Though being dead, yet he speaketh

One of the greatest gems in the treasure-house of exposition over recent years was Ed Clowney, 1917–2005. He wrote books, defending the thesis that the proclamation of the pulpit is to be a setting forth of none other that Jesus Christ. He wrote commentaries and articles, showing how this applies in particular passages. He practised what he preached—or do we say, he preached what he preached? And he was a man of many talents, as his Wikipedia page illustrates. I'm sure I wasn't alone in being saddened to hear, a few years ago, of the death of a man I'd never heard preach, but whose books and articles have been a real help at different times.

And now, it is possible to hear a whole host of Clowney's sermons from sermonaudio.com. (With acknowledgement to Scott Clark of the Heidelblog.)

The unintended consequence of law

Dubner and Levitt, they of Freakonomics fame, have written an article (NYT, so I hope the links works; with thanks to the JollyBlogger) expounding the way in which well-intentioned laws have been corrupted by those against whom they directed, the further to attack those whom they protected. I quote one particularly interesting section.

How long have such do-good laws been backfiring? Consider the ancient Jewish laws concerning the sabbatical, or seventh year. As commanded in the Bible, all Jewish-owned lands in Israel were to lie fallow every seventh year, with the needy allowed to gather whatever food continued to grow. Even more significant, all loans were to be forgiven in the sabbatical. The appeal of such unilateral debt relief cannot be overestimated, since the penalties for defaulting on a loan at the time were severe: a creditor could go so far as to take a debtor or his children into bondage.

So for a poor Jewish sandal maker having trouble with his loan payments, the sabbatical law was truly a godsend. If you were a creditor, however, you saw things differently. Why should you lend the sandal maker money if he could just tear up the loan in Year Seven? Creditors duly gamed the system, making loans in the years right after a sabbatical, when they were confident they would be repaid, but then pulling tight the purse strings in Years Five and Six. The resulting credit drought was so damaging to poor people that it fell to the great sage Hillel to fix things.

His solution, known as prosbul, allowed a lender to go to court and pre-emptively declare that a specific loan would not be subject to sabbatical debt relief, transferring the debt to the court itself and thereby empowering it to collect the loan. This left the law technically intact but allowed for lenders to once again make credit available to the poor without taking on unwarranted risk for themselves.

They go on to explain how the fallow-land law is also abused. The problem isn't a problem of law: God's law, above all others, is holy, righteous, and good. The problem is a problem of the heart, for it is deceitful above all things. What has this to do with anything much? We know, I think, the application in terms of the gospel, and perhaps these would serve as good illustrations for a sermon on Romans 7. But what else?

We see here a society ruled by God's law, and yet even with laws from the best source possible, things go wrong. This isn't to argue that we shouldn't bother with legislation, but I would suggest that winning legislation isn't as important as winning the debate. It's far better, on contentious issues, to try to argue against undesirable behaviour than to legislate against it. If we find that we win the argument, then legislation will either be inevitable or unnecessary. And if we get the legislation but no social desire for it, we'll see any success crumble quickly. It's better, in short, to live in a society where drug-taking/abortion/homosexual activity is socially-unacceptable than one in which it is socially-acceptable but illegal.

And all that, without expecting people to be more "moral" because of this (there's a Lewis quote about all of this). Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, and so there will be no "moral" improvement (the category error of the Victorians, among so many others) but we may hope, pray, and work towards an improvement in civil righteousness.

Consistency's the thing

From one of our campus rags, about the Sexual Orientation Regulations passed last year:

Lord Smith, former Labour culture secretary, defended the new legislation, stating that: “People have the right to believe that homosexuality is somehow wrong, but I do not believe they have the right to put their beliefs into action.”

And so he put his belief into practice, by, um, stopping people from putting their beliefs into practice.

Who'd want a McA-Level?

Apparently, McDonald's have been given approval to issue their own A-Levels and diplomas as accredited awarding bodies. This means that their training programmes can now be recognised as proper academic qualifications, along with Flybe and Network Rail. I wonder what sorts of subjects we could suggest?

