Gordon's policy on teenage mothers

Today was Gordon's conference speech. To call it make-or-break, as the lazy press are doing, is a nonsense: Gordon broke months ago. Anyway, one of Crash Gordon's headline announcements was to open a network of care homes for teenage mothers, aged 16 and 17 (the mothers that is, not the network). Imagine the outraged reaction if a Tory had made this proposal. I suppose the idea that since it is legal to marry and to have sex at 16, a 17-year-old mother might actually be good news in some (very limited!) circumstances, and might be supported by a caring partner and a loving family, hadn't occurred to our illustrious Prime Minister. Presumably if Gordon thinks that having children at 16 or 17 is so bad, he's going to move the age of consent up to 18 as well, to "send a message".

Beyond that, though, let's have a little fun. We have seen, before now, residential collectives of social undesirables, where they are made to undergo (re-)education, social rehabilitation and normalisation before release into the community at large. The workhouses, yes, but more recently, and on the statist left? Oh yes, the blogger (Alex Massie and Tory Bear are the front-runners) who came up with the name hit on a good one: Gordon really did just say he would open a network of "gulags for slags".

The Pilkington case

It's a tragic case (BBC), and raises serious questions at all levels of government. And for the record, all three parties held office at the three levels of government, each of which failed in its way. The borough council was and is controlled by the Liberal Democrats (src); the county council was and is controlled by the Conservatives (src); and the UK government as we know is controlled by Labour. So while it is fair for the opposition at each level to make it plain that it would have dealt differently with the issues the case raises at the level of government mentioned, it should also be recognised that politicians from each of the three parties have failed in their duty to ensure that public services live up to their name and serve the public.

The borough bears responsibility for ensuring that the local public services, notably the police and social services, were tackling the problems that residents really wanted tackling; the county council bears responsibility for strategic oversight of Leicestershire police force, in its use of police time and also in its awareness of the powers which it has under law; and national government bears responsibility for ensuring that the public services are able to spend the most optimal amount of time at the front-line, rather than constantly filling in forms or covering their backs in case something goes wrong. Lest we forget, we bear a responsibility too, because the best way for communities to live in safety is when those communities themselves are exerting social pressure on those whose teenage antics are spilling over into oppressive violence, particularly against the vulnerable. This is not harking back to some earlier time as though we ever had a golden age, nor is it a legitimisation of vigilantism; but we all have a responsibility where we live not just to our own immediate families, but on behalf of all the others who want to live quietly and peaceably.

What is political liberty?

Liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right. The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this – that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. (Sir William Harcourt, 1873.)

(Thanks: Wordsmith at the ASI blog.)

The long arm of government, now even longer

Parents who have an arrangement to do childcare swaps could be breaking the law unless they register as childminders, we learnt on Sunday (BBC).

Paul Krugman, in pursuit of explaining Keynesian economics, famously used the example of the Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op, which operated by letting parents trade coupons among themselves in exchange for baby-sitting. Quite sensible, and the coupons were an attempt to keep the arrangement pretty equitable (although it did suffer something of a recession [1], which is where Krugman steps in).

In modern Britain? It would almost certainly be subjected to inspection by Ofsted, shut down and the parents told that what they were doing was illegal. It would never get to the stage of Interesting Economics Experiment, so Paul Krugman's parable would have to conclude:

The bad news was that a couple of years later the dead hand of government fell on the CHBC: Ofsted stepped in and removed the children for their safety while all the parents were prosecuted for running an illegal child-minding business, receiving untaxed services in kind, potential child abuse and sundry other crimes. No further co-ops have been set up, and most parents are scared ever to let their children out of their sight. The few parents who are willing to run the risk of allegations of neglect and are able to afford it now pay a professional, accredited child-minder when they go out instead.

Okay, I exaggerate slightly, but as a scenario it's one step further towards reality than it was a few months ago.

(UK voters can sign a petition to the government about this issue here.)

[1] It is irrelevant to the main body of this post, but Krugman claims that the recession was due to an excess of savings. I suspect that two different factors are at play: firstly, that the rules required parents on leaving the co-op to hand back the twenty coupons they were given (thus encouraging hoarding), but secondly, because the value of a coupon was fixed rather than left to parents to decide through trade. Why should a Wednesday night's child-minding be priced the same as a Saturday night's? Why should a five hour stint all at once attract the same rate as five one-hour blocks? Price-fixing doesn't generally lead to happy conclusions.

Classical liberals make a comeback in Germany?

The results from the German Bundestag elections are rolling in, and the CDU/CSU (an alliance comparable in some senses to the Labour/SDLP alliance, although more formalised) are able to form a coalition with the liberal FDP. Now, the media are all reporting the FDP as "pro-business". I know what they mean, and I suspect the FDP might even describe themselves as pro-business, but I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. A pro-business party would be in favour of corporate welfare: government handouts to businesses in order to help then survive, especially in tough economic times. But in an interview with Der Spiegel, Guido Westerwelle (the leader of the FDP) said this:

In terms of financing, among other things, we've proposed roughly 400 spending cuts in the budget -- although these calculations, of course, don't include all the nonsense with the cash-for-clunkers program or the billions in tax money wasted on the crazy health care fund. src)

Does opposition to car scrappage schemes, especially for a German politician whose nation's economy is so tied to the automotive industry, sound like a pro-business political stance to you? It doesn't to me. I think the FDP are pro-market, rather than pro-business.

