for reasons that not only defy but actively piss on understanding, is in charge of health in this country:

“We don't want to work in partnership with the tobacco companies because we are trying to arrive at a point where they have no business in this country.”

Now, it has to be conceded that part of the problem is that it is Andrew Lansley saying this. To say he has little credibility is like saying that Pol Pot was a bit of a shit – a dramatic, almost farcical, understatement. Frankly, when I see Andrew Lansley, I think to myself “when did scrotums begin to walk and talk?” So not only this but any announcement that dribbles forth from the pompous pie-hole of Lansley has the massive, crippling disadvantage of the fact that it would be marginally more credible if said announcement was coming from the mouth of a shit-flinging monkey in a suit. But does that mean that the announcement would be better if it came from another politician? Well, no, no it really wouldn’t. Partly because there is no-one in our Parliament of Slugs who has much more credibility and gravitas than Lansley. But mainly because the words quoted above should never come from the mouth of any politician in this country.

As I said, it is all about the language. The arrogance is astounding. Lansley is refusing to work with the businesses that will be affected by the latest ripe policy turd that the coalition is handing the country. He won’t work with the tobacco companies; with those companies who provide goods that people actually want in this country (yes, Mr Lansley, some people do want to smoke) and who generate millions in revenue for the Exchequer each and every year. Lansley is perfectly happy to dismiss contributors to the economy. Probably because the economy is doing so well, eh? Oh, wait…

But it isn’t just the arrogance. Lansley wants to stop the tobacco companies having any business here. There are two possible implications of this; either this is a precursor to an outright ban or Lansley believes that he and his chuntering, power-hungry ilk can denormalise a habit that adults can legitimately choose to indulge. Either he’s planning to ban tobacco or make it a taboo. He wants to control what you can buy or what you choose to do (most probably, both). This sort of control of the economy and the personal choices of adults has no place in a nominal liberal democracy; it is the politics of the authoritarian, with more than a pungent whiff of the totalitarian about it. This represents an astonishing power grab and, given the general failure of all projects of prohibition, the sort of thing that only the batshit crazy would ever think could have a hope of working. This sort of thing truly does mark the departure of the coalition from the reality based community.

So we have a Health Secretary, drunk on quaffing liberally from the fountain of undeserved power, looking to change and restrict what you can do as an adult really rather radically. Of course, he is but one man – one gobshite – in the coalition. Just because Lansley seems to have left sanity behind, seemingly for the duration, does not mean that his fellow members of the coalition government feel the same way. Indeed, some really do not. Yet there has been no condemnation of Lansley’s plan from those running this government. No-one important has turned round and said “seriously Lansley, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up”. Which is a staggering indictment of the coalition, really. It is yet another sign that the new politics is identical to the old politics in all bar name and party affiliation. Because this sort of thing is precisely the sort of shit that Nu Labour used to come up with and the Tories and Lib Dems used to oppose. Now, after just two short years in power, the coalition seems happy to openly endorse the sort of utter shit that they used to rightly decry when it came from the last Labour government. Last Friday was not just the day the coalition went mad; it was also the day they became Nu Labour. The terrifying implication of this is not so much that nothing changes, but rather than nothing can change while the three main parties have a monopoly on power in this country.

So what can we do in the face of this power mad government? Howl in protest seems to be the best option in the near future, and then remember this sort of guff when we next enter the ballot box. Stop returning these controlling arseholes to power seems like a good option. And, regardless of whether you smoke or not, go out and buy a packet of fags – if for no other reason than it will really piss Andrew Lansley off. A small gesture, to be sure, but in the face of Lansley’s hard-on for controlling you, also a noble one.

FakeCharities change again

2012-04-09T22:41:00.002+01:00

Dear all,

When myself and the Filthy Smoker set up FakeCharities, we never imagined that the term would pass into web parlance so readily as it has.

However, in order to ensure that the information is correct, FakeCharities does require an awful lot of continuous work: it is not enough to say that x charity took y amount of government cash in z year—it needs to be done every year.

However, FakeCharities does have some mileage in it; as such, I am pretty much decided that the site will become a wiki—probably based on the MediaWiki software—and we will ask some of you to contribute much more.

As such, I am asking if the following would be willing to give a few hours a month to help us:

Someone experience in WordPress/MediaWiki, to help transfer the information that we already have into a new system.

A core bunch of people who will act as the editors for the wiki—checking a random selection of submissions, for instance, to verify them.

A bunch of people who are willing to pick, say, three charities and to follow them each and every year; in "sponsoring" these charities, you will be responsible for ensuring that the latest accounts are checked and uploaded to the wiki.

Please do let me know. If no one volunteers, we shall continue to keep the current site up for as long as I can be bothered to pay for the domain and server—however, no updates will occur.

However, should you choose to be involved, I can promise a renewed interest from the think-tank and policy sector...

Regards,

DK

Watching your fall

2012-04-01T22:06:00.008+01:00

This is the massively-foreheaded face of our enemy. And—look!—isn't it a stupid face, a weak face, a detestable face? But don't be deceived—this man holds you all in utter contempt. Mark him: he is the enemy of all free-born British people everywhere.

Oh look—here is proof positive that no matter who you vote for, the cunt politicians always get in.

The government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK under new legislation set to be announced soon.

Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.

The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism, but civil liberties groups have criticised it.

As The Mail points out, this kind of monitoring was thrown out when Labour proposed it—not least because the Tories and LibDims thought it was absolutely beyond the pale.

In 2006, Labour was forced to abandon similar plans in the face of fierce opposition from Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and privacy groups.

Well, how the tide has turned, eh?

Does anyone remember this interview from 2011—a mere year ago?

Early in our interview, he says disarmingly, "I need to say this – you shouldn't trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good."

He hasn't changed his views since we met five years ago when he was home affairs spokesman for his party and I was beginning to get to grips with the attack on liberty and privacy by the Blair government. We were both astonished then at the range, depth and stealth of the campaign and the surprising truth that few people seemed to notice or care about Blair's authoritarian project, which did so much to reduce the citizen's standing in relation to the state. Clegg is passionate on this: "It was the outright derision towards the criminal justice system… and extreme disdain for due process. For Blair the criminal justice system was an impediment to keeping people safe."

Five years after that meeting it seems extraordinary that he now occupies such a pivotal role in government and is in a position to lead the restoration of civil liberties. Were it not for his performance in the TV debates during the election campaign, which put the Lib Dems in the game, and the need for the coalition partners to find areas in which they could bond, it is certain that this Protection of Freedoms Bill would not exist. Although I have some concerns about what has not been included in the bill, it is true that the conditions that brought it into existence are near miraculous.

Yes, that is Henry Porter's interview with Nick Clegg, from February 2011. It is entitled—ironically, it now seems—Why we should believe Nick Clegg when he promises to restore liberties stolen by Labour.

Predictably, the BBC have interviewed David Davis and he is not in favour—although he does not condemn Cameron and his merry band of twats as "a collective sack of shit".

As a reminder—because memories are short—David Davis resigned his seat in protest against the 42-day detention law. At the time, he gave a speech outside Parliament, announcing his intention and the reasons for his action. Please, go and listen to it: everything that he said then applies now.

Despite David Cameron's pontifications and Nick Clegg's protestations, this government is leading our country down precisely the same dictatorial route that NuLabour did.

In a couple of decades, when people asked what went wrong with Britain, they will identify David Cameron's victory over David Davis as the decisive factor—when the man of spin won over the man of principle.

And, given the Coalition's activities over the last few months—on booze, and smoking, and surveillance—then I issue this edict: if you are a member of Labour, LibDems or Conservative then you are a traitor and an enemy of the British people.

You have marked yourselves as fit for nothing but a public hanging—and one day we, the people, will ensure that is what you will get.

UPDATE: Norman Tebbit asks why the vote for all of the Big Three collapsed in Bradford...

More than ever before the mainstream party leaders need to be asking themselves why their one time voters have joined the ranks of the 'None of The Above' moment...

Well, Norm: I think that this latest news answers your question—does it not? It is because the Big Three are all the same: they are the enemy class, united in a conspiracy against the ordinary people of Britain.

So why on earth would those same people connive at their own destruction by voting for their executioners—do you think we are stupid...?

UPDATE 2: is anyone else surprised that EU Referendum can point to an EU motive behind this travesty?

Now this may be a coincidence, but don't we have a Data Retention Directive, otherwise known as Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006?

Isn't this the directive which requires member states to oblige providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks to retain traffic and location data for between six months and two years for the purpose of the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime?