Perhaps the Ronald McDonald Institute is sorting out a qualification in nutritional science. I'm sure Flybe College is itching to start their new courses in customer service, and the University of Network Rail must have some transport logistics lined up.

Libertarian paternalism?

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article about the-topic-I'm-not-going-on-about, in which it is suggested that the potential policy represents a shift towards a political-philosophical viewpoint known as libertarian paternalism. I'm not convinced, and the tone of the Wikipedia article bears this out, that libertarian paternalism is so hot on the "libertarianism" side of things. According to the Wikipedia article, the philosophy is alternatively called "soft paternalism" and most self-described "libertarians" are opposed to it.

The idea is this: the state will let people have the choice to smoke, say, but will make it difficult to smoke by imposing some kind of onerous restriction. Julian LeGrand, a professor at the LSE, was interviewed for the CSM article and suggested that, for instance, smokers could be required to register, for free, for a pass to buy tobacco. The time and effort such a system would require would put people off smoking, he suggests, and yet their liberty would not be infringed.

As you might tell, I'm not so sure this is "truth in advertising." Making the default to be the "healthy option" sounds like a nice system in theory (no, really, it does; I can see the appeal), but as Norman Lamb for the Liberal Democrats pointed out in the article, if people are signed up for things unawares "then that undermines their freedom in a way that would be unacceptable." [1] And even a proposal to make things onerous in terms of time is tricky, since time and money are quantities we should ensure remain conceptually-linked. I mean that filling in forms is like a tax on people's time, which is far more valuable to most of us than our money.

This stands in contrast to the classically liberal position, also taken by libertarians, which is that the default position should be the one requiring the least bureaucracy and the least interference. I'm not too keen on assuming that I, or anyone else, knows so well how others ought to live their lives that we can impose those kinds of decisions on them, even as defaults.

Take the issue of abortion, for instance. The cultural assumption seems to be against having children, which isn't what I'd call a healthy default. But that's where any "softly-paternalistic" policy would leave us under the current circumstances. Therefore, it would be far preferable to win the cultural and moral battle, rather than achieve any number of political and legal victories. And if we won those battles, we wouldn't need a paternalistic default to guide people. Thus, I'm a liberal because I want people to want the right thing, not simply to do the right thing.

[1] Interestingly, Lamb is on record at his personal website as supporting the government's policy about-which-I'm-not-blogging-honest.

Lenten lessons (2)

A few days ago, I promised to return to the RCL's selection of passages for Lent 1A. The temptations of Christ in the wilderness are long-associated with Lent, as I observed, and so it's highly appropriate to use one of the accounts on the first Sunday of Lent.

The Matthew passage has been well-explained by Jonathan Gibson at beginning with moses. Briefly, the point is this: Matthew, throughout his Gospel, is contrasting Jesus and Israel as sons of God [1]. One piece of evidence, to serve as an illustration of the whole, can be found in chapter 2, where Matthew applies to Jesus Hosea's prophecy referring to Israel as God's son.

So here's Matthew contrasting Israel and Jesus in their responses to God's law and to temptation. Israel ignores the law and falls for the wiles of the devil, while Jesus stands fast on God's law and does not buckle. Matthew's point is simple and clear: at last, here is a Son who will obey.

Luke's account compares not Israel and Jesus so much as Adam and Jesus: the point can be proved simply by comparing Matthew's and Luke's genealogies of Jesus. Matthew goes as far back as Abraham, wanting to establish Jesus' identity as the true Israel; Luke goes all the way back to Adam, for Jesus is the second Adam, the true Man. That's why I think Luke's account works better with the Genesis and Romans passages, by the way; it makes it slightly easier to preach those two passages and link them together with the relevant Gospel account.

Whichever gospel you take, the point is clear: by nature, we are the son who fails, but Jesus is for us the son who obeys, for by union with him, that obedience is made ours.

1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.