On other matters, the FDP is the most strongly Atlanticist German party, which should be good for US-German relations, especially as Herr Westerwelle is marked up for the foreign portfolio. It may, interestingly, be less good news for the UK, as Obama's evident disdain for the special relationship, helped by our Government's incompetent bungling and coupled with a renewed German Atlanticism, may mean that we are increasingly by-passed by the US State Department as it deals more directly with Europe, treating the UK less as its Vicar in Europe. The FDP is also socially liberal — Herr Westerwelle is openly gay — and solidly in favour of civil liberties. While there is a small foreign policy niggle for the UK, I am definitely smiling for Germany today.

Regulation is pro-Big Business

Not all the time, of course, but some of the time for sure. My previous post on pensions is a case in point. You might ask, given I have this clear idea of how someone could run a cheap-and-cheerful pension fund (a sort of easyPension, or a Ryanair Retirement Plan), why it hasn't already been set up. Isn't this a failure in the market, you might ask. The simple answer is that the failure has been generated by high barriers to entry.

Of course, all markets suffer barriers to entry: you need to attract investors, you need to build up a customer base, and you need to pay staff out of a very small pot of investment funds. So to take the pension fund example, that means that fees for an all-new pension fund are necessarily much higher than large, established funds, and that is a problem in a fund which is trying to make its unique selling point that it has a simplicity which keeps its fees low! We know, of course, that many start-up businesses have to run at a loss for a long time before finally breaking properly into the market and starting to turn a profit.

But that's only the beginning of the barriers. The biggest barriers are not a feature of the market at all. You are running a tax-privileged product, so there are various conditions which you have to meet. There are anti-money-laundering regulations to comply with. The FSA doubtless has its own standards for people who are handling client money. All of these have their own aims: they are not simply regulation for regulation's sake! Some are designed to stop fraud, others to catch the proceeds of crime, yet more to protect consumers. But each freezes the market just a little bit more, erecting new barriers against fresh competition. And to make my point more forcefully, that is only an example of a principle which applies across all areas of the economy: regulation generally makes life harder for small businesses than for big ones.

So when we see Tesco supporting a minimum price for alcohol (it happened), we know why: it will drive smaller, local off-licences out of business. When we see large, established, City firms signing up gleefully to complicated regulations, we will know why: it makes life harder for the vigorous upstart based in another city. When we see experienced professionals support yet another addition to the qualifications in their field, we can tell what's going on: it keeps the young competition at bay.

Not all regulation, of course, has this effect: it is entirely possible to draft regulations which favour small businesses over the large. But for a generic piece of legislation, the general effect is to entrench the powerful, established firms against the smaller rivals. Thus, every legislator and regulator should have in his sight a World War II-style poster which reads, "Is this regulation really necessary?" For if we're going to talk about the role of government with respect to power relations in the marketplace, regulation as a species is part of the problem.

Where is the Ark of the Covenant today?

At church it was our Harvest Sunday today; harvest of course being a time when we especially remember God’s provision for us, particularly of his faithfulness in keeping the seasons year in year out so that we might have enough food to eat.

In the Bible, the Israelites had times when they also remembered God’s provision for them, and they had one thing in particular which was important as an all-year reminder of his provision. It was in the Ark of the Covenant, that wooden box which was a centrepiece of the tabernacle and Temple worship.

Inside the Ark were three things, each put there at God’s command. There were the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, Aaron’s wooden staff and (here’s the link with harvest) a pot of manna (Heb. 9:4). They were all there for a reason. The Ten Commandments were a reminder of God’s perfect law, which showed Israel the perfect way to live (Ex. 25:16). Aaron’s wooden staff was put in there to remind the people of their rebellion against God’s rule and his law (Num. 17:10). And the pot of manna was a reminder of God’s provision of food for the Israelites while they were in the desert (Ex. 16:32).

The inside of the Ark of the Covenant was a reminder of the fact that God had cared for Israel, and had provided for Israel; that he had a perfect way of life set out for them; and that despite all that, they still disobeyed him, and they disobeyed him again and again and again.

But on top of the Ark was the mercy seat, and it was on the mercy seat that the priest sprinkled some of the blood of the sacrifice, for the forgiveness of the people’s sin. The sacrifice was placed above that law which was a constant indictment of Israel’s sin, the law which they kept breaking, the rebellion they were involved in, and their need of God. I think (following something a friend pointed out a few weeks ago) that that was to show the Israelites that though God’s law is important, his grace is supreme. His love for us is bigger than the depths of our sin: although our sin earns us enmity with God, his love is so much bigger that he loves us anyway, and so he provides a way for our sins to be forgiven.

Of course, the Ark of the Covenant disappeared during history, and we don’t know where it is. In fact, in a 3:16 verse, Jeremiah says: “And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they shall no more say, 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord.' It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again.” (Jer. 3:16) God’s people don’t need to miss that old wooden box. (That doesn’t mean that other people aren’t obsessed about it, of course: you can find all sorts of funny books and websites written by people saying they’ve found the ark. I’m sure I even saw a television programme once about an American archaeologist who was chased by legions of Nazi soldiers in a race to find it.) But despite all the funny ideas about where the Ark of the Covenant is, God tells us we don’t need to miss it or to make another one. Why so?