And didn't the EU commission last year start a review of the rules, with a view to proposing an improved legal framework? Wasn't that then followed by a proposal for a comprehensive reform of the system?

Then, a few months later, up pops the UK government with some proposals of its own. Are we supposed to believe that this is a complete coincidence? Does anyone believe that, with data retention being an occupied field, the British government is working entirely independently, and has not consulted with the commission on this?

Yup: it seems our ~~Mother of All Parliaments~~ EU regional government is simply obeying the instructions of its puppet-masters. Well, what a surprise.

Can we leave yet?

Against State Funding of Political Parties

2012-03-30T13:24:00.000+01:00

Another party funding scandal inevitably means that the call would go up from somewhere for state funding of political parties. And, lo and behold, it arrives – in the form of The New Statesman’s. Mehdi Hasan. He starts as he means to go on (i.e. idiotically):

Would you be willing to fork out 50p a year to help clean up British politics? I don't know about you but I would. Happily. So, too, would the Independent's Mary Ann Sieghart

To answer your question, Mehdi, no I would not be willing to spend a single fucking penny on funding British parties which – given it keeps the same old shit in power – would not “clean up politics” but merely perpetuate the status quo. And the fact that a journalist for The New Statesman and The Independent proves precisely nothing.

The article then rambles on, presenting a largely tedious case for state funding that life is too short to really engage with. The real meat of this article, though, come when Hasan attempts to rebut the objections people have to state funding if political parties:

Let's deal with the two most common objections to state funding: the practical one and the principled one. The practical one says that in our "age of austerity" and in the wake of the afore-mentioned expenses scandal, it would be near-impossible to persuade the public to sign up to state funding, to having the revenue from their precious taxes diverted towards political parties.

Which strikes me as a pretty good objection; every penny spent on saving David Cameron from having to have dinner with an opinionated business man is a penny that isn’t spent elsewhere. It is also – given what Hasan is effectively calling for here is a new annual tax – money that has to be taken from a tax paying public already stretched to the hilt. The practical side to this really is rather important. But not to Hasan:

For a start, the 50p figure, in my view, is sellable to Joe Public. Come on, it's the cost of a first-class stamp! Warsi talks of "£100m" (I assume she gets this amount from adding up the £23m-per-annum cost over four years) as if it some huge, unaffordable sum of public money. Yet, in December, her leader, the Prime Minister, clicked his fingers and doubled the budget for the opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics - from £40m to £80m. That we can afford? Really? But we can't spare £100m over four years to clean up British politics? To help fix a broken, discredited and unpopular party funding system? Critics of state funding refer to it as the "state funding of politicians" which, of course, is a phrase that turns off voters. Supporters of reform, therefore, should refer to it as the "state funding of democracy".

Well, it is the cost of a first class stamp only for now. Besides, I would rather spend that money on a first class stamp than on political parties. And this notion that because Cameron is spending more money on the Olmypics more money can be spent on political parties is an argument drowning in its own lack of logic. Firstly, the state funding of political parties and the Olympics are completely different things. Secondly, the fact that Cameron is willing to spend more money in one area does not make it right to spend it either there or in another area. And frankly we don’t have the money to spend on the Olympics, so spending even more money on an even less worthy cause is the very definition of stupid.

And critics call this the “state funding of politicians” because it is the state funding of politicians. The state already funds democracy through the administration of elections; Hasan’s proposal is effectively the state funding of the status quo.

Then there's the so-called principle behind opposing such funding. It's wrong, say the critics, for the state to fund political parties. It's undemocratic and statist. This is nonsense. First, free-market, small-government America has no such "principled" objection to the state funding of presidential candidates - in 2008, Republican candidate John McCain turned down "matching funds" in the primaries but then took them in the general election.

I’m pretty sure that you could find a lot of people in America who do object to state funding of politicians. And John McCain, with the best will in the world, is hardly a radical libertarian politician. Furthermore, the fact that he did something in a floundering campaign proves nothing; It doesn’t make state funding of political parties either practical or right.

Second, the same political parties and politicians who say state funding is wrong in principle refuse to acknowledge or recognise that we already have a form of state funding: it's called "short money"… In 2009/10, the Tory opposition led by David Cameron took £4m in taxpayer-funded short money; in 2010/11, Labour under Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband took £4.6m.

So what? Again So what? The fact that Cameron and Miliband Minor did something does not make it a right or a good thing to have done. There is a crucial difference between the right thing to do and the self-serving thing to do.

So let's have a little less moralising from our politicians about the supposed evils of state funding. They should just get on with fixing our broken system of party funding. The status quo is unsustainable - and an embarrassment.

It may very well be true that status quo is an embarrassment, but there is nothing in Hasan’s account that suggests that his solution is any better than the status quo. Indeed, his solution is all about preserving the status quo; it is about funding the main parties already in existence. What he argues for – and what everyone who argues for state funding of political parties – is political parties as welfare recipients; as the clients of the very system the purport to run and change.

So by all means change the way parties are funded; state enforced caps and state offered funding are not the way forward - particularly since much of the problem comes from the inability of parties to obtain funding by actually inspiring the public to give their hard-earned cash to them voluntarily.

The problem with healthcare

2012-03-27T20:25:00.002+01:00

Some of you might have noticed that there is a lively debate going on in the US Supreme Court over the so-called Obama-care Programme. Whilst the wife has been avidly reading the transcripts—with some interest, outrage and amusement—we have been debating the more general point of how healthcare is delivered.

It's a tricky subject—not least because it is emotive and, as such, tends to give rise to bad headlines for politicians when the inevitable rationing happens. Because the really big problem with all healthcare systems is that there simply isn't enough money to pay for what is desired (if not absolutely required).

All of these debates about the actual delivery and payment of healthcare—both here and in the US—simply doesn't address the basic problem of healthcare being massively expensive. I would like to posit some reasons, and put forward some hopes of solutions.

The first pressing problem is that healthcare services are extremely prone to Baumol's cost disease.

In line with the government’s 2% inflation target, the Treasury’s assumption is that productivity in the economy as a whole will rise at 2% a year and pay at an average of 4%. Hence, if pay in the public services is to remain competitive with that outside, it must rise on average by about 4% a year. So to be able to afford the same number of staff in any particular service, expenditure also needs to go up by 4% a year – a “real increase” of 2%. The problem for services, such as health and education, and for the armed forces, is that they need such a “real increase” to keep the same number of staff to maintain existing standards, because there is little or no room for improving productivity.

As Timmy points out, there are ways to mitigate for this—particularly in how services are delivered.

The reason being that productivity in services is merely more difficult to improve, not impossible. Only if you say that a near monolothic organisation of 1.4 million people is the most efficient manner of delivering health care to 60 million people can you say that the NHS productivity cannot be improved. And that certainly ain’t an argument I’m going to try and make.

One obvious method of improving efficiency would be to abolish national pay bargaining... but no one has the balls to try that as yet unfortunately.

There were rumours that Osborne was going to do so in this budget and certainly is seems that the government is moving that way. And there is no doubt that the NHS could be run more efficiently—especially if the providers were not run by the government and thus had some efficient way of measuring quality.

One of the biggest goals in healthcare service delivery must be to adopt the strategy of manufacturing and remove, as far as possible, as many people from the delivery as possible. Now, there are many ways to do this, but one of the most exciting is to harness new technologies as much as possible—like, for instance, being able tobuild new organs or even print new kidneys (truly amazing video)!

Just think: although it's still a prototype (both printer and organ), that machine can print a new kidney in seven hours. And that kidney can be printed from the recipient's cells.

Just consider the cost reductions over conventional treatment—no cost of keeping the patient on dialysis for months or years whilst waiting for a donor; no surgical teams required to remove the organs from the donor; no need to go through the whole thing again to replace the organ after ten years; no drugs required to deal with rejection nor having to treat the patient for the panoply of diseases inevitable with immunosuppressant therapies.

We are on the cusp of a healthcare revolution—where technology really can start to make healthcare delivery cheaper.

One of the other big costs is drugs, and this is largely a political problem. To make you marvel and to illustrate this point, I'd like to introduce you to bexarotene. Bexarotene is a cancer drug that has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for a decade (this is important later on).

Now, bexarotene has been shown to be immensely effective in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease—not only can it slow it, but it seems likely that the drug can actually reverse the effects.

In the study described below, the cancer drug Bexarotene quickly and dramatically improved brain function and social ability and restored the sense of smell in mice bred with a form of Alzheimer's disease.
...