11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart! (Psalm 32)

[1] See, for instance, Jesus as Israel: the typological structure of Matthew's Gospel, Leithart. (pdf)

Lenten lessons (1)

For those who count by the church calendar, Lent is coming upon us rapidly, a result of an extremely early Easter this year. The Revised Common Lectionary texts for Lent 1A, the 10th of February this year, are decidely well-chosen. Although the order in which they are listed is Old Testament lesson, Psalm, New Testament and Gospel lesson, I think I can see the story the selector was wanting to tell, and I suggest that the order is better slightly altered.

Gen. 2:15–17, 3:1–7

This concatenation of passages tells us of the first commandment, and the first sin. The Lord tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the serpent deceives Eve into eating, and she leads Adam into the same. We leave Adam and Eve perhaps knowing good and evil, but certainly knowing nakedness and shame.

Matt. 4:1–11

This is the story of the three temptations of Christ in the desert, long-associated with Lent. I shall give reasons, probably on Saturday, as to why I think this is a highly appropriate contrast with Genesis 3, but also why I think it would be slightly better to have Luke's account with these passages.

Rom. 5:12–19

This is one of those classic Pauline passages which has proved a mine for theologians over the centuries, reflecting on the work of Christ. It fits particularly well with the Old Testament and Gospel lessons, since in it, Paul is comparing and contrasting the sin of Adam with the salvation of Christ.

Ps. 32

This wonderful psalm opens with the declaration, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." Having heard the stories of Adam and Jesus, and Paul's explanation of them, what is more fitting to than to sing praises to God for his salvation, forgiveness of sin?

Times: Women turn on ‘traitor’ Oprah Winfrey…

AMERICA’S favourite television presenter is paying a painful price for her intervention in the US presidential campaign last month. Oprah Winfrey has been dubbed a “traitor” by some of her female fans for supporting Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton. (Source)

The simplistic media coverage of the way people vote is largely to blame. I hear the primaries painted as if there's such a thing as the Hispanic, black, female, gay, evangelical, whatever vote. It seems to me that it is racist to suggest that the "black vote" will go to Obama and sexist to say that the "female vote" will go to Hillary, as it treats black (resp. female) voters as if they all care about the same issues in the same way. What has happened to Oprah must be illustrative of the problems facing voters who are black and female across America.

Once more unto the organ donations!

I'll try not to keep posting on this.

Downesy has an insightful post on the topic of organ donation: "The British Government challenges the Heidelberg Catechism" and for why? Because "I am not my own, but belong, with body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ."

Although it is certainly true that, politically, the individual's and family's wishes must be respected and we are the ones who ought to decide what happens, I'm glad he pointed that perspective out and only wish I'd remembered it.

FT: UK lenders seek help to fund home loans

Mortgage lenders are raising pressure on the Bank of England and the Treasury for measures to help them raise funds to provide loans to homebuyers – and are warning that without support, the level of lending will plummet.

Industry groups such as the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the European Securitisation Forum and private banks have urged the UK authorities to back the securitisation industry, the sector of finance that enables bankers to turn loans into bonds and other instruments. (Source)

What's good for the Rock is good for the rest, I suppose. Apparently, Mervyn King was fretting about moral hazard a few months back, but it would seem we have a Government more bothered about short-term damage limitation than long-term economic distress.

It just occurred to me…

…that what I really wanted to say, in summary, was organ donation is a wonderful thing, but you will steal my organs from me over my dead body.

Thinking along lines of liberalism, I also heard George Bush on the radio, saying that he was going to cut taxes so as to "let the American people keep more of their money." How magnanimous of him.

Invasion of the body-snatchers

Wednesday's Moral Maze on Radio Four revolved around the proposal by the government to presume consent when it comes to organ donation. Clifford Longley, the Catholic, was against for what amounted to religious reasons: it sounded to me like he was deeply sceptical of transplanation at all. Melanie Phillips was against for generic ethical reasons, which again sounded like she couldn't really accept the notion of transplants. Claire Fox was against for solidly liberal reasons, but very much in favour of transplants. I forget where Ian Hargreaves stood on the issue, but frankly, his viewpoints have always seemed pretty fuzzy to me.