The Ark of the Covenant was a kind of container which showed God’s provision for his people through that perfect way of life, the true rule of God as opposed to people who rebel, and our daily bread, the food we really need, and it was also the place where the sacrifice was offered for the forgiveness of God’s people. Those are important things for God’s people to be shown, but even more importantly, they need to be done for them.

We have something far better than a wooden box to show us what the perfect life looks like, something far better than a wooden staff to show us who is the real ruler, something far better than manna for food, and a far better sacrifice than farm animals. In fact, that something is a someone, for we have Jesus, who was a living, walking, talking achievement of all that of which the Ark was a picture.

He is the true and faithful ruler over God’s people, and the real source of our spiritual life, who offered himself as the perfect, final sacrifice for our sins. He achieves peace between people and God, and he does this as the only one who is both a human being and also fully God. We don’t need to miss a wooden box, because we have a living Saviour.

Adapted from a children's talk delivered this morning at York Baptist Church.

Pensions: not great value

The RSA released a report the other day proposing changes to the way that pensions operate in the UK (EDIT: link). The headline-grabbing 'announcement' was a simple piece of mathematics that any A-Level student can comprehend: a fee proportional to the value of your pension portfolio reduces its value over time. Unfortunately, many people appear not to have understood why this is so, and even when they grasp that, they misunderstand where the money goes.

The RSA's specific statement is that over forty years, an annual fee of 1.5% (which they claim is a typical fee for the pension wrapper on its own they appear confused as to whether this is for the pension 'wrapper' or the underlying fund investments) results in a pension pot which is 40% lower than a pot without any fees at all. (Remember that on top of the pension fee comes the fee for the investment funds they buy, so the total cost is higher still.) Although the report tries to provide a "worked example", their example might as well be chucked in favour of the following. Each year, a pension pot is eroded by 1.5% in fees, which means that the pension becomes worth (1–0.015) of what it would have been without fees. This happens forty times, so what we have is an overall value of

(1–0.015)×(1–0.015)×…×(1–0.015);

that is, forty lots of (1–0.015). If you work this out (e.g.), you will find that at the end of the forty years, you have only 54.6% of what you would expect without the fees.

A 0.5% fee, which is what the RSA proposed as being a reasonable fee, would do less damage, resulting in a 12% erosion over forty years, or the client retaining 88% of the total value. As you can see, all that matters is the annual fee and how long you keep your pension for. (But remember: running a pension for fewer years is a false economy!) The overall effect of cutting fees by a third (from 1.5% to 0.5%) is to increase the final value of a pension pot by over a half (from 54.6% to 88%), which shows how important it is to keep fees low, assuming you're not getting any special performance from the higher-fee manager, which typically you aren't.

So that leaves a question: what's a guy to do if he wants to get a pension? (I don't have a pension plan, because I don't have an employer making contributions. My retirement investments are in an Isa.)

If you are taking out a pension and want to avoid the effect of these very high fees, let me plant a seedling of an idea: try finding out about Self-Invested Personal Pensions (Sipps, a lower-charge pension which you administer yourself) and exchange-traded funds (ETFs, a lower-charge way to buy index funds of shares or bonds). I reckon it's entirely possible to run your own simplified pension fund (you have just a few basic index funds), without it needing to be hard work (you simply re-balance once a year), for lower fees (Sipps and ETFs make sure of that), and without taking on greater risk (most pension funds buy basically the same kind of investments). The plan, at its simplest, is to buy a FTSE stock market tracker and a bond market tracker, and then to move your allocation between the two as you get older. Both generate income, so it may even be as simple as merely using the investment income carefully to provide that balance. You should only need to look at it once a year if you really can't stand financial stuff, and I believe it should be as secure as a pension plan. However, if you have any doubts or questions you should ask an Independent Financial Advisor (one whom you pay per hour, so you know he's not getting commission) for professional guidance.

The banners are out in force

I just heard a story on the PM programme about what are indelicately termed 'shag bands'. (Outraged coverage from the Mail and angst at the Guardian can be found.) They come in different colours, and apparently the 'game' among young adults is that they are associated with various sexual acts, and when one person succeeds in snapping another's band, the results can be guessed. These bracelets are popular among children, and they are clearly aware of the associations that young adults have applied to them, even up to using them as a way of playing kiss-chase.

Now, this is hardly a defence of the game played with the bands itself, but having just heard a Concerned Parent say that they had written to Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson asking for a ban on selling these bands to under-16s, one does have to ask whether some people are carrying their concern just a little too far. I don't think it is very sensible to place little plastic bands on a list populated with items like cigarettes, alcohol and hunting knives. After all, a little girl could easily want a band simply because she likes the colour and they look pretty. The same cannot sanely be said of booze or fags.

The bands are not the problem: the game is the problem; but since when did people stop to analyse the underlying problem and try to tackle that? Far easier to ban the symptom than to tackle the disease, right? And now, let's talk about the burqa…

Copywrong

Danny Finkelstein manages to put one right in the back of the net:

Having spoken out against piracy, Lily Allen has made herself the subject of attacks from those who disagree and believe, essentially, that copying everything should be legal.

The burden of their attack is that she has, herself, infringed the copyright of various news sites by pasting their material on her site.

I think this attack is absurd.

Lily Allen has used posts from free websites. That is entirely different from file sharing of movies and recorded music.