Within hours of taking the drug, amyloid plaques began to clear out of the mice’s brains. After three days, more than 50 percent of the Alzheimer’s plaques had disappeared, and the mice regained some of the cognitive and memory functions typically lost in Alzheimer's disease.
...

Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Science, show that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer’s. The results point to the significant potential that the medication, bexarotene, has to help the roughly 5.4 million Americans suffering from the progressive brain disease.

Sounds pretty cool, yes? Alzheimer's is not only an incredibly expensive disease to treat, it is extremely distressing.

When I worked as an Auxiliary Nurse in a medical centre, I saw people with progressive brain disorders such as Alzheimer's. One woman was nothing more than a still moving shell of a human being—no thinking human being existed inside her. She simply wandered about making a soft ululation day after day: when she got to a wall, like a wind-up toy, she just kept walking and walking against the wall.

Another time, I had to comfort a twelve year old boy because his father no longer recognised him. These patients had been there for years—at a cost of more than £1k a week—and would be there for years more.

A drug that could stop all of this would be amazing. But there are a couple of problems.

First, bexarotene is pretty expensive.

How much does Targretin (Bexarotene) cost?

Targretin is a tier 5 drug, this means it is very expensive. An Internet search indicated that 30, 75mg capsules cost $1,156.64.

Now, we might guess that this is probably still considerably less than £1,000 a week (minimum) in a nursing home but actually we don't know—and herein lies the rub.

Despite being approved for the treatment of cancer at specified doses, bexarotene, and the dosage, would need to be re-approved by the FDA for the treatment of Alzheimer's. And, as we all know, that kind of testing costs a lot of cash.

Will the drug company stump up for it? No. Why? Because bexarotene is about to come out of patent.

Unfortunately, the drug is going to have to go through several rounds of clinical testing before the drug is approved for Alzheimer's. This will takes years.

Will the drug ever get tested and get approved by the FDA for Alzheimer's? The current drug Targretin is scheduled to lose its patent in 2016. So, in order for Targretin to be financed into a Phase 3 clinical trial it will need to be re-engineered and re-patented to make the numbers work. In other words, it is unlikely that anyone is going to step up and finance the testing of a drug that is likely to be an available generic by the time it is approved for Alzheimer's patients.

And there we have the big problem with drug development.

It takes something like 8 years and $600 million to get a drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of humans. Those are big numbers, and it is why we have Big Pharma. I know a couple of people in Edinburgh who run small drug research labs; when they find something promising, they sell the patent to Big Pharma because only big corporations have the colossal amounts of cash required to get a drug to market.

And the patent life for a drug is, if I recall correctly, about 14 years. So, you spend 8 years bringing a drug to market and then you have about 6 years to recoup over half a billion dollars. As the Americans would say, you do the math.

This problem is only going to get worse as we move towards personalised treatments; if the regulatory agencies insist that every drug tailored to an individual—because that is the kind of breakthrough that we are looking at—need to go through this kind of approval process, then we may as well kiss tailored treatment goodbye.

There needs to be a fundamental rethinking of drug regulation: either it needs to be relaxed, or the patent life needs to be extended.

So, both technology and relaxed regulation can play a part in ensuring that we—the customer—get more healthcare for our limited resources, i.e. cash. But, you can bet that these innovations will be fought tooth and nail.

The medical establishment and the unions will fight to the bitter end to protect their own interests—as we have seen with the Healthcare Bill in this country. After all, the bastards of the BMA were happy to destroy the Friendly Societies and oppose the NHS because they believed that each of them were opposed to doctors' interests—they couldn't care less about patients and never have. The same applies to all of the other trades unions.

And governments love their regulation, oh yes. And so do big corporations because they are set up to deal with them. The people who lose out are... well... we poor idiots who pay for it all.

Technology will make us freer, happier and richer than ever before: the forces of conservatism will stop that if they can...

A modest proposal

2012-03-27T02:04:00.005+01:00

The Quote of the Day comes from The Commentator (although, admittedly, it's actually from Friday), where Simon Miller echoes my long-standing contempt for most parts of the electorate.

And you know what? It is our fault. We constantly demand that the government should do something about a situation. Instead of common sense, instead of saying to our leaders “listen we’re adults, give us our money back, give us our freedoms back and we’ll sort ourselves out” we and the fast food media demand that nanny helps us.

Well nanny has spent all our money, taxed us to high heaven and is gradually removing all aspects of the rule of law through retrospective actions and interfering dogma. Instead of shrilling about this and that, we should give a simple message to these politicians, this is our country and it is our money you are spending. We are permanent; it is you that is temporary.

Quite. He actually uses another example that has pissed me off too—that of "low tax" aficionados who bitch and moan about families on fat salaries losing Child Benefit.

I consider Child Benefit to be one of the most stupid, pernicious and suicidal pay-outs ever invented—and it is not simply that I object to being robbed to pay for other people's lifestyles (although I do). It is because its very purpose is to encourage those on the margins—i.e. those who are not mature, sensible or intelligent enough to look after themselves, let alone a child—to have children.

And what is the result? Those who are vaguely successful are taxed to buggery, thus ensuring that they wait longer and have fewer children; in the meantime, the country is rife with a growing underclass of disenfranchised, ill-educated and hopeless youths who have neither the drive nor the wherewithal to ever look after themselves.

And before people start whining about this view being tantamount to eugenics (as I'm sure some will), it most certainly is not. Not paying people to do something is totally different from rounding up those you consider undesirable and systematically having them castrated or spayed.

And no—neither am I denying anyone their Human Rights: whilst having the choice to spawn might be a fundamental right of being alive, forcing other people to pay for them is not.

And, whilst we are about it, let's stop with the whole "we're leaving our children with oodles of debt" argument too: one way and another, a very great deal of that debt has been spent on them—their Child Benefit, their housing, their education, their Educational Maintenance Grants, their Child Bonds (or whatever it was called), and their parents' Working Tax credits (so they could pay for their kids).

That little lot adds up to well over £100 billion per annum—and I'm not counting every other expensive initiative that is done "for the sake of the chiiiiiiillllldren"—so I reckon that it's fair enough that the kiddie winks should be the ones to pay some of it back.

Come the rolling black-outs in 2014, I reckon that coal fires are going to become immensely popular again, as people struggle to keep warm.

So, start training your little darling now and, in a couple of years time, your little urchin can be earning a fine living up the chimneys—as well as doing their bit to pay back their debts.

A open letter to David Cameron

2012-03-26T18:50:00.005+01:00

~~I have just sent the following email to the office of the Buttered New Potato...~~

I have attempted to send said email: alas, the only way to contact the Buttered New Potato electronically is to use the Number 10 submission form—which limits you to 1000 characters. So, do I break it up into several emails, just send him the link or shall I print it out and post it in the old-fashioned way?

Or, since all the Tory grandees seem to be reading him at present, perhaps Guido would be kind enough to ask on your humble Devil's behalf...?

Answers on a postcard or, preferably, in the comments below.

Anyway, on with the fun...

Dear Mr Cameron,

I am writing to ask you—as politely as I can—what you think you are playing at as regards the minimum pricing of alcohol?

Since you are Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I assume that you have a great many researchers and advisors (who will, no doubt, be the only ones who read this); as such, I am forced to assume that you also know that:
the amount of alcohol consumption has been steadily dropping over the last ten years;

the proportion of people drinking more than their recommended weekly units is also on a solid downward trajectory;

this is true even amongst "the young";

the nation's alcohol consumption has dropped by about 20% in 5 years;

these figures come from your Office for National Statistics' General Lifestyle Survey—helpfully summarised by Chris Snowdon.

Further, you will also know that:
about 4 years ago, Richard Smith—a member of the Royal College of Physicians group that produced the report on which the recommended weekly units are based—told The Times that "... it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t... we don’t really have any data whatsoever... Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee" (no longer generally available online but also reported by The Register);

the ONS changed assumed that people were drinking bigger glasses of stronger alcohol in 2007, thus producing a strong upward trend where none actually existed (as measured in volume of pure alcohol)—Myth 1, here;

although you were recently quoted as saying "When beer is cheaper than water, it’s just too easy for people to get drunk on cheap alcohol at home...", this is, in fact, not true. Alcohol is not cheaper than water, even bottled water—Myth 5, here;

alcohol is roughly 20% more expensive, in real terms, than in 1980 (the year often quoted as a yardstick)—Myth 2, here;

that alcohol, smoking and obesity actually cost health systems less money than "healthy people" due to their tendency to die younger.