The most interesting guest was Janet Radcliffe Richards, a bioethicist and feminist. Her academic training showed, in that she was really very good at separating issues properly. On more than a couple of occasions in what was probably only ten minutes of discussion, she had said, and with justification, that she was being asked to answer more than one question or tackle more than one issue.

But despite her undoubted technical skill, she said some pretty stark things. Her opening shot was that she thought it "overwhelming morally a good idea" to presume consent, and suggested that the issue is "which way the default goes" when someone doesn't make a decision: is it worse that someone's possible wishes be violated, or someone's life be lost?

Reasonable though that sounds, to presume consent does seem to suggest that someone else—the State—has authority over our dead bodies. According to Richards, it seems, whatever we decide about our own bodies, the writ does not run after death. Of course, to a strict materialist, you can see the logic. After all, if this thing that I am pleased to call "me" is simply a material construct, then there is little point in respecting "my" wishes after I'm gone. But then, the logic runs a little harder than that, since why should anyone else respect "my" wishes before I'm dead? In fact, what's this "death" thing we're talking about—isn't this "life" thing all just so many atoms buzzing around?

Clifford Longley's question drove straight to that point. He asked her if it was acceptable to kill a dying person, in order to harvest their organs in pristine condition. And her answer? It's not politically possible at the moment, but morally she would do so. In response to the challenge that this made her a murderer, she suggested that the legal definitions of murder and death would have to be changed to accommodate this. So in fact, she sounded like she would indeed be perfectly happy to admit that the wishes of the living should be flouted, too, as I suggested above.

Finally, after questioning from Michael Buerk and much dancing round the issue, she admitted that in her view, "the family should not have a veto." So not only do the views of the deceased matter, but the views of those with the closest legal claim on the deceased's property, including, one should have thought, their body, have no say either. Brilliant.

Personally, I think I understand the Government's wishes in presuming consent; the Spanish system presumes consent, but it appears that nevertheless, no organs are ever taken without the consent of the family. And if the Government is simply wanting to put doctors in the position where they are able to stop familie having to decide, and instead putting them in a position where they're simply able to agree, then I can appreciate why they'd want to do that.

But I disagree vehemently with Dr. Radcliffe Richards, whose position is that people's wishes on such a sensitive topic, whether alive or dead, should be over-ridden in the better interests of another individual. She wants to see co-erced removal of organs, which is inhuman and deeply distressing to families, some of whom may have profound moral objections to transplants.

And I find myself, once again, agreeing with Claire Fox: while I support organ donations whole-heartedly myself, and would want any and every usable organ to be donated on my death, the presumption of consent is a very dangerous presumption to make: think what it would do to rape trials, for instance. Instead, people like the very first witness, a transplant success story, should be going round the country and explaining why transplants saved their lives, what the process involves, how others can ensure that they are registered donors for when they die, and why it is important that they decide this now.

Are you registered?

You couldn't make it up

The BBC's Jonah Fisher is on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, tracking the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. (Source)

Did you get that?

He's called Fisher, and he's in chase of fishermen.
He's called Jonah, and those "fishermen" hunt whales.

Oi, Peston, no!

Sorry, this one's going to be a fully-grown rant. Just read the executive summary and leave me to fulminate, vituperate and excoriate in peace. : )

Executive summary

Robert Peston is a class A berk. The Chancellor and Prime Minister seem little better. They're all squabbling over a business which is headed for the hot place in a home-built wheeled contraption. And in the middle, the only people with real ownership rights over the company are being over-ridden roughshod, as if the company is no longer theirs to run. Oh, Vince Cable was stupid, too.