And her essential point is definitely correct. If we cannot find a way to protect copyright, then it won't pay anyone to create material worth copyrighting.

I didn't say which net, though. I think it's a serious own goal. On his principles, I've quoted his entire post, and am refusing to provide a link, because it's available on a 'free website' and frankly I'm only naming him because I think he's been rather silly. I was sorely tempted to start copying, unattributed, whole stories from his employer's august publication the Times. Because if it's on a 'free website', you can copy it entirely legally, doncherknow, whereas if it's recorded, then you can't. A recording, after all, is nothing like a document on a server somewhere: one is a sequence of ones and zeros, while the other is… um… Well, look at it like this: one is put into an electronic device and is original content generated by someone's creativity, while the other… Oh, this copyright thing is harder than it looks, isn't it?

Copying anyone's content without their permission is illegal, subject to provisions about 'fair use', and it matters not a jot how that content is made available. We can argue about whether it ought to be — there are arguments from all sorts of people about reform, abolition, retention, etc. — but as I understand it that is the law as it stands.

On the subject of reform, meanwhile, Nellie, a commenter on the thread, put it well:

…and carriers with horse-drawn wagons should definitely have been able to force through laws to stop the use of trains and lorries.

Technology is making copyright hard to enforce. That is not the fault of technology, but the fault of copyright, and it shows that rather than bumping up fines and cutting off Internet access, letting the content industries use the government as proxy bullies, we need to re-think what copyright means in the digital age. The arts pre-date copyright (in fact, from a cultural perspective, we had better art before copyright!), so it seems reasonable to suppose that the arts would survive copyright abolition, never mind the much milder proposition of reform.

Guess who? Question Time edition

The BBC has an article about the history of Question Time, and claims that:

Of the current cabinet, only one member is a resolute refusenik. (src)

Who is it? (Honest question. Of the somewhat more long-term political members of the Cabinet, Mandelson, Darling, Balls, Miliband (E), and Cooper have never appeared on QT. A shame, because I really think that Balls, Cooper and Mandelson would do so much to endear the government to the British public.)

The Attorney General

I think the job of Attorney General must be quite fun, in addition to the obvious demands it places. After all, you get to draft legislation, guide it through Parliament, and then when you fail to comply fully, you get a fine, a slap on the wrist and told to be very sorry by the Prime Minister (link). Does it work with speeding?

Labour, of course, is a party committed to blowing away all the dusty traditions associated with British politics and marching forward in progress to a newer, brighter age. (This is why the House of Lords is now a completely democratic institution after twelve years of Labour government.) Traditionally, the A-G has been an elected MP, but despite Tony's links with the world of silk, they evidently weren't able to get enough into Parliament to appoint a decent Attorney General from the massed ranks of the Commoners. As a consequence, Labour has had to break with a dusty old tradition of British politics, and instead of democratically-elected Attorneys General has appointed them in the Lords (they have, however, kept the tradition that the A-G barely ever votes in the House).

Isn't it lovely to see that they're breaking with fusty old democratic traditions and progressing towards a better age where government ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister, and are given a seat in the Lords and substantial leeway when having to comply with legislation which they themselves were responsible for? Progress: it doesn't always have to be towards democracy or the rule of law, you know!

Sinister Susan

Recently, Heworth ward on the City of York council had to hold a by-election; the ward contains working-class areas of York and was held by Labour, with a swing towards the Liberal Democrats. (For the benefit of non-residents, this is entirely unsurprising. The ward is classic Labour territory, and the city is naturally left-leaning liberal.) However, I was looking up some stuff about the new constituencies York is getting for the next general election, and found that Susan Wade Weeks, the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives, had today posted this at ukpollingreport, a respected website and blog dedicated to the dark arts of psephology:

On the face of it, Conservatives had a disappointing result in the recent Heworth council by-election, polling 591 votes which represents around 26% of the low turnout. Heworth is perhaps the strongest Labour ward in the seat, embracing the Tang Hall estates mentioned earlier on this site.

Many core Conservative voters were away over the summer and, crucially, at the time of the election, as were half our activists who would at any other time have been available to work the seat.

Conservatives in Heworth came in 17 votes behind the Lib Dems.

Frustratingly, a percentage of our declared committed voters in Heworth chose this by-election to vote ”tactically” (their words not mine) for UKIP and the Greens, though all those identified have pledged to vote Conservative at the General Election.

Lessons have been learned. (src)

Perhaps it's just me, but that all sounds a little sinister. It gives me visions of Tory activists kidnapping voters, applying thumbscrews and wet towels, and brainwashing them into returning to the Tory fold, and makes me wonder whether the lessons have been learnt by Conservative pols or by the hapless voting public of Heworth.

I think I need Spooks to come back on the telly before my imagination really runs away with me…

So who is the government's puppeteer-in-chief?

There is an evil genius somewhere in the government, and I think I know where to look.

According to the Daily Telegraph, "The cash for bangers scheme is set to earn the Treasury a major windfall" (src). Apparently, this is basically because the Treasury made more in VAT than it shelled out in scrappage rebate. When you consider that a VAT charge of £1,000 (which was the Treasury's share) would equate to a ticket price of £6,667, you can see that a good many cars bought under the scheme will result in a net revenue for the Exchequer.

In other words, the Government was claiming that the rebate would be a way for the Treasury to stimulate the economy by pumping money into it; but if we are to believe their argument that this money would not otherwise have been spent (and that's the really dodgy assumption here, never forget), then the net effect will be to suck money out of the economy into the Treasury.