Finally, for the moment, I will also assume that you know that the EU has already said that minimum price fixing is illegal under Free Trade rules—for both alcohol and cigarettes, e.g. media reports here (Ireland's attempt to set a minimum price for tobacco), here (Scotland's minimum alcohol price), here (an EC Council Directive on tobacco which lays out the judgement on minimum pricing of anything), and references to two other cases here.

Let us leave aside whether the minimum pricing of alcohol is a suitable policy initiative for a man who said, in 2008, "The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end". Yes, we'll leave that—no one actually expected you to keep such a promise, nor any others about restoration of our freedoms.

No—what I am asking is why you would adopt such an illegal, regressive and illiberal policy when you yourself must know that the problem that minimum pricing is supposed to solve simply doesn't exist?

And given that you must know all of the above, why you continue to tell lies to the public?

Regards,

DK

I look forward to publishing the Prime Minister's response.

Minimum price for alcohol

2012-03-25T13:36:00.003+01:00

So, David "buttered new potato" Cameron—the man who once said "The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end."—has announced that he intends to pass a law setting a minimum price per unit for booze.

The Prime Minister is to say: “Binge drinking isn’t some fringe issue, it accounts for half of all alcohol consumed in this country.

What? How the fuck can he possibly determine that? I call "bollocks" on that one.

“The crime and violence it causes drains resources in our hospitals, generates mayhem on our streets and spreads fear.

Sure, alcohol-fuelled crimes are deeply unpleasant. So, the solution is to stop accepting drunkenness as mitigation when convicting people.

“When beer is cheaper than water, it’s just too easy for people to get drunk on cheap alcohol at home before they even set foot in a pub."

Oh, this old ~~canard~~ lie again. As my colleague, the Filthy Smoker, pointed out in his Five Myths About Alcohol post (back in 2009), alcohol is not cheaper than water.

This doozy is a favourite of pretend charity Alcohol Concern and has been repeated many times...
...

Let's ignore for a moment the obvious point that someone wanting to buy water is hardly likely to buy lager on an impulse instead. Let's even ignore the fact that water comes out of the tap for 0.02p per glass.

Instead, let's look at Tesco's own brand lager. Here it is.

It costs 91p for a 4-pack, or 5.2p per 100ml.

And here's Tesco's own brand mineral water.

It costs 13p, or 0.7p per 100ml.

So please can we put this one to bed now?

Apparently not, because the leader of this country is repeating it. Again. Given the number of advisers the man must have, it's hardly even worth applying the Polly Conundrum* because Cameron must be lying.

So, what else does the scumbag has to say to justify this massively illiberal act?

“So we are going to introduce a new minimum unit price—so for the first time it will be illegal for shops to sell alcohol for less than this set price per unit.

“We’re consulting on the actual price, but if it is 40p that could mean 50,000 fewer crimes each year and 900 fewer alcohol-related deaths per year by the end of the decade."

So they're "consulting on the actual price", are they? So, given that we know the usual suspects, let's think who they'll consult...

The BMA and other assorted medical charlatans: they'll be for a much higher price, because their massive salaries will bear it and they are a bunch of interfering, self-righteous, patrician arseholes.

Alcohol Concern, Alliance House Foundation, and other fake charities: they'll be for a much higher price because they are insane, temperance supporters and, besides, telling the government what they want to hear is what the government funds them for.

Drink companies, pubs and off-licences: they'll be for higher prices (within limits) because they will get a fuckload more cash.

So, the ordinary people of this country are going to get royally stitched-up, eh?

“I know this won’t be universally popular."

Well, it'll be popular with those groups outlined above.

"But the responsibility of being in government isn’t always about doing the popular thing. It’s about doing the right thing.”

The right thing, you pompous prig, would be to leave people to go to hell in whatever way they choose, frankly. As your Deputy Prime Minister once said, "Taking people’s freedom away didn’t make our streets safe."

In the same article, Clegg also said...

... the Government wanted to establish “a fundamental resettlement of the relationship between state and citizen that puts you in charge”.

Excuse me whilst I let out a hollow, derisory laugh.

As ever, the brilliant Chris Snowdon has done some sterling work on this issue, so forgive me whilst I quote large chunks of this neat round-up post.

I have written much about this subject on this blog in the last two years—that campaigners have used statistics dishonestly to promote the policy; that it is very likely to be illegal under EU law; that pub chains have gone all bootleggers 'n' baptists in their rent-seeking; that the BBC has bent over backwards to amplify the voice of temperance groups; that the government has used public money to lobby itself.

I see minimum pricing as a sister policy to plain packaging in that it will give the government an unprecedented right to impose its will on the free market. Sin taxes and health warnings are one thing. Having the government setting prices and seizing control of a product's entire packaging is quite another. These are powers that the government has never had in our peacetime history (correct me if you can think of an example to the contrary) and they are being taken without any kind of rational debate. The binge-drinking 'epidemic' is a modern moral panic which will baffle sociologists for years to come, and the packaging of cigarettes would be trivial if it were not such a blatant trampling of private and intellectual property.

As James Nicholls wrote recently:
That it is the Tories, rather than Labour, who have been first to throw their weight behind minimum pricing is remarkable enough: it is, after all, a concept entirely at odds with free market principles.

Indeed. It is especially disappointing—though not surprising—of a government that came to power promising to restore freedom to this country. The so-called Freedom Bill seems to have been shelved and, whilst the Coalition seems to suffer less from legislatory diarrhoea than their predecessors, they are quietly carrying on with the job of removing more of our liberties.

Chris goes on to make this prediction...

Nothing—absolutely nothing—is more certain than that within weeks, perhaps days, of minimum pricing being introduced, you will hear the usual shrill voices complaining that 45p, or 50p, is mere "pocket money" and the minimum price should be 60p, 70p, 80p, £1 a unit. What hope can we have that the government will stand up to them then?

... and, sure enough, this little gem appeared in the Telegraph on Friday.

Minimum alcohol price 'could be higher than 40p per unit'

Drinkers face paying more than 40p per unit of alcohol under a minimum price scheme to tackle the country's binge-drinking problem, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has indicated.

Now, Chris Snowdon has studied the tactics of temperance loons—and published two excellent books about them: Velvet Glove, Iron Fist and The Art of Suppression**—but most of us, I think, would easily have predicted this move.

See, it's brilliant for the temperance movement: it's a campaign that they can continue to fight (thus continuing to justify their existence and, thus, their dollops of taxpayer-extorted cash) through demands ever higher prices, until eventually moving in for the ban.

Hmmm, that tactic sounds somewhat familiar...

Did I mention that fags have got even more expensive in the Budget?

Anyway, over at the ASI, Timmy is incensed...

This is the most monumentally insane, stupid and illiberal nonsense that we've had imposed upon us in years. There have been things more illiberal, yes, but not insane at the same time. I'll leave you to fill in the (...)s in the title there for I'm afraid that my carpet biting outrage at this silliness might lead me to become intemperate in my language. Idiots just isn't strong enough.
...

As Sam points out a lot of the detailed heavy lifting on this has been done by Chris Snowden, sometimes of this parish. Alcohol consumption is falling, definitions of "binge drinking" are ludicrous, the statistics on alcohol related hospital admissions are nonsense (they are assumed, not counted or calculated), boozers, smokers and lardbuckets save the NHS money, not cost it and anyway, what is this interference in our charting our own way from cradle to inevitable grave? Not to say that it's regressive in distribution.

There is worse though than just entirely shakey evidential support (much of it cooked up by people paid by the government to lobby the government) and gross illiberalism. There's actual stupidity as well in at least two points. The first is that minimum pricing is almost certainly illegal. We even have case law on the point.

The second is so glaringly, inanely, stupid that it even has the European Commission on the right side of the point. And yes, you know someone has to have been really barmcaked to have managed to get them on the right side of any question more complex than the cuteness of kittens:
The European Commission sounded a warning to Britain about the policy, saying it believed “minimum tax rates to be preferable to minimum pricing for alcohol”.

“Minimum tax rates put all products on an equal footing from a market perspective, whereas minimum prices can increase the profit margin of products with the lowest production cost,” a spokesman said.

Let us assume that all of the evidence is in fact sound: that there is an outbreak of binge drinking, that this is doing harm and that higher alcohol prices will reduce these evils and harms. How magnificently chocolate teapot do you have to be to insist that that extra money from the higher prices goes to brewers and supermarkets rather than into the Treasury? If you're going to sting the boozers because they've been naughty boys and girls then the least you can do is reduce the tax burden on others, no? Instead of pumping up the profits of some favoured sector?

Me? I am so tired of this crap that I can barely summon up the energy to curse them all as a pack of cunts.