Full rant

Is it just me, or does the BBC, and particularly Robert Peston the business editor, seem to be attempting to stoke the fires of nationalisation under the feet of Northern Rock? The fervour behind his latest blogpost is so thinly-disguised he'd get nicked for exposure if he left the house. Shareholders are, apparently, "recalcitrant" because they want to decide how the company administers its own assets. The cheek of it!

For the benefit of Robert Peston's continuing education, the shareholders of Northern Rock are what we call its owners. This means that, absent actual criminality, they should be blinking well left alone to decide what happens to their company in peace. To teach this lesson, I propose that Mr Peston's current abode be "nationalised temporarily" to stabilise his home situation, and then sold off to the highest bidder. So, Peston, buzz off and quit calling for state interference. Remember Iraq? Not a model of state interference, is it?

Yes, I will grant that the Treasury has a right, as a creditor, to ask for its money back; but that does not extend to nationalisation. When did you ever hear of a creditor acquiring a debtor company because it couldn't pay its debts? And, more to the point, when did you ever hear of the acquiring creditor doing so to the detriment of all other creditors, unilaterally writing off or down all their debts? It's not lawful.

Northern Rock is publicly-held property, and the Government has no right to appropriate it in order to solve its own cock-up. Any nationalisation would be simple theft, depriving shareholders of their natural property rights. We will have watched Stalin come round full circle. And of course, Stalin will revert to Mr Bean and the whole thing will be an absolute fiasco.

Thinking of the source of that gibe, Cable was a prize ass to suggest nationalisation. He was a co-author of The Orange Book, one of the Lib Dems' better publications, in favour of free societies, free markets and free minds. What went wrong?

Full disclosure: I'm not an idiot, I don't hold shares in Northern Rock. As you can tell, I believe, very simply and very strongly, that the Government is confusing its privileges as government with its legal rights as creditors, and it's being egged on by sections of the Fourth Estate which I thought knew better than to trust politicians. And as long as the Emperor believes he has clothes, we have a problem.

Praying, or praying to?

I lose count of the number of times I've seen Roman Catholics defend the practice of praying to the saints on the basis that,

"Pray" is simply an old-fashioned word for "request," as in "I pray thee, do thou get me another beer, and I shall reckon it an act of kindness withal." Thus, in asking me to pray for you, you are "praying to" me in the sense the Catholic Church means it. (Source)

The problem with this is three-fold. The starting point, which I'm not even going to dignify with a number, is that while this problem exists in French, and possibly other languages, it is still centred around particular linguistic groups. Does the Roman Catholic church disambiguate its language where the concepts of addressing deity and "asking" are clearly distinguished? Anyway, onto the real problems.

Firstly, who said the saints were listening? I agree that it is entirely plausible, perhaps even true, that as part of their worship in front of the throne, the spirits of those who have gone before are remembering us in intercession [1]. But that doesn't mean that we can ask them to do it. In fact, it makes asking superfluous, and we don't have a guarantee that they're listening.

Secondly, the grammar doesn't lie. There is a difference in the English language between "praying someone" and "praying to someone". The former is archaic, but means simply "asking someone". The latter is definitely not, and has never been, in all its use, directed to any but deity—excepting Roman Catholic practice and very occasional poetic licence.

In short, praying the saints is without biblical support and devoid of any promise; but praying to them is idolatrous.

[1] See, for instance, Rev 5:8 and especially Rev. 6:9–11.

Deconstructing the postcode lottery

The decentralisation debate is, in my view, one of the few remaining genuinely ideological debates in British politics, allowing the electorate to sort the liberal men from the authoritarian boys.

One of the perennial slogans that is bandied about by opponents of greater local autonomy is the label "postcode lottery", often applied to the health service. I tend to associate the objection with left-leaning authoritarians, but my Google searches [comment struck - see meta] revealed that right-leaning ones can be just as prone (I assume the Daily Mail counts as right-leaning?).

Anyway, the accusation levelled is that, by substantially returning power to local authorities for taxation and services, the levels of those functions will vary from council to council; in particular, they allege, poorer areas will lose out as richer areas are able to afford better services.