Well, as I suggested, the government's economics were cock-eyed (amounting the paying homeowners to smash their own windows, and assuming that those homeowners would not have spent or invested the money otherwise), and the environmental benefits equally doubtful (since a buyer could equally have bought a greener car or an SUV). The politics were also doubtful, given that it is alleged much of the rebate was not spent on cars which were made in the UK; however, the politics were most likely to be the driving factor, since car plant workers are more likely to vote for Labour. Therefore, those workers will probably attribute their continued employment to the actions of the government and a few marginals may swing Labour's way. The middle classes have been offered a chance to pay for Labour's electoral benefit, and they are taking it in droves.

So who's the evil genius in the Cabinet? We need look no further than the business department: I trace the handiwork of the Dark Lord.

Scripture and the promotion of the poor

One of the things which came up a few times in discussing with John the relative merits of a classically liberal state and a more activist, left-wing state was his appeal to certain passages of Scripture. For example, he quotes Psalm 72 and comments:

“May he defend the cause of the poor and needy, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor” – one of a large number of texts that call on the king to actively promote the interests of the poor. (Yes, there are also texts calling on the ruling authorities not to tip too far in the opposite direction, unjustly favouring the poor against the rich, but those are a minority – reflecting where the balance of risk tends to lie in practice.) (src)

Or again, referring to:

Proverbs 31:8,9’s call to exercise power in favour of the “poor and needy”. (src)

(Those verses say, for reference:

Open your mouth for the mute,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
defend the rights of the poor and needy.)

The key question, though, is what the vision of these passages actually is. It can be all too easy, I suspect, to fall into the trap of reading modern social democracy back into these verses: tempering material inequality through redistribution, state regulation of economic activity and altering the basis of international trade. I would suggest that these verse are a call for justice: for equality before the law, access to redress, and a refusal to ride roughshod over the weak and the poor. In fact, I think this is the more obvious reading, and I suggest that they tend to push us towards a view of state and law which are more like classical liberalism than any variety of social democracy.

As I read these passages, I see not a call to promote the poor, but a call to avoid promoting the rich. It is the difference between ensuring that courts and laws are not stacked against the poor, and stacking them in favour of the poor. (Of course, if we are to err on one side or another, I will always prefer to err on the side of the poor. Yet even if we err on the side of the poor, it remains an error.) The distinction may seem nice, but it exists and I think the Bible lands on the side of trying to ensure that the powerful cannot abuse the weak, nor the rich the poor, rather than trying to make the poor rich, or make the weak powerful. In other words, the vision is for a genuine equality before the law, rather than promoting the interests of the poor.

To take a practical example, compulsory purchase is a real injustice in many modern societies. It forces people to leave their property, simply because a big company or some arm of the government wants to build there; it puts me in mind of Naboth's vineyard, in so many ways. (As a general point, the left always seems to get more exercised about corporate compulsory purchase than state schemes. Odd, that. Oh, and while I'm being parenthetical, it doesn't stop being unjust simply because the property is a limited company rather than a house. Yes, Alistair, I'm looking at you.) The powerful get to exercise their power in order to have their own way, and they do so using the force of law. We would be in a better position if the law simply protected property rights and let people negotiate a settlement! Justice, in this case, is intimately linked to freedom: the freedom of both sides to negotiate without harassment and with the law defending the property-owner. In short, the classically liberal view is a step towards justice, rather than away from it, and I claim that is generally true.

To defend my appeal that these verses are a call for impartiality, I note that God says in Exodus 23:3, "nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit," and in Leviticus 19:15, "You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour." Someone might object that the temptations to partiality are greater in terms of being favourable to the rich and the powerful. I agree absolutely, and sometimes those temptations are in-built, such as the fact that legal representation can be too expensive for poor people. I hope that I am not wilfully blind to the importance of programmes like legal aid (properly administered), nor to the importance of ensuring that the poor are able to access basic services like healthcare and education. For all that, though, I cannot get past the fact that all these calls for justice for the poor are calls for justice: a call for law to rule, rather than wealth or power, a call for impartiality and therefore for an essentially level playing field. It is surely an unattainable ideal, an impossibility this side of glory, but it must be the ideal to which we strive, and it is the essential ideal of classical liberalism: a society in which all are free, and all are equal before the law.

How to annoy everyone

I was listening with half an ear open to the arguments about the BBC and the two culture spokescritters for Labour and the Conservatives: Ben Bradshaw (Lab) has been complaining about the Trust, Jeremy Hunt has been saying he won't top-slice the licence fee, the BBC DG weighs in, that sort of thing. And it occurred to me that the following problems and benefits are perceived with the BBC:

1. Negative. It is funded by a compulsory payment, which is a real problem if you watch television but never BBC. It's not great if you don't use the BBC much. (Of course, it is cheaper than Sky. But the compulsion is still a point against.)
2. Negative. Related to that first point, it is perceived to have an institutional bias towards the left and the left's particular concerns. Tony Benn may complain that it is right-wing, but very few people further right than Marx would agree. That would be less of a problem in a privately-run situation, but the compulsory funding model makes anyone who dislikes the BBC's ideological stance choose between not having a television at all, or funding something they would prefer not to fund.
3. Positive. It is not driven by commercial pressures. This means it can produce stuff which a private company, especially an advert-funded one, could not produce.
4. Positive. The BBC is publicly-owned, although formally independent of the government. That means that the paying public have a sense of ownership, even if it is somewhat removed and mediated through the trust

I don't like the idea of kicking the BBC out into the commercial sector as a privately-owned and -run organisation, if only because we don't need another tempting morsel to add to the growing Murdoch empire.