But they are a pack of cunts.

P.S. As a special bonus, let me introduce the Turn-coat of the Day—one Andrew Lansley—who, in May 201o, said this:

All our decisions must be evidence-based, and on that basis, we do not currently support an introduction of minimum pricing.

It seems that Lansley has been bought off because, on Friday, the following was reported:

Mr Lansley said last night that he had changed his mind about the wisdom of minimum pricing.

He said: “I think it is important to send a signal that we will not have a situation where people are being continuously prompted to drink to excess.”

What's that jingling sound coming from your pocket, Andrew? Gosh—are they solid silver...?

* The Polly Conundrum is named after Polly Toynbee, of course, and asks this simple question: "are they pig-ignorant or are they lying?"

** DISCLAIMER: I did the covers for these books, and I stand to make a few pennies if you buy them.

Can anyone tell me what comes next...?

2012-03-25T12:44:00.003+01:00

So, the Tory Party Treasurer has resigned after being caught promising to get donors into "the Cameron/Osborne dinners" for £250,000.

Prime Minister David Cameron has criticised the party's former treasurer for boasting that a big enough donation could lead to high-level access.

He said Peter Cruddas' claims, filmed by undercover Sunday Times reporters, were "completely unacceptable". Mr Cruddas quit hours after publication.

The PM pledged a "party inquiry" into the claims that £250,000 would get donors a private dinner with him.

And quite right.

Because anyone who is willing to pay a penny to have dinner with that massively-foreheaded shit or his rat-nibbled-nosed Chancellor needs their head examined.

Besides, anyone who thinks that Cameron would keep any promise made at that time also needs to get a fucking grip. The man is a shifty, dishonest little bastard.

Mr Cruddas had been secretly filmed saying that a donation of £250,000 gave "premier league" access to party leaders, including private dinners with Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne, and with any feedback on policy shared with Downing Street.

Donors get an input into policy, eh? Well, that's nice. But, as Douglas Carswell indignantly tweeted...

DouglasCarswell: An input into policy making? I thought that is why I stood for election. Where are the MPs in the policy unit?

No, Douglas: what you are there for is as lobby-fodder. Now shut up and toe the damn party line, or you'll be getting deselected, sunshine.

This is an argument that I will develop in another post sometime, but I actually have little objection to rich individuals* paying for access to party policy-makers. It seems only fair, since the poor and middle-class have far greater numbers: as we have seen from all the outrage at "the rich" being thrown a bone in the budget, people in this country would happily vote for "the rich" to pay for the plebs' every whim.

Having rich individuals paying for access to the top party echelons simply redresses the balance a bit: otherwise, the politicians—pandering to their electorate—would pander to the worst desires of their electorate, i.e. vote for us and we'll give you loads of shit, and make someone else pay for it (admittedly, that is modern democracy in a nutshell, but it could be worse).

No, what I am concerned about is the greater implications. When they came to power, the Coalition promised an "agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding", and we all know what that means, don't we?

State-funding of political parties is what it means.

Although Nick "wet dishcloth" Clegg has supposedly ruled out state funding for this Parliament, we all know that all three parties are just itching to get their hands on some of that lovely tax-payer cash.

How do we know this?

Well, because they told us last time state funding of political parties raised its head—back in 2006 (lots of swearing)—and all three major parties were in favour of it.

The trouble is, neither NuLabour nor their Change Coalition successors have worked out how to get around the outrage from the general public. The trouble with funding scandals is that the populace's response is, "well, the politicians have once again proved that they are crooks: why the hell would we want to give them more of our money?"

So, watch out for the next move...

UPDATE: well, that didn't take long...

* Corporations, however, are another matter entirely...

Healthy people are expensive

2012-03-25T12:25:00.003+01:00

Anyone follows politics in even the most cursory manner (or, indeed, reads the letters page of the Metro) will, I assume, be thoroughly pissed off with self-righteous fucknuts bollocksing on about how drinkers, smokers and obese people should be taxed to buggery because they cost our brilliant NHS buckets of cash.

For many years, those of us who indulge ourselves in our pleasures have pointed out that we pay a fuck-load of tax for the pleasure of doing so—not just in the ludicrously high National Insurance payments, but also duty on the fags and booze. We pay far more in tax, in fact, than the cost to the NHS.

"Nonsense!" cry the prodnose temperance loons.

Well, now a nice little report has come out which points out that "healthy" people really do cost, as Timmy reports.

The question is, are the costs of treating the illnesses and deaths brought on by those three indulgences higher or lower than the costs of treating those who live healthily but still inevitably die? We could argue it either way: Alzheimer’s costs more to manage than lung cancer costs, the cracked hips of age related osteoporosis perhaps more or less than fried livers from excessive bourbon. What we need to do is actually go and tot up the figures. Fortunately, that has been done:
Obesity is a major cause of morbidity and mortality and is associated with high medical expenditures. It has been suggested that obesity prevention could result in cost savings. The objective of this study was to estimate the annual and lifetime medical costs attributable to obesity, to compare those to similar costs attributable to smoking, and to discuss the implications for prevention.
….
Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

The actual numbers for lifetime from 20 years old medical costs were:

The lifetime costs were in Euros:
Healthy: 281,000

Obese: 250,000

Smokers: 220,000

There are excellent arguments in favour of taxing in order to reduce the occurrence of smoking, excessive boozing and obesity. We humans are subject to hyperbolic discounting, not taking full account of long distant future costs for current pleasures, sometimes those running the public health system really do know more than us, there are externalities associated with these behaviours (late night drunks, passive smoking and the visual pollution of someone 300 lbs overweight perhaps). But the argument we cannot use is that these behaviours increase the costs of health care.

The reason we cannot use this argument is that it simply isn’t true.

So all you health fascists can stick that in your pipe and I'll smoke it.

This is a work of non-fiction

2012-03-25T10:22:00.007+01:00

In case you don't know, a certain gentleman named Mike Daisey caused something of a stir with his one-man monologue called The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In it, he tells of visiting the Foxconn factory in China, and of the appalling working conditions there which he heard about, first-hand, from the workers that he met (many of them horrifically crippled from their work in the factory).

Mr Daisey has actually been hawking his play around the smaller theatres of America for some time now, but his big break came when a radio station called This American Life broadcast the show in one of their episodes. Now, I bet that they wish they hadn't: for, whilst it was their most listened-to show, it turns out that it was a pack of lies—and they had to publish an embarrassing retraction.

Over at Forbes, Timmy published an excellent article that took a far more balanced view of the working conditions at the Foxconn factory (which, by the way, assembles just about every computer brand going—not just Apple machines).

The general suicide rate in China is 22 per 100,000 people. That is a high rate by international standards but that is the one that we should be looking at to try and judge the suicide rate at Foxconn.

Foxconn employs some 1 million people in total so, if the Foxconn workforce were to have the same suicide rate as the general Chinese population (which, to be accurate, it won’t for suicide is not equally divided over age groups and the workforce is predominantly young) we would expect to see 220 suicides among such a number each year.

Timmy also points out that, whilst there have been some tragic deaths at Foxconn, it's actually safer than the American workplace. And, whilst wages are low compared to the West, they are high compared to the rest of China. Paul Annett then produced a graphic that neatly illustrated all of this...

Let us return to Mike Daisey, however.

Mr Daisey claimed to have travelled to China and hung around outside the Foxconn factory. Since he doesn't speak Chinese, he hired an interpreter and, through her, was able to elicit these tragic stories from the workers as they changed shifts. Unfortunately for Mike—who made every effort to stop This American Life contacting the interpreter (as you'll hear in the retraction)—a China-based reporter named Rob Schmitz decided to investigate, and tracked down said interpreter.

What he found was that Mike Daisey had not, in fact, actually seen any of the things that he claimed.

Take one example from his monologue—it takes place at a meeting he had with an illegal workers union. He meets a group of workers who’ve been poisoned by the neurotoxin N-Hexane while working on the iPhone assembly line: “…and all these people have been exposed,” he says. “Their hands shake uncontrollably. Most of them…can't even pick up a glass.”

Cathy Lee, Daisey’s translator in Shenzhen, was with Daisey at this meeting in Shenzhen. I met her in the exact place she took Daisey—the gates of Foxconn. So I asked her: “Did you meet people who fit this description?”

“No,” she said.

“So there was nobody who said they were poisoned by hexane?” I continued.

Lee’s answer was the same: “No. Nobody mentioned the Hexane.”

I pressed Cathy to confirm other key details that Daisey reported. Did the guards have guns when you came here with Mike Daisey? With each question I got the same answer from Lee. “No,” or “This is not true.”