Of course, this misses the fact that there is currently a process called equalisation (sounds spooky) which is meant to remedy this to some degree, and those arch decentralisers, the Liberal Democrats, in all their position papers [1], make it abundantly clear that they will continue to use this.

But even with all of that agreed, this notion of "postcode lottery" is still total rubbish, boiling down, as it does, to a belief that local conditions are basically uncaused by the local culture. It is certainly true, there are also non-local effects in local communities, but the most important ones are the local forces, because it is local people who most influence the local community. To take an obvious example, if everyone in a community genuinely wishes, and will work, to be raised out of poverty, it may take outside help to achieve that; but if that community doesn't wish to work to that end, it will never happen. Local people matter to local communities.

And if localism is so important, then it follows that central government programmes, while perhaps achieving some measure of good, can never work properly with regard to a specific local community's problems. The programme will have been designed for a sort of notional recipient, which probably doesn't exist in the real world. And so no individual, no community will get the full benefit of the investment being made. In fact, the benefit derived from centralised programmes and policies will be dependent on how closely the actual conditions match the notional ones. And so it is centralised government diktats, not local initiatives by local people, that form the real "postcode lottery".

[1] I am not a member of the Liberal Democrats, and I can't even recall if I've ever voted for them, but if you think decentralisation is important, then their position paper, The Power to be Different (pdf), is well worth the read.

Alan Greenspan on gold

He wrote an article in the Eighties asking whether the US could return to the gold standard it had abandoned only a decade previously. Towards the end, he wrote,

The run-up to $875 per ounce in early 1980 was surely an aberration, reflecting certain circumstances in the Middle East which are unlikely to be repeated in the near future.

The closing spot price of gold in dollars yesterday was $878.

Yeah, yeah: $878 today is less than $875 in 1981 terms, and we don't know what Goldspan's "near future" was. But it made me smile, all the same.

The Third Law of Theology

I haven't a clue what the first two would be, but the third is clearly that, "For every theological error, there is an equal but opposite error." I suspect this is because Christian theology is pretty heavily-laden with concepts which have to be held in tension. Here are some examples, drawn from all sorts of different places.

For every Arianism, there's a Docetism

Jesus Christ was fully God, that is for sure. First-century Christians had no trouble confessing him as divine, co-eternal with the Father, the Creative Word, Lord of all, both seen and unseen. In fact, one early heresy was docetism, which was not merely wobbly on the humanity of Jesus, but had fallen off the wagon. Docetists confessed a Christ who, as it were, left no footprints along the path he trod, since he was a spirit being who appeared to have flesh. I can't think of any officially docetic bodies, although I have a suspicion that some evangelicals tend to wobble a bit in this direction. By contrast, later centuries were to see the rise of Arianism, which could cope perfectly well with the created-ness of Christ, but baulked at his Creator-ness. The Jehovah's Witnesses typify this kind of view, although modern theological liberalism is also heavily influenced by Arian thought.

Legalism and antinomianism

One of the perpetual tensions in Christian theology has been the dialectic between Law and Gospel. Legalists, of course, come in all shapes and sizes: some are hard-core legalists asserting that we must obtain a righteousness by the Law, but most are simply people who think that the "real Christian" way of living is to be described by subjection to Law, rather than a life led in a manner worthy of the Gospel. They probably would say that the Gospel is what "gets people saved" but has no further role in the life of the believer. Antinomians, on the other hand, believe that the Law has no place in the life of the believer, since we are under grace, not under law. However, they fail to realise that we cannot know what a life worthy of the Gospel will look like without knowing God's holy law, and we cannot even know that we continue to need the Gospel without the Law's condemnation of all sin.