And yet, I don't like the "telly tax". It particularly grates to think that the BBC spends money (thankfully reducing) on importing foreign, mostly American, content: it really should be using its resources on new, British content and letting the imports come through the commercial sector. And then there are the things the BBC does which drive the commercial sector out of activities: Radio 1 could survive as a commercial channel, rather than competing from the security of the licence-payer's bosom. The same probably goes for Radios 2 and 5, and possibly for Radio 3 as well: Radio 4 is perhaps different (but I would say that, wouldn't I?). The television channels could be slimmed down, and bbc.co.uk is a major web presence, but frankly unnecessary.

So, apart from selling off those bits of the BBC which are not necessary to its core function, what do we do with the rest? As I say, I'm reluctant to make it a private company, but I can't for the life of me see the justification in taxing people for it. Mercifully, subscriptions have become a viable option since the days of Lord Reith. So here's my suggestion, which has been partly inspired by the blog conversation with John H:

After selling off the "non-core" assets of the BBC, turn the rest into a co-operative broadcaster funded by subscription. (I'd suggest that a divvy be abandoned in favour of lower subscriptions or better programming, though.) The initialism can be retained as the British Broadcasting Co-operative; the BBC's political bias lies not too far removed from the co-operative movement's own political centre; the subscription model identifies the BBC's viewers with its customers (ITV's customers are, of course, its advertisers) without the compulsory element of taxation; the left is annoyed by the idea of removing the BBC from the state; and the right is infuriated by the co-operative model.

A policy which maketh wroth quite literally everyone: so wrong, it's right?

Supplementary to my last post

It didn't quite fit in the post, but it fits the topic. I have been looking at the Home Office's set of accounts, and it transpires that the Criminal Records Bureau turned a surplus for the three financial years 06–07, 07–08 and 08–09 (£13mn, £9.5mn and £6.5mn respectively, or a margin on income of 13.8%, 9.7% and 5.2%). That's nearly £30mn over three years. It was only by some clever accounting that the Home Office managed to hide the latter surplus from the main tables. Now, given Gordon's great scheme to save his skin the economy by putting us all in the hole for trillions, tens of millions are hardly here or there, but nevertheless the point remains: the government is making a profit out of moral panic. Little wonder they want to charge £65 a pop for people in paid employment to get themselves a chit confirming that they are safe around children, as if we are unsafe until given safe status by the government.

Offensive? It's downright scandalous.

Figures for the years 06–07, 07–08 may be found on this html conversion of a cached .pdf, on page 63, and figures for the year may be found in this .pdf on page 62.

From today's Times

This is an important column and well worth reading:

This CRB-check paranoia won’t stop another Soham

The reason for its high reading value? The author is DCS Chris Stevenson (ret) of whom the subtitle says, "I helped to catch Ian Huntley and I know these stupid rules would not have prevented his crimes".

Ian Huntley, the murderer of the two Soham schoolgirls, worked at a different school from the one the girls attended and in any case had slipped through the bureaucratic net. His job made no difference, since as DCS Stevenson points out, it was Huntley's girlfriend, Maxine Carr, whom the girls knew and trusted: "He could have been in any occupation, lorry driver, architect, anything, and lived with a woman that the two girls knew and trusted."

The effect of the politicians' knee-jerk responses to these cases is that even retired police officers can feel brow-beaten into removing photographs of their grandsons playing football at a village match, rather than being accused of indecent activity. Moral panic around child abuse has turned us into a fearful nation and imposed a collective madness. It's time for the worm to turn.

Wandering around classical liberalism

John H has posted some interesting thoughts at his political blog on what he perceives to be the benefits and difficulties with the classically liberal political viewpoint. As I am quite happy to describe myself as being a classical liberal, and as we had a brief exchange the day before, I should like to respond to some of his points.

Classical liberalism and "property conservatism"

One of John's points was that the state has created, or at least legally established, ownership and property for so long that we cannot assert that any given structure is a natural thing. He writes,

In other words, the state’s actions in establishing what Marx would call “bourgeois property” – for example, the Enclosure Acts or the invention of limited liability companies – are to be accepted, but any proposals to change what we have inherited from those earlier actions is unacceptable interference in private property by the state.

There are two issues here. The Enclosure Acts were an act of private theft, pure and simple. The principle behind it — that privately-owned land is more efficient than publicly-owned land — is clearly correct, but the Act itself was simple theft, with the wealthy suborning the legislative process in order to raid the state. However, that does not mean that it is practical to go round trying to "right" a wrong that was done nearly two centuries ago. We are where we are, after all.

The limited liability company is a more interesting topic of concern, and ties in with the question of whether a company is a legal person in its own right. John raises, implicitly, the question of whether a classical liberal could contemplate 'undoing' the Limited Liability Act 1855: it is interesting to note that the Act was, at the time, controversial. The truth is that there is probably a spectrum of opinion among classical liberals, but my own is that in principle we could quite cheerfully undo the Act; again, it would be practically very difficult. However, I agree on the principle: if banks want to agree to limit a company's liability, then as far as I am concerned that is their own affair and there is no need to involve the law beyond the honouring of any contract which is signed.