Daisey claims he met underage workers at Foxconn. He says he talked to a man whose hand was twisted into a claw from making iPads. He describes visiting factory dorm rooms with beds stacked to the ceiling. But Cathy says none of this happened.

Whoops.

On his blog, Daisey defends his lies thusly...

I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.
...

What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic - not a theatrical - enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations.

Again at Forbes, Timmy uses pretty much the same defence.

Which is where my defence comes in: I think it’s just fine to manipulate an audience, to tell them half truths, even to make up events entirely in order to get at those emotions. No one really thinks that Romeo and Juliet went down just like Shakespeare said (nor even the Leonard Bernstein or Mark Knopfler versions) but we’ve been queueing up for centuries to be so lied to. Even when The Bard was obviously correct as to the righteous course of action (“First, we kill all the lawyers” has always appeared pretty sound to me) we know that it’s something said by a character to contribute to the overall truthiness of the entire experience.

Which would be fine, except...

Except that Daisey, despite his protestations, actually insisted that what he said was truth. How do we know this? Because the marketing manager at the theatre which developed the show, Alli Houseworth, has told us. [Emphasis mine.]

In 2010 I worked at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, when The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (TATESJ) was “birthed” at the theatre, and the following spring was the marketing and communications director who worked on the show at Woolly. Today, as an independent consultant, I write as a former marketing director who is no longer bound by the public statement of her institution in this matter, and what I would like to say is this: Mike Daisey, you should be ashamed of yourself. And to members of the American theatre: we should be disappointed in ourselves too.

For months and months four major non-profit organizations across the US (Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, Woolly and the Public Theater) worked to put TATESJ on the stage, bringing the story we all felt was so enormously important – a story Mike told at least me time and time again was true. He insisted that “This is a work of non-fiction” be printed in playbills [PDF]. This was to be a work of activist theatre. Staff at Woolly handed out sheets of paper to every audience member that left our theatres, per Mike’s insistence, that urged them to take action on this matter. (I and other staffers would get nasty emails from him the next day if even one audience member slipped by without collecting this call to action.) As the head of the marketing staff at Woolly, my staff and I worked hard to get butts in seats, and it worked. We sold out our houses. As in the other cities where Mike appeared, we got Mike in every major news outlet in DC, and the buzz, hype and importance of the show only grew along the way.

And then what happened? We learned from a radio producer, a year later, that Mike’s facts weren’t true. And what Mike did was apologize to him, to Ira. But he never apologized to us, and he never apologized to our audiences. In fact, what he did in his retraction interview [PDF] was say, “I believe that when I perform it in a theatrical context in the theatre that when people hear the story in those terms that we have different languages for what the truth means.” My answer to that is that “This is a work of non-fiction” is pretty clear language. And how dare you, Mike, how dare you say to Ira Glass that the context in which the work is presented is different. All this time I thought you respected this industry, respected our audiences the very same, if not more than the audience of This American Life. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement.

The defence that theatre is not journalism simply doesn't hold up in this case. When we go to the theatre, or watch a movie, we assume that it is fiction: for sure, it might want to make a point and, in doing so, employ some "truthiness" (as Timmy put it). But we assume that elements have been dramatised.

However, when the writer of the piece insists that "this is a work of non-fiction" be printed on marketing material, we must then assume that... well, that it is a work of non-fiction—that all of the facts and experiences are true. We expect, in fact, the journalistic standard rather than the theatrical.

Alli Houseworth's revelation blows Daisey's defence out of the water: he is revealed as a liar and a charlatan, who will stoop to sordid depths in order to promote his own work. And, a little like a woman who falsely cries rape, Mike Daisey has implicitly tainted any other reports of worker abuse in China.

DISCLAIMER: I no longer own any Apple shares although, given current performance, I wish I did! However, to me the company has the same kind of status as their football team has to many other people.

Great minds, and all that...

2012-03-13T00:34:00.003Z

Back in December, the wife wrote the following in a short post musing on the Welfare State...

Seriously? No, seriously?

Just cut out the middleman and let rich people sponsor a poor person. There would be less waste in the long run, jobs for council workers (the OKCupids of wealth patronage!), and a powerful social impact.

After all, why give your money to charity when you can give it to your own impecunious client?

... and today, Blue Eyes posts one of his increasingly infrequent missives.

I’ve got an idea.

Instead of running an entitlement-based welfare system where Parliament decides the rules and then makes up taxes to pay for it, how about a sponsorship system. The system should match up contributors and recipients in, say, a local area and provide information for the sponsor. The sponsor would get to see how the people he/she is funding are getting on and the sponsored might be encouraged to persuade the sponsor that he/she is getting value for money. Sponsors might even want to give advice to their mentorees to help them get on in life.

Those wanting to receive money from benefactors should have to provide certain information in return for their money: what is the money going on, how are the children getting on at school, how is the job hunt going?

If all this sounds quite intrusive to you then that is the idea. It’s about time the relatively small number of people who pay for the huge all-encompassing welfare machine got a little bit of influence on it.

Sounds good to me.

One of the biggest problems with the Welfare State is that the recipients truly believe that their money comes to them—not as charity, nor as pay-outs on insurance payments that they have made—but as of right.

Which, of course, partially it is. The idea that one should be ashamed of living off the hard work of others has long gone; similarly, as politicians have sought to bribe ever larger and more biddable swathes of the electorate, the idea that one should first have to pay into the system in order to get anything out of it has become similarly redundant*.

Long-time readers will know that I consider the National Insurance Act of 1911 to be—as viewed over the long term—one of the stupidest and most evil acts ever passed by a British government. (Had it remained as it was intended—that is, buying Friendly Society memberships for those who could absolutely not afford them—then its consequences might have been mitigated.)

As it turns out, that Act simply started the rot.

Because the doling out of subsequent monies to those who have never paid a penny into the system—and which often rewards them for doing the most perverse things, such as having myriad children which they can neither afford nor properly care for—must be some of the wilful, stupidest and downright evil acts in history. Especially, I say again, the bit about encouraging them to have children.

So, as an alternative to simply stopping these payments overnight, perhaps we should consider Blue Eyes's and Bella's proposals...

* Unless, of course, you do actually pay in—in which case you must prove you have done so in order to get a brass farthing of your insurance. Especially if you are freelance.

The Ron Paul Solution

2012-03-06T23:14:00.000Z

Please note: I am not the Devil

Ok, let’s start with a couple of points that, while to most people are clearly true, will be upsetting for some; firstly, Ron Paul is not going to be the Republican nominee for President. Secondly, he is never going to be President. That is not to say that he isn’t the best of a bad bunch, and clearly the best (and arguably only) libertarian option in the 2012 race. And that is not to say that of all the candidates he’d be the one I’d back if I had any sort of influence or vote in the primaries or the general election in the US. But we have to face reality here, my good people; Paul may have performed consistently in the primaries, but he has not done well enough to get the prize he seeks.

Let’s pause for a moment and think about why Paul hasn’t done as well as perhaps he should have done. The first (and increasingly tired) excuse that a Ron Paul supporter might come up with is media bias; that Ron Paul simply does not get the same level of attention as other insurgent candidates who have apparently risen from nowhere to challenge Romney. This is partially true, but it is also partly because there is nothing really new going on with Paul’s campaign. He contends in primaries, he does ok in them. There are only so many ways in which the media can write that story and when you have someone like the barking fucking mad Rick Santorum winning primaries despite his inept and extremist campaign, that’s going to dominate the headlines rather than the story of “Paul did ok. Again”.

Then there are Ron Paul’s – how shall we put this delicately – presentational problems. He seems to only have three facial expressions, and each of them looks a little odd. He either looks bored and faintly grumpy, utterly startled or positively demonic. Of course, such things shouldn’t matter; unfortunately, they do. And while he doesn’t look as ridiculous as the rotund Newt Gingrich – who increasingly resembles a greying teddy bear who has just sucked on a lemon – he still seems awkward compared to Santorum (who seems to have lost his neck somewhere) and Romney (who seems to be the cliché of a career politician in every way, including how he looks). There is also the potentially more worrying problem of those apparently racist newsletters; I’m not going to reignite the debate over them (there are plenty of other places you can go to if you want to indulge in that); for now, it suffices to say that such newsletters don't really create the impression of someone destined for the nomination or for the highest office in his homeland.