Psalms XOR hymns

Exclusive psalmody has its home among some Reformed Christians, who take the view that God has not sanctioned the use of "uninspired compositions" in sung worship, and therefore do not sing anything other than the Psalms. Some will stretch a point and allow any passage of Scripture set to music to be sung, but no further. However, it occurred to me (and was the occasion of this writing) that there is an alternative error, exclusive hymnody. Again, this could come in extreme and moderate forms: the extremist might take a dispensational view that the Psalms were Old Covenant, and on that basis refuse to sing them. I've never known of this view directly, but it must exist somewhere. The "moderates", though, are those people who simply don't think about what they're doing, and therefore fail to include psalms in sung worship through carelessness. They can even assert that the Psalms were the God-given hymnal of Israel, but fail to realise that means they're an inspired source for our singing today. While exclusive psalmody is (as far as I know) exclusive to the Reformed, exclusive hymnody exists across every theological divide.

Stock portfolio, 2008Q2-3

As I mentioned at the beginning of last month, I was thinking about pensions and decided to go the self-administered route, which meant investing in the stock market. So in April, I started to buy a portfolio. Basically, I rank the companies in the FTSE 100 and 250 by dividend yield, exclude all the tiddlers and those whose earnings weren't enough to pay last year's dividend, and see who's left over. I work down the list until I find a suitable candidate (or candidates) whose business isn't already replicated by a company I've invested in.

Following these principles, I bought, through the year, shares in seven companies: United Utilities (water and electricity supply), Lloyds TSB (a major clearing bank), Bradford & Bingley (a mortgage bank), DSG International (the owners of PC World and Dixons), Tate & Lyle (the well-known food producer), Barratt Developments (a lower-market housebuilder) and Trinity Mirror (owners of the Mirror newspaper, among others). In terms of business sectors, that means I have shares in Utilities, Banking (twice), General Retail, Food Production, Construction and Media.

I've been keeping records as if this were an income fund, so the performance of the capital value and the income are dealt with separately. The value of the units started in April at 100p, and had experienced a steady decline over the year to 85.29p. The income produced over the year was 4.982p per unit.

The portfolio action in 2007 was as follows.

Apr 07
Buy UU. (United Utilities) at 752.18p.

Jul 07
Buy LLOY (Lloyds TSB) at 564.12p.

Aug 07
Receive dividend 30.3p per share from UU.
Re-invest in UU. at 678.86p.

Oct 07
Buy BB. (Bradford & Bingley) at 301.46p.
Buy DSGI (DSG International) at 142.11p.
Buy TATE (Tate & Lyle) at 432.85p.
Receive dividend 11.2p per share from LLOY.

Dec 07
Buy BDEV (Barratt Developments) at 460.16p.
Buy TNI (Trinity Mirror) at 352.11p.

What's happening to our health service?

The story is all over the news: the Minister for the Civil Service wants a constitution for the NHS. And so, barring major political upheaval, we shall have one, since, by way of some constitutional quirk, Ministers for the Civil Service get Listened To. The newspapers, of course, are running with this under headlines like ‘Change your lifestyle if you want to have treatment from NHS’ (The Times), after suggestions that this could mean people with unhealthy lifestyles will be penalised.

Now, I support nationalised health pretty heartily, although I'm not unwilling to "think the unthinkable" if private healthcare were ever demonstrated to be more effective. So that said, it seems to me that this is a fundamentally privatising notion. If a health insurer wanted to increase its premium for smokers, people might be annoyed but they'd understand. But there's a real uproar over at the Times about the prospect of HMG doing this. Proper hypothecation of taxes might go some way to helping: if booze and fags paid for the NHS, then the premium would be being imposed indirectly.

This story comes hot on the heels of the suggestion that there are now four separate health services in the United Kingdom: one each for Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England (BBC).

And here, too, there's an interesting slant. If the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments were able to levy taxes to fund their respective health services, they'd be perfectly free to do whatever they liked at whatever the cost. And why not? But at present, they have to rely on United Kingdom taxation (through the arcane machinations of the Barnett formula) to achieve local results, and that's not fair on either the devolved regions or on the United Kingdom as a whole.

Of course, I'd extend that principle to local councils and across to a whole range of government services, but then I'm a de-centralising liberal nutcase.