Classical liberalism and the state

Classical liberalism is not anarcho-capitalistic. We do not believe that the state should cease to exist, and although we may place the limits at different places among us, we are all agreed that it should respect proper limits. This is a contrast with the social-democratic left, which has not yet seen a problem it does not believe that politics and the state cannot make better. So while most classical liberals are strong believers in universal access to education and healthcare, we are not at all concerned that the state should be the only provider of those services: in fact, we generally argue that all monopolies are potential for abuse, including state monopolies.

Classical liberalism and taxation

Although he mixes his political philosophies a little, John observes that classical liberalism can appear, at its most anti-state reaches, to descend into a view of taxation which sees it as "unacceptable “coercion”". Of course, the latter of the two words is a simple matter of fact: no-one has yet found a way of making the state survive by voluntary subscription, so taxation is inherently coercive.

The question is whether the coercion is justified. A classical liberal, believing in the importance of a state, will agree that taxation is not in principle unacceptable; however, we would generally I think be of one voice in saying that the present burden is unacceptably high. So even I would agree that, at the margin, taxation is unacceptable coercion; however, once it is cut it will become acceptable coercion.

Classical liberalism and the football pitch of society

The last point I want to make is to pre-empt what I hope may be a useful dialogue on the Co-operative Party, which John is currently considering. There is, I believe, an inherent distinction between the classical liberal (and let me include the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist in this as well) and most of the rest of the political discourse. Most other parties see themselves as being engaged in the business of turning the state to the advantage of some special interest group or another: business, labour, ethnic minorities, "the indigenous people", corporations, co-operatives etc. [1] It was Bastiat who described the state as "the great fiction through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else."

We are different. We don't want to get the government to pass laws favouring any given structure or group: we just want to be free. So while the rest of the parties in the football game of politics are busy cheering on their team and trying to tilt the pitch in their favour, the classically liberal have the best claim to being in favour of a level playing field and an impartial referee. We are not tied to any given structure or any particular interest group: instead, we want a society where all are free to speak their minds, to exercise their skills, and to own and enjoy their property in peace and quiet.

[1] Perhaps the poor, the marginalised and the relatively powerless are a category apart, in that I would certainly consider the effects of policy on them first. However even here, I prefer policies which give them the chance to help themselves, rather than simple hand-outs.

Even more Balls

The Secretary of State for Private Lives is at it again, at Labour List:

I think the co-op trust model - together with Labour's other school improvement policies like National Challenge and Academies - will go from strength to strength. Unlike the Tory free market model we know our approach is not just affordable and fair, but it works too. (src)

I guess it's just too hard for the Secretary of State for Education to get his head round the fact that the Tories' proposals would allow people to set up co-operative schools of the sort that he favours, as well as schools of sorts that he doesn't favour. Then, schools which are efficient at providing a good education will grow and thrive, while schools which are not so efficient will have to adapt or wither.

You see, I'm not bothered about any given structure in a sense. I have my philosophical prejudices about education, of course, but I don't much mind whether other people set up a Steiner School or a Montessori Academy or an unschool or a co-operative school or a business-oriented school or a classical school or a traditional school or… the list of educational philosophies is endless. I really don't mind! But what I do want is freedom, because it is only when people are free to set up schools and parents are free to choose that we will start to find out which schools educate children well.

One might have thought that the economically-minded Ed Balls had learnt that lesson, but evidently in his mind the government knows better than parents. That is the only explanation for his insistence that only certain models for schooling are permissible. Still, at least he is consistent with the latest piece of authoritarian [CENSORED] to emanate from Whitehall: the "Independent" "Safeguarding" Authority.

A vote for Labour is a declaration that adults can't be trusted to look out for children, not other people's and not their own.

Teachers.tv on the Swedish supply-side saga

Now with added unflattering pictures of Ed Balls' arch-nemesis. (link)

(Seems I can't embed videos properly. Bother.)

I should respond to the concerns of the parent featured at the end, as well as the union rep, who basically said "It's all well and good them foreigners having these funny ideas about schools, but don't you come over here with them strange foreign ideas from overseas and start thinking you can mess around with our education system. We like it failing just the way it does." I should respond, but it kind of defeats itself.

The point about the Swedish model is that it allows parent choice. The story about Richmond is that parent choice is still non-existent; all that is happening is that a Swedish schooling company is exporting its educational philosophy to the UK. There's nothing wrong with that as it stands, but it is not the free market which the Swedish revolution brings about, and it is that free market in schooling which is more important than any paedagogical philosophy.

Tories in pro-freedom shock exposé!

You can read all about it in the Guardian (yes, from a couple of months ago). Apparently, the Tories are convinced that private schools are good for poor people. Gosh. And because of this, they propose to exchange funding state-provided education for a voucher system which lets parents choose where to send their children. In essence, they are proposing that if their education policy is good for British people, it is good for people in poorer countries too.

Not only the Tories have been finding out about the benefits of private education in poor countries. As I wrote a few months ago (link), James Tooley, an academic from Newcastle University, has also been on the trail of low-cost private schools in the poorest parts of the poorest countries, and he has found that even where officialdom denies their existence or significance, they are playing an important role in educating the children of the marginalised and the poor. If the Tories haven't heard of Tooley's work, they should, because he shows that the market is providing where government fails.

However, the charities, many of whom rely heavily on government for their funding, are incapable of thinking outside their own comfort zone of state aid and big, top-down public projects. Ironically, they are the ones who accuse the Tories of being ideologically-driven, despite the fact that the Tories are willing to countenance anything which works, while the charities insist that human services must be provided according to the model they lay down. Witness the comments of the Oxfam spokesman:

Vouchers sound attractive because they apparently give power to citizens to choose the best schools and health services. But in many poor countries there are no services available, full stop. There is a chronic shortage of teachers, nurses, doctors, infrastructure and materials. What is needed is aid money invested in helping poor countries build and maintain free public health and education systems.

Is it any surprise that an organisation which derives about 23% of its income from various governmental and quasi-governmental bodies should be ideologically opposed to the involvement of the private sector?

The man from Oxfam misunderstands what is expected to happen, too. By giving people vouchers, the Conservatives plan to generate demand for healthcare and education, and where there is demand, entrepreneurs will be incentivised to step in and supply the services demanded. This is a revolutionary approach to aid, which puts the power in the hands of the poorest. Instead of treating them as passive recipients, this policy treats them as active participants, with ideas and desires worth funding.

Big Charity struggles to treat the poorest with the respect they deserve. It's time to by-pass them and go straight to the people in need of the aid.

(Thanks: Thomas Byrne at Charlotte Gore's blog.)

The taxpayers' revolt

How do you solve a problem like Gordon's increasing tax burden?

Perhaps not the catchiest of titles, but it is a real question all the same. The Government snaffles, through the tax system, some 40% of the national income. Some of the taxes we know about: national insurance, income tax, corporation tax, value-added tax… the list is apparently endless. While we get VAT on our receipts, the effect of the other taxes on our bills and spending is less well-known. Here is an idea that could change all that.

The picture on the right is a till receipt for a high-class hairdresser's, some bod called Michael Van Clarke. If you click on it, you should see that it is not simply itemised in terms of the customer's spending, but also by an estimate of the taxes paid on the transaction. So although your eyes, like mine, would pop at the thought of a £374 bill for getting the mop cut, they should water intensely at the thought that of that £374, nearly £180 goes from the customer to the Treasury, leaving the business owner with £195. Like me, you may be more used to paying a modest £10 for a haircut; if this receipt is a good guide, that would mean that about £4.80 of that transaction goes to the Treasury.

Tax is almost doubling the price of hairdressing at this establishment: if you're a small business owner, perhaps you could think about showing your customers how much Gordon is costing them, too.

(Thanks: Taxpayers' Alliance.)

Such a long-running convention!

The Speaker of the House of Commons is the recipient of an awful lot of conventions. By convention, he is escorted to his seat because many Speakers were only marginally longer-lived than machine gunners in the Somme. By convention, he wears all sorts of funny gear, although that convention is slowly dying out: we seem to have got him down from regalia which were almost papistical in their finery to a plain old Geneva gown. By convention, the Speakership alternates between political parties, although on closer inspection that convention turns out to be a slight fiction. And by convention, the main opposition parties don't put up candidates against the Speaker seeking re-election. Labour has been most insistent on this convention, since the previous two Speakers were from the Labour party and the present one was known to be the choice of the Labour party.

A convention so well-respected must have been running for an awfully long time, right? Wrong.

In 1987, Speaker Weatherill was opposed by Labour and the SDP (src). In 1974, Labour and the Liberals contested Speaker Lloyd's seat (src) and this was noted as a break with convention. As far back as I can see, however, the Tories never contested a Labour Speaker's seat.

So in fact it seems that the convention is now that Labour and the Lib Dems always contests a Tory Speaker's seat; and yet they shall not be contesting Bercow's seat. Presumably, the only way this can fit the pattern is if Bercow were in fact a Labour Speaker; and given Nigel Farage's announcement that he will run against Bercow, perhaps the Tories should appeal to '74 and '87, observe that the "convention" has only existed at Labour's pleasure and therefore is a dead letter, and oppose Bercow at the ballot box.

Lookalike

In the spirit of Private Eye, I give you:

John Piper	Sir Malcolm Rifkind

Or is it the other way round?

Globalisation is good

Johan Norberg explains, in an excellent video lasting fifty minutes. He visits Taiwan and explains how globalisation has been responsible for its development. He then goes to Vietnam and shows how a Nike factory, a result of globalisation, is giving Vietnam some of the same benefits Taiwan enjoyed. His final stop is Kenya, where he shows that land reform has stifled development, even as low import taxes in Kenya and the EU have helped some smaller sectors of the Kenyan economy. His conclusion is that anti-globalisation campaigners are missing the point: development is stifled not because of Western capitalism, but because Western countries are refusing to admit poorer countries into the trading cycle.

I might add that Botswana and Zambia have both engaged in significant liberalisation and are among Africa's success stories. It is not that we have too much globalisation to help the poor, but too little. We can't affect Kenyan land policy directly, but we can affect our own policies: we need an end to the CAP, lower tariffs and unilaterally preferential deals for poor countries, especially in agriculture and textiles: the two areas they can best exploit, and the two areas in which we particularly refuse to cut tariffs.

(Thanks: Junksmith at the ASI blog)