But by far the biggest problem Paul has is that he’s ahead of the debate. What this primary season for the Republicans is boiling down to is what the last one was about as well; namely, the fight between mainstream statist republicanism and the more extremist Christian fundamentalist wing of that party. Last time it ended up being McCain vs Huckabee; this time it’s Romney vs Santorum. And there’s Paul, stood on the sidelines, making genuinely radical proposals with the mainstream just not listening to him. And because he stands alone among the candidates, he’s painted as some sort of an extremist when all he is really saying is “the state can’t cope with what we want it to do and therefore we should rely on it less”. I hope that there will come a point when Paul’s basic politics is considered the common sense mainstream; unfortunately, that time is not now.

So he’s not going to win either the nomination nor the presidency. So what should he do? Pack up and head back to Texas to chill with the idiotic Rick Perry? No. He should do something far more radical. He should run for President. As an Independent.

A number of questions immediately arise. Firstly, can he win? Almost certainly not; he would lack the massive get out the vote infrastructure that the two main parties have. Can he even run an effective national campaign? Here, I think he stands more of a chance. He has a band of devoted followers and passionate advocates; plus, he is able to raise money without dipping into his personal fortune (indeed, I’m not sure he really has one – especially when compared to the likes of Romney) and without begging from major donors. There are people out there to fund him and fight for him; it wouldn’t be a mighty party machine, but he could conduct the guerrilla politics of the independent candidate, and be able to move with far more fluidity and speed than those with large monolithic party bureaucracies behind them.

And he as the added advantage – assuming, as is almost certainly the case, that Mitt Romney wins the nomination – that there will be bugger all difference between the two main candidates. This means that the media will need some sort of different narrative, and what could be better than being able to report on a candidate who actually has different policies?

Of course, there’s the immediate charge that Paul might split the Republican vote and hand a second term to Obama. But there’s a couple of things to note there. Firstly, with each passing day, a second term for Obama becomes more and more likely. Yes, he’s been an appalling disappointment as President who has failed to impress even his own base let alone build up a wider consensus behind him in the US. But he’ll be fighting Mitt Romney, who has exactly the same problems and lacks the massive advantage of incumbency in the White House. Romney’s going to lose; thus Paul wouldn’t really be making a great deal of difference there.

But there’s a more fundamental point here; Paul has cross party support. He can win over small-state Republicans but, with his foreign policy, he can also win over younger people who stand against US bellicosity and who have been bitterly disappointed by a President who has, among other things, left Gitmo open. Put crudely, he could take votes from both left and right, and thus form a radical alternative that hits the vote tally of both the Republicans and the Democrats.

Yet… I’ve already said he’s not going to win. So why spend millions of dollars in an exhausting campaign that on first glance looks a lot like tilting at windmills? Well, Paul has the opportunity to change the terms of the political debate in the USA. I noted above that he’s ahead of the debate in the Republican party; if he can take votes from both parties, though, then at least one of them (most probably the Republicans) will start asking themselves what they can do to get these people back. And thus the debate in the Republican party might change from being an ongoing culture war between reasonable Republicanism and it’s virulently Christian extreme to being one between statists and libertarians. Likewise, the Democrats might start to clock that it is not good enough to promise a more sensible foreign policy and then do fuck all about it once in office. Ron Paul has the chance to show how popular libertarian ideas; but as this primary season and the one back in 2008 show, he needs to do so outside of the confines of the Republican party. A well-run independent campaign might push his ideas towards the political mainstream – where they deserve to be – and start laying the groundwork for a major party (again, most probably a Republican) nominee to actually endorse libertarian principles.

So Ron Paul 2012? Yes please. But as an independent candidate.

The Mitt Romney Problem

2012-03-05T23:35:00.000Z

Please note: I am not the Devil.

For those of us who keep an eye on such things, there is a perverse joy to be had in watching Mitt Romney limp towards the Republican nomination over in the US. The primary results seem to be taking on an oddly predictable pattern; Romney wins a contest, and then the next time the vote heads in the direction of Gingrich or Santorum. It is as if the Republican party faithful realise that there is an inevitability to Romney's nomination, but at the same time they resent it; so half the time they accept what is inevitable, and the other half they want to kick against Romney and go for someone - hell, anyone - else.

So what is the Romney problem then? The first thing to acknowledge is that he is being (relatively) successful simply because he is faced with a bunch of the incompetent, idiotic and unlucky; he is running against those who for whatever the reason are quite simply not destined to be the nominee, let alone in the White House. Herman Cain was buried underneath a landslide of snide innuendo; he didn't even make it to the primary season. Rick Perry sank his own campaign by appearing to be more stupid than George W Bush (which is no mean feat), while Michele Bachman failed to inspire the sort of misplaced confidence that many have/had in Sarah Palin (who herself seems content to sit this one out). And then we have Gingrich, the thrice married Catholic social conservative with a focus on moon bases. Of course, there is also Rick Santorum, who puts the mentalist in Christian fundamentalist. And finally there's Ron Paul - whose own woes are (or will be) the topic of a different post* - who, with the best will in the world, is painted as an extremist by an increasingly disinterested media. Rather like Cameron on this side of the Atlantic, Romney ends up being aided by the fact that he is surrounded a group of people who are basically (Paul excluded) fucktards against whom he looks faintly credible. But again, because he is for many the least worst option is no hearty endorsement; and like Cameron, he fails to inspire.

And that is another component part of his problem; he fails to inspire even his own base. This manifests itself not only in the occasional victories handed to much less mainstream and credible candidates, but also in the hopes of some for a brokered convention or the rise of a realistic alternative to him. Romney's success is not because he is the chosen one, but rather because there is no-one else to choose. He is a grudging compromise of a candidate; his faltering baby steps towards the Republican nomination remind me of John Kerry as the 2004 Democrat nominee; Kerry was chosen not because he was any good (and the general election of the year showed that beyond all reasonable doubt) but because he was less mental than the alternative.

But that then leads us to what the worst of Romney's issues actually is and what is at the heart of the Romney problem; as things stand, he's not going - even if nominated - to beat Obama (as some affiliated with his party are starting to acknowledge) in the race for the White House. That's right, he's not going to be able to take the White House back from that incompetent incumbent. Even now, he's struggling to make any headway against Obama. Come the actual election, when the massive Obama war chest is turned against a Mitt Romney already crippled by attacks from his own side during the primary season, the latter will be the one who almost certainly falls. Obama will be re-elected grudgingly because the alternative is too samey and uninspiring to provoke any sort of change; further, if the American economy continues to improve (largely despite rather than because of Obama's policies) then we could be about to witness the grudging landslide. Obama wins a second term not because he is any good, but because the alternative is so uninspiring that he actually becomes the best option. And the irony is that it is exactly the same logic allows Romney to win the opportunity to lose the election in the first place.

So what is Romney's problem? In a nutshell, he's going to lose. It is just a question of when.

*I'm writing it at the moment...

"Are we coming or going?", asks Cable

2012-03-01T10:44:00.005Z

Via the deeply scornful Capitalists@Work, I see that Grandad Cable—the Sage of Twickenham—has decided that the Coalition is going to adopt a "proper industrial policy" and "support the oil and gas industry".

In a move that represents a shift from last year's controversial tax raid on North Sea oil, the Business Secretary said the Government wanted to help the sector "re-energise" its supply chains, which include thousands of small businesses.

In a speech in London, Mr Cable said targeted Government support was needed to create a "different kind of economy" based on manufacturing and trade. Britain could not "just hope it happens naturally", he said. He and Charles Hendry, the Energy Minister, will chair meetings to "see how together we can support this important industry".

Well, Vince, one way of supporting "this important industry" might be not opportunistically taxing it whenever you fucking feel like it. But, then, what do I know, eh?

He insisted the plans were different to the "cack-handed interventionalism of the 1960s and 1970s" and denied that the Government was reverting to "picking winners" rather than trying to create a benign business environment.

Yes, of course it is completely different.

But he argued: "There is a case for being more explicit about the choices we are making and linking them to a clearly articulated economic strategy."

We are now two years into this Coalition government: one would have thought—especially given the current economic crisis—that, if they were going to form a "clearly articulated economic strategy", they would have done so before now.

But, as I say, what do I know?

With a nod to the previous Labour government, Mr Cable said Britain's car manufacturing industry had benefited from the "explicit choices" of government support.

We have a car industry? Who knew...?

Other industries to be ~~destroyed~~ targeted include aerospace, media, film and fashion.

What's that old Reagan saw about the most terrifying words in the English language?

Oh yes: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".

Mr Cable said: "Revolutionary technologies are often too risky, or simply too complex or resource intensive, for an individual company to make the necessary investment.. for Government, there is a significant role here."

Well, yes: if any organisation is adept at pissing our money up a wall, the government is surely a prime candidate to walk away with that prize.

The mind boggles.

DISCLOSURE: I hold a pretty insignificant number of shares in various oil and gas exploration companies. Most dropped sharply on the 27th and 28th and we have seen increased volatility.

I'm not saying it's linked, but Cable made his speech on the 27th and the Telegraph article was published on the morning of the 28th. Just sayin', is all...

Against Ken at Londonist

2012-02-29T23:00:00.003Z

Your humble Devil has a short article up at the Londonist, about why Ken Livingstone was—and would be—a shit Mayor. Over the course of a little less than 700 words, I tried to cover all of the lying, corruption, waste and incompetence demonstrated by this vicious little shit.

Alas, the article had to be cut slightly; believe me, I could have written double the mount and still not have covered everything—even in the most cursory manner.

I shall, I think, expand that small start here at The Kitchen over the next couple of weeks: much as I dislike the man—and, believe me, I do—even I was shocked at his mendacity, venality and inability.

For balance, yesterday Londonist published a similar article about why Boris was a twat.

And you can find some of my views on him and, specifically, the booze ban on London transport here and here...

UPDATE: I believe that my reply to some of the commenters over at Londonist makes a number of simple but salient points about libertarianism (since that is what said commenters picked up on).

I admit that both I and BorisWatch could have simply pointed out that they are both politicians and are, obviously, both liars. However, I thought that I would attempt to provide some articles backing up the assertion.

@jaypeedee: "What's your problem with Unions?" Quite simply, the support given to them by government. They should not be able to distort the democratic process through massive amounts of funding (and the same applies to corporates) but, most importantly, it should not be illegal to sack striking workers.

@Chenobble: "Libertarians hate democracy..." No, we just don't worship democracy. The main point is that democracy is not the point of it all—freedom is. Democracy has been, so far, the best way of ensuring freedom for the longest time (until the next bloody revolution), but it is not an end in itself.

"They call it the 'tyranny of the majority'..." Because it is. The majority get to elect politicians—who, by the very nature of democratic re-election processes, will pander to that larger group of people—and so happily oppress the minority to do so. If you don't believe me, simply look at how politicians are oppressing the rich through vastly higher tax rates (clue: there are very few rich people, and lots of less rich people).

"Libertarians also hate anything that gets in the way of free market enterprise [...] unions are seen as an impediment to the free market because they stop business fully exploiting their employees." No. Unions—when not backed by government laws—are an entirely legitimate way for workers to rebalance power. It is the intervention of government—on both sides (corporate and union)—which makes them both enemies of the free market.

@David Levy: "There can be no question but that Ken supports cheaper fares..." He may well support cheaper fares: my point (delivered with evidence) was that he has—despite his "support" or his marketing—failed, consistently, to deliver them.

"... interesting you don't compare his fare increases with those under Johnson." My brief was to write about why Ken is deeply unsuitable, not why Boris is; this article has been shortened from it's original 700+ words as it is (and I could easily have written double the amount and still not touched on all of the corruption under Ken's rule).

In any case, why do you think that fares are going up 7%? Because the Tube drivers have demanded pay increases of not far less than that, plus energy is becoming massively expensive.

The first happens because the unions wish it so, and Ken is a supporter of those same unions; all other things being equal, he cannot support the interests of both the unions and the people of London.

The second is happening because of successive governments' policies on energy consumption, i.e. to tax it heavily (for a variety of reasons).

Regards,

DK

Being on foreign turf, so to speak, I decided to keep my tone—especially on the last two points—relatively neutral: after all, I do not expect Londonist people to be political anoraks...

Over regulation kills business

2012-02-19T11:28:00.005Z

As long-term readers might know, your humble Devil gambles a bit.

Every month, a standing order conveys a few tens of pounds to an escrow account with my stockbroker; every few months, when I have built up enough cash to make it worthwhile to buy, I fire up my Instant Messenger client, ask my stockbroker to get me prices on a couple of stocks and then instruct him what to buy.

In the weeks before I do this, I will have done some research—I find City Unslicker to be useful, as well as The Motley Fool—and tracked a few stocks that I'm interested in.

Quite often these stocks will simply be companies that I have read about or stumbled across and which happen to fit my general interests. In building my portfolio, I tend to stick to areas that I know quite a lot about—technology and energy.

And, because I don't have that much spare cash, I tend to look at "penny shares" that might provide a good capital return: after all, if I buy a stock at 4p and it gains a penny, I have made 25%. As such, most of my stocks are on the AIM, rather than the LSE's main market.

As I said, I gamble.

And I do it largely for fun. Although with the added bonus that this particular brand of fun has delivered roughly 40% growth over 18 months.

Well, it's better than sticking it in the bank, eh?

But what I am not really prepared to do is to give my stockbroker the most intimate details of my life, earnings and medical history (this last might be problematic in any case, since I haven't seen a doctor since 1999, am not registered anywhere, and have no idea where my medical history might reside—somewhere in Edinburgh, I'd imagine).

"Surely one doesn't need to!" you cry. Well, I haven't had to yet, but as my stockbroker writes today, it's coming down the line.

The FSA, which does not understand Private Client stockbroking, and therefore does not like this is at serious risk of harming clients by hammering the brokers with often inappropriate demands for record-keeping, and fact-finding. The ultimate effect is to deny decent advice to people without serious amounts of money to invest. If it ain't worth my while spending 3 hours or more finding out your inside-leg measurement and medical history (the former is flippant, the latter is not), I will not be able to advise you about the best way to save for your retirement. You're on your own, or at the mercy of cowboys. Maybe you've inherited a pot of money and you'd like to stick it somewhere for a few years, before buying a house. Maybe you've downsized and would like to supplement your pension with a bit of income from the capital. Few brokers will touch you if it's less than £100k.

As Jackart points out, all of this regulation is killing businesses and, most importantly, reducing choice and service for the customers.

Inappropriate over-regulation is killing the old school advisory business, just as it killed old-school relationship banking where long-term relationships have long provided decent advice to people for a reasonable cost. The only people to benefit are the big banks who have access to more captive customers for their fee-larded "products" sold according to a process, and the regulation sausage factory of the FSA.

I am going to get little sympathy. Though I am just a guy earning a crust by helping clients decide which stocks to invest in to achieve their aims, in the popular imagination I may as well be a "banker". But this nonsense is going on in every industry, not just finance. I am not saying all new regulation is wrong. Much of the new regime is merely formalising what a decent broker should be doing anyway. But to imagine this is without cost is naive. And the cost is borne by customers, who lose choice and privacy as well as paying higher fees. Regulation ultimately benefits government, which gains power over people, and big business, which can absorb the cost, pass it on, and put the insurgent or innovative smaller player out of business.

Ultimately the cost is borne by the nation who have to employ a caste of nose-poker-inners in every industry to check "compliance" with regulations. The only businesses who can influence the regulations are the big, powerful, politically connected ones, and you can bet they're gaming the process to their benefit, and against the interests of the entrepreneur, sole-trader and independent small firm. This crony-capitalist cartel is the real beneficiary of over-regulation. The compliance department, or indeed the PAYE administrator, or the H&S officer may be nominally employed in the private sector, but they're every bit as parasitic as the mandarins of Whitehall, as they are not serving the person who's forced to be paying them.

Worse, innovation may well be beneficial to customers, but the compliance risk means much innovation is not allowed or otherwise stifled because regulators who by their nature are conservative and risk-averse don't like that which they don't understand. Ultimately as we're at the technological frontier, without innovation, we've no growth. And what does the UK desperately need now?

Quite.

And in the meantime, I will continue gambling: I might lose it all—it's a risk that I take. But, ultimately, if I do then I won't blame my stockbroker, or the bankers, or anyone else. I shall blame myself.

But the reason that I do it is because I get to choose what stocks I invest in, I get to see if my hunch was correct. I don't want some big fund choosing where my money goes (even if I had enough to interest them)—where would be the fun in that?

Ultimately, the fun and the pleasure that I gain from my little bit of gambling is because I get to choose my own path. If I lose the lot, well, I'll get back up and carry on. But every little thing that I do here, every little gamble that I have, is my gamble. It is fun because I get to choose.

And this is true, not only in stocks and shares, but in the whole of life: you might get it wrong, but at least it was your choice. And if it didn't work, well, you can choose something else.

A life in which your decisions are made for you is no life at all—and it probably won't work because you cannot be invested in decisions that you haven't made.

So, make your own choices. Or at least have a little gamble—go on, you might enjoy